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Something about picking through her kids’ old baby stuff to see what she could have delivered to Ryan’s place here so they’d have it when they were in town. I hadn’t really been listening.

What’d struck me was that the silence in the car hadn’t been as hostile or awkward as before. Instead, it’d just been that exhausted kind of quiet that came after hours of chasing after Cam in the mirror maze, trying to keep up with Deja at the prize booths, and inhaling way too much fried food.

Alicia seemed to have used the drive to recharge her batteries, however, since she was now sitting at the kitchen counter with a mug of chamomile tea in her hands, giving me grief about my performance in the Slaughterhouse.

“I’m just saying, you almost took out a minimum-wage actor,” she teased with a wicked little smirk playing at her lips. “The poor guy was just trying to do his job and you roared at him. Like a cornered grizzly bear.”

“Where I come from, if someone is shoving a chainsaw in your face, they’re considered a threat,” I argued, my hip cocked against the counter across from her. “In any civilized society, it’s unacceptable to wave chainsaws around. My body responded appropriately.”

She rolled her eyes, trying to hide a smile behind her mug as she took a sip of her tea. “It was a prop, Thayer. It didn’t even have a chain on it.”

“And yet, it had the auditory signature of a real weapon,” I countered, but there wasn’t much of a bite to my voice anymore. “I still don’t get why Maggie didn’t go in with you. She lives for that sort of stuff.”

“The guy at the ticketing booth advised against it,” she explained, clearly knowing things I didn’t about my very own family. “I asked while you were in the mirror maze. She said there was a sign asking people to let the operators know if you’re pregnant, and when she did, they told her she could go in, but they would recommend she didn’t. With all those props around, there’s a real risk of tripping or getting knocked over. It was a rather safe than sorry situation.”

While I got all that, my brain had gotten stuck before the actual explanation had started. “You asked? Why?”

She shrugged. “I was curious about how, out of a whole group of fully grown adults, we were the only ones willing to go in and check it out.”

“Oh.”

She smirked again. “Deja said Halloween isn’t a thing in Egypt, so she doesn’t really understand the draw. She also told me there are enough things that scare her about the world their little girl has to grow up in that she doesn’t need manufactured fear.”

“That’s fair.”

“Which brings us to you,” she said, curiosity burning in those hazel eyes when she brought them back to mine. “Why did none of the Thayers want to go in? You’re big, strong boys and Jane is probably the toughest of you all, yet I didn’t see any of you volunteering.”

I stared back at her, considering making up some bullshit excuse, but at the end of the day, we were married now. At some point over the next fifty years, we wouldn’t only have to replace another kitchen appliance. She was also going to find out everything there was to know about me.

It seemed more dignified to tell her the truth myself instead of having her piece it together from the stories she’d hear from others. “We didn’t exactly have a typical childhood. Our parents would never have taken us to a local Halloween festival.”

She frowned. “Why not?”

“Let’s just say that walking through mud to buy a deflated pumpkin balloon was considered way below our station. If we celebrated at all, it was at a catered gala in a ballroom where the children were expected to sit quietly in formal suits and not speak unless spoken to.”

Alicia eyes softened as she looked at me over the rim of her mug, the teasing light in them fading. For a beat, she looked at me like I was a book she was reading and trying to figure out the plot twists still coming.

While I’d never wanted anyone to open that book, the truth was that I’d had a great time tonight. I tended to steer clear of family events. Whenever I could, I avoided them like the plague. I loved my family, but any time spent with them usually meant dealing with poorly disguised tension, legal stress, and my mother’s social anxieties.

Having Alicia there tonight had flipped the script for me, though. Knowing she was excited about it had made me want to go, want to stay, and more surprisingly, made me actually want to contribute. I’d genuinely enjoyed myself, even if my nervous system had believed she was in mortal danger the entire time we’d been inside that stupid haunted house.

Naturally, as soon as I realized tonight had turned out to be pretty fucking good, an intrusive thought crashed into my brain with all the subtlety of the grizzly bear Alicia had accused me of acting like.

Did my parents ever have a night like this? Once upon a time, did Court and Nora Thayer have a happy, easy relationship that made them look forward to their future together?

As soon as the thought landed, my good mood crashed and burned, that familiar darkness rolling back in that that made me want to shut myself off from everyone and everything. It was like a thunder cloud, reminding me that my father was walking out soon and when he did, whatever peace or happiness we were pretending to have right now would be gone.

Immediately, a switch tripped inside and I had the sudden, almost overpowering urge to fall back into old habits. Unfortunately, locking myself in her dad’s old office upstairs would mean leaving my perch against the kitchen counter. More to the point, it would mean walking away from her and I wasn’t really ready to say goodnight just yet.

I cleared my throat and looked back at her again. “What about you? Did you go to a lot of Halloween festivals when you were growing up?”

For some reason, it was her turn to look uncomfortable. She’d been so enthusiastic about the festival that I’d assumed she had fantastic childhood memories of Halloween, but she shifted on her stool and glanced at the tea in her mug.

“Uh, yeah,” she finally said, but her voice was soft and she still hadn’t looked back up at me. “For a while there, anyway.”

Oh. Right. I felt a quiet sigh sliding out of me at the realization that Halloween happiness was yet another thing the accident must’ve taken from her. Shit.

For a few long seconds, she just sat there staring at her tea and I stood with my arms crossed over my chest, torn between feeling like an idiot for bringing it up and wrestling with my resentment toward my parents for never taking the time to do normal stuff like that with us.