2019
Rob is an overprotective father. It's understandable with Lexie, she's his little girl. He hates her wearing make-up, and Cassie has to convince him that it's harmless for his daughter to try on her mother's lipstick.
Peter though, is now 10, and wants to go out to play with his mates. He has Cassie's black hair and fiery personality and looks nothing like his namesake. Rob flatly refuses to let him go out, and Peter ends up shouting at his father that he hates him and it's not fair.
"You can't keep them in a bubble, you know," Cassie says at last to Rob. She knows that she has her own paranoias, she gets very jumpy where they're all in the car together, for instance.
"Wish my parents had," says Rob darkly. Finally, he is persuaded to let Peter go with his friends, as long as he keeps his phone with him at all times and calls his mother — he's still not speaking to Rob — every half hour. When Peter goes off with the other boys, Cassie can see what a wrench it is for her husband, and she hugs him close.
"I hope we won't fuck them up too much," she says later, while curled up in Rob's arms. Lexie is safely in her bedroom, singing "Let It Go" into a hairbrush.
"Isn't that what parents are for?" Rob says sleepily. Cassie prods him lightly with her foot.