do you need meat?” It’s easier to control the wolf with beef and bison, sometimes.
“No. I’m good today.” She sniffed the island. “Eewwww. You and Frost had sex in the kitchen!?”
I rolled my eyes. “Manners, Nora. We don’t talk about shit you can smell that humans won’t know.”
“There are no humans here.”
“Yeah, there are four people in human form here, and while in human form in this house, we’re going to...” I sighed. “Your father can make whatever rules he wants in his house, but I’m raising kids who are going to live in the human world, and who will need to have human manners. So, you’re welcome, though you aren’t going to thank me for it until sometime in your twenties, probably.” Gil and I are mostly on the same page when it comes to parenting them, but in this thing, we’d agreed they’d just have different rules at home and here, and that would be okay. They have different rules at school than they do at home, and that’s fine, too.
“It might be different if we could meet him. I mean, we smell him all over the house, but we don’t know who he is.”
Right, but that was her father’s doing, and I wasn’t going to disparage him twice in just a few minutes. I put the bowl of sliced apples on the table. “Homework. We’ll be leaving in two hours. I’ll be right back.”
I grabbed a sketch pad and my graphite pencils, poured myself a glass of wine, and sat with them at the table, but I checked out the boys’ screens before I sat. They were both working on a science paper. Nora had a pencil and paper, since she was doing geometry. I really hoped she didn’t need help.
I went to work on a sketch for a job I wanted to bid on — a mural on the side of a grocery store showing a ‘bountiful land of plenty’. I’d sketch it, then paint it, and when I showed it to the clients, I’d photoshop the painting onto the side of the building alongside showing them the actual painting on canvas.
Ten minutes later, Nora needed help with geometry and couldn’t reach her dad on the phone. I looked at it, and it’s likely I could’ve read through the last couple of lessons and figured it out, but barring that, I had no clue. I made good grades in geometry when I took it, but I don’t remember the specifics. I mean, I can figure out how much paint I need for a certain square footage, and other things artists need to figure out, but that was all I’d retained. We only had so much time for them to do their homework, so I called Frost and requested video. His face popped up, and I said, “I have a huge favor to ask. Any chance you can help Nora with a geometry question via video chat?”
“Sure, let me move to another room so I have some quiet. Hand her the phone and have her show me the problem.”
I turned the phone towards her and said, “Ya’ll say hi, first.”
Once they’d gotten that over with, Nora took the phone and showed him what she’d done. The conversation lasted less than five minutes, and she was all, “Wow, that’s easy. Thanks so much!”
When they’d hung up, she said, “He’s smart?”
“Yes. Engineering degree from Georgia Tech. He’s the top person who runs a general contractor firm.”
“Dad says he’s an outlaw biker.”
“He’s a biker. He was in jail for a misdemeanor because the gun he used during the big battle is technically illegal. Also, his truck was blown up, and he found a car that worked – the people in it were dead, so he pulled them out and used the car to try to get to safety. So, they got him for car theft and possession of a prohibited weapon, which sounds bad, but you have to understand the circumstances. We still have an hour until we need to leave. Homework.”
Everyone went back to work.
Dinner went better than I could have imagined. Gil was on his best behavior, and the kids ate close to their body weight in food. Okay, not quite that much, but it seemed like it.
Partway through the meal, Gil asked Nora what she’d needed him for, and apologized for not being able to answer his phone right away.
“OMG! Dad! Did you know Frost is smart!?”
Gil gave me the stink eye, and I shrugged. “She needed