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When we went to visit, we sat and talked on the porch. He’d even bought—or built—two more rocking chairs for us.
Sway and Slash had floated the idea of having him join the club, but they hadn’t had any success talking him off of his homestead yet.
“He’ll come. And I bet he’ll build the baby a crib or something,” Sway said, pressing a kiss to my temple. “Maybe bring it a little Bloodhound puppy to grow up with.”
“God, you know what I just realized?” I said, grimacing.
“What?”
“We’re going to have to move to the… suburbs.”
It wasn’t like there were a lot of options in Shady Valley.
Apartments, trailers, Millionaire’s Row—that was full these days—and the ‘burbs.
“That’s okay,” Sway said, giving me a squeeze. “We’ll add cool points to the neighborhood. And if anyone tries to talk to us, we can sic Miranda and Samantha on them.”
Sway - 10 years
“Should we… do something?” Murphy asked as we stood on the back porch, watching the kids… well… build weapons.
At least, that’s what it looked like they were doing, with their pile of sticks, thorns, and tape. Fuck, we went through so much tape. Duct tape, Scotch tape, fucking painter’s tape.
“And squash their creativity? I don’t think so,” I said, wincing as our daughter, the younger of the two, held out a thorn-studded… well, there was no other way to describe it, club at her brother’s face.
“Did she just… build a mace?” Murphy asked.
“I mean, I think it’s actually an improvement on the typical mace design,” I said. “More spikes.”
“You’re probably not supposed to sound so proud when your daughter is improving upon medieval weaponry.”
“I mean, I’d be worried if she was making it worse,” I said, getting a little laugh out of her.
“Maybe it doesn’t mean she’s going to be a weapon designer,” I reasoned, understanding her concern.
It was more than the usual ‘wanting better for your kids’ kind of thing. It was the bone-deep fear that came with knowing your little girl would be a target for bad men, much like Murphy had once been a target.
“Maybe she’s just going to be into engineering shit. Build contraptions that will clean the oceans or help us build life on other planets… okay,” I said as she grabbed the mace by the handle, pulled it over her shoulder, and flung it at the target, hitting it dead center. “Maybe she is going to design weapons.”
“Well, at least she will have the protection of the whole club if she does,” Murphy reasoned.
And that club had been growing like weeds the past decade.
Our baby girl would have dozens of men ready to ride out if she so much as got a door closed on her face.
We watched as our son retrieved the mace, inspecting the damage the impact had done, then high-fiving his sister before handing it back to her.
“Don’t you dare say it,” she demanded. “Every time one of us says it, they start fighting again.”
Even as we watched, it looked like they were about to get back into it over the supplies laid out before them.
But then a little German Shepherd puppy came tear-assing into them, on the hunt of a fucking butterfly.
From the corner of the yard, a Bloodhound—a gift to our son from his Uncle Cohen on his fifth birthday because ‘a boy needs a dog of his own’—was following the scent of a squirrel that had rolled through a few minutes before.
And over our fence, in our quiet little suburb full of very normal people, our neighbors were eyeing our little future weapons designers and dealers from their raised back deck with unmasked horror.
We might not have added cool points to the neighborhood, but we’d certainly added shock value.
Our attention slid back to our kids as our girl started dancing around, singing something from the Lindsay catalog I’d been playing for her since she was born.
“Oh, God, no,” Murphy said as she watched the light in my eyes as I grabbed her hand and danced her out the back door with me, belting it out with our little girl to the horror of our son and his mother.
She was smiling when we’d finished our little singalong, though.
“You love it,” I told her as I yanked her up against me.
“I love it slightly more now that I lost a little hearing in this ear,” she said, tapping the lobe. She’d once been contracted to design a very big, very loud gun. It had caused a little damage when she’d tried it out. But she was a trooper about it.
“What do you think about a trip to the beach house?” I asked, giving her a squeeze.
“I think that is a very long road trip with two dying-cat-singers in the car,” she said, smile tugging at her lips.
“So, what I’m hearing is… you’d love it.”
“Okay. Fine. Yes,” she agreed, that smile spreading.
