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On the drive back from school one Friday afternoon, Phoebe asked her Uncle Roy, “D’you think my dad’s still out there somewhere?”
The car swerved suddenly, so suddenly that Phoebe had to press her elbow into the door to keep her head from slamming against the window, and her Uncle Roy muttered something under his breath that would probably have gotten Phoebe ten pence for her jar if she asked for it. But she didn’t. She wasn’t sure why her Uncle Roy had almost driven them off the road, but she was sure it was something serious. Her Uncle Roy was a very careful driver. He always looked both ways and checked her seatbelt twice and kept the music on the radio low, even when it was the Moana soundtrack.
“Why?” her Uncle Roy said. His knuckles were pale around the steering wheel. Phoebe hugged her backpack close to her chest, like the pink sparkliness of it would help her figure out what she’d done wrong. “Why the fuck are you asking that, Phoebe?”
“I’m sorry, Uncle Roy!” Phoebe cried. She hated making her Uncle Roy upset. “Please don’t be angry.”
Her Uncle Roy took a deep breath, and then another. His knuckles returned to their normal color. When he spoke again, it was in a softer, gentler tone. “I’m not angry, Phoebe,” he said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve snapped. I just meant, why do you care where that shitstain’s gone? He’s not here anymore.”
“I know,” said Phoebe, quietly, into her backpack straps.
“You been having nightmares?”
“No!” Phoebe was offended. She was eight and three-quarters minus one month, and as such was far too mature to still be having nightmares. “Swear it.”
“All right, I believe you, muppet. Then what’s the matter?”
“Ms. Bowen’s making us write letters,” said Phoebe, deeply disgusted. She didn’t understand the purpose of letters, not when you could do the same thing twice as fast with text messages, even though she supposed it was nice that with letter-writing she wouldn’t have to beg Mum for her phone just so she could invite Stacey over for a sleepover. “To our younger selves. She says it’s an exercise in ‘remembering to be grateful for how far you’ve come’.”
“Jesus Christ,” grumbled her Uncle Roy.
“I think it’s a dumb project,” said Phoebe, and she didn’t feel bad about it because her Uncle Roy appreciated honesty and he never got mad at her for speaking her mind. “But I’ve gotta do it or else I’ll fail in life. And also maybe get held back forever and ever.”
“I wouldn’t let you get fucking held back,” said her Uncle Roy.
Phoebe perked up. “So I don’t have to do it?”
“No, you do. I’m just letting you know in case your letter is shit.”
“Uncle Roy!”
“It won’t be,” her Uncle Roy assured her. “But in case.”
And Phoebe appreciated honesty, too, so she accepted her Uncle Roy’s promise and settled into her seat, content that at the very least she wouldn’t get held back no matter how horrible her letter turned out. They came to a slow stop at the four-way intersection near home where Phoebe had once found a snail she’d named Horace, and her Uncle Roy turned to face her, leaving one hand on the wheel while the other came up to brace against her seat’s headrest. Phoebe blinked at him.
“Phoebe,” he said, in that specific tone which meant an adult had a lot of other things going on in their head, and they were doing their best to make it clear and simple out loud. Sometimes her Uncle Roy didn’t do a great job at it. Sometimes, the things her Uncle Roy said were incredibly confusing. But he was also being gentle, like the way he held Mummy’s expensive vases or the pottery cups Phoebe had made at an art camp over the summer. “What’s this letter got to do with that shi—with your dad?”
Phoebe twisted the tail of her backpack strap around her thumb. “It’s your turn, Uncle Roy.”
“What? Oh.” Her Uncle Roy pressed the pedal and they drove through the intersection. “Phoebe.”
“It’s nothing,” she said, unsure why her cheeks felt so hot, or why her stomach was twisted in knots as if she’d eaten a bad piece of fish. She tugged at the backpack strap again. She wanted to cry, a bit, but she wouldn’t do that. It would freak her Uncle Roy all the way out. “I was only wondering.” She wished she hadn’t asked it in the first place; it had been a dumb question.
