"So you are the one who built the robot maid," Veronica said.

"Robots aren't one of Akane's aptitudes," I said with a shrug. "I, personally, am more surprised by the revelation that there was a house with a basement for sale in Austin."

"Why would there not be?" Veronica asked.

"It's a generally-reliable rule of thumb that, if it snows every winter, then basements are probably common in the area," I said. "When building a house, it's good practice to pour the foundation deeper than the frost line, to avoid shifting during annual freeze-thaw cycles. As such, the deeper the frost line, the deeper you need to dig, and at a certain point, a basement means you don't need nearly as much concrete."

"Ahhhh. And Texas is not precisely known for a frigid climate..."

"And then there's the question of digging a basement," I added. "About half of Austin in particular is on the wrong side of the Balcones Fault, and located on the Edwards Plateau. Which may sound like geological trivia, but in point of fact, I think 'half the city has maybe an inch of dirt before they hit bedrock' is a very relevant factor here."

"Which brings me around to your position, of being surprised that there was a house with a basement for sale in Austin," Veronica said. "Why would anyone bother?"

"Oh, people build objectively stupid homes all the time," I said. "I mean, just look at Frank Lloyd Wright. I reckon this was a case of someone with more money than sense deciding that they wanted a basement, and the bedrock was no impediment to them."

We were all barred from entering our new house- well, Akane's new house, since neither Veronica nor I were committing to living here on a permanent basis- by the robot cleaning crew. I'd churned out three more robot maids, bringing the total up to four. It was a neat trick- if you built multiple identical copies of the same artifact, and happened to know the trick, then they would share headspace, and they'd all collectively be as costly to maintain as a single artifact.

Thankfully, the house had come with a shaded back porch, and all we'd had to set up were some folding chairs.

"Is the house that bad?" Akane asked.

"Oh, quite the contrary," I said. "No, whoever built this house knew precisely what they were doing. Modern construction is exactly sturdy enough to be sold to some sucker and not collapse until it stops being the builder's problem. This house, though, is built to fucking last. The interior walls are soundproofed, water pressure's good- and that's important, because improving the water pressure is so fucking hard. Yep, this is a well-built house, and it's stupid because it's this well-built for no good reason. Who sells such a well-built house? This shit is fucking heirloom quality."

"Oh," Akane said.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Well, I called my mom the other day, and..." Akane fidgeted with her skirt. "...She might be coming to visit us next weekend?"

I blinked. Then I grinned.

"Already introducing me to your mother, huh?" I asked. "Sure, I moved in with you after the first date, but it still hasn't been even a month."

Akane snorted. "Thank you, Roxy. I needed that." She sighed. "I don't suppose you've got any ideas what sort of arrangements we should make for when they arrive?"

"Well, let's see," I said. "The house has four bedrooms, two of which are particularly large. I say we earmark one of those as the guest room, and put your mom up in there." I blinked. "Wait, you say they. Do you... have multiple mothers?"

"Three of them," Akane said, nodding.

"Okay, definitely give them a big bedroom. Uh... Hrm. Might need to buy a particularly large bed. Besides that, though, we're going to want to provide food in high quality and quantity," I said. "I know how to make plenty of desserts, but pretty much the only actual high-quality meal I know is chicken and sausage gumbo. And while it is good, I'm not convinced it's 'dinner three nights in a row' good. So... Hrm." I frowned, tapping my leg.

"Hrm?" Akane asked.

"Hrmmmm..."

"Hrmmmm..."

"Are the two of you choking on something?" Veronica asked.

"Gimme a minute," I said, dialing a number on my phone and bringing it up to my ear.

It rang twice before it was answered.

"It's Saturday. This better be good," Valiant grumbled.

"Shabbat shalom to you too," I said. "You've lived in Austin for a while, yeah?"

"...Yes, in fact," Valiant said, his voice softening. "Why do you ask?"

"I got a guest coming for a potentially-extended visit, and I need your opinion on what restaurants are the best around here. Gotta feed them something good, and the only thing I've got that qualifies is chicken and sausage gumbo."

"...How do you feel about barbecue?"

"Honestly, I'm kinda meh on it," I said. "I grew up here too, just... in different circumstances... and Texas barbecue isn't all that good. Barbecue needs sauce. And frankly, it's my contention that the sauce doesn't necessarily need barbecue."

Stolen novel; please report.

"That's fair, I do like sauce on my barbecue as well. Right, well. I actually used to work at a barbecue restaurant, and I actually got very good at it. I still make it every weekend for my family, so I can bring you some leftovers, see if they're what you're looking for."

"Sounds good to me," I said. "I'll text you the address. We ain't doin' anything."

----------------------------------------

Silas Marinakis was a Greek man somewhere in his forties, with bronze skin, copper hair, and golden eyes. He was big, not just tall but broad, his shoulders wide and his belly rounded. His arms were thick, but not particularly toned.

Underneath a healthy amount of body fat and sufficient daily hydration, though, were muscles, thickly corded and developed with purpose, only visible if you knew what to look for.

To the uninitiated, Silas Marinakis looked like someone's dad. To me, he looked like a fighter.

