carl@fire

"You need to stop teaching them those things, Carl," Annie called.

Carl had just come in from helping Sammy work on her hook shots—an exercise which effectively reduced him to a standing post with his arms stretched out above his head while his daughter threw the ball over him. Bobby was upstairs, likely playing New Era, or doing homework, or, as seemed to be the case more commonly of late, both at the same time, and Sammy was up taking a shower.

He pulled the footrest for the wing chair over towards the couch and settled onto it, sitting next to his wife who was stretched out on it with a tablet—likely skimming through a novel again for one of her classes. "Which things?" he asked, opening their discussion.

"They're getting so… So manipulative," Annie said with a sigh. She let the tablet fall face down on her chest and looked over to him. "I feel bad telling them no."

"Well," Carl said carefully, "if I can get technical for a sec…"

Annie sighed again, but she nodded all the same.

"It's actually more like social engineering," Carl said. "It's a type of confidence scam commonly used by people attempting to break into secure systems by exploiting security flaws in people instead of cracking the system itself."

Annie placed a hand on her forehead and rubbed it down her face. "Carl, why are you teaching our daughters social engineering?"

Carl had prepared himself for this inevitable discussion. He just hadn't expected it to happen this soon. "I have two reasons," he began.

"Let's hear 'em," Annie said in the same tone she used when she was preparing to settle in for a lengthy explanation. She set the tablet on the nearby coffee table and rolled onto her side to face him.

"In order for this to work," Carl said, "they'd have to fully understand both sides of an issue. For example, you said no to Bobby earlier when she wanted to have her friends stay over on Friday. And you don't usually say no at random, do you? So you must've had a reason."

"I've got a couple," Annie allowed.

"So Bobby had to take a moment when you told her no and then think about why you might be saying no instead of just continuing to complain like she used to."

"I miss those days," Annie said wistfully.

"I might have told her firmly that if she made plans again without asking then I was taking away her headset because it was driving us nuts," Carl said, scratching his beard.

"And she believed it?" Annie said, now seeming greatly amused.

"I can be pretty convincing!"

"Uh-huh."

"Anyway, armed with that knowledge, she probably decided that she needed to exploit your tendency to repay good intentions—"

"She what?"

"—by offering you what you wanted first—that she stop making plans before asking you—and then you'd be more likely to change your mind."

"I did want her to stop doing that…"

"And now she did, so you can enjoy the fruits of my labor. I knew how much it was bugging you."

"That's really thoughtf—Wait a minute. You're doing it now, aren't you."

"Uh, well… It is what you wanted, right?"

"Carl."

"And now they're both a lot more prepared when they ask for stuff, aren't they?"

"Carl."

"Okay, okay, but at least hear me out on my second reason."

Annie was again laying on her back, now with both hands pressed to her face.

It wasn't the first time that one of their talks had gone this way, and it wasn't likely to be the last, but they were talking.

Carl loved that about his wife. He knew he could be a little difficult sometimes, but—

"Are you gonna tell me, or do I have to guess?" Annie said, her voice muffled by her hands.

"One of the greatest benefits of learning how social engineering works is that you become more resistant to it," Carl said. "At the office, every month I randomly pick someone from a department and have them try to call around to a few of the other departments with specific goals: usually trying to get a answers to common password reset questions, like—"

"Okay, but can you skip the policy description," Annie said, turning to him with a tired look.

"Every time I pick someone," Carl said, "they learn how it works and learn how people looking to gain access in that way think. Then they become more suspicious when faced with the same type of behavior, which more or less fixes the problem."

"So you're training them to be more suspicious," Annie said.

"Something like that," Carl said.

It wasn't "something like that".

It was exactly that.

He was Carl Weathers.

Nobody was going to take advantage of his daughters.

"I guess that's kind of a form of critical thinking, too," Annie said as she considered his explanation.

That was one of the many things Carl loved about Annie. She might not be great with tech—though she was certainly capable of figuring most things out—and she wasn't particularly knowledgeable about anything he did for his job, but she was always willing to hear him out and consider what he said.

So long as he never lied, of course.

But Carl would never, ever lie to his wife.

Not unless it was about something he wanted to surprise her with, that is.

Which reminded him, he really needed to get back to planning his surprise for their twentieth anniversary. It was less than ten months away now, and—

"And it's not like they're lying to me," Annie continued, giving him a sharp look. "Because you wouldn't tell them to do that, would you, Carl?"

