“I have fence removal on speed dial. Just say the word,” he says.
“Which word? I love you?”
He sighs. “Soon. We will destroy it soon.”
“No, husband. We will be buried with it.”
“Oh joy.”
“Scratch that… our coffins will be made from The Fence’s giving planks.”
“I’m just not even going to engage,” Jackson decides.
FOUR
LELAND
We pull into the driveway of Cam’s house to drop him off, and he leans into the front seat.
“Come inside. My dad wants to see this car, so I need to grab him,” he says. “He also wanted to show you the car he’s been building for like… my entire life. It’s like… a car body… that’s struggling to survive, but boy does he love it. Just go ‘Oh wow’ and he’ll be happy.”
“I’m very good at pretending to like cars,” I tell him. “I pretend to like Jackson’s every time I find him out there petting it.”
“I don’t pet it that often,” Jackson protests.
Look at us. Being a normal family, meeting the parents of our child’s friend. Like… can we get any more disgustingly normal than that?
We all get out of the car and Cam ushers us to the front door and inside.
“Mom? Dad!” he shouts.
I trail after Jackson as I look around the foyer feeling especially nosy and curious about what a “normal” family’s house looks like. I guess maybe wecoulddecorate more to reallypull off the whole “family that has it together” thing. Most of my decorations used to be weapons, but Jackson made me remove a lot of that when we were watching Mila, a young girl who we had for a while until we found her father. After getting Waylon, we didn’t put many back out. It wasn’t that we didn’t trust Waylon; Jackson just thought it was a healthier environment to put guns in locations where it made sense to find them.
Supposedly, the cereal cupboard didn’t “make sense” when Waylon pulled a box down and knocked a knife out from where I’d had it hidden.
These peculiar people have all of these decorations and pictures of their child… ooh… Icouldput pictures of my guns on the walls… oh, and Waylon. Hmm… I think if it’s a 2:3 ratio, Jackson could only complain two-thirds of the time.
I could sprinkle some Cayenne and Sarge pictures in there as well.
“Daaaaaaad,” Cam calls, and a man pops out of a room.
“Sorry! I was putting cookies in the oven,” he says before throwing us a smile and pinpointing me for some reason. “Cam says you’re a car man?”
I point at Jackson. “He is.”
“I’d love to see what you’re working on,” Jackson says.
Look at us… we’re so good at faking this normal family shit.
“I’m Nathan,” he says, shaking our hands as we introduce ourselves. “And of course I know Waylon. Let me just say, he’s been a fantastic influence on Cam. Cam had these friends we weren’t overly fond of?—”
“Dad… why?” Cam asks, all embarrassed. We would never embarrass Waylon like that.
“Shush,” Nathan says as he pats his son’s back in an “I’m talking and you’re interrupting” way.
I pat Waylon’s back in a “Look, our child is better than yours” way.
I am so good at this! My child is even significantly better than theirs!