And now he was on the back porch with us, sharing some leftover barbecue mutton, slathered in a well-caramelized layer of the best barbecue sauce I'd ever had. It had to be mustard-based, judging from the orange-gold color it had, and while I didn't typically care for mustard, the combination of spices had transubstantiated the humble yellow goo into a sweet, zesty ambrosia with the loveliest zing.

Texas did barbecue wrong. There was an opinion here that, if you slathered your meat with sauce, it meant you were hiding something. But Silas Marinakis had nothing to hide- even after a night in the fridge and maybe ten minutes in an oven to warm up the whole lot, this meat was as tender and juicy as anything I'd ever eaten, and the powerful taste of the sheep meat shone through, mixing with the sauce in the best of ways.

"Okay," I said, setting down a bone that I'd finally gnawed and licked clean of every last scrap of flavor. "How many hundreds of dollars do I need to give you to make a batch for next weekend?"

"Haruna Sakurai is a family friend of mine," Silas said. "You would've noticed Akane calling me 'Uncle Silas' if you hadn't hyperfocused on the sheep meat."

"You know it's called mutton, right?" I said, filing away the fact that Akane called him Uncle for another day.

"I'm Greek, of course I know that. But I live in Texas, so I don't trust other people to know that."

"Well, that's fair," I admitted. Sheep, whether young or adult, was not a common meat in America.

"So, here's my pitch to you," Silas continued. "If you'll allow me and my family to come over for a housewarming barbecue, and you build a barbecue smoker to the plans and specifications I give you, I will teach you how to use that smoker, and how to make my mustard-based sauce."

"Can you also throw in an explanation of how and why you and Akane's mom know each other?" I asked.

"Well, quite simply, Akane has more than one mother," Silas said. "Tanya Donovan was instrumental in the raising of Akane Sakurai, and her brother is my best friend, Dean Donovan." His gaze turned very stern. "And the Donovan family shall remain ignorant of anything you know about me. Silas Marinakis is a government employee who works in the IT department, and Akane is the one who called me for advice."

"Of course," I said. "It's Akane's house, obviously she's the one inviting all the guests over. All I know is you're a Greek Jew who cooks the best food I've ever had."

"What makes you so confident I'm Jewish?" he asked.

"The fact I am also Jewish, and know what it means when someone says 'it's Saturday' in that particular tone of voice," I said. "Anyhow. Send me the plans, and I'll build a temple to your barbecue."

"It would be more of a church, would it not?" Silas mused. "The consumption of flesh is a very important part of the barbecue experience, and the closest analogue is a ritual performed by Catholics."

I closed my eyes, and breathed in deeply through my nose.

"...I'm finally home," I said.

----------------------------------------

After a long, rambling, good-natured argument about various culinary heresies, Silas made his excuses and left, leaving us with the rest of the barbecue mutton. And then the conversation turned back to the house and, in a way, local geography.

"I mean, it is true that a lot of Texas is arid," I said. "You're not going to find subtropical rainforests here, in general. But, at the same time, people build cities around the most desirable pieces of land, and in Texas, that especially means places with a source of fresh water. So, there's creeks, little river valleys, and a surprising amount of greenery."

"Such as the forest there," Veronica said, pointing at the woods behind our house. Because of the woods, our yard did not have the conventional fence. After all, what if we wanted to actually enjoy the woods our house is adjacent to?

"Yes, exactly," I said, nodding. "Which I am very pleased with; I am going to take so many walks in the woods."

"I didn't take you for an outdoorsy type," Akane said.

"As much as I just said that Austin is special for Texas, it very much still is Texas," I said. "You don't get to be outdoorsy when you grow up in a suburb where it's a hundred degrees outside at ten in the morning."

"I will never understand why so many people choose to live here," Veronica said.

"A heady melange of heritage, culture, and economic opportunity," I said. "There's also the matter of people who live here and don't choose to, because they can't actually leave."

Something caught my eye, in the forest.

"On that note, I think I'm gonna take a little walk right now," I said, picking up my thick paper plate- two of them stacked together, in fact, because the sauce and the fat from the mutton, while delicious, were not great for the structural integrity of pressed cellulose- and stepping out into the warm sunshine. "Be back in... eh, whenever. Y'all have my phone number if something comes up."

"Be careful!" Akane said.

"I have won fistfights with grizzly bears," I said, stepping off the deck and onto the grass. "But sure, I'll try to avoid picking such a fight in the first place. Not that much dangerous wildlife around these parts, though."

Not only was I tall, I had disproportionately long legs for my frame. As such, it took maybe five good strides to go from the edge of the deck to the border of the woods, and two more to find what I'd been looking for:

A very curious and unafraid red fox. Perfect.

"Here you go, little fox," I said, handing her a little chunk of barbecue with one hand, and scratching her ears with another.

"Oh my fucking- Roxy, please don't pet wild animals," Veronica called from across the yard, finally noticing what I was doing.

I scooped up the fox in one arm, skritching her upper chest and neck with the fingers of that hand, holding my plate of barbecue carefully out of reach of her hungry nose. "Oh, relax. This isn't a wild animal." I walked back out of the woods, across the grass.

"You are not going to be keeping a domesticated fox in my house."

"First, it is in fact Akane's house, that she is allowing you to live in," I said, stepping up back onto the porch. "Second, and more importantly, this isn't a wild animal. This is a werefox."

The fox went very, very still.