"Mina, sit here!"
Mina gave Carl a questioning look as Bobby pulled her to sit in the chair between her and Rebecca.
Carl nodded approvingly. He caught Annie beaming at him out of the corner of his eye and started to grin. The girls were all getting along better than he'd hoped, though so far it seemed that Bobby was the biggest fan of their new arrival after seeing her racing prowess. The older girl still wasn't talking as much as he was used to, but she also seemed a little nervous so far. Might be something a dad could help with, so he'd keep an ear out.
Annie finished pouring the fifth glass of milk to go around the table—Rebecca, being mildly lactose intolerant as she was, had opted for water instead—and placed it in front of her own setting just as Carl put down the final dinner item, which was the tray of smashed potatoes.
"So, Sammy, how were the cars you looked at with Becca?" Annie asked.
Sammy took on a guilty expression, and her eyes moved to Carl, who gave her an encouraging nod.
In the hushed, but heated argument that had ensued earlier, the younger Strickland—though technically her last name was Stone—had actually come out slightly ahead, though it had been a near thing. With the point made that it was best to encourage and capitalize on a girl's excitement for some positive bonding time, Rebecca had successfully put on display the critical thinking which proved time and again that her rise through the financial company her father ran wasn't entirely due to nepotism. No, the thirty three year-old was certainly capable enough when she put her mind to things other than being annoying, which was why, despite her being very, very annoying much of the time, Carl did still afford her a reasonable amount of trust when it came to the girls.
"They were soooo awesome!" Sammy said, a massive grin taking over her face. "We started with this Porsche out at…"
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"Wow, Becca, I didn't know you had those kinds of connections," Annie said. She speared another couple of the green beans—roasted with slight amounts of garlic, salt, and pepper, which Carl had finished with a hint of Parmesan to match the pesto chicken—and popped them into her mouth, closing her eyes as she chewed.
Carl felt her foot stroking his again under the table, as she'd done a number of times since they'd sat down, and wiggled his toes against the underside of her foot. The constant stream of affection had been a little disorienting at first; while it wasn't exactly accurate to say that their marriage had cooled off to a significant degree over the years, time had taken its toll, and this state of constant adoration that had marked the early years of their relationship was now usually only exhibited—on both sides, no matter how attentive and considerate he strove to be—once in a while and for short periods of time.
This was more like…
Well, if he had to use words, it felt to him like somehow they'd been reset back to those early years. As much as it had surprised him to see his wife mirroring his reaction to being back home after spending weeks in-game—which was seeming more and more stupid, the more he thought about it, though every time he reached that point he again caught sight of Mina's previously-unseen level of joy and happiness and was forced to reconsider—he was also glad that it wasn't just a one-sided thing. Then again, this was Annie. They were almost always on the same page about things, and she was absolutely the best, so maybe it shouldn't have been so surprising after all.
"Yeah, well, it's not much of a hassle if it's for my niece," Rebecca said. She winked playfully at Sammy and took another bite of a smashed potato. "Oof, Annie, these are great, but I don't know how you stay in such great shape if you're eating like this every night. What do you think, girls? Doesn't she look amazing? Between the two of us, who would you say looks like the older sister?"
"Becca," Annie said in a warning tone.
"What? I'm just messing around," Rebecca said, waving her off with a lazy smile. "But it's really amazing that at your age you don't even have any lines on your hands. See? Even I've got some wrinkles," she said, holding up a hand and flipping it back and forth to show that there were indeed the signs of age showing in a couple spots.
Annie sliced off a piece of her chicken. "I just moisturize more responsibly, that's all."
"Hear that?" Rebecca said, looking around the table at the girls in turn. "If you remember to moisturize, you can look half your age too!" she whispered with a smirk.
Now that Carl looked more closely at this very specific detail, it really was amazing how much care his wife had put into maintaining her appearance. Her hands in particular, which maybe he hadn't quite paid enough attention to in this context, seemed completely smooth and without lines, unlike his, which were definitely showing some wear and tear from age.
"Maybe I should moisturize more?" Carl said.
Rebecca snorted her way into a laugh, which was probably her way of letting him know that no amount of moisturizing this late in the game was going to be able to save him after so many years of not even really considering it—though he was thinking now that if he did some research, he'd be able to verify that idea, since if Annie was putting this much work into something, then probably he should at least check it out so it didn't seem like he didn't care, which obviously he did since it was something she'd been putting some amount of effort into to the point of making her sister jealous, which was the only reason the entire situation had come about.
"Mom does always say it's important to take care of your skin," Bobby said right before she crammed most of another smashed potato into her mouth and crunched down on it.
Baked chicken pesto with green beans and smashed potatoes might have been one of Annie's favorite dishes, but the smashed potatoes were mostly added on because of how much the girls loved them, in particular the way that Bobby had always tried to eat them without making use of her knife.
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Mina took another dainty bite of a slice of chicken, smiling from ear to ear as she chewed. Her eyes met Carl's, and her smile grew slightly wider, and she nodded enthusiastically as she looked down at her plate.
"I'll have to see what kind of lotion you use and switch to that, whatever it is," Rebecca said.
"But you still look really pretty, Aunt Becca!" Sammy jumped in as she lined up a slice of her pesto chicken with part of a smashed potato and scooped them both onto her fork using her knife. "That guy at the Porsche place was totally gonna ask you out if we hadn't left when we did."
