Who: Amelia and Aaron When: Tuesday, Nov 7, noonish Where: Gavin’s house
It had been a strange few days for Aaron. Between what had happened with Mila and Gavin telling him that Amelia was back, but different ... his brain felt tired. At least one of those things was an incredibly good thing, so that was a plus. He’d texted with Jasper a bit just to confirm that it was true -- not that he didn’t trust his brother, but grief could make people crazy, right? And Aaron was so worried about the mental health of his family now. But Jasper had excitedly backed up his dad, even sent a couple more pictures, and Aaron had to admit this girl looked a lot like Amelia.
He still wanted to see for himself, and to hug the shit out of Amelia if it was all true. Gavin had suggested he take a few days off from the bar, and Mila had gone to do her training at The Boathouse, so Aaron had some time on his hands. Which sort of made him antsy. He wasn’t sure how to contact Amelia if Gavin and Jasper both were gone from the house, so he hoped she didn’t mind him just showing up. Aaron wanted to bring her something, but he had no idea what she might like now, so he just picked up some burgers and shakes from Moxie’s and drove over to Gavin’s place. After Sunday, things had felt more normal with Mila -- not all the way normal, he was still worried, but she was acting okay -- but Aaron felt little flares of nervousness as he parked his truck in the drive. What if this was another disaster waiting to happen? What if literally everyone was losing their shit, or the Lucases were being plagued by demons from all sides or something? He tried to put it all out of his mind as he walked up to the front door. Aaron thought about just letting himself in, but he didn’t want to scare Amelia, so he knocked and listened to the dogs start barking.
Amelia was settling in just fine, though she still felt a little weird about her dad taking the couch while she was there. They could share the very large bed, she thought, or they could just get her a little mattress to sleep on the floor. But no, he was adamant she take his bed until they figured something else out. She'd decided she was not going back home to her mom. Things were weird with her and Amelia was still a little bit upset after meeting her. Ollie had believed her but she'd somehow managed to make Amelia feel guilty about not coming to see her sooner and from there on it was just weird. Jasper had cheered her up some but when there was a knock on the door she was worried it was her mom and she'd have to endure another hour or two of that bad weirdness. She shushed the dogs and padded to the door, bracing herself before opening up.
As soon as she started opening the door she second guessed herself. Maybe she shouldn't let anyone know she was there, maybe she should ignore the door. It was a little too late for that now that the door was open and then it didn't matter anyway because she knew very well who this was standing outside the door. With food! "Uncle Aaron!" she squeaked before she could stop herself. Jasper had told her Aaron knew so she didn't need to do the weird shuffling about with him too but she still barely kept back from jumping up to hug him. He looked so young. She'd always thought he was one of the super grown-up people in her life but seeing him now he just looked... Young.
Aaron had considered that the girl might be a faker, though if she’d done her homework she ought to know that the family didn’t have any money to con them out of. And if she was just crazy, her dad and her brother would figure that out, right? But Gavin had said there’d been DNA proof, and everybody seemed to believe her so far ... He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when she opened the door, but it wasn’t the sudden surge of relief he actually felt. She knew him immediately, and while that was possible to fake, the lilt in her voice when she said his name was all Amelia. Aaron stared at her for a heartbeat, then started to grin. “Oh my God,” he murmured as he moved into the house. Aaron put the food bag and drinks down on the little table near the door so the dogs wouldn’t tear into them, then scooped Amelia up into a hug. She might be longer, but she was still easy to pick up and spin around, the found that much out immediately.
God that brought up memories and while Amelia was laughing there was raw emotion to it that had her close to tears. For now she forgot all about her mother's passive aggressive weirdness as another relative saw and accepted her just like that. She laughed almost hysterically when he spun her, feeling like a kid for a few seconds. When he put her down she backed up enough to look at his face, cupping it with both hands, still laughing. "Oh my god," she tittered. "I thought you were older... Like a lot older. Everything is weird." She was well aware that it was even weirder for him but she was caught in her own emotion and Uncle Aaron had always been one of the Grown Ups but now he just looked... like a young man.