Her Uncle Roy couldn’t look at her while his foot was on the accelerator. Phoebe was grateful for this, more than her letter would probably end up being, because if her Uncle Roy was looking at her right now she wouldn’t be able to stay silent another second longer. “All right,” he finally said, except his voice didn’t make it seem like it was all right. He sounded sad. Quiet. They pulled up in front of Phoebe’s house and he parked the car. “Your mum still got the night shift?”
Phoebe nodded.
“Let’s go get your overnight bag, then,” said her Uncle Roy, and he carried her all the way into the house on his shoulders, even though she’d grown too big for that years ago, and she laid her cheek against the top of his head and listened to the sound of his breathing and pretended she lived in a world where there were no letters, there were no dumb school projects, and there were no shadows taking up all the light even when you couldn’t see them.
**
At her Uncle Roy’s house, Phoebe laid out two packs of Crayons, a pad of coloring paper, and two bottles of glitter: pink and gold. On the round Bluetooth speaker, she started playing the Moana soundtrack, since ‘You’re Welcome’ had been on in the car earlier and they hadn’t been able to listen properly because of her Uncle Roy’s car commandments. From the kitchen she heard her Uncle Roy groan, but she ignored him. He loved Moana as much as she did; he just liked to pretend his only emotion was being grumpy.
She hummed along to the lyrics as she doodled flowers and skulls on a yellow sheet of coloring paper, and when her Uncle Roy entered the living room with a plate of cheese and crackers, he sat on the couch behind her and said, “How’s the letter going?”
“It’s not,” said Phoebe cheerfully. “Princess Giselle is slaying the evil witch! See, here’s the decapitated bodies of her victims.”
“Good for Princess Giselle,” said her Uncle Roy. “Now that she’s done vanquishing evil, why don’t you get started on that project? When’s it due, anyway?”
“Tomorrow,” said Phoebe. She switched her purple Crayon out for an indigo and shaded in the patch of grass at Princess Giselle’s feet. Princess Giselle probably didn’t have to write stupid letters for her stupid class. Princess Giselle had a great big sword and her brown hair was braided all the way down to her knees and she could do anything she wanted to. Phoebe wanted to be Princess Giselle when she grew up. “But Ms. Bowen’s really Leninist about late work.”
“What?”
“Leninist,” Phoebe repeated. “Moe told me!”
“Jesus Christ,” said her Uncle Roy. “It’s lenient, not Leninist, and he’s never babysitting again.”
“But he wasn’t babysitting,” said Phoebe. “He specifically told me he wasn’t because he doesn’t believe in authority.”
“Jesus Christ,” said her Uncle Roy, again, which Phoebe thought was a bit repetitive.
Phoebe returned to Princess Giselle and the slayed witch, pondering. She should give Princess Giselle a friend-dragon. Not because Princess Giselle needed the protection of a friend-dragon—Princess Giselle was strong and brave and kind, and she could protect herself—but because Phoebe thought that everyone needed a friend. And because maybe, sometimes, Princess Giselle couldn’t always protect herself. Sometimes, there were monsters too frightening to fight alone. Maybe she’d feel safer if she had a friend-dragon watching out for her.
She chose a pale green Crayon, for the friend-dragon’s scales, and a bright yellow Crayon, for the friend-dragon’s belly. She placed the point of the green Crayon to the paper and was about to start sketching when her Uncle Roy said, in an odd, funny sort of way, “Would it be all right if I invited Jamie over for dinner tonight?”
“Ooh!” Phoebe’s head snapped up. “Yes please!” She adored Jamie. He had soft hair he let her put butterfly clips in, and jokes that only he and Phoebe really understood, and he always had stories to tell. Last time he’d come over for dinner, he’d told her and her Uncle Roy about how he’d once ended up half-naked in the Thames as a result of some extremely fucking poor monetary decisions (her Uncle Roy’s words, not hers or Jamie’s). “And could you please remind him he still owes me seven pence?”
“I’ll let him know,” said her Uncle Roy. He ruffled her hair and then left the room, presumably—a word that Keeley had taught Phoebe last week during book club—to text Jamie. Why he couldn’t text Jamie while sitting on the couch was a mystery to Phoebe, but adult men did strange things like that on occasion. That was another lesson that Keeley had taught her last week during book club.
