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Robin groaned. “My curtains are wide open, aren’t they?”
“Yep.”
“Well, the secret’s out, I guess. This is how we spend our nights over here. Exciting, huh?”
Jack laughed. “Very. Have you seenMars Attacks?”
Robin’s answering bark of laughter made Abby jump, so she whispered an apology before turning her attention back to the joker next door. “That’s just mean. We don’t look like those creepy aliens.”
“With the cucumbers where your eyeballs should be and your hair wrapped in that towel, you kinda do, actually. I’d send you the picture I took, but you’d probably call me a creepy stalker again.”
“Uh, isn’t it illegal to take a photo of someone inside their home without their permission?”
“Okay, I confess. I didn’t really take a photo. But just so you know, it’d be perfectly legal as long as I wasn’t standing on your property when I did it. But from the street or my own property, totally fine.”
Robin hummed, holding back her laughter with considerable effort.
“That doesn’t make me sound any less creepy, does it?”
“Nope,” she replied, dragging out the word.
“Well, shoot. On that note, I’ll let you get back to your alien pampering rituals.”
“Mom, I’m gonna go wash all this off,” Abby said, causing Robin to sit up and allow the cucumber slices to fall from her eyes.
“Hold on, Jack,” she said into the phone. But it was too late, Abby had already stormed toward her bathroom and slammed the door behind her. With a sigh, Robin tossed the cucumbers onto the table and leaned back on the couch. “You still there?”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“It’s Abby. I’m not sure what’s wrong with her, but I think something happened at school today and she won’t talk to me about it. This spa night was supposed to cheer her up. At first, it was because I felt bad for bailing on our plans to make gingerbread houses tonight, but when I realized something was bugging her, I went all out trying to make her feel better. It didn’t work at all.”
A knock sounded at the door, and as she turned her head toward it, Jack chuckled into the phone. “Lemme in, I’m freezing.”
Two seconds later, he was in her house with a box of pizza in one hand and a six-pack of beer in the other. The man must have headed this way the moment she’d said there was something wrong with Abby, and it absolutely floored her.
Jack looked her up and down with a mystified grin, shaking his head in amusement as he did. “You sure that stuff is good for your face? What if you can’t get it to come off?”
Robin tightened her robe and wrapped her arms over her chest. “Hush. What are you doing here?”
“Nothing cheers a kid up like pizza, right? I got it for myself and planned to have the leftovers for breakfast, but it sounded like you could use the reinforcements.”
“And the beer?”
He shrugged. “That’s for us, obviously. We might need them if the plan doesn’t work.”
“Hey, Jack,” Abby grumbled as she shuffled back into the room. Then she lifted her freshly washed face into the air and sniffed. “Is that pizza?”
“Yep.”
Robin excused herself to wash off her mask while Abby got out plates and they dished up the pizza. By the time she returned, Jack and Abby were at the kitchen table with mouthfuls of food, and he had her laughing hard enough that she nearly choked. Looked like pizza really was the magic cure.
A few minutes after she sat down and started on her own slice, Robin finally got up the nerve to try again with Abby. “Wanna tell us what happened today?”
Abby’s cheeks flamed as she chewed her dinner. “Not really.”
“Ah, come on, kid. Whatever it is, you’ve got plenty of people in your corner to help you handle it,” Jack said, shooting Robin a wink as he did.
After a few moments of indecision, Abby gave in. “It’s this boy in my class, Tanner. I was telling my teacher about my snowman collection and showing her the photos you printed for me, and he took them and started passing them around.”
