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“Can you teach me how to ride a bike?” are the first words Emily says to Leon when he comes into her room.
When Grace called him a few days ago, just from her initial greeting, he knew she was going to ask a favor of him. There was more of a shake to her usual chipper tone, different from the nervous softness of an ‘I’m making a personal call on company hours’ phone call. No, this was the tone of a girl who wanted something and didn’t know how to go about asking for it.
“Spit it out, Grace,” He said, though not meanly. He just knew this call was going to go on another ten minutes if he didn’t make her bite the bullet.
“You’ll be in town this weekend, right?” She prefaced. “I know down time is really rare for you, and you probably want to be spending time with your partner when you can. Plus, I know you’re still healing from–”
“Grace.”
“I got asked out on a date.” A shaky breath echoed over the receiver, like it was the first time she’d said it out loud. The edge of his lip curled fondly.“During the day on Saturday. It’d just be for a couple hours. She’s got a kid at home too, so I can’t expect her to stay out too long, but I need someone to watch Emily.”
Without so much as checking his planner, he knew his schedule was wide open. He’d just returned following a dead end lead in Boston a couple weeks ago and somehow earned himself a shoulder injury in the process. His boss was clear he’d have no future assignments until “that shoulder of yours heals up”. Whatever that meant. He wasn’t even 50 yet, and it felt like everyone was babying him. It was just a sprain, he’s had far worse. Far, far worse.
Even if he was busy, he would have made time. It was Grace, after all.
“There’s a girl, huh?” Absent-mindedly, he rubbed a hand over his stubble. God, he needed to shave. “Didn’t know you knew how to talk to those.”
Grace sighed.“Leon.”
His eyes flickered to the clock on his desktop monitor. He would have teased her some more, pushed for more details like the gossip he is, but he knew both of their lunch breaks would be ending soon and who knew if Grace had been working herself up to this call for half of it.
“Text me a time and I’ll be there,” he said.“But I expect a full report on this mystery girl, Agent Ashcroft.”
Grace began to thank him profusely, but he cut her off.
“Now, go eat your lunch,” Leon ordered. “I’ll talk to you later, kid.”
He hung up the phone.
He hasn’t been in Emily’s room too many times, just twice. Usually spending his time with the girls in the communal spaces of their medium-sized apartment, like the living room or the kitchen or the balcony, he rarely had a reason to further investigate their sleeping quarters (nor did he really care to). Now that he thinks about it, the only other time he’s been in here was when he helped Grace put together Emily’s bed, a task that made Grace’s old office seem much larger than it was. He still needs to patch up that dent he left in the wall. Though, he doesn’t see it now, so either it’s hiding behind the purple bookshelf Grace has leaning up against the wall or she got the spackle out herself. Knowing her, probably the former.
As soon as he ducks inside the little girl’s room, he’s pleasantly surprised to see how filled up it is. The last time he saw the bed, it didn’t have the army of stuffed animals lining its edge nor did it have the puffy periwinkle comforter that Leon’s sure feels like a dream to sink into. The bookshelf is already exploding with books and Grace has added a simplistic checkered rug to the floor to tie it all together. The room has also added a few posters to its walls, all cartoons Leon doesn’t recognize. Well, except for one. On the wall beside the window is a KPop Demon Hunters calendar, each day crossed out with the shaky X of an inexperienced hand.
Emily sits at Grace’s old desk, resting her small body on her calves in a way that pains even Leon to look at. Crayons and markers are scattered around her, a blooming chaos compared to the neat lines in her coloring book. She barely looks up when he approaches, but she shifts a little to the left of the chair as if she’s offering him the rest of the seat. He almost laughs at her confidence that they will both fit, but doesn’t get the chance because she’s already asking her burning question.
“Can you teach me how to ride a bike?”
Leon puts his hands on his hips. “What? No ‘Hi Leon’? ‘Hello, Leon’? Just getting straight to business?”
“Hello, Leon,” Emily says softly, looking up from her coloring book. “Can you teach me how to ride a bike?”
Honestly, Leon can’t remember the last time he’s touched a bike that wasn’t motorized or gym equipment. He’s sure there’s probably one in his shed, but he wouldn’t be surprised if the chains were rusted beyond help. He doesn’t know why Emily is asking him of all people to help, but it must be something that’s important to her if she couldn’t wait ten seconds into their time together to ask.
His lashes flutter a few times, still flustered by the question. “What makes you want to learn how to ride a bike?”