She drew a long, curving line across the bottom half of the paper in yellow. This would be the friend-dragon’s belly. With the green, she drew a long, curving parallel line across the top half of the paper, extending it a little farther out than the belly. This would be the friend-dragon’s spine and tail. Satisfied with this outline, she began connecting the pieces of the friend-dragon together. It would be nice, she thought, to have it finished by the time Jamie came round. He’d find it proper cool, having a friend-dragon. Jamie understood things like that in a way that her Uncle Roy didn’t, really.
The cheese and crackers disappeared far too quickly, but by then it was almost five o’clock and Phoebe knew that asking for another snack would get her another snack, and then she’d ruin her appetite, and then dinner wouldn’t be quite so exciting. So she decided to be a grown-up about her disappointment and brought her empty plate to the kitchen, where her Uncle Roy had started boiling water on the stove and was now angry-eyebrow-ing a jar of pasta sauce.
“Uncle Roy,” she said, dragging a stool over from the counter to the sink, “when’s Jamie getting here?”
Her Uncle Roy continued angry-eyebrow-ing the jar of pasta sauce. “Soon, I think. D’you want to text him to ask?”
Phoebe considered that for a moment, elbows-deep in sudsy warm water. The bits of cheese and cracker crumbs from her plate fell in and softened, turned mushy and pale brown, made it impossible for her to see her reflection. “That’s okay,” she finally decided. “I don’t wanna rush him.”
At that very moment, as if Jamie’d heard her and chosen to be contradictory (another word Keeley had taught her, specifically in relation to Jamie in fact), the doorbell rang.
“I’LL GET IT!” Phoebe hollered before her Uncle Roy had the chance, shaking the water off her arms and dashing for the front door. She no longer had to lift on tiptoe to reach the doorknob—a fact which filled her with immense pride every time she remembered it—which gave her the maximum momentum necessary to launch herself into Jamie’s arms the minute the door was swung wide enough for it.
“Hiya, Pheebs!” he said cheerfully, hooking his hands beneath her armpits and spinning her around once. “Oi, you’ve grown since I saw you last.”
“You saw me last week, Jamie,” said Phoebe, gravely. “I can’t possibly have grown since then.”
Jamie set her on the ground and took a step back, tapping one finger to his chin in deep thought. Then he wagged his head back and forth decisively and said, “Nah, you’ve definitely grown. Gonna be taller’n me soon enough.”
“Well,” said Phoebe, “you’re not that tall anyways,” and delighted in how he stumbled back, hand pressed to his heart, a wounded noise croaking out through his lips in a silly, squeaky way that reminded her of a mouse.
“Ouch,” he said. “Keep that up and I ain’t gonna give you your swear tax.”
But Phoebe knew that he was only joking, and after a moment he proved her correct by digging into a pocket and producing seven pence, plus a wrapped blue raspberry lolly that he made her promise not to tell her Uncle Roy about. She thanked him for his service and led him into the kitchen. Her Uncle Roy had finally finished angry-eyebrow-ing the pasta sauce and now the pasta sauce was sitting uncapped on the counter while the noodles cooked. The sharp, nose-scrunch smell of chopped onion hung in the air.
“Jamie’s here, Uncle Roy!” Phoebe chirped, clinging tight to Jamie’s hand.
“I heard,” said her Uncle Roy. “How are your garlic mincing skills, muppet?”
“Fuckin’ mint,” said Jamie, at the same time Phoebe replied, “Non-existent, Uncle Roy!” There was a beat of silence, and then Phoebe turned her face up to Jamie’s and found him already looking down at her, a soft, strange smile haunting the corners of his lips.
Roy broke the quiet by saying, “Get over here, then, Tartt,” and Jamie went obediently. Phoebe understood, because her Uncle Roy was a difficult person to not listen to, though she missed being able to hold Jamie’s hand. He had very nice hands. They were big enough to enclose her own smaller ones within the palm, and his fingers were usually chapped and dry. He’d once sat down with her on the floor and let her find all the small scars he kept there: The pale crescent across his thumb (sliced himself cutting carrots); the tiny line at the base of his index finger (fallen on wood chips as a kid); and the faint curve that ran along his pinky (slipped on ice).
