“Don’t kid yourself. Rick thinks you’re perfect. But why is he so tight-lipped. Is there something dangerous on the Hidden planet?”
Max rolled away from the designs laid out on his desk. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
She frowned. “What do we know about the political situation? Are there civil wars? Is the planet unstable and their sun about to go supernova leading to us being turned into a cinder? I’m reaching for science fiction plots here, but there has to be some reason why Rick is being so weird, even for Rick.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s a family issue.”
Dee wrinkled her nose. “So you have shitty in-laws? Welcome to the club. My mother-in-law refuses to eat anything I cook. She says it tastes like jet fuel, probably because she hates my job. That’s not a reason to panic.”
Again, Max shrugged. “I genuinely don’t know.”
“Do the kids know?”
“Not a chance. Kohei is picking up on his father’s discomfort, and Xander realized today that Kohei and I were both trying to convince Rick not to land.”
Dee threw her hands in the air in unvarnished frustration. “Why does James get to outvote everyone? Why didn’t you tell me there was a problem with Rick’s family before I volunteered to postpone the trip to Earth? Why do I feel like we’re walking onto a battle ground?”
Max leaned back in his chair and stretched his spine. “James wants to swim on his home planet, and Rick is determined to be a perfect father.”
“That’s a disaster in the making. He does realize by definition all parents suck, right? I mean, even wonderful parents objectively suck a large percentage of the time.” Dee’s expression twisted.
“I’ve tried to tell him. He’s the good parent; I’m the one who sucks. I set up James and Xander to resent each other because I spent so much time with Xander when he was born premature. Then I spent so much time with James to fix it. And I’m pretty sure Kohei only tolerates me.” Max was carrying more than fifty percent of his parental load on the sucking front.
“At least you’re parenting them. I’m not sure Rick does anything to interact with the kids.”
“For Hidden ones, that’s desirable. Kids are supposed to independently explore the world. Parents protect them from life-threatening dangers and provide educational materials, but for Hidden ones, parenting is getting out of the kids’ way. And that’s why Rick won’t say no. If James wants to explore, then in Rick’s Ward Cleaver ‘perfect father’ universe, he has to make that happen.”
Dee sat backwards on a second chair, straddling the narrow back. “Ward Cleaver? Really? Can’t you at least find a more modern example of fatherhood? I don’t trust people who never lose their temper. That family is creepy.” She shuddered. “So, what contingency plans do we have if everything goes FUBAR?”
“What do you mean?”
“Escape plans if you do something illegally stupid again.”
Max narrowed his eyes. “Are we going to ignore the fact I never would’ve been arrested if you hadn’t given Carrington information on human technological levels?”
“Only if you ignore the fact you were trying to pull a con. And actually, I might’ve supported you, but you didn’t even tell me what you were doing. I couldn’t afford to turn down a job.”
She had a point. Max had lucked out with a social worker who had helped him find a good job. She had some schmuck who had shoved her in front of the computer before disappearing. Lazy public sector workers were ubiquitous. He had evidence now. “We should talk to Xander and Kohei about any plans.”
She hesitated before answering. “I hate the idea of pulling your children into this discussion.”
“You don’t have to tell me. I get it. They’re not even two years old. They should be babbling and learning how to walk, but they’re Hidden one children, and they have grown up watching educational videos about their home planet. If we need to make contingency plans, we should involve them.”
“And not Rick?” Dee asked after an awkward silence.
Guilt clawed up Max’s spine. “I would love to include Rick, but every time I mention his family, he runs off to repair some imaginary damage. If I push too hard, he’ll crawl into an alien version of a spacesuit and hammer the rivets on the outside the ship. Rick’s people are called Hidden ones because their first reaction to danger is to hide.”
“Do you think there’s physical danger?” Until now Dee had projected aggravation and annoyance, but her fear was now on display. They were two humans alone in a universe that wasn’t designed for them, and she didn’t even have the benefit of having an alien family.
“Rick wouldn’t land the ship if there were real danger,” he assured her. “He would cut off his own tentacles before endangering the kids.”
Max should stop there. He was pretty sure there was something in the Husband Handbook about having each other’s backs and never sharing embarrassing stories about each other.And he always swore to himself he would live by his own internal Good Husband Handbook when he got married, but Dee deserved to have all the information.
“But he sucks at threat assessment. When Rick was finishing the navigation program we sold, the proximity alert alarm kept going off. He didn’t immediately see the pirate ship on radar, so he assumed it was a malfunction.” Max took a deep breath before admitting, “He turned off the alarms. That’s how we got boarded right after the kids were born.”
Dee stared at him.
Max stared back.