It was funny how skepticism could vanish just like that. Aaron squeezed Amelia before he put her down, then grinned as she got a good look at him. He looked at her right back, taking in how her features had matured. There was a lot the same about those big pretty eyes though. His chest felt too full and he was a big giddy, and he thought that was probably just a taste of what Gavin must have felt when she’d shown up. “Well hey, I thought you were a lot younger, too,” he teased gently, rubbing her arms. “This is amazing. Holy shit.” The dogs were being insistent about wanting attention, so Aaron broke his gaze away to vigorously rub their heads and tell them they were good boys. “I brought food, you hungry?” he asked Amelia, glancing back up.
"Oh my god, yes," Amelia said and she felt like she was hungry pretty much all the time these days. At least she was always ready to eat when someone brought food but the food was just so good and so varied back here. Her face almost hurt from all the smiling as she watched him with the dogs, "Did dad tell you everything?" she asked and that helped dampen it a little bit. She wasn't sure she wanted to tell her story all over again but that was something she had to get used to. It was just frustrating that it felt like there were more holes in it every time she did.
Aaron scrunched up one side of his face a bit as he straightened up and reached for the food he’d brought. “More or less, the uh, the gist of it, I guess,” he said. He didn’t know how much ‘everything’ actually entailed. “He said something took you somewhere else, a hell, and to you it was a really long time when it was only a couple weeks here.” He gestured for them to move and started toward the kitchen with her. “You found your way back? This is all ... pretty fuckin’ crazy,” he said with a laugh that said he didn’t mind that at all. It was finally the good kind of crazy.
"I missed you guys so much," Amelia said because it beat trying to explain what she had done to get back and how she'd been all alone and had nothing to lose anymore. "I thought you'd have all moved away or gotten married and had kids. I just kept picturing Jasper with his cheerleader 'wife' and then I come back and everything is the way I left it." It was crazy but parts of the crazy were definitely good. She was home. She sat down at the kitchen table after grabbing some plates and glasses from the cupboards. "I'm gonna need a new identity, dad says and I don't want one. I just wanna be me."
He couldn’t even begin to imagine what she’d been through -- they’d been miserable enough for two weeks, that was probably just the tip of the suffering iceberg in comparison. But she was home and smiling and he was about to feed her burgers and milkshakes and Aaron felt pretty amazing about that. The part about having kids gave him a little twinge, but it was easy enough to ignore in the face of everything else. “You’ll still be you,” he said as he set out the food for them and plopped into a chair himself. “You’ll just ... have a slightly different name and background story.” Aaron had no idea what the actual plan was, but he already knew that Gavin wouldn’t let her go anywhere, they were going to take care of her.
Amelia didn't waste any time getting her portion of the food out of the bag and onto her plate. She'd been so focused on Jasper for so long, like he was her tether to this world, but meeting the rest of her family was making her so stupidly happy. She hadn't dared believe they'd recognize her and accept her but one by one they were doing just that. "But how are you?" she asked, not wanting to linger on a topic that was depressing to her. "I know so little about you all, like... I just know you all do grown-up stuff and you worked at the bar with dad? But you also... liked cars?" She was pretty sure that had been Aaron. Being nine people hadn't told her a whole lot and she felt so in the dark with whatever was going on with her family.
Aaron could’ve been more skeptical, could’ve questioned her on stuff only Amelia would know, ask to see the DNA evidence the cops supposedly collected ... but he really didn’t want to be. Gavin believed her, and he would know his own daughter, right? Jasper believed her. The cops obviously believed her to some degree, since she’d been allowed to come to the house. And the fucking family needed something good these days. Something comforting. Caden would probably end up being the strongest skeptic of them all, so why put Amelia through the interrogation wringer more than once? Aaron unwrapped his burger with a little grin. ‘Grown up stuff’ was a cute way to put it. “Yeah, I co-own the bar with your dad and Caden. I do some car work on the side when I need the money, used to be a full-time mechanic. I’m uh ... I’m okay. There’s been some ... stuff, lately. But it’s okay.” He reached over to give her arm a little squeeze. “Especially since you’re back.”