“My friend Sadie has a sparkly pink one with shiny tassels on the handlebars and a basket,” Emily says. She caps the marker she has in her hand and suddenly stands on the chair. Instinctively, Leon places a hand on her back to steady her, arms ready to swoop in if she takes a fall.
“Careful,” he warns.
She reaches for a unicorn sketchbook tucked onto one of the shelves above the desk, though it’s just out of her reach. Leon leans forward and plucks it off the shelf with ease, waiting until she rests on the chair again before handing it to her. It only takes her a few flips to find what she’s looking for.
In simple words, the drawing is cute. Two bikes — Leon hoped they were bikes at least — take up the central focus of the paper, nestled in an expansive verdant patch of grass, and beside each of them is a little girl. One has long dark hair in what Leon can assume are braids and the other has Emily’s unmistakable silvery blond.
“It looks like this.” She taps the drawing, specifically the fuschia tangle of lines beside the dark-haired girl. “I drew it myself.”
“Nice work, Picasso.” He nods in approval. He glances at the picture a bit closer, noticing the close proximity of the two girls and their wide U smiles. “So you want to learn so you and Sadie can ride bikes together?”
Emily thinks, then reluctantly nods. “I think so.” She looks down at the drawing with fond eyes. “I just like it.”
Leon glances around the room again, seeing if he missed a whole ass bicycle in his initial peruse of the room, but he comes up empty. “Do you even have a bike?”
Emily falters. “No. Grace says we don’t have room.”
Leon had a feeling this apartment would be getting too small for the both of them. It’s built for a well-off twenty-something whose only life was work and the club (maybe just the former for Grace), not for rearing a child. Grace knew that from the moment they’d built that bed together, expressing to Leon that she was saving up so they could maybe find an actual house to live in. But saving took time and it would be a hot minute before Grace could even think about looking at a home.
“It’s okay if we can’t.” The sudden neutrality to Emily’s tone takes a hammer to Leon’s iron heart. He watches her fingers rub at the raw sienna crayon of Sadie’s hair.
Grace mentioned Emily’s quest for friends her age has been gradual. Having an introspective nature and a gaze beyond her days often proves to be too much for the average kid to handle. The only two to break down her barriers were a little boy from the library and the alleged mystery girl’s daughter, Sadie.
“You should’ve seen the look on Emily’s face, Leon,” Grace gushed. “I’ve never seen her so active… so full of life than when she was with Sadie. I just wish other kids would give her the chance.”
With that thought, his decision is made.
“Sorry, I was just thinking.” His hand dwarfs her shoulder when he gives it a squeeze. “Maybe the problem isn’t that you don’t have room. You might just have to make room.”
Emily stares at him like she can’t believe her ears. She doesn’t say anything, but the trembling smile on her lips tells Leon that she understood what he meant. She’s smart like that.
“Get your shoes on, kiddo. Have you ever been to a Dick’s Sporting Goods?”
──
As smart-mouthed as he can be, Leon is not the type for conversation or, at least, he hasn’t been for awhile. He likes to go into a store, get his business done and get out. No dicking around. Of course, any store’s attentive customer service policy always manages to get in the way of that.
For once, luck must be on his side because they manage to get to the bike section mostly unscathed besides an offhand greeting from a cashier in the middle of a transaction. Before they even look at the bicycles, Leon guides Emily to the tall wall of bike helmets and other protective gear. He’s not letting her anywhere near a bike without some sort of safety gear, as hypocritical as it may be. Even Grace has made fun of his harness and compression shirt, but he also has years of training fighting people off. The most Emily has on biking is a frequent admiration of her friend’s kiddie bike.
“Seems like everyone’s looking to hit the trails,” Leon says, frowning at the sparse selection. While they have helmets in abundance, their children’s knee pads and elbow pads are very much picked over. The ones that are left over seemed like they would be too large for Emily’s tiny joints. “Let’s at least get you a helmet.”
He lets Emily browse the helmets. She picks up a Bluey one, twisting and turning it a little to examine it properly, before putting it back. Leon is surprised at the attention to detail she has, wondering exactly what criteria she was applying to bike helmets as a (probable) eight year old, but he doesn’t have time to consider it because an agitating, grating voice pops up behind him.
“Anything I can help you with?”
He knows it’s their job. He knows Dick himself is somewhere with a rifle aiming at their heart making them do this, ready to snipe his employees into submission, but he can still wish they’d just leave him alone, can’t he? Emily gravitates toward him at the new voice, instinctively latching onto the loose material of his jeans, and that’s when he knows he needs to keep this interaction short.