He had other scars, too. She’d seen one of them on his brow when they’d been sitting that close to each other, half-hidden by the shadow of his hair. She hadn’t asked about that one.
Phoebe didn’t have many scars. She’d counted them once, when Mummy had already gone to sleep but she hadn’t been able to because the shadows on her walls all looked like humans. There was a real old one on her knee, and she’d gotten it from tripping on her jump rope and hitting concrete on the way down. Mummy had kissed it better, and now it was only a faded pale circle, almost invisible against the rest of her skin. And there were more of them, too, scattered mostly on her legs and some on her palms. But the weird thing was, the injuries that had caused the scars had never hurt that much. There were different memories that hurt. Memories of loud voices and slammed doors. Memories of careful, quiet suppers. Memories of a tall man making her home feel like it wasn’t even a house.
Nobody else could see those memories, though. Only her. Sometimes she wondered if that made them less real. Sometimes she wondered if that meant they’d ever even happened at all.
“Hey, Pheebs,” Jamie called, and she jumped, a bit. “Wanna help? C’mon, I need your hummingbird eyes to make sure I’m chopping ’em small enough.”
“It’s hawk or eagle eyes,” her Uncle Roy grumbled. “Not a fucking hummingbird’s.”
“Jesus, sorry,” said Jamie. “Didn’t realize you were the fuckin’ simile police.”
“It’s not a—” Her Uncle Roy cut himself off, and sighed. “Christ. Whatever. Don’t let her fingers get in the way, or I’ll get the hospital to bill you personally.”
“Aye, will do,” said Jamie. “I mean—won’t do. All fingers’ll be safe and accounted for, swear down.”
“Speaking of swearing,” said Phoebe, clambering onto the footstool that her Uncle Roy kept in the cabinet beneath the sink, mostly for whenever they baked cakes or scones together, “you both owe me three pence each.” She grinned at the twin groans they made, and then focused on assessing the status of Jamie’s garlic-mincing while their conversation turned to tomorrow’s practice and the plans Jamie had made with Sam and Dani for the weekend to go pet service dogs at the local shelter.
“Gonna be some adoptables,” said Jamie, in a knowing sort of way. “Maybe a big grumpy dog with bushy eyebrows?”
“Like caterpillars!” Phoebe chimed.
Jamie snapped his fingers. “Exactly like caterpillars, right on.”
“I’m not getting a fu—I’m not getting a dog,” said her Uncle Roy. It was a half-truth, Phoebe knew, ’cause she’d been using his computer two days ago to research ladybugs and their life cycles and the search history had been filled with Best large breed dogs, Most fucking annoying dog breeds, and, her personal favorite, How to make sure my eight-year-old niece will get on with a dog before I go and make a stupid fucking purchase with my own adult money. Her Uncle Roy didn’t really grasp the concept that the Internet couldn’t talk back to you yet.
“I’d like to go pet the puppies,” said Phoebe. “Please can we go pet the puppies, Uncle Roy?”
Her Uncle Roy was silent for a moment before he said, “I suppose.”
Jamie gave Phoebe a high-five for her perseverance in the face of adversity.
Dinner was ready at ten till seven, and all of their bellies were rumbling and Phoebe could tell she was on the verge of a hangry temper tantrum, so her Uncle Roy uncorked a bottle of red wine, Jamie served everybody their helpings of pasta and salad, and Phoebe arranged the forks on the table. They sat in comfortable silence for a bit, no sounds except the soft clink of cutlery against the ceramic plates Phoebe had painted at pottery camp over the summer and chewing, until her Uncle Roy cleared his throat and said,
“How’s that letter coming along, Phoebe?”
The pasta felt suddenly heavy in Phoebe’s stomach. “Fine,” she said, ducking her head.
“What letter?” Jamie asked.
“Nothing,” said Phoebe.
“Phoebe,” said her Uncle Roy.
“It’s just a dumb project for school. It’s not a big deal.”
