"I didn't do it." Four-year old Alexei Sudayev claimed, staring at the scribbled drawings and art on the grey walls. Anya and Dmitry gave each other a look, not buying it.
"Who else would? Your mother and I know better than that, which leaves you." Dmitry knelt to his son's eye level, speaking in a gentle voice. He wasn't mad, he just wanted to hear the truth.
"She did it! She even told me she was going to do it, but I didn't believe her." Alexei pointed wildly at a stuffed animal that resembled a wolf. Anya stifled back a laugh before growing a sly grin.
"Wolfie did it? That makes so much more sense, I can't believe we hadn't thought of that before." She said dramatically, temporarily going along with the lie. Alexei just nodded with a look of fake disappointment at the stuffed animal.
"I think Wolfie might need some time away in the attic to learn her lesson." Dmitry added, catching on with what Anya was going for. He reached over to pick up the stuffed animal, Alexei swiped it up before he could grab it though.
"No! No, no no. She won't do so well up there, we need each other." Anya shrugged at that.
"I'm sorry but if she's going to be drawing on our walls then she needs to learn her lesson. Unless someone else happened to do it?" She asked with a raised eyebrow.
"No...maybe the house ghost did it! Or the monster in the closet? Or..or..or.." While Alexei scrambled for more possibilities, Dmitry grasped his son's hands to inspect them.
"Interesting development. There appears to be marker stains on both of your hands, and if we hold your hand up to the wall, it's a perfect match! Green marker on the wall and green stains on your hands." Dmitry stood up and crossed his arms, awaiting an explanation.
"You caught me. I colored the walls." Alexei admitted in defeat, he looked over at the stuffed animal apologetically, as if he felt sorry for blaming it.
"Why did you do it?" Anya questioned, feeling more upset now about the lying then about the drawings.
"The walls are boring! All they are is grey and even more grey! I thought they might look better with some color and flowers." Alexei explained as logically as he could.
"It's not the drawings we're upset about right now, it's the fact that you lied to us about it being your doing." Dmitry handed him a wet cloth to wipe down the walls. "Clean all this up and then we'll talk more about this at the table."
Alexei took the cloth and got straight to work at wiping down the walls. After a while, he realized that just the wet water wasn't going to be enough and went into the kitchen, climbing up on the counters to grab the soap.
"Mom! Dad!" He shouted when he looked over the edge to get down, it was far too high.
"What on earth do you think you're doing?" Anya almost shouted, quickly hurrying to lift him up off the counter before he could slip and fall.
"The marker wasn't coming off so I came to get soap to help, but it's higher up than it is down." He explained.
"What marker did you use?" She asked. He pulled one out of his pocket and showed it to her.
"This is one of those permanent ones...where did you even get this?"
"Found it somewhere." Anya sighed.
"I think you're right. The walls here are quite boring. Maybe tomorrow the three of us will go to the store and find a nice color and we'll paint the walls a new color!" She suggested with a smile. Alexei smiled back at that.
"I like that idea. Does this mean I'm not in trouble?" He asked hopefully.
"Oh no little one. You're still in trouble for lying to us."
Alexei looked down sadly but just nodded. Him and Anya went over to the couch to sit down, Alexei began to yawn and leaned on his mother's shoulder, she placed an arm around him and let him fall asleep on her. Dmitry eventually came back in, sitting opposite of Anya.
"We can't just let him off the hook you know." Dmitry reminded quietly, lightly running his fingers through Alexei's hair.
"He's four years old, he probably won't even remember what happened today. Besides, we're taking him shopping tomorrow, that'll be punishment enough." She responded laughing.
"Punishment for who exactly?" Dmitry asked smartly, remembering the last time they took Alexei shopping. He had begged and begged to go with them and eventually they gave in and made it a family trip, only for Alexei to learn just how boring shopping was. He wasn't the type of child to throw a fit when he was bored, he looked for any form of entertainment. Which in that particular case, had been away from his parents. It took Anya and Dmitry ages to find where he had gone.
"We'll watch him this time, it was your fault he wandered off anyways." Anya reminded. Dmitry scoffed at that.
"Oh it's my fault is it? If I can recall, it was you who said, oh let's just take him to the busy stores and shops, nothing could go wrong there. I even get lost in that place Anya, it was bound to happen!" He argued back, unable to contain his laughter now at the silliness of this discussion. They were both laughing now, only starting to stop when Dmitry finally picked Alexei up carefully to carry him to bed.
"Goodnight, I'm sorry about the wall." Alexei murmured quietly as Dmitry set him down.
"Yeah goodnight, we'll work on that wall tomorrow together. Just get some sleep." Dmitry got Alexei all tucked in and everything and quietly walked out of the room.
"I still feel like we let him off the hook too easily." Dmitry said to Anya when he returned to her.
"Maybe...but I doubt he'll do that again. We'll get the wall all sorted out with him and he'll see how much work it takes when you use the walls as a coloring sheet." Anya wrapped her arms around Dmitry.
"I don't know about you, but I'm feeling quite tired myself." Dmitry smirked when she said this and lifted her off the ground in a spinning fashion before carrying her bridal style to their room. Both of them were laughing loudly again, smiles on their faces as they started going to sleep themselves.