"Yeah, I remember your house had like... an engine in the middle of the living room," Amelia said though it had been a really long time since she'd seen it so maybe it had been something else. A water pump, a radiator, hell maybe even just a battery. The memory was fuzzy at best and she hadn't known a thing about cars back then. To Aaron it was probably only a year ago, maybe two. She hadn't been to his house often and she couldn't remember why she'd gone there that time. The clunk of metal her dad had been quietly cursing was memorable though, right there on the floor. She covered his hand with hers and frowned softly. "What kind of stuff?" She wasn't a kid anymore and if there were problems in the family she wanted to know.
Aaron had had living room engines before, he currently didn’t, but the fact that Amelia remembered that made him grin again, in spite of everything. He hadn’t really expected her to ask what the stuff was, and Aaron faltered for a moment. She might look a lot older now, but it was hard to shake thinking that she was still nine years old. At the same time, he kind of wanted to blurt out everything to someone -- how excited he’d been to be a dad, how much it had hurt to lose the baby, how devastating Amelia’s own disappearance had been, how scared he was for Mila now. It would be so much, though, too much to dump on her. “Just ... some stuff with my girlfriend,” he settled on, managing a little smile. Aaron rubbed his thumb against her and then took his hand back to pick up his burger. “You remember Mila?”
"Yeah," Amelia replied, though she only really remembered her name and face. She was pretty and she was a friend of the family, that was where Amelia's knowledge of the woman ended. "Is she your girlfriend? Nobody told me." It wasn't really weird, on the list of thousands of things they all needed to talk about, who Aaron was dating was hardly top priority. "Is she okay? Are you okay?" She took a big bite of her own burger, wide eyes looking to Aaron for answers.
Aaron had never really told his child-niece about his relationships, because ... why would he? They were mostly sordid affairs anyway, nothing a nine year old ought to hear about. Apparently word hadn’t gotten down to Amelia that he was serious about somebody before she’d vanished, but Aaron supposed that made sense too. They’d been keeping it quiet until the pregnancy, and then Gavin was upset enough about it that he wouldn’t have told his daughter, of course. He nodded a bit, taking a deeper breath and trying to sort his words out. “Yeah, uh, she’s my girlfriend,” he said first. That was the easy part. “Um ... we uh, lost a pregnancy. Right before you disappeared. So we’re still tryin’ to ... work through that. Mila’s not taking it very well.” He shot Amelia a glance that was almost apologetic. It was small potatoes compared to what she’d been through.
Amelia stopped chewing for a few seconds, then chewed faster so she could speak sooner. "I'm so sorry," she said quietly. "How far along was she?" She'd read about it plenty and she couldn't imagine what Aaron and Mila were going through. It was so alien to her, more of a promise of a life than an actual life but still their child. She'd lost people but having something die inside of her was kind of a scary thought.
It was such an adult question, it just drove home how surreal all of this really was. Amelia was back, but there was such a gap between her and them now. She was almost all grown up. “Not very,” he answered Amelia. “Maybe ... seven or eight weeks. We were excited, though.” Aaron gave her a wan smile. He hoped she didn’t ask how the family had taken it, he really didn’t want to dance around the subject of her father and how he’d tried to talk Mila into an abortion. Amelia didn’t need to know the ins and outs of all of their fucked up family dynamics -- they were supposed to be better now, like Gavin had said. That meant letting go of shit. “But it’s okay,” he added, even though it wasn’t. He just didn’t want her to worry about it. “How are you settling in?”
Amelia was watching him with a sad little look when he changed the subject. She might be rusty at talking to her family but she knew an out when she heard one so she forced a little half-smile onto her lips and nodded. "It's weird," she said, despite her intention to just tell him everything was great. "I just feel stupid and out of place." So much for a feel good attitude. It was just hard to be a downer when Jasper and her dad were so happy to have her back, this somber conversation was the first time she felt like she could talk about it which probably meant she should get her ass back to the hospital to talk to Lettie Amari. "I mean-" she shook her head, not wanting it to sound worse than it was. "It's amazing, don't get me wrong, I just... I don't know anything and I have to change my name and I don't want to."
