Love, Dad | Joe Cruz

Chapter 20: Finale

"Lame. Well, wanna play Minecraft when you get home?" He asks her smiling.

"No, I still have to unpack I lost something really important." She tells him a frown covering her face.

"I hope you find it. We should play afterwards!" He suggests.

"Sure." Tatiana smiles looking out the window at the passing buildings.

"Monday you should ask to come over to my house! You can just ride the bus over."

"I'll ask them." She grins at him.

"What'd you lose?" He asks her.

"My dad wrote me letters and I lost the box that has them all in it," Tatiana says looking at her hands.

"I'm sorry that sucks," Braden says as the bus pulls up to his stop. "Bye Tots! See you Monday!" He hurries off the bus while she looks at the firehouse. Cruz stood at the end of the apron waving at her. She waves back at him with a grin. He plans to do this whenever he's not on a call and the bus is passing.

The bus makes it to her stop a little while later and she climbs off and hurries up the street Chloe following behind. No words were said. Chloe didn't know what to say. She's known for almost a year that one day she'd be helping raise this girl. But now she has no clue how to. How to help with these hard moments. Or what to say. So she says nothing instead following her to their apartment and unlocking the door.

Tatia runs in going straight to her room.  She digs through the boxes, not an easy feat when one of her arms is in a cast and a sling against her chest. Chloe was unpacking the kitchen since they haven't gotten to that yet. Tatiana come in maybe an hour later dried tears on her face.

"I didn't find them." She says.

"Okay then let's unpack the living room together and see if they got put in one of those boxes instead," Chloe suggests setting the plate in the cabinet.

"Fine," Tati says turning on her heel and going into the living room.

She opens a box and begins carefully removing the framed pictures that were wrapped up in the box. They used to be placed around their old apartments. Most featuring fifty-one, and Tatiana. Others have Leon, Otis' family, and Chloe in them. Chloe takes each photo from her and props a few of them up on the mantel. A photo of Otis and Tatiana at a father-daughter dance, her latest yearbook photo. Though Cruz told her Otis has the rest stacked in there too. She leaves space for her own photos and the wedding pictures they haven't gotten yet.

She stacks the rest to later hang up. She looks at Tatiana who was moving to the next box after finding that her letters were at the bottom of that one. Chloe says nothing as she moves the empty box out of the way. They make it through all of the boxes in the living room and find nothing.

"We'll find them," Chloe assures.

"No, we won't. They're gone I lost them." Tati cried running to her room. Chloe watches in defeat. Her phone begins ringing and she reaches for it.

"Hey, Baby." She says to her husband.

"Hey, I have good news." He says on the other side of the phone.

"Really?"

"We found the letters. They got kicked under the seat of my car during the move." Cruz tells hers.