“You don’t have any kids knee pads or elbow pads?” Leon asks, gesturing halfheartedly to several empty hooks.
The man, probably about 15 years younger than him, stands in the center of the aisle with an overenthusiastic smile on his face. “This happens every year. The sun finally shows its face and everyone decides they’re gonna go biking or roller-skating or the like. You might have more luck at the bike shop across town.”
“Right,” Leon says monotonously. He scans the shelf blankly, knowing that if he picks up anything the worker will find a way to market it to him. He flexes his hands uselessly at his sides. “Thanks.”
A long bout of uncomfortable silence follows. Some painfully 80s pop song echoes out of the speakers above them and the man begins to do a little dance, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself.
Finally, he takes the hint because he claps his hands together and says, “Well, if you or your granddaughter need anything, I’ll be just over here. My name is Paul.” This time Leon can’t help the scathing look he sends the worker’s way as he turns around and hurries out of the aisle.
Leon doesn’t move even after he’s gone, rendered immobile with shock.
“Granddaughter? Granddaughter?” He repeats to himself incredulously. He looks down at Emily. How much of an age gap do you need with a child to be a grandparent to them? “Do I look like a grandpa to you?” Emily stares, then opens her mouth. “Nevermind, don’t answer that.”
Emily gravitates to the helmets again once they’re alone. She must have been looking during Leon and Paul’s conversation because she’s quick to pick up a lavender helmet just within her reach. Its polycarbonate plastic shell gleams in the store’s fluorescent lighting, but it appears sturdy enough to protect her head in a nasty fall.
“Let me see it, kiddo,” Leon says gently. Emily uses both hands to pass it over to him.
He gives the foam inside a firm squeeze. With his strength, the foam gives a little bit but not enough that he has Emily picking out another helmet. If it was up to him, he’d throw the thing against the ground to see how durable but the last thing he needs right now is Paul coming back or a permanent ban from Dick’s. He’ll have to trust the “Unbreakable!” marketing on the helmet’s packaging.
“Good choice.” Emily smiles at the praise in a way that makes Leon want to give her the world. “Now let’s take a gander at those bikes.”
Their trip to the children’s bike section is much more pleasant. Their selection is a bit smaller than Leon would have liked, probably from that biking fever Paul mentioned, but it’s still enough to give Emily a choice.
Not that she needs much of one. Unlike the helmets, Emily knows what she wants immediately. Her eyes lock on a pale blue cruiser nestled between a pair of city bikes and don’t let go, so Leon takes the initiative to lift it out into the aisle for them to take a closer look at.
No tassels, but it makes up for that with the shiny bell attached to the handlebar and a white woven basket fixed to the front of the bike. The tires are about 20-inches in diameter if he had to guess and his quick call to Sherry on the way here confirmed that would be best for beginner riders. The tubes are less angular than a city bike and it doesn’t seem like it would sustain well in any off-roading but he doubted Emily would be popping wheelies on the thing, so he doesn’t see the harm in humoring her choice.
He places Emily on the bike seat, lowering it just shy of the lowest setting, to make sure her feet reach the pedals as well as her ability to rest her feet on the ground if she wanted to.
“You like how it feels?” Leon asks. Emily nods enthusiastically. He reaches to help her off the bike, but she slips off the seat with ease and nudges the kickstand down.
He reaches over and grips the handlebars, barely acknowledging how funny his grown body must look hanging over a tiny bike. He just wants to make sure the grips on the handlebars won’t be too rough for Emily’s hands. Once he deems everything with the bike fine, he takes a staggered step back and checks the chunky plastic tag zip-tied around the top tube.
“Relaxed handling that is stable and forgiving for new riders,” Leon reads. Sounds perfect, honestly. He flips it over for the price. “Oh, Jesus.”
“What’s wrong?” Emily asks.
It’s a little more than he wanted to pay for a bike, but after seeing the way Emily hasn’t been able to tear her eyes from the bike, he doesn’t think he could say no. After they’ve spent so much time on this one bike as well, it would be plain torture to make her pick out a new one.
Well… In for a penny, in for a pound.
“Nothing, sweet pea,” Leon reassures, hoisting the bike up with one arm. It feels a bit silly, carrying a bike, but with the frame lock attached to the front tire, there would be no rolling it up to the cash register. He honestly should’ve probably gotten Paul to ask how they go about the transaction but by the time he thinks of that, the bike is already in his hands and he’s nodding for Emily to follow him up to the registers.