“Huh,” said Jamie, twisting the end of his fork through his teeth. If Mummy were here, she’d make him put it on the table and quit messing about. Phoebe knew because she was a chronic fork-twister herself. “Who’s the letter for? ’Cause if it’s for your greatest hero, you can just give it to me right now and I’ll make sure you get a proper A.”
Phoebe giggled, though she didn’t much want to be giggly at the moment. “It’s not for my greatest hero,” she said. “And besides, if it was, I’d write it to Uncle Roy!”
“Betrayal,” Jamie gasped, and mimed stabbing his fork through his chest.
“Fuck off,” her Uncle Roy said gruffly. His cheeks were pink.
“It’s true,” Phoebe insisted. She pushed around some of the noodles on her plate, taking care not to mix their sauce with the salad dressing, and took a deep breath. Pretended that she had a friend-dragon perched on her shoulder, smoke curling from his nostrils. He could protect her from the shadows. He could protect her from the monsters. And even though he was imaginary, she could cling to him long enough to gather the courage to say, “It’s supposed to be a letter to our younger selves.”
She was staring hard at her plate; the pink and yellow swirls, the chip along one side of its rim. Still, she could sense the glance that Jamie and her Uncle Roy exchanged above her head.
“…Oh,” said Jamie, at last.
“I don’t want to do it,” said Phoebe, furiously, without looking up. “It’s stupid.”
She expected Jamie to disagree, to try and coax her into accepting the necessity of the project. But instead his chair scraped backwards on the tile and he said, “You ain’t gotta do it, then. C’mon,” and when she finally dared to lift her gaze, she found his hand in front of her, palm open, fingers splayed. There was that same odd little smile from earlier on his face, only a bit sadder, maybe.
Phoebe glanced at her Uncle Roy. He nodded at her, and gave her wrist a brief squeeze before standing to start storing the leftovers.
“All right,” she said, curiously, and accepted Jamie’s hand, trusting him to lead her even though she wasn’t sure where it was they were going.
They ended up outside, on the steps of the front porch. The grass was hard with frost, and the wind was sharp through Phoebe’s t-shirt, and she was just beginning to regret not stopping to grab a coat when Jamie wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tugged her close. She pressed her cheek into the warmth of his sweater. She could smell the faint cologne he wore, like vanilla. His heart was a faint, steady drumbeat beneath her ear. Inexplicably, she felt as if she was about to cry.
“I were never very good at school,” said Jamie, at length. His voice was soft, quiet, like a radio dial turned almost all the way down. She felt it vibrating at the place where her head rested. “Especially maths. The numbers would always get jumbled in me head, y’know?”
Phoebe nodded. She knew. Sometimes the numbers got jumbled in her head, too.
“And, um. And me da, he would—he’d get real angry about it.”
“Oh,” said Phoebe. She curled in closer, the burn behind the backs of her eyes growing stronger. She wished she could go back in time and tell little Jamie that it wasn’t his fault that his da got angry, the way Mummy and her Uncle Roy used to tell her. “My dad yelled at me a lot, too.”
“I know, Pheebs,” said Jamie. “He were a bad man, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Phoebe whispered. Usually she was afraid of agreeing when somebody called her dad a bad man, as though her agreement would summon him—like in Percy Jackson, the way the gods got angry whenever one of their kids said their name. But here, with Jamie, she didn’t feel quite so afraid.
“And he’s gone now,” said Jamie. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Phoebe whispered, again, and gnawed on her lower lip till it hurt. “But, Jamie?”
“Hmm?”
“What if….” Her tummy turned over on itself. She peeked out through the safety of Jamie’s shirt to give the street an assessing glance, but it was empty, so she looked up at Jamie instead. “What if he comes back?”
Jamie didn’t answer at first. He just kept gazing forward, eyes on the stars and the moon hanging full and round above the peaks of the houses with their lights on. “If your dad came back,” he finally said, sounding as if he was measuring the weight of each word before he spoke it, “you wouldn’t have to be scared. It’d be real scary, I know, but you wouldn’t have to be scared. ’Cause see, Pheebs, you’d come over and stay at me gaff, and the whole team would be there.”
