High Noon on Jefferson: Chapter Nineteen

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Sleep was actually easy. Which was weird. Normally, when I spend the night in a new place, I don't sleep as well. When Dad had Mom's tower home built when they divorced, the first few nights I was in my new room there I didn't sleep very well at all. New place and new sounds and the stress of our new family situation. That ought to be the problem here, too. After all, this was a new place and it was pretty obvious that Khiara and Dad were getting serious.

Yet.

For some reason.

This, this place, this cottage felt...like my home. Like the home I'd been living in for years. Not just arrived at for the first time. That was weird. It was even weirder that I just accepted it without thinking. At least until I started to think about it the next morning. And even then, it was when my Pranksters and I were walking to the main house that it even tickled my brain that something was off.

Well, it wasn't really off: I meant it wasn't really bad. Nothing bad came of it. Nothing had was meant by it. Nothing bad was intended. However, it gave me a sense something was off. I was too accepting of the cottage and the situation. While we had weird, illegal and possibly ecologically damaging ro-bats and repticulates running around.

Something nefarious was afoot and I was...happy and content.

Either that said something about me or something else was afoot.

hrm.

We made it to the main house and found our way to the kitchen. Khiara greeted us warmly and hummed a happy tune while she seemed to dance as she cooked. Normally, Dad used to cook in the mornings. However, sometimes that could be a mistake: for all Dad's talents, he was not a morning person.

Some days his breakfasts were amazingly delicious: his omelets were to die for. When they were good. However, other days...well, let's just say, torture and damnation at the hand's of the devil for an eternity might have been more merciful. Dad liked to say he and mornings did not get along: there were no major disasters - though I disagree as someone who has eaten a few of them! - but rather it was like a political cold war between him and the morning: lots of little brush fire wars along the periphery of getting going until he was properly caffeinated and rolling. Those bad breakfasts were definitely Vietnam or Afghanistan for my brother and I though. Yech.

However, it was late enough in the morning I would have thought he'd be making breakfast and make it amazingly. Like I said, his omelets were amazing and I wanted my Pranksters to get one each. Tom would have made a fool of himself, but that's Tom. For whatever reason Tom was Tom. I couldn't have figured out why. Maybe it was because he was born a Tom and a Tom must be a Tom as long as they are a Tom.

That Khiara was making breakfast and seemingly dancing and humming and even bursting a bit out in song seemed to be so weird and out of place in my father's house, I couldn't even wrap my head around it. That she had continued without embarrassment after we arrived was weirder still. When my father came inside - he had an issue with a bot milking the cows - she waltzed, or sambaed, or whatever that dance was over to him and kissed him. And he kissed back happily. My teenage embarrassment and horror could not have been greater.

Something truly strange was afoot at the Father's Farm.

Dad plopped us down to eat and helped serve. Khiara had prepared cardamom rolls - Dad makes a kiler cardamom bread each christmas and these were just as good! definitely suspicious that! Why was she buttering us up like this?! Rolls, butter, get it? She also made something I'd never had before: aborrajado.

Aborrajado.

How weird. Strange. Delightful. And suspicious.

It was something like a Colombian piroshki or pierogi for those who get their consumable traditions from Europe west of Carpatia, um, the Carpathian Mountains. It had a slightly different batter, but was also fried. Mom made amazing piroshki. However, her piroshki were made with ground meat and potatoes: Mom called potatoes the Ukrainian bread. The Irish might want to claim to that, too. However, Khiara's aborrajado were filled with cheese and bananas. Or plantains. It was...different. weirdly, amazingly, different.

The pranksters chewed their way ashamedly through the stack. We joked and teased and taunted each other. Tom even teased Dad and Khiara over the kiss. Dad raised his eyebrow and then proceeded to kiss Khiara again. Tom was going to die for that. He had to know how uncomfortable that made me. Actually, Dad probably did, too, and did that again just to give me a hard time. This wasn't like normal teasing though and it made me uncomfortable. Khiara did push him away though, so I think she understood.

Khaira gave me a sympathetic look then. I think she wanted me to get used to the idea Dad and her were a thing, but didn't want to rub it in too hard. Dad in his teasing and getting into the groove with the Pranksters was rubbing just a bit, ok, more than a bit, too hard there.