“You know I have a pretty good relationship with your mom,” he tells her as he hands the cashier his debit card, “but she might kill me for this one.”
“I’ll protect you,” Emily vows.
Leon half-smiles. “Thanks, sweet pea.”
──
The hardest part of Operation Training Wheels is figuring out where they plan to complete said mission. Despite the suburban environment they live in, there aren’t just expansive plains made for beginner bike riders. There is a forest preserve between their houses but once Leon thinks about it a bit more, the more he remembers how fast people ride their bikes down the main path and realizes it might not be the best place for a child to get their feet wet. It was going to be tough getting her to balance on her own, let alone raise her hands off the bars to signal whether she was going left or right.
He’s about to just give Sherry another call when they pass by a school. He doesn’t know the name of it, though he’s seen it many times on his way to Grace’s apartment. A small brick building with a broad stretch of black top beside it, the surface only interrupted by a few basketball hoops and a drinking fountain.
He glances at Emily in the backseat through the rearview mirror, only for her to be already looking at him. They don’t even have to speak, Leon just turns into the parking lot.
Despite it being a Saturday, there’s barely a soul in sight on the playground. A father pushing his toddler in one of the bucket-shaped swings, and now Emily and Leon, but otherwise it’s empty.
Leon cuts the packaging around Emily’s helmet with his multitool and places it on her head. Her hair puffs up around the helmet in a way that makes her look a bit like an upside down mushroom. Leon wishes he had thought of this ahead of time, when they were still back at Grace’s place so he could have at least scavenged her drawers for a hair tie. He rubs his own wrists like one will miraculously appear but the only adornment he has on his hands is his wedding ring. Emily, however, circumvents this by pulling her hair behind the helmet’s cheek straps. Does it look a little funny? Oh, a hundred percent, but unless the toddler and his father were judging them that harshly, Leon doesn’t think it’s anything to worry about. What is childhood for if not looking a little funny.
Emily waits patiently to the side as Leon frees her bike from the Porsche. The wheels bounce a little when they hit the concrete and Leon starts cutting the tags from the frame. He gives all the trash to Emily and tells her to toss it in the nearby garbage can.
“Where do you plan on keeping this thing?” Leon asks once she comes back.
Emily thinks for a minute. “My room.”
The only empty space in that room was the wall above her bed, so reasonably, that’s where Leon imagines the bike hanging. Oh, Grace was going to throttle him for sure. The closest he’d seen her mad was during their final encounter with Zeno and while he doubted buying Emily a bike would induce such vitriol, he knows it’s going to at least incite at least a little frustration.
“Okay, kiddo,” Leon stands and pats the seat. “Hop on.”
For the first time, Emily shows an ounce of trepidation. She eyes the bike like it might bite her, but that doesn’t stop her from approaching slowly. Her hands wrap around the handles and she starts to swing her leg over the top tube when the whole frame wobbles a little. Emily stumbles, hopping on her one grounded foot.
Leon lunges forward and takes the back of the saddle in one of his hands, stretching out the other around Emily to prevent her from falling. “It’s okay, I got you.”
Emily stabilizes herself. Her breathing is a bit labored, but that’s the only sign she gives of her panic. With Leon’s support, she’s able to scoot herself onto the saddle and stand up. The toes of her sneakers squeak from where they touch the pavement.
Once she’s upright, Leon takes a step back and puts his hands on his hips. Pride flares in his chest. “Look at you. Balancing is the hardest part.”
Emily only nods. Leon doesn’t even know if she’s breathing.
“It might take a few tries, but you’re doing great so far,” Leon encourages. “Take some deep breaths and then we can try riding around a little.”
Her little chest rises and falls a few times, her lips parting to let the air in and out. A cool spring breeze wraps around them and Leon briefly fears it might be enough to knock Emily off the bike, but the little girl just keeps on breathing.
Rarely has Emily proven herself to be very flappable. At least in Leon’s presence she hasn’t. He knows she has her moments where the dams break and the tears come out because Grace has told him so; there are nights where the bad dreams don’t stop or when the years of isolation and experiments start to take their toll on her young mind. She’s just a kid but trauma is a vicious glutton that feasts on them all. He knows these moments exist, yet he can’t picture her anything less than the kid she should be. A little stoic, sure, but a child with walls is still a child at the end of the day. He vows to himself silently that he won’t let this vision get in the way when her trauma does rear its cruel head. As much as he wants her to embrace childhood and its unparalleled magic, he knows she’ll never experience it the same way he did, and he needs to take that into consideration when they interact.
