carl@fire

"I'm back," Bobby announced, shutting the front door behind her. "Why's it smell so lemon-y?"

Carl glanced at Annie, who didn't look up from the bestselling fantasy novel she was reading on her tablet. He took a long blink, turning his phone's AR display off in his glasses. He'd been reading up on recent scores for NFL games as well as related player and coaching events in order to keep current.

"You have fun at Jen's?" Annie called.

Bobby appeared in the doorway of the den, her backpack still slung over her shoulder. "Yeah, it was cool," she said, setting her bag down before walking in. She walked over and gave her mom, who had put her tablet down a moment earlier, a brief hug. "We had pizza, and we went out to see the new Spider-Woman movie."

"How was it, pumpkin?" Carl asked. He held his arms out just as his daughter fell onto his shoulder in his big, comfy arm chair. It was the second-most comfortable chair he'd maybe ever sat in.

Bobby rubbed her face on his beard, as she'd nearly always done in greeting. "Kinda cool," she said, sounding skeptical. "It was another team-up thing, and she had to get rescued by old Spider-man. Then the rock guy—"

"The Thing," Carl supplied, shifting over slightly in the chair.

"Yeah, him," Bobby said as she settled to sit along the edge of his leg. She pulled her brown ponytail to rest over her shoulder. "He got captured by some minor bad guy, and there was this big chase scene where—"

Carl put himself on Auto-Carl for a little while. He would've been interested in seeing the movie himself, but he never had time for that kind of thing anymore. And even if he had, he was so many movies behind in the series that he doubted any of it would have made much sense to him.

"So, yeah, it was kinda cool, but the whole thing where the bad guy was supposed to be a metaphor for global warming was way too forced, and I had to sit through all these asides and soliloquys," his daughter finished.

"That's a very thoughtful analysis, Bobby," Annie said in an approving tone. "And good vocab use."

Bobby leaned in close to Carl's ear. "And we spent a ton of time after theorycrafting out new stuff for New Era," she whispered, seeming far more excited by that than she had when she'd talked about the box office-destroying movie which had somehow been released in October.

"Well, Sammy won her game," Carl said, covering for his daughter's eagerness, "so make sure you give her a big hug when she gets home."

"Okay," said Bobby, nodding. She looked over to where her mom was watching the two of them from the couch before turning back to him. "Um, Dad, do you have a little while to help me with some homework?"

Carl rolled his eyes. His youngest daughter might be precocious in many ways, but subtlety was not yet one of the skills she'd acquired. "Yeah, why don't you go up and get started, and I'll be up in a bit," he said, patting her shoulder.

"Cool!" Bobby said, sounding more eager than a thirteen year-old girl should probably sound at the prospect of doing homework on a Saturday. "Love you, Dad," she said, giving him a quick hug before she rolled off the side of the chair and fell to the floor, causing the hood of her sweatshirt to flop down over her head. She sprang to her feet and scampered out of the room, grabbing her backpack on the way.

"Love you too, pumpkin," Carl called after her before his expression turned sheepish under his wife's continued gaze.

"Homework again?" she asked, raising her eyebrows and giving him an amused smile.

"Hey, she's getting pretty good at writing these scripts on her own," he said defensively. Obviously he'd never keep something as trivial as helping his daughter write scripts for a game she was already allowed to play a secret.

"You could just tell her I know," Annie said. "And I think it's a good thing you're helping her anyway."

Carl paused, halting his previous train of thought. "You do?" he asked in confusion.

Annie sighed. "Of course I do," she said as though he should already know. "It's part of why I said yes to her playing in the first place. She's learning some valuable skills. Problem solving, critical thinking, teamwork, math, a little bit of computer programming…"

Carl frowned. "That's true," he allowed, never having heard this line of reasoning from her previously.

"And with you helping out with her homework," she continued, "then she won't learn any bad habits, will she? Like you always complain about people at work having."

"That's…also true," Carl said.

Annie picked her tablet up again.

Carl considered bringing up a topic that he'd been thinking about for some time. He nearly did, but…

It wasn't quite the right time for it.

No, Carl knew his wife very well, and he could tell that she just wanted to sit and read for a while and try to relax.

When Carl wanted to be a good husband, he was the best.

Well, he tried anyway. There were fights and disagreements as any two people had, but they never lasted long. Neither of them could stand it.