Aaron wasn’t surprised to hear that it wasn’t all peaches and rainbows. Ever since Gavin had told him the news, he’d been thinking about it all, and he knew she couldn’t have come through it all unscathed. Where she’d been sounded bad even without many details, but just the separation at that age had to be hell to start with. None of them would probably ever understand what she’d been through. He reached out to give Amelia’s back a gentle rub, then squeezed her shoulder a bit. “For starters, you’re not stupid,” he said, holding her gaze. “Nothin’ stupid about not knowing things you never had a chance to learn. Now I dunno much about where you were, but if you survived it for so long, you’re pretty fuckin’ smart and clever and tough, okay? As for outta place ... that’ll probably just come with time. You’ll always be Amelia Lucas to us, no matter what anybody else thinks, and there was a huge hole in our family without you. You’re back where you belong. Just gotta ... adjust that hole to fit you now, know what I mean?”
Amelia felt a little choked up as she listened to him talk and when he finished she wiped her fingers off with a tissue, then shifted closer to him to give him a hug. "Thank you," she whispered because what he'd said meant more to her than he'd ever know. She'd had help in surviving but yeah, she was tough and she definitely had her strong points. Driving in traffic and math just weren't among them. Hugging her family members always triggered a whole lot of nostalgia in her, how could it not when they smelled the same as they did nine years ago - or two weeks ago. Aaron was no different and she clung to him for a good long moment before letting him go with a little laugh, emotion over amusement. "I never thought I'd see any of you again."
Aaron was happy to hug her, rubbing Amelia’s back again while she was there. She didn’t quite smell the same to him, and she was obviously bigger, but there was something sweetly familiar about it all anyway. She’d always been affectionate with him, the more loving of her uncles, and it made his throat feel a bit full to think about how she was too big now to climb all over him like she used to. He could still pick her up though, and he would keep doing that until he couldn’t anymore. “We kept hoping and praying that we’d find you,” he said, and tried to clear the thickness out of his voice. He patted her shoulder again, then went back to his burger. “Most of us, anyway. And here you are.” Aaron gave her a brighter smile. “Gavin said the sheriff got DNA evidence? How’d he take that?”
"I don't know," Amelia said with a little shake of her head. "The sheriff was really nice about it all when he was with me, dad went to see him this morning and I don't know how it went. He hasn't called me so I'm guessing it went well, you know? He just texted to check if I was okay." If things had gone badly she had no doubts Gavin would have come straight home and... done something about it. That was still her idea of him, he just showed up and fixed things, no matter what it was. "He says he doesn't need the papers to be sure but I'm still glad he has them. I want him to be sure."
“Well yeah, I mean, I know Gav didn’t need a piece of paper to confirm it ... I meant how’d the sheriff take it?” Aaron clarified. “He talked to you before you came over here, right?” He hadn’t had a lot of run-ins with the Point Pleasant lawmen, but they’d always struck Aaron as a skeptical, practical bunch. None of them even went to church as far as he knew. He was just curious how the man who was supposed to keep order in the town had taken the proof that a girl had gone missing for two weeks and aged nine years in that time. It would be a mind fuck for anybody, and Sheriff Barrett didn’t have the benefit of familial instinct when it came to knowing Amelia was Amelia.
"He was really nice about it," Amelia replied. "Even before he believed me." The cop who had found her had been upset. He hadn't needed to lose control of his temper or anything for her to pick up on that but she understood that. It hadn't been nine years over here, he probably still thought she was a lunatic unless the sheriff had told him what was going on. "Maybe he always believed me, he was really patient and he helped me a lot." She smiled. "A total dad, he has two kids, I could tell."
“Good, good,” Aaron murmured, feeling warmly pleased about that. The Lucas family didn’t have the best relationship with the cops in Point Pleasant, and it was nice to hear that they’d been kind to one of them, even after finding out she was a Lucas. Granted, she was still a kid in some basic, important ways, and she’d been through trauma and all, but the distrust of law enforcement was almost genetic for Aaron at this point. He ate another bite of food and washed it down, then tossed a sideways glance at Amelia. “I wanna ask about your mom, but ... we don’t gotta talk about it if you don’t want to.”