After about a minute, Emily looks to Leon for further instruction, pale blue eyes wide and expectant.
Leon rolls his shoulders a few times, then grabs the back of the saddle again. “You can take your feet off the ground now. I got you.”
Reluctantly, Emily pulls her left leg up, then her right leg and rests them on the pedals. As soon as she’s situated, Leon comes around to her side and stretches an arm to wrap around the center of the handlebars. The bike wobbles for a second and Emily yelps.
“You’re okay. I got you,” he repeats. “Why don’t you try and pedal a little? I won’t let go yet, I promise.”
As soon as the bike begins to move, Emily’s handlebars jerk to the left. They take a wide turn as Emily tries to recover, effectively jerking her handlebars to the right. Another wide turn, until Leon helps her out and straightens the handlebars so the bike travels in a straight line. Slow but steady, they carry on like this from one edge of the black top to the other.
When Leon sees the concrete is ending, he releases his hold on the handlebars. “Why don’t we try going to the left?”
Emily tilts her handlebars ever the slightest, pivoting the bike ever the slightest. Realizing she’ll need to push a little more, she tilts them again. The bike jerks to the left, but doesn’t wobble as she makes a sharp left turn, but a turn nonetheless.
“Great,” Leon says in her ear. “Now one more time.”
The next turn is more gradual, more controlled as Emily makes another complete left turn, effectively turning the bike around the way they came.
They travel to the other end of the black top in a similar fashion to the way they came, and when the edge of the black top comes, Leon doesn’t even have to tell her to turn right this time. She just does it, twice, and turns them around again.
It’s through their third run of the black top that Leon removes his hand from the front of the bike. Emily stiffens a little bit, but Leon reassures her he’s still right there next to her for the next couple laps.
Until he isn’t.
Gingerly, oh so gingerly, he loosens his grip. He stays jogging behind her, but carefully releases one finger after the other until he’s barely touching the seat at all. She’s practically doing it all on her own besides his moral support, but even he drops that at some point too.
She doesn’t realize Leon has let go until she’s making her next turn. Usually there’s a bit of resistance from Leon grabbing the seat due to the awkward angle of the bike turning and Leon trying to maneuver around it, but she must sense its absence because her head shoots up like a leaves of a root vegetable.
“Leon?” she shouts unsteadily. Her eyes scan the black top until they spot him clapping a few feet back.
He cups his hands over his mouth. “Just keep pedaling!”
Her feet never stop. Though they’ve since slowed since noticing Leon missing, it’s not enough to stall the bike. Her gaze slips from him to the horizon and she readjusts her grip. The unsure frown plastered to her face melts away into surprised determination. She’s doing it. She’s really doing it, all by herself.
“Leon!” she gasps as she glides past him. Her momentum flutters the back of her hair like a bouquet of butterflies flying in the wind, chasing after her joy. “Leon, look!”
“I see, I see!” he reassures. “Keep going!”
The bike sails across the pavement, picking up speed as she pumps her legs faster. Her little knees heave up and down, up and down, like she’s marching in an invisible parade. The visual makes Leon chuckle lightly.
As her confidence grows, her lines become less straight and she’s maneuvering the bike around him. Emily giggles as she circles him and Leon’s heart soars. He only wishes Grace was here to see her daughter right now. He reaches into his back pocket for his phone. Pictures will have to suffice for now.
He sees the crack at the same moment she does. A concerned wail escapes her as the bike twists and tilts.
Emily uses her hands to brace her upper body against the fall, but her knees have no guardian, tangled in the pedals. Her forward momentum forces the bike another foot, dragging her knee against the black top that rips a strangled cry from her throat.
The second the bike starts to tip over, Leon is racing to her side. He’s not quick enough to stop the disaster from happening, no, he isn’t superhuman, but he’s still there before she realizes she needs him to be.
“Emily!”
The bike is still trapped between her thighs, the back wheel spinning as if it believes they are still on their joyride. Leon pushes it out of the way, his eyes never leaving Emily’s sprawled form.
As soon as the bike is gone, Emily sits up. She isn’t crying, but her eyes are glassy. She pulls her knees to her chest and her hands clasp around her wound without touching it. A flash of crimson blooms between her fingers.
“Hey, we’re okay.” He crouches to her level and places his hands on top of hers. Carefully, he peels her fingers away and squeezes them in his palms as he examines the scrape.
