7. "Sticky Notes"

"Double-D, are you fucking stupid!?" The phone's speaker squeaked a little bit from the sheer volume. "All those books you've read, and you've never learned basic elementary-school logic!?"

Double-D sat at the table in his dimly-lit kitchen, remaining calm as Eddy berated him, if only because he knew that Eddy wasn't one to be receptive to anger, even if it was justifiably reciprocal. "On the contrary, Eddy, I would argue that the reading I've done over the years has bolstered my deductive reasoning skills in such a way that I feel confident-"

"In English, Sock-Head?"

Double-D held the phone away from his mouth for a second and took a deep breath. "...I have already had the same thought occur to me me, Eddy, but I used the evidence at my disposal to conclude that that was a false notion."

"Double-D, there're easier ways to tell me you think I'm stupid."

Yes, but that would be a waste of a vocabulary; that's what Double-D wanted to say. Instead, he tried to reframe his point for a third time. "I considered that they were the suspects the police were looking for. I decided, however, that their behavior simply would not fit the profile of wanted criminals."

"...Wait, what?"

"How much clearer can I make this, Eddy? I made the connection that the authorities were in pursuit of a fox and a bear. I pondered that those two were the suspects, as opposed to yourself and Ed. But I came to the conclusion that they were simply too civil and sophisticated to be denizens of the wrong side of the law."

Eddy was speechless for a moment, so Double-D continued.

"I've done my fair share of reading, Eddy. It's simply too difficult for anybody to successfully conceal their true character for too long. Between the two of them and the three of us, surely one of them would have faltered in such a way to make their true intentions known, and surely one of us would have picked up on the fact that we were in the presence of evil."

"...Double-D… I'm dead serious… are you stupid?"

"Eddy-"

"Are... you…. mentally… stupid?"

"Eddy, whom among us truly thinks themselves to be stupid?"

"You really think they weren't criminals just because they were 'sophisticated'? You were just a sucker for that fox's accent. Roger or whatever. Because that John guy was a grumpy old fuck that sounded like he gets into bar-fights for fun. You're a fucking maniac if you'd call that 'sophisticated.'"

"Really? Is that how he came across to you? He was certainly much more reserved than Robin - I would even concede that he came across as tad abrasive - but remember, he had just suffered a significant casualty, he was visibly fatigued, and he was in a position where he needed to swallow his pride to ask a mortifying favor of complete strangers - not just any strangers, mind you, but the members of the infamously empathy-empty demographic known as teenage boys! Any of us would struggle to be amiable in such a tight spot. Furthermore, he was actually much nicer to me after you and Ed departed. Considering the prevailing stereotypes that his people's culture is rather antisocial, he was certainly more agreeable than Ed's father. Surely he must have been a fine fellow to make the acquaintance of a gentleman like Robin."

"Who you just went gaga for his accent!" Eddy's sentence structure was atrocious, but Double-D doubted Eddy would care for a correction right about then.

"Oh, I confess, Eddy: encountering a well-spoken Englishman in a junkyard was a pleasant surprise. But it wasn't the sonic quality of his speech that convinced me that he was an upstanding citizen, but rather his diction and mannerisms. He fell in line with all the other intelligent and worldly adults I've encountered in my lifetime, and such a person simply could not be a criminal. Besides, why would someone move all the way across the Atlantic just to begin a life of crime?"

"Maybe he had to high-tail it out of there because he had an arrest warrant; did you think of that!?"

"Oh, yes, Eddy, it's so very easy for a person with an arrest warrant to book a flight, navigate their way through an international airport terminal, get on an airplane, and disembark in the land of one of their home country's closest allies, all without being seen or recognized by police or security even once. Especially after all the increases in security measures in the last few years." Double-D had to readjust in his seat; he realized his posture was slumping.

"So he faked some documents! That's what criminals do!"

"Do pardon my obnoxious skepticism, Eddy, but I don't think it would be that easy for a fox who's almost five feet tall to conceal their identity."

The line was mostly silent for a second, but Double-D thought he heard a faint seething on the other end. Realizing that he'd likely just struck a nerve, Double-D decided to reroute the conversation.

"Eddy, I understand that you mean to have a healthy distrust, but one can easily over-do it. Trust and distrust can both be dangerous without enough empirical evidence! The fact of the matter is that we don't know too much about these two, and good and evil exist in each and every last one of us." At this point, Double-D decided he needed to get up and pace around his kitchen a little bit as he talked, lest his legs fall asleep. "But I, for one, gathered all the clues and hints that I could, and I decided that these two were more good than evil, and that helping them would be the right thing to do. I did my best, Eddy, and you will not make me feel stupid or ashamed for doing that."