That was a sore topic, he wasn't wrong about that, and Amelia shrugged, pursing her lips to the side. "It was nice," she said with a tone that suggested that it hadn't stayed nice. "A little weird. I won't be going home again. God, my room is exactly the same as it was. It was like walking into a dream - or nightmare, I don't really know if it was a good sort of feeling. It was weird enough to come here. I think I was hoping it'd be... okay. That I could spend some nights over there and give poor dad his bed back but... No." She shook her head and gave Aaron a wry smile. "She wasn't mean or anything but she just... I don't know."
He wasn’t too surprised to hear that it hadn’t been the heartwarming reunion that she’d probably been hoping for. Olivia was hard to deal with even when things outside of herself made sense, and this really didn’t. Aaron gave a little nod and glanced around the house, wondering where they were going to put Amelia if she was going to be living here. Gavin didn’t have any more rooms, and a teenage girl deserved her own space. “Well, I’m sorry for that,” he said quietly, reaching over to pat her arm again. “Maybe Gav needs to build on an addition on or something,” Aaron offered in a bit lighter tone. “I dunno if you remember, but I helped him get Jasper’s room ready. I know some contractor guys too. Might not be ‘til spring, though.”
"Yeah I don't know," Amelia said quietly. Thinking about things like that made her head hurt. It started with thinking she could just stay at Juniper, but that cost money and she had no idea how to make money, let alone enough money to rent a room. The fact she needed money at all hurt her head and there was that anxiety pit in her stomach again. She took a deep breath. "I keep telling dad I can sleep on the couch. I've slept on worse, that couch is really comfortable but he won't hear it." It was cleaner now than when she'd first come home. Gavin had cleared out the overflowing ashtrays and empty bottles somewhat sheepishly and she was well aware he was a bit ashamed of it all.
Aaron shook his head quickly, because he was on board with his brother on that one. Really, it probably ought to be Jasper giving up his room and sleeping on the couch, but Aaron knew he had a girlfriend now and probably highly valued his privacy. “A young woman needs her own room,” he murmured, picking up his milkshake to have a slurp. Maybe Amelia wasn’t used to that idea, but he knew it was true. “We can build some room or Gavin might start looking for a bigger place. Either way, we’re gonna make sure you’ve got a home.” He knew he was using ‘we’ a lot, but he couldn’t see this as anything but a family endeavor.
"I don't know," Amelia said with a little smile. "It feels weird to sleep alone. I've had the dogs in the room and the door open, it's a lot nicer than sleeping alone at Juniper." She was pretty sure she'd like sleeping in the living room but Gavin wouldn't hear of it, as she'd already said. She felt stupidly grateful and a little corny about what he was saying though and it showed in her smile. "You can just build a new room?" she asked skeptically.
Aaron was pretty sure that even with her own room, the dogs would make sure she didn’t sleep alone. At least not all the time, he could see Max and Rude splitting their time between Gavin’s bed and Amelia’s. Maybe Jasper’s too, but Aaron guessed he probably didn’t need the comfort as much. “Yeah,” Aaron said, in a ‘piece of cake’ sort of tone. He gestured vaguely. “Just knock out a wall, build a frame, do the roof and the drywall ... wouldn’t be too hard. People do it all the time. I know some guys.” They might not have been the most upstanding citizens, but they could build an addition, he knew that much. And they owed the Lucas brothers a couple of favors. It would depend on Gavin, of course, but Aaron would bounce it off him.
"Huh," Amelia said and she supposed it made sense. People built things all the time. She just hadn't seen it happen in years. Now she couldn't help but wonder where they would put that room and how it would connect to the house. Maybe her dad would rather get another place, she just knew that she wasn't anywhere near ready to get a place by herself, even if someone took care of it. The idea of Aaron knowing some guys who could do it was another reminder of how many people there were now, people she didn't know, people she might never know, not even their names. "I know dad used to work in construction," she said as she crumpled up the wrappings of her hamburger. "I don't know if he built stuff or what he did but he could probably help too."
