The Family We Choose

Chapter 12

Carla was letting herself in the Diaz household bright and early, finding Emelia sitting at the kitchen table and Chris running back to his room to get dressed while Eddie was trying not to burn down the kitchen.

Her presence went unknown by the teen girl sitting in front of her laptop. Carla peaked over her shoulder and found her looking through a bunch of dance websites. She could see the bookmarks of the different schools she found and smiled fondly.

"Are you looking to get into the show business?" she teased, causing Emelia to jump. She quickly shut her laptop and turned to face the older woman with a shy smile.

"Morning Carla." She laid an arm over the laptop to prevent her from trying to open it.

"You do know it's not illegal to look up dance schools." she raised an eyebrow and Emelia blushed.

"I know, I was just looking." She quickly packed up her things. "It's not like we can afford the lessons anyways. Bye." She yelled, on her way out to meet a friend.

Carla shook her head at the girl and turned her attention to Eddie, who had been trying to clean up the disaster they called a kitchen for Carla .

"Morning," he says over his shoulder, uniform already on from running so late.

"Morning, did you see your aspiring star's search history?" she said, laughing at the confused stare on the man's face.

"Emelia, she was looking up dance studios nearby." She dropped her bag to the side and took over making lunch for Chris.

"Really?" he paused, eyes softening. It had been years since she even wanted to dance. That was once her favourite thing to do. There were days she would spend all hours of the at the studio. Helping the director, teaching the little ones, taking her own classes. Then Shannon left and she lost that spark.

Eddie wanted nothing more for her to have that spark back.

"Yeah but she said she was just "looking." says you can't afford it right now." She said sadly as Eddie's face fell slightly before he looked at his watch and winced.

"I will figure that out when I get home," Eddie said, kissing Chris on the top of his head on his way out the door.

–

"You're looking rough." Eddie heard Buck say from atop of the stairs at the station. His hands crossed over his chest as he made room for Eddie to sit next to him on the couch.

Eddie rolled his eyes but took a seat next to the man. Much closer than he probably should have but neither of them were complaining.

"Thanks Buck"

"You know what I mean." he elbowed his side, silently telling him he was here to listen.

"Shannon's freaking out and Emelia wants to go back into dance." he says quickly, rubbing his temples.

"Are those two things related?" he knew they were. Of course he knew they were, he could read Eddie like an open book.

"Dance is expensive and Emelia knows that. She didn't even tell me, I had to find out from Carla when she saw all the stuff on her laptop. But she is scared to tell Shannon because she's already expressed her concerns with our spending as of late." He thought they were doing pretty well at hiding that stuff from Emelia, they weren't exactly perfect at it when she was little but so far they were screwing up their second chance as well.

"Like?" Buck pressed, moving closer to his side as he leaned in a little more.

"Chris' treatments and school and Carla and the surfing lessons. Then there's the house and the gas and the groceries and the bills. And Emelia never asks for these kinds of things. Never and after everything..." he stops himself, knowing if he went further it would only be a matter of time before he was spiraling from all the guilt.