That was the thing about Annie. She hated being lied to. Her father—her real father—had lied a lot, it turned out. As had the first boy she'd dated.

Carl had never done such a thing, even before she'd opened up to him, and he now knew that was one of the biggest reasons why Annie had given him her ultimatum instead of simply leaving.

"Of course not," Carl said calmly, echoing his own feelings on the matter. "I told them they'd be double grounded if I ever found out they were doing that."

The one gray area on this topic was Carl's short fishing excursions during his lunchtimes. It wasn't lying since she'd never asked, and he didn't intend to lie if she did, and she'd certainly never told him he couldn't ever play games again…

He was pretty sure she'd be upset if she found out, though.

That's why he only played for short, fifteen or twenty minute periods of time during his lunch breaks. And no more than three times in a week, either. And he never did anything but fish, because he was only playing in order to do the fishing he didn't have time to do in real life because he had to go pretty far away to get out of the relative desert that he lived in. The smoke masks they had to wear around this time of year until the ever-intensifying seasonal wildfires died out was proof enough of that.

"And I guess it wouldn't work if I was really set on my reason for saying no," Annie said.

"Probably not," Carl agreed. "Also they're not that great at it yet. If she really wanted to prime you, Bobby should've at least spent the rest of the day cleaning the house or something before asking."

Annie sighed yet again. "Carl, can't you just let them be kids?"

Carl frowned.

Of course he was letting the girls be kids.

They were just his kids.

And Annie's kids, obviously. He wasn't nitpicking how she made Bobby give a report on all the themes and examples of symbolism for movies she went to see with friends, even if he couldn't imagine how any of that stuff could possibly be useful in—

"Alright, I guess I can't be too mad since you're…sort of…teaching them valuable skills…" Annie said, making a face like she was trying to justify it to herself. "But telling them to add on the 'I love you' after is too far."

"That was something else," Carl broke in, not wanting her to get the wrong idea. "I just said we both liked to hear it, and they could stand to say it more."

Annie gave him a grudging half-smile. "They really could."

"Carl, I have something I need to talk to you about."

Carl looked back from his position next to the stove where he'd been working to prepare the ground beef that they'd be using for tacos later that night.

Annie wrapped her arms around him from behind and squeezed. "It's Rebecca."

Carl paused his spatula in the middle of stirring the pan.

Rebecca Strickland was Annie's half-sister. Fifteen years younger than Annie, Rebecca had grown up spoiled by her father's high-paying, executive role at a financial firm. They may have had the same mother, but the relationship had always been strained by how Annie's own mother had gradually begun to dote more on her needy, younger daughter than her independent older one.

It was a mistake that Carl had vowed he would never make.

"What now?" he asked, setting his spatula down on the plate he kept next to the stove for such purposes, lowering the heat on the burner, and turning around.

Annie grimaced a little. "She's got some trip to the city and wants to stay here."

Carl joined his wife in grimacing.

"I tried to put her off," Annie went on, "but Mom just called, and…"

Annie had grown up for a time in a small apartment that contained only her and her mother. The bond they shared might not have been as strong as it once was, but Annie had always looked up to her mom for somehow managing to raise her with love while working three jobs. She always found it difficult to refuse her mother's requests.

"Alright," Carl said, giving his wife a supportive hug. "When?"

She looked up at him with a slightly worried look. "You sure?"

That was the thing about Rebecca. Unlike Annie, who'd grown up wanting to help kids grow up to be better like her mother had done for her, Rebecca had had a different sort of upbringing.

Rebecca got whatever she wanted whenever she wanted.

It was a flaw of her mother's; she'd always wanted to give Annie that sort of upbringing, and once she fell in love with another man who could provide in that manner, she became unable to ever say no.

Rebecca continued to get what she wanted. As she grew older, it had changed into a superiority complex, believing herself to be the better sister since Annie had always attempted to live by her own means instead of relying on her step-father's wealth. The result was that every so often, Rebecca Strickland would parachute into their household and lives with little warning, expecting to be treated like a queen while cattily remarking on everything that failed to live up to her own standards.

In short, as Carl tended to be when he thought of Annie's bratty little sister, she was really fu—freaking annoying to have around. He considered it to be a tough decision whether he would prefer to have Rebecca or Roger stay over their house; both were equally annoying but in different ways.

"Yeah, I'm cool with it," said Carl. He rubbed his wife's arms. "When's she wanna get here?"

"Tomorrow," Annie said.

Carl was very glad he had no siblings. Rebecca's annual or biennial visits were more than enough.