The guys that Aaron knew knew Gavin too, of course. The construction world in this part of the state was pretty small. But Aaron had been more chummy with them. Gavin was bad at chummy. He chuckled a bit and shot Amelia a wry little grin. “He’ll just boss everybody around, that’s what he’s good at now,” he said, thinking of the two of them fixing Charlie’s porch for her. And getting Jasper’s room ready for him. Not that Amelia probably had much of a sense of how her dad was in the business sense, or how badly his injury on the job had been. “I’ll see what he thinks. He might just wanna sell this place and upgrade, I dunno. Or Jasper needs his own place.” Aaron wolfed down the rest of his burger and picked up a napkin to wipe his fingers off.
Amelia didn't like the thought of Jasper moving out so she hoped that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. It was comforting having her brother around again and she wasn't ready to give that up. Which was probably naive. They were at an age where they should be moving out and getting their lives started but Amelia had no idea how to do that. She wasn't so sure her brother did either. On one hand she didn't want to cause a hassle but on the other she knew she wasn't going to be able to stop her dad from taking care of everything, he seemed adamant to make things work. "I'm so used to sleeping wherever, I don't feel like I need a room," she said again, shaking her head with some amusement. "I'd be happy on a mattress on the floor, any floor."
“Well, we’re gonna make you better than happy, so deal with it,” Aaron said, one cheek full of food. He gave her a lopsided grin and finished chewing, then washed it all down with milkshake. He plucked up all their trash and got up to toss it, ignoring the way the dogs hopped up to their feet and followed him, looking hopeful. Once that was taken care of, he came up behind Amelia, hands lightly on her temples, and kissed the top of her head. She was about as short as she had been at nine when she was sitting down, and it made him want to scoop her up again and just piggyback her around all day. “Missed you, squirt,” he murmured, patting her softly. “If I ever do get a daughter, I want one just like you.”
Squirt. She hadn't heard that in years and it made her feel all warm inside, nostalgic and loved. She tittered and then leaned her head back to look up at him. "I hope you do. Have a daughter, I mean. You'll be such a good dad." Maybe she wasn't the best judge of that, from what she'd gathered from her mom Gavin was the worst dad but Amelia had never felt that. He'd always been kind to her, generous and warm - if a little awkward at times. She was sure about Aaron though, he was so caring and fun, how could he not be a great dad.
During her breakdown, Mila had referred to their child as ‘her,’ so maybe he had been on deck to have a daughter. There was probably no real way to know, but Mila’s instinct was good enough for him. Aaron knew he couldn’t really talk about being a dad -- or not, because he wasn’t -- without getting emotional, so he just gave Amelia a crooked little smile and smooched her forehead. He squeezed her shoulder and moved away from her again. “I’m off today, there uh, anything you wanna do? Anywhere you wanna go see again?” he asked, trying to shift his own gears.
Amelia thought about it and there were a few places she wanted to go but couldn't, like checking up on her old friends and letting them know she was okay or driving past her old school just to see. "Can we just go for a ride? You can give me a tour of town." She smiled hopefully, eyebrows raised. It would be nice to know where everything was and she could watch him drive and try to learn from it.
“Hell yeah we can,” Aaron said amiably. “We can stop off at the park to let these two knuckleheads run around too. Or the beach. Whatever you want.” He reached down to vigorously rub Max’s head, grinning down at the dog. Having company for the day made him feel much better about not working, especially this particular company. Aaron was already planning to treat her to ice cream or frozen coffee from Moxie’s or hell, take her to dinner too, whatever. Eventually he wanted Amelia to meet and hang out with Mila too, but for now he just wanted some more quality time with his niece.
Amelia beamed at him because taking the dogs out was actually a great idea. "Okay," she said excitedly and reached over to here her dad kept a box of paper scraps to write shopping lists and memos. She knew Gavin and Jasper could call her if they got worried but she wasn't used to having a phone on her and she might so easily forget it in the car and she didn't want them to worry. So she wrote a simple note in big letters. Went out with uncle Aaron and the dogs! XXX A There. They could call Aaron if she got stupid with her own phone and this way they wouldn't fret when they came home. "Beach?" she said because the ocean was just another thing of many she'd really missed. It wasn't really the perfect day for an outing but she didn't mind the rain. Getting soaked wasn't a big deal, her clothes would dry again.