“Nah.” I just needed a breather. Not a whole…TV hour. “You should go back; it’s your party.”
“It’s our party. And everyone we love and care about is here, so it’s fine. We can take a little break.”
“Sometimes there are just too many people.”
“Absolutely.”
“I got pissed off at Armstrong; he was, like, saying he should have got in there first and had you adopt him. That he missed out and he was here first.”
Fuck. Now they looked worried.
“It’s no big deal,” I continued on, but they still looked worried.
“You said it yourself. Not everyone fits. Armstrong is not you, and he has a whole different…” Dad Fox, he was just like me. He worried about a lot of things. Sometimes too much.
“Armstrong is my best friend, but he’s like… He’s got…”
“Yes. We see a lot of him, and you know he’s always welcome here. He’s your friend. And he’s a nice lad, and he’s kind of funny. Makes me laugh.” Dad Noah, he was really good with things like this. Calming me down. “You know we’ll always look after you. And Armstrong is our responsibility here at Kilmartin. We care about him too. But you’re our kid. Remember that.”
“I know. It just becomes too much for me. Too many people.” Honesty. Good stuff. They both nodded, like they understood me. I liked that they did. I liked a lot of things here.
“Sometimes too many people are hard. And sometimes there are too few. I used to live here on my own, and it was fine, but it’s so much better, my whole life is so much better because there are now three people living here and I love that.” Dad Fox. And now he was looking all emo.
“We’re family, stoopid.” I grinned.
“Of course we are.” Dad Fox smiled back. “And I have a great kid and a great husband.”
“And a mother-in-law who is now besties with Baronetess Daniels.” Dad Noah smiled.
“Is Baronetess Daniels wearing a wig?” If it wasn’t a wig, she had a dead cat on her head. It was weird.
“I think it’s a…winter hat. Made of fur, kind of old-fashioned. Remind me to talk to you about fur and why it’s thankfully gone out of fashion. Cruel and wrong, yet used to be seen as elegant. Weird, isn’t it?”
I grimaced. And also, it was… Well. I needed to look that up. The old lady was nice, and she’d shaken my hand and whatever. The thing on her head? Ugh. Not nice.
“When are we eating that cake?”
“The wedding cake? We need to go carve it now. Dad and I need to cut the first piece, and then we can eat it.”
“Which tier is chocolate?”
“Middle. Bottom is carrot.”
“Ugh.”
“Don’t let Mrs Cook hear you say that. She’s very proud of her carrot cake.”
“And the top is vanilla.”
“Yup.”
“Okay. Would it be alright to have a tiny piece of vanilla and a tiny piece of chocolate?”
“Of course it is. There’s going to be so much cake left over. Mrs Cook made sure we’d have enough for everyone, and more. You can have two pieces.”
“Okay,” I said. I’d share them because Armstrong and I had talked about it, and I’d promised to ask. We’d have half each. And save some for later.
“Wanna come help carve? We can all hold the knife and do it together.” I liked all of this. The together bit. The questions. My opinion. What did I want? I still wasn’t used to it, making all these decisions for myself.