“With Jude?” Phoebe asked, in a tiny voice. She loved Dani’s big, solemn pitbull.
“’Course,” said Jamie. “And we’d all go on a walk with Jude ’round the neighborhood and we could race on the swings in that playground you like, in the park with the pond, and then we’d go back home and watch movies and eat sweets from Sam’s restaurant. And while we were doing that, your mum and your Uncle Roy would be telling your dad to fuck off and leave the lot of you alone. And, Phoebe,” he continued, shifting so that she was perched on the bent point of his knee, facing him, “you’d never even have to see him, not once.”
Phoebe stared at him, at the gentle planes of his face and the way his eyes crinkled at the corners with that special smile he seemed to reserve only for her. He was sweet, her Jamie, and he was honest. She knew that he would never lie. But still, she had to hear it. It would make it easier to remember the next time she was lying awake at night, and wasn’t sure whether any of it was real. “Promise?”
“Promise,” he said, immediately, and leaned forward to press a kiss to her forehead. “I promise, Pheebs. Cross me heart.”
And Phoebe didn’t say anything, because she didn’t have to. Jamie would understand.
Jamie brushed a strand of stray hair back behind her ear and said, “Now, what’s this about a letter to your younger self? You wanna show me what you’ve got so far?”
“Maybe,” said Phoebe. “I just…I haven’t started yet. I’m not really sure what to say.”
“That’s all right,” said Jamie. “Me and your Uncle Roy can help, how’s that sound?”
It sounded much better than trying to work through it on her own, so Phoebe nodded and gave a small shriek of excitement when Jamie tucked his hands beneath her armpits and swung her up into the air to carry her back into the house. Inside, it was warm and still smelled faintly of pasta, and her Uncle Roy was waiting for them both in the living room.
“Hello, muppets,” he said. “You want cookies?”
“Yes, please!” she and Jamie chorused as one.
So her Uncle Roy brought out a freshly-baked plate of chocolate chip cookies, and Jamie sprawled out with his phone on the armrest of the couch, and Phoebe sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table. Her Uncle Roy pressed a button on the Bluetooth speaker and the Moana soundtrack started playing from the beginning, and he ruffled Phoebe’s hair as he walked by to take his place on his designated reclining chair.
Phoebe blinked down at her drawings, at the half-finished friend-dragon and Princess Giselle standing triumphantly above the slain evil witch. It was nice to have a friend-dragon, she thought. You could stay at their homes when the world got big and frightening, and they wouldn’t make you leave until you were ready. But she didn’t need to finish the drawing right now. She needed to write her letter.
She picked a fresh sheet of paper from the bottom of her pile and pressed the point of a pencil into the upper left-hand corner. Dear Phoebe, she wrote. Then she stopped. Gnawed at the eraser. Her heart felt strange, beating all quick, like a little bunny in the wintertime. “Uncle Roy?”
“Phoebe?”
“I don’t,” she began, and had no chance to prepare herself before she burst into a sob.
“Oh, Phoebe,” said her Uncle Roy, and the next thing she knew, she was being bundled into his arms and he was holding her how he’d held her when she was very, very small and could still fit into his lap. She couldn’t quite do that anymore, but that didn’t stop her Uncle Roy from trying, keeping her close to his chest as she wept for something she couldn’t explain. His fingers tangled in her hair and smoothed it out, and his palm cradled the curve of her skull, and he kept murmuring You’re all right, Pebble, you’re all right as he rocked her back and forth, back and forth.
“I don’t like thinking about it, Uncle Roy,” she sniffled into the thick fuzz of his jumper. “I don’t wanna think about it.”
“I know,” her Uncle Roy said, the rough gravel of his voice so comforting, so familiar. She’d known it since the day she was born, and it hadn’t once abandoned her. “I know. It’s not fucking fair, is it.”
Phoebe shook her head soundlessly, squeezing her eyes shut against the heated darkness of her Uncle Roy’s chest.
“Pheebs,” said Jamie, tenderly, and Phoebe hadn’t known his voice as long as she’d known her Uncle Roy’s but it was comforting and familiar just the same, “it ain’t gotta be about him. The letter, I mean. It ain’t gotta be about your dad.”
