"Okay, what's up?" Bobby asked as she took a seat facing him on the couch in the den, folding one jeans-clad leg under herself and adjusting the hood of her sweatshirt so she could use it as a pillow while she leaned against the back of the couch; she was way too freaking cute.

Carl had opted to change locations for this very delicate talk to somewhere that would feel more cozy, imagining that the rigid, vaguely uncomfortable chairs at the kitchen table weren't the right fit for the topic at hand. Now all he had to do was figure out the right starting point for that topic, which was seeming a bit crazy now that he thought about it, because how was he supposed to just tell his thirteen and sixteen year-old daughters that they were maybe going to have a new, older sister—if things worked out—and have them go along with that? The whole situation felt more surreal the more he considered it.

But then he remembered how cute Mina was when she got excited, and how adorable she was when she did the same sleeping grab move that Sammy did, and a million other little things that made her who she was, and he resolved himself again.

The thought of such a sweet, bright girl having to go through any more of the terrible things she'd already lived through made his chest hurt. She deserved better.

It was like Annie said: it had to work.

He decided that for his youngest daughter, who was more like him than Sammy was, the more direct approach would probably be the best, since this was a serious matter. "Pumpkin, we need to be serious for a bit," he said to start off.

The thing about Bobby was that she was precocious, and not just in the technical smarts she applied to write her gaming scripts and addons. She acted cutesy most of the time at home, and it was really endearing, but she was almost fourteen now, and she was just as cute as she'd been when she was half that age.

No thirteen or fourteen year-old was this adorable all the time.

Sammy definitely hadn't been, and the reinforcements he'd made to the frame of her bedroom door were proof enough of it in the time before she'd been successfully taught the reasons why No Daughter Of Mine Is Going To Slam Doors In This House, Do You Understand? by Annie.

Bobby was different though—which was obviously fine with him, because he'd love her no matter how she was—and her occasional slips into asking unusually poignant questions were enough of a giveaway even without the improved detection abilities that his Dad Mode Five senses would provide.

"But how can we be serious if you're Dad and I'm Bobby?" she asked with a confused expression.

Carl gave her a probing look, and she retained the same, adorable expression of nonplussed innocence that made him want to give her a hug for landing such a stellar retaliatory dad joke.

It was unfortunate, but he was gonna have to circle back to that later so he didn't get sidetracked. "You know what I mean," he continued, powering up to Dad Mode Two to get a little extra gravitas going. "How do you like having an older sister?"

Bobby's brows drew down, and she started picking at her fingernails. "Um…"

"You and Sammy get along pretty well, don't you?"

"I guess? Is she gonna be okay?"

Carl's own brows drew down. "Why wouldn't she be? Isn't she just at practice?"

"Oh. Um…" Bobby looked down at her hands and continued to pick at her nails. "Yeah, obviously she'd be at practice since it's Wednesday. She's always at practice on Wednesdays."

Carl frowned. This was another thing he was going to have to circle back to, since it seemed like he'd just unearthed something with his peerless ability to get his kids to incriminate themselves and each other, also known as the high rank skill Making Misleading Statements, which he'd had to spend points from several years worth of leveling to acquire.

For the time being, he pretended he hadn't picked up on anything. "Yeah, so she'll probably be a little tired when she gets home. But what I meant was more like the general idea of having an older sister."

"Ohhh," Bobby said, now sounding a little relieved. She shrugged as she looked back up at him. "Yeah, it's cool. I can't really imagine what it'd be like to not have one though." Her expression turned thoughtful. "Guess kinda like during basketball camp over the summer? Except all the time…"

"What would you think about having two older sisters?" Carl asked.

His youngest daughter frowned. "Like, two of Sammy? Well… The basketball games would be really one-sided then?"

Carl chuckled, imagining a pair of Sammies out on the varsity team. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he might not ever get to sit down during the games since he'd probably just be standing and cheering the whole time.

Actually, maybe it was good that there weren't two Sammies, he decided. The principle of scarcity applied here too, and if he had two or three Sammies, then each individual Sammy might end up getting devalued—not in some kinda weird market sense of the word, obviously, but just in being able to give his full attention to each unit of Sammy—and that could lead to a…

"But if you just mean in general," Bobby said slowly, "then… I guess it'd be cool? It's kinda weird to think about."

It definitely was kinda weird to think about, but that was where Carl's life was at now. A lot of weird stuff had happened over the past week of real-time, and now he was sitting here trying to sort of get to the point but also sort of skirting around the edge of it, he now realized, because if things didn't go well, he really wasn't sure what he was going to do, and it was making him a little nervous.

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Maybe more than a little, now that he'd had that realization and considered it further.

"Okay," Carl said, not wanting his time spent musing to himself to wear on to the extent that it created an awkward silence. "Um…"

It was then that he realized what should have really been bothering him.

He'd had such an important task, but he hadn't spent nearly enough time preparing for it. He hadn't triple, double, or even single-checked his plans for the very important talk he was planning to have here, and he was momentarily drawing a complete blank.

"Did you have more kids before you and Mom got married?" Bobby blurted out. "Like, with another woman? And now—"

"What?"

