Third, there was an adorable little dark-haired girl wearing a princess dress costume, complete with fake satin top and masses of tulle skirt, this ensemble complimented by clickety-clack, little girl plastic high-heeled shoes. She was sitting on the couch with her legs straight in front of her, feet bouncing while she gamely licked a melting Popsicle but was struggling in this endeavor as evidenced by it dripping purple on the fake satin of the top of her dress.

Fourth, an older woman with thick silver hair, blue eyes, and an overall look that screamed, “Grandma!” was standing in a doorway grinning at me like a madwoman.

And last, Brock’s furnishings were, at a glance, approximately two point seven five steps up from the overall feel of his apartment complex. But at least the place appeared clean if not tidy. And when I say “not tidy” I say this in the sense that it also reflected that Brock was a single man with a Harley Fat Boy and a beat-up pickup truck that Martha was right about. It needed to be traded up and that trade up should have happened around a decade ago.

“Uh… hey,” I greeted.

“We’re a surprise, we know. We were on our way back from junior football league practice and we thought we’d stop by,” Fern said, coming farther into the room and I saw she was holding a dishtowel. “We brought KFC because the kids had to eat. We didn’t know Slim was expecting company.”

“Um… okay,” I told her, then added stupidly, “Cool.”

She made it to me and held out her hand. I took it and her fingers closed around mine. Her other hand came up and closed around our clasped hands. As she did this, she looked into my eyes and did a Mom Scan, which left me feeling mildly ill at ease considering the fact that I was pretty sure her blue eyes read all the words written on my soul. Therefore, she knew I’d lied to my mother when I was ten and told her I didn’t try to shave my legs (when the nicks on them proved this to be false) and that I let Jimmy Moriarty get to second base at the homecoming dance my sophomore year in high school.

She released me from The Scan, let go of my hand, stepped back, and luckily didn’t announce to the room I was a floozy who lied to her mother.

“They’re about to leave,” Brock stated, to which Princess Ellie shouted, “No, we’re not! We’re watching Tangled!”

And to this, Dylan (or Grady, it had not been pointed out who was who), shouted in return, “We’re not watching Tangled! We watched Tangled this weekend five times.” He swung his head to Laura and whined, “Mooooooom! I’m sick of Tangled!”

“I’m not sick of Tangled. That movie is awesome,” I found my mouth (again) stupidly muttering.