“But he was always there,” Phoebe said, and shivered as another cry rattled her entire body. Her Uncle Roy kissed the top of her head.
“But you’re the one who’s still here,” said Jamie. “And your mum, and your Uncle Roy. You’re all still here, and your dad’s not, and I think your younger self would be real glad to hear it. So you ain’t gotta talk about him. You can talk about how you’re reading the Percy Jackson books right now, and how you’ve made loads of new friends, and how your Uncle Roy’s planning on getting a dog.”
“Undecided,” her Uncle Roy muttered, and Phoebe snuffled her way through a laugh. Then she felt her Uncle Roy recline, and she was propped on his stomach as he leaned against the sofa. She swiped at her eyes, her puffy-red cheeks. “But Jamie’s right, Phoebe. Your dad doesn’t fucking deserve to be in your letter. It’s not him that’s important. It’s you. D’you hear me?”
“I hear you, Uncle Roy,” Phoebe said, and poked a bit at his beard to prove she had.
She returned to the coffee table once her Uncle Roy had swiped the last of her tears from her face with the sleeve of his jumper, only this time Jamie joined her. He didn’t tell her what to write, or look over her shoulder to make sure she was writing. He just sat there, keeping her company, and doodled small footballs on the edge of a piece of paper. Nearly an hour had passed when he said, suddenly, “I haven’t talked to me dad in a few months.”
“Really?” Phoebe said, curious. Jamie didn’t usually give her specific details about his dad. Mostly all she knew was that one day a year or so ago, her Uncle Roy had been sitting at dinner with her and Mummy, and then he’d gone to the bathroom and she’d heard him crying over the sounds of the sink running. She was pretty sure he hadn’t realized she’d heard him, and she’d never brought it up, but she knew it was something to do with Jamie because after that, Jamie had started coming ’round loads. “Did you get a restraining order on him?”
Jamie laughed a bit. “Where’d you hear about restraining orders?”
“Uncle Roy says you should get one,” said Phoebe, and watched as Jamie lowered his eyes to the floor. “He says it’ll be better that way, maybe.”
“Yeah,” said Jamie. He ran a thumb along the underside of his lashes and then looked up at her again. “Yeah, it probably would. I’ve been considering it. But, uh. No, I just—I just blocked his number. Made it so he can’t text me. Thought it wouldn’t work, but it has.” His gaze was bright, almost glossy in the orange light of the room. “And I’m telling you this, Pheebs, because I need you to know that it’s going to be okay. Whatever happens, it’s going to be okay.”
“I know,” Phoebe said, and she did. “I know it will. You’re my friend-dragon.”
Jamie grinned. The brightness of his eyes shifted, became stronger, less uncertain. “Yeah?” he said. “Always wanted to be a dragon when I were a lad. Have I got orange scales?”
“Obviously,” Phoebe said. “And glowing purple eyes!”
“Right on,” said Jamie. “And guess what?”
“What?”
“I’m real good at playfighting!” Jamie hollered like a football announcer, and tossed a pillow at her head. Phoebe shrieked, first in delight and then in outrage that he’d caught her off guard, and hurled the pillow right back. It smacked him in the face and, while he was busy spluttering, she dashed upstairs to gather more ammunition.
Their game of tag lasted a record-breaking two hours, and at the end of it she and Jamie collapsed in the living room breathing hard, and her Uncle Roy tsked at them and brought them ice-cold glasses of water to cool off with. Phoebe giggled at the upside-down sight of her Uncle Roy’s fond frown, which set Jamie off giggling, and then they were both in hysterics on the carpet and it took a long time to catch their breath, and when it was over Phoebe felt lighter than she had since she’d first heard about the letter-writing assignment. She rolled onto her stomach and gulped down her water.
“Jamie?” she said.
“Mm?”
“I think I’m ready to write my letter.”
Jamie pushed himself up onto his hands and tilted his head at her. “You want me to stay?”
“Yes, please,” said Phoebe.
And Jamie did.