Khiara left for a short time. Things got back into the teasing, less awkward groove and about ten minutes after that Khiara came back. Dad started to move to her, probably to give her a hug or peck, but she gave him a little, very subtle shake of the head, and he nodded just as subtly back. Apparently, they were very affectionate. And she also knew I was uncomfortable and that it would have been too much, it already had been too much! Dad got it. Even if not being affectionate wasn't his normal way with her.

That was going to take ages to get used to. bleh.

When I was looking away, I saw a dog food bowl. It was labelled: Toad. That must have been Khiara's dog. Great. That explained why I hadn't seen Gooberface, my cat. Gooberface was probably deeply offended by Toad's presence. I understood completely.

The rest of breakfast was fine. It was getting better by the end. Jackie seemed to pick up on how uncomfortable I was and made it her point to pull me out of my weirded out zone. Rosa and Veena helped. Those two were close and had grown closer, but they tag teamed getting me to open me backup.

Dad asked what our plans were and we let him know we wanted to explore and go hiking off the property. He just made we knew to check in and NOT turn off our boosters. Just in case. I think he was alluding to what we then called The Incident a few years before when we snuck off and got entangled in an interstellar, international incident at the age of twelve. After all, at 15, on a normal scale of mischief, we were capable of far, far more.

ahem.

We agreed. We didn't want to get caught getting into the mischief we were really getting into. No need to give away the game. Especially if Dad was guilty, but it seemed he probably was not.

Dad and Khiara walked us to the airlock and talked to us the whole time. They were not rushing us, but were just trying to spend as much time as possible with us. Speaking of Gooberface, Dad asked if I wanted to move him out to the cottage. He suggested Gooberface might be happier being king of his own domain. Dad didn't mention the dog. However, I had my suspicions Toad and Gooberface didn't get along. I thought that was a good idea. Mine with me in mine seemed fine.

I felt a pang then. I loved Dad and might even grow to like, even love Khiara, but there was a certain distance that was growing. I was growing into my own and Dad was the same. Or sorta was. Khiara was sure to have some influences. And vice versa. Poor woman. Dad influencing her. What a horrible fate for anyone. heh.

I grudgingly gave Dad a hug. I slightly less so gave one to Khiara.

I was feeling that whatever may have been going on that I had seen with Dad and Khiara when I had spied on them with the drone, whatever they had plans for their relationship, I was starting to feel like I could trust and love them as them and things would be fine. I could accept them for them and they would accept me for me and we would be happy.

We went through the normal routine of going outside. Dad flipped on the taxito zapper. He and Khiara stepped into the airlock with us. They hadn't put on their leathers or smart cloth clothing. It was a little risky, but not much. Less risky than letting a teenager manually drive a car. They closed the inner door and we opened the outer one. I was saying bye again when Veena gasped.

The others gasped. I couldn't see what they were gasping about. My Pranksters were a solid wall of dumbfoundedness.
Dad and Khiara came forward to see and gently pushed the teens, my teens, out of the way. Then we saw.

On Earth, the site we saw would have been no big deal. In fact, it probably was, in the sub and exurbs and the rural areas, quite common. Even normal. There, at the door, was a dog. Completely unprotected, wagging its tail and it had a stick its mouth. It's smart tag registered immediately with all of us as being 'Toad' and where he lived and who owned him.

There Toad the dog was, completely unprotected from the taxitos and other biological and biochemical incompatibilities of Jefferson. Wagging his tail. Chewing on a stick that probably ought to have killed him. As we watched, since he was outside and beyond the reach of the antitaxito zapping laser in the airlock, a taxito land on him, bite him and fly away...at least at first. It quickly started flying drunkenly and then fell to the ground, dead. The dog, however, was fine. It wiggled to try to throw off the annoyance of the bite, but otherwise seemed unharmed.

Dad and Khiara, as one, let off an expletive that was impressive and not what I'd ever come from his mouth before.

We all looked at them with a stunned bunny expression.

We didn't know what to say or do.

Khiara called Toad and took the stick from him.

Dad sighed and told us to come back inside.

They were busted.