Blood wells inside the webbing of the scrape, some small rocks and dirt caught around the abrasion. Leon uses the pad of his thumb to wipe what he can away without making contact with the wound. He wants to get an antiseptic wipe to clean it up but the first aid kit is all the way back in his car and leaving Emily’s side right now is not an option.
“Our first battle wound,” Leon says warmly. He shifts his weight to another angle, starting to slot his hands around her body. He’ll just carry her back. “We can get you cleaned up back in my car, but you’ll have to let me pick—“
“No.”
Leon can’t hide his surprise. “What?”
She pushes his arms away. She moves her legs, as if to get up, but winces when her knee unbends. “I want to try again.”
There is no biological connection between Grace and Emily. Grace tried to explain to him what she found out about Emily’s origins — something with clones and experiments, but she did that thing where she skips details because she’s talking so fast and Leon couldn’t hear her over the sizzle of the meat on the grill, so he just nodded and smiled. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a very patient man and didn’t have the heart to ask her to repeat her whole spiel. What he did gather was that Emily is a clone of some kind and her similar appearance to Grace is only happenstance.
Yet…
Yet that expression on her face, with her eyebrows set firm against her brow bone and the determined narrowing of her eyes, could not be any closer to Grace’s.
You really are your mother’s daughter, he thinks.
Leon chuckles. “I’m not saying you can’t, sweet pea. We just gotta treat that scrape before you sign yourself up for round two.” He raps her helmet a few times with his knuckles. “Now… Can I pick you up?”
Emily tilts her head down. She swallows. “Okay.”
Leon carefully slots one arm under her bent knees and the other behind her back. With a soft groan, he lifts her up and carries her back to the car, careful to step over the uneven pavement and around the bike. He’ll come back for that later.
Once he’s got the trunk open and Emily situated on the carpeting, he retrieves the first aid kit from the netted side pocket of the trunk.
“You know this thing might be older than you,” Leon muses, shaking the container. He flips open the latches and lets the countless bandages and ointments unfurl onto the carpeting. “Saved me many times in the past.”
“How many times?” Emily asks.
Leon thinks. “At least three.”
By the time he cleans up the scrape, even going the extra step to slather some antibacterial cream on it, the bleeding has stopped. He finds the largest bandage he can find and plasters it to her knee. It isn’t the glow-in-the-dark unicorn bandaids Grace has under the sink at home, but it works to prevent any blood from getting onto her jean shorts or the baby chick yellow shirt Grace has outfitted her in.
He retrieves the water bottle Emily and Grace got him for Christmas from the front seat and forces it into Emily’s hands. She needs both to hold it. “You did good work today, kiddo. Take a long drink.”
Emily flicks open the lid, but pauses. “Grace says not to drink from other people’s drinks unless they’re family.”
Leon frowns, but nods. “She’s right.”
Before Leon can think to bring her to the water fountain, she tilts the bottle back and drinks hungrily from the lip. Some escapes out the corner of her mouth and carves down her chin, so Leon uses the edge of his shirt to wipe it.
She releases her mouth’s hold on the bottle with an involuntary ‘ahhh’ and places it on the seat. A new life thrives behind her bangs.
“You drank anyway?” Leon asks, surprised.
Emily tilts her head a little. “You help me tie my shoes and make me dinner sometimes. And you read me stories. Grace does all that too and she’s family. So I think you’re family too.”
Leon rarely has the choice to do things because he wants to. Since he was 21, the government made sure that was an aspect of his past. It wasn’t until his marriage and his presence in Grace and Emily’s lives did he feel a change in the air.
He got to spend some evenings shooting the breeze with Grace on her balcony, to teach her how to fix that problem with her faucet dripping, to rearrange Emily’s room so it was fit for a child. Together, they learned how to cook, how to set the table for a gathering and how much food would feed three to four people. When Emily finally came home to Grace, his choices only expanded. While he left the letters and numbers to Emily’s tutor and Grace, he gladly taught her her colors and where they appeared most often in life. He helped her get her arms through her jacket and showed her how to zip zippers and button buttons. They learned the best way to decorate a Christmas tree without getting pine needles all over the carpet and, when the snow melted, how to throw a frisbee without getting it stuck in the neighbor’s yard.
All of it… because he wanted to.
“Right?” Emily asks.
For once, Leon doesn’t look at her. He lets the sun burn into his eyes, his bangs shielding his vision of her innocent little face so all she sees is the quirk of his mouth.
“Right, kiddo. Right.”