**
That night, after Jamie had gone home and her Uncle Roy had finished reading the next chapter of Percy Jackson to her, Phoebe wriggled in underneath the blankets and watched her Uncle Roy close the blinds and plug in the ladybug night light that illuminated her room in a pale wash of rose. He and Jamie had participated in a competitive game of paper-hat-making while Phoebe had finished her letter, and he still had Jamie’s glittery sailor’s cap on, tilted at a lopsided angle over his brow. It made him look like a very grouchy disco pirate.
“Right, then, muppet,” he said, hands on his hips as he assessed her room. “I think you’re all set for bedtime.”
“Mm,” said Phoebe, “not yet.”
“Not yet? What, have I forgotten something?” Her Uncle Roy frowned and tapped a finger to his nose. “It can’t be a good night hug, because I know I gave you one.”
Phoebe scrunched her nose. “No you didn’t!”
“I’m pretty fucking sure I did,” said her Uncle Roy, and came to sit on the edge of her bed. “But I suppose I can give you another.” He bent down and she raised her arms, looping them around his neck tightly. He smelled of garlic and a stray bit of paint that had gotten on his neck. “And one more, for luck.” He kissed the tip of her ear, and then the top of her head, and then her brow, and then her nose, and then hugged her again. “There we are.”
“Much appreciated, Uncle Roy,” Phoebe said solemnly. She laid back down on her pillow and twisted her hand into the end of her comforter before unwinding it. “Uncle Roy?”
“Yeah?”
“I know my dad’s still out there somewhere,” she said.
“Phoebe—”
“It’s okay, though,” she continued. “Because you’re here, and Mummy, and Jamie and the rest of the team. And Jude.”
“Jude’s a good girl,” said her Uncle Roy.
“The very best,” agreed Phoebe. “And I know that you won’t let anything happen to me, so I don’t have to be scared all the time anymore, not the way I was when I was little.” She scrounged beneath her pillow for a minute and extracted her letter, folded twice over and slightly crumpled. “Would you like to read it, Uncle Roy?”
“Only if you want me to,” said her Uncle Roy.
“I do,” said Phoebe. “The first sentence. I want to hear you say it, please.”
“All right.” Her Uncle Roy cleared his throat and unfolded the letter carefully. He had big hands, too, her Uncle Roy, like Jamie’s. But he could be gentle with them. He was always gentle with them, when he was with her. “Dear Phoebe,” he read out loud, and Phoebe closed her eyes, pretending that she was five years old again and knew this time that everything was going to be okay. “You’re a Kent now, and it’s much better than before.”
Phoebe opened her eyes. Her Uncle Roy was staring down at the paper, his bottom lip trembling a bit. “It is,” she said. “It’s much better than before.”
Her Uncle Roy didn’t say anything. He folded the letter back up, set it on the bedside table, and bundled her into another hug, one that stole all the breath from her lungs. He squeezed her, like he’d never let her go, like it’d take a thousand people to drag him away, and when he pulled back his cheeks were damp but he was smiling. His palm cupped her cheek, and she nestled into the touch. “I love you, Phoebe,” he told her. “Yeah? I love you very fucking much.”
“I love you too, Uncle Roy,” said Phoebe. “Very fucking much.”
Her Uncle Roy shook his head with a fond laugh. “Cheeky muppet. To bed with you now, else you’ll be too tired for school tomorrow.”
“Yes, Uncle Roy!” Phoebe chirped. She snuggled beneath the blankets once more, feeling warm from the tips of her fingers to the tips of her toes, and when her Uncle Roy turned off the big light, she felt frightened of the shadows for only a moment before he came to sit beside her again. “You should also go to bed, Uncle Roy.”
“I will,” said her Uncle Roy.
Phoebe tucked her head into her pillow, the blankets up at her chin, and sighed contentedly. The room was big, and the world outside was dark, but as she drifted off to dreams, she wasn’t thinking about any of that. She was thinking about her Jamie, and her Mummy, and her Uncle Roy. She was thinking about little Phoebe, lying in this same bed years ago, wondering whether the evil witch would ever be slain, wondering whether the bad things would ever go away for good. They will, she promised herself. They have.
This, she knew, was real.