"Oh?" Annie said, not looking up from her plate, where she was slicing a chicken cutlet into more or less uniform-width pieces. "Didn't know this was going to be that kind of trip for you."
"Nah, he was nowhere near handsome enough to be my type," Rebecca said as she nudged Sammy next to her with an elbow. "But there was that cute shop boy who—"
"Aunt Becca!" Sammy whined, her face turning red.
If he was the Carl from a week ago, he might have made some type of comment, but this was a different Carl. This was a Carl who was completely in tune with everything going on around himself, who wanted nothing more than to get back into his normal daily groove.
"What's his name?" Carl asked, not bothering to look up from—
"Daaad!"
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"Mina, how are you doing, honey? Can I get you anything?" Annie looked across the table at the girl who had remained silent throughout dinner.
"No, I'm quite alright," Mina said, still smiling.
"Where are you from anyway, Mina?" Rebecca asked.
"Well, surely you're capable of recognizing my accent?" Mina said. She turned and gave the older woman an angelic grin.
"It's like, the coolest British accent ever!" Bobby enthused.
"Oh, oh, the game's about to start!" Sammy blurted out. She sprang to her feet and rushed her plate over to the sink. "Mina, c'mon, you gotta learn about basketball now!"
"I'll just bring this to the sink then, shall I?" Mina said, standing up and looking uncertainly between her plate, Carl, and the sink.
"Just put it anywhere. We're gonna miss the tip-off!" Sammy beckoned the shorter girl over to the sink with rapid waves of her hand and then tugged her out of the room into the den. The sound of a commentator began blasting out soon after.
"I'm gonna go too," Bobby said, bringing her own plate over at a slower pace.
"Bobby, can you make sure Sammy starts her Driver's Ed course?" Carl asked.
"'Kay." The youngest member of the Weathers family headed over towards the den. "Too loud!" she shouted as she walked in. "Volume half!"
The commentator's voice became much softer.
"Ugh, you're such a brat!" Sammy complained.
While it was true that the girls got along most of the time, it seemed like today they were both trying to show off for the older girl with the cool accent, which was bringing out the sort of sibling rivalry usually reserved for the last taco on taco night.
"They're awfully worked up tonight," Rebecca said.
Annie shook her head, seeming more amused than upset, likely after having reached the same conclusion as Carl in how not-serious this conflict was. "They're taking it well, which is all I could hope for."
Carl nodded along. It was obviously not realistic to expect there not to be any friction whatsoever, but this was so mild that it barely qualified as such. He was incredibly proud of Sammy and Bobby at that moment.
Rebecca leaned across the table towards them. "But seriously," she said more quietly, "who is she? Are you like, adopting her? I know we don't talk a ton, but I don't remember you mentioning anything like this."
Carl looked to Annie.
Annie snagged his closest hand and clasped it between both of hers, going to work on both sides with her thumbs. "It was more of a…spontaneous kind of thing," she said, giving him that same, adoring look she'd been shooting him from time to time that evening. "We saw a girl who needed help—who needed a family—and we didn't hesitate."
Carl nodded firmly in agreement. "It's the right thing to do."
Remembering how the girl had cried in happiness after he'd gotten home had really made it clear how miserable she must've been with everything that was going on, and seeing how overjoyed she'd been just hanging out with the girls and enjoying a nice, family meal was making him very aware at that moment of how much dust and sand was in the air. He patted Annie's hands and withdrew his from their embrace, taking the plates from both women and stacking them on his own before carrying them over to the sink.
An indicator of an incoming call lit up in the AR display of his glasses, and he frowned a little. "Huh."
"Huh?" Annie said.
"Tim's calling," Carl said. It wasn't exactly surprising that his long-time best friend would be calling if he considered the mail sent earlier that day talking about how nice it would be to catch up sometime. It was more like it was a little weird to imagine talking to him again after so long, which wasn't a feeling that Carl had previously experienced—but it was a feeling he could sort of…imagine…maybe having…
"Tim?" Annie said, sounding confused. "Oh, Tim Tim?" She smiled at him. "That's great, Carl. It's been a while since you've talked to him, hasn't it?" She turned back to her sister. "Let's go upstairs and talk to give him some privacy. Say hi to him and Connie for me, okay?"
Sure, it might have made more sense for Carl to be the one going upstairs, but this was Annie, so obviously she knew that he preferred to do the dishes on nights that he cooked dinner, just as she wouldn't let him help on the nights that she made dinner. It was a system that had worked for decades, and tonight was no different.
"Okay, let me grab my glass," Rebecca said, reaching for her discarded wine glass and the bottle she'd been working her way through over the past couple nights.
"I'll get one too, actually," said Annie as she moved towards the cabinet.
Carl was already focusing on the call he was about to have though. It was going to be a really easy call. All he had to do was pick up and talk to his friend. His friend he hadn't talked to in…
Well, it had been a while, that was for sure. Both of them were much busier nowadays, and it was actually a little surprising that he'd gotten called so quickly at all. That was Tim though, always fitting everything into his schedule and trying to squeeze the most out of it, almost like he enjoyed the challenge of doing so.
He took a breath.
It wasn't like he was avoiding picking up the call—which was still ringing since he'd been thinking very quickly about all of this—since that would be stupid. It was more like—
"Answer call," Carl said before he could procrastinate further, though procrastinating wasn't exactly the right word to use here, and…