Page 46 of But For You

“But if he was a real lion, he would make her sneeze, huh?”

He thought a moment before both faces turned up to me, waiting.

“I think it’s just house cats, but we’ll have to look it up when we get back to the room.”

My answer seemed to placate them.

“Kola, look,” Hannah said, pointing at some kind of casserole. “That looks like monkey brains.”

“Or like a horse blew up.” He retched, which made the woman behind us gasp.

“Guys,” I cautioned them.

“Remember that time Chilly barfed up that hairball with the jelly beans?”

“Eww, the red ones!” Kola announced.

She dissolved into her husky laughter.

He gagged again, which sent his sister into hysterics.

Sam had to apologize to the people behind us, and I noticed that no one even picked up the spoon to put any of the red glop on their plates.

“Dad,” Kola began as we moved down the side of the buffet table, “when I get big, I’m gonna be a marshal too.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah. I’m not gonna shoot people though.”

“No? What’re you gonna do?”

“I’m just gonna make them sit in a room and talk to Hannah,” he announced with diabolical glee, his voice rising at the end.

“Kola!”

He started laughing, and she picked up a roll.

“Hannah Kage, don’t you dare throw that roll,” I threatened her.

“Kola is made of boogers!”

“Well, Hannah is made of poop!”

“Guys.” Sam was chuckling, so his warning lacked any real power. Stern he was not.

Once we were sitting, Hannah asked me why a lady had hit a girl when we were in line.

“That was her daughter,” I explained.

“So, why did she hit her?”

“She’d probably done something her mother didn’t like.”

“So, she was bad?”

“Kids aren’t bad. Sometimes, they do things that make their parents upset, but it’s not bad. It’s just that the behavior is misguided.”

She looked at me like I was from another planet.