"—her mom's dead, so she has to come live with us because you're her only surviving relative?" Bobby finished, having spoken at an increasing speed until the last few words were a nearly indistinguishable blur of noise.

"Uh…" Carl had been drawing a blank, but now he wasn't drawing anything at all. "What?" he repeated while his brain caught up.

"Um…" Bobby looked at him for another few seconds before looking down in a clear expression of guilt.

"What?" he said a third time, starting to chuckle at the absurdity of it. "How did… Where did that come from?"

"Ummm…" Bobby rubbed her thumbs together, refusing to meet his eyes. "Well… Promise not to tell Mom?"

"If you tell me now, I'll think about it."

"Well… I…kinda cracked Mom's reader password," Bobby said, interlocking her fingers and twisting her hands back and forth. "I just wanted to see if I could! And then it was easy, and I decided to see what she was reading, and…"

And Carl knew immediately that he didn't want to hear what Bobby had found, having the strong suspicion that his ever-curious daughter had ventured out of the list of Fantasy genre books that Annie liked and into the Romance—though he was using that term loosely based on some of the more incredible passages she'd shared to laugh at with him—books, which were absolutely not…

Carl stared at his daughter.

Bobby stared at her father.

Carl stared at his daughter.

Bobby stared at her father.

Carl stared at his daughter.

Bobby blinked.

Carl stared at his daughter. "Your mom's gonna change her password to something that isn't based on the date we met," he said slowly, "and I'm not gonna tell her about this."

Bobby nodded, her expression turning relieved.

"You're gonna forget about that," Carl continued, "and I'm gonna forget that we talked about this." One of the factoids from a number of books he'd read on parenting floated to the fore of his thoughts. "When you're older, you can un-forget, because it's not bad, you're just too young for that stuff now, and it's very unrealistic. Got it?"

Bobby nodded again, more vigorously this time.

It was a tough line to walk. On one hand, his cute little daughter was way too young for what he was pretty sure she'd found, and, as far as he was concerned, she'd always be too young. On the other hand, studies had shown that being too negative about sexuality during formative years could inhibit a child's growth into becoming a normal person, and nothing was going to stop any of his daughters from growing up to be extremely normal, just like him and Annie.

"Let's start over," Carl said, beginning the tough conversation he now needed to have for the first time after having sat in this spot on the couch for several minutes doing absolutely nothing. "We're going to have a guest staying with us for a while, pumpkin," he opened, firing off a Dad's Serious Now, which obviously he should've done at the start, but he was just too off-balance with how sudden and fast everything was.

"How long's a while?" Bobby asked.

"I'm not really sure yet," Carl hedged, "but maybe a long time."

Bobby shrugged. "Okay. Who?"

"Well, her name's Mina, and she's a girl who's a little older than Sammy who really needs people who can love and support her," Carl said. He sighed. "She's had a really, really tough life, Bobby," he said more quietly. "Your mom and I think we can help, so—"

"How old is she?" Bobby interrupted, crossing her arms.

"Eighteen. She—"

"Does she like games, or is she all sports like Sammy?"

"She's… She's pretty good at games, I guess you could s—"

"What kinds of games does she play?"

"Well, she was pretty deep into…" Carl paused. The sparkle in his daughter's eye gave him an idea, which seemed obvious now that he thought of it. "Why don't you ask her? I'm sure she'd love to talk to you or hang out any time."

Bobby tilted her head. "You mean… Like, she's already here?"

Carl nodded. "Yup. Upstairs with your mom."

Bobby sighed in that manner that only teenage girls can, tipping her head back and seeming like it was exhausting just to exist in the same room with him, which it definitely wasn't since he was the best dad of all time and it wasn't ever gonna be boring or anything like that to spend time with him.

"You're so weird, Dad," she said after a few seconds. "Why didn't you just say that to start? I'm gonna go meet her." She stood up and rushed towards the stairs.

"Be really nice to her," Carl said to his daughter's back, causing her to slow. "I mean it."

"I'm always nice, Dad," Bobby protested. She tossed her head, causing her brown, French braided hair to bounce against her back as she flounced out of the room, once more gathering up speed as he heard her sock-covered feet racing across the floor.

Carl frowned and rubbed his feet together. He'd felt oddly uncomfortable wearing socks around the house since he'd gotten home and had instead chosen to go barefoot.

That wasn't a matter of any significance to him, just something he thought about as he stood up and walked over towards the stairs to—

A chime sounded out, and there was a thud nearby as another package arrived just as he'd been about to head upstairs despite not receiving the signal that it was clear for him to do so. Given that there were no screams or otherwise unusual noises coming from the second floor that he could discern, he decided that probably what was best for him, as a dad, was to grab the groceries and put them away, maybe even doing some prep so he could just throw everything in the oven later and have dinner ready faster.

The more he thought about it, the more he felt like he was getting his bearings. This was just another day, and he was going to do all the same things he usually would, starting with opening this package he'd just set on the counter, which was absolutely going to be full of groceries and not clothes. He double-checked the sender's ID, confirming that this was his grocery package, as was further indicated by being addressed to him and using the grocery store's logo-covered packaging, which was something he probably would have noticed about the first package—which had been pink—if he'd been using his brain at the time.

Carl Weathers was back on track.