"Jesus Christ, Double-D, how can you be this naïve? Have you never been taken advantage of by a smooth talker before?"

"Of course I have. By you."

"Oh, hush!" Eddy scoffed. Double-D was a bit surprised that Eddy wasn't flattered beyond words that he'd just been called a 'smooth talker' as he'd always striven to be, just like his brother. Eddy continued, "The guy tells you to your face that they're a couple of actors - people who play pretend for a living - and you still believe every word they say!"

"So you believed them, too."

"...What?"

"You're going on about them being liars, and then you cite their own claims of being actors as evidence that they're liars."

"...?"

"You're saying the lying man calling himself a liar proves that he's a liar."

"Double-D, will you tell your brain to quit doing jumping jacks or whatever! It makes perfect sense that they'd be the criminals that cops were looking for! They were looking a fox and a bear, not a fox and a bear and a wolf wearing a stupid little hat! If I saw us, that stupid fucking hat of yours would be the first thing I'd notice!"

"Eddy, we caused a very loud avalanche of trash and were carrying around implements for a decidedly illegal activity." Double-D took a moment to stop by the window and peel back the blinds to see just how dark it had gotten outside. It was very late, and the sun was nowhere to be found after a long June day. "I don't know about you, Eddy, but I didn't see them engage in anything illicit."

"Us and everybody else in the cul-de-sac've been fucking around in the junkyard for years! We've done worse damage and nobody's ever called the cops on us once! Why would today be the day?"

Double-D needed some new territory to pace in, so he meandered his way into his living room. "Sometimes you just get unlucky, Eddy. And I got lucky by not being seen by whoever alerted the authorities. All I know is that it would be unfair to Misters Hood and Little to assume that they were perpetrators of some ambiguous infraction just because they matched an extremely vague description, much like how it would have been unfair to us if they were the culprits but we were apprehended because two of the three of us were of the same species. Eddy, I have been falsely implicated in misdeeds several times over specifically because of my association with an outwardly antagonistic person like you. I know what it is like to be held guilty until proven innocent in the court of public opinion, and it is not a fate I wish upon anyone."

"Oh, boo hoo, some people misjudged you once or twice, so now you blindly trust people who you should have realized were playing you. Cry me a river under the bridge I'd like to sell ya."

"Eddy, may I ask a question?" Double-D proposed.

"What now?"

"Without an ounce of sarcasm, Eddy, I need to know: even if you were right, even if the three of us looked hardened criminals in the eyes today and didn't even realize it, even if I am as naïve as you believe me to be… why are you telling me this?"

"...What do you mean, 'why am I telling you this'?"

"How do you want me to act upon this revelation, Eddy?" Double-D had wound up back in the kitchen. The digital clocks on the microwave and the oven, which had been meticulously timed to be perfectly in-synch with one another, read 10:07. "Do you want me to call the police? Do you want me to march down there with you and demand that those rapscallions leave our space? Do you want me to resolve to always defer to your judgment, now, always, and forever?"

"...Well, originally, I was going to ask if you thought they might be those robbers or whatever who hang out in the woods."

Double-D stopped and propped himself up on the back of a kitchen chair to think for a second. "...Robbers?"

"You know, the ones everyone says live in the woods and rob rich people, but they only keep enough to live and give the rest to charity or something?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Eddy."

"You're kidding me."

"I am doing nothing of the sort."

"You've never heard anyone at school talking about them? I mean, it's not like they're a hot topic of conversation or nothing, but I can count on two hands the number of times I've heard people talk about them."

"It's not ringing a bell, Eddy. Sorry."

"...Jesus fucking Christ, you really don't talk to anybody at school, do you?"

"Oh, where is this coming from, Eddy?"

"If you weren't such a fucking nerd, you'd probably have talked about it with other kids at least once! Do you talk to anybody besides us and the other cul-de-sac retards?"

"Eddy, I am quite sociable at school! I simply don't waste my breath entertaining urban legends of paradoxically altruistic thieves!"

"How are you so sure that it's just an urban legend?"

"Eddy, was that the only reason you called me?" Double-D's voice betrayed his burgeoning fatigue; it was past his preferred bedtime, and his body knew it.

"You really wanna know why else I called you Double-D?"

"Enlighten me, Eddy."

"I want you to feel stupid."

Double-D started walking again, back to the living room, hoping the motion would keep him awake for just a little bit longer.

"Now what would that accomplish, Eddy?"

"It'd light a fire under your ass to step up and be the smart one in the group like you're supposed to be!"

"You didn't realize yourself that they may have been the suspects until much later, and now-"

"Are you deaf, too? I just said you're supposed to be the smart one! The-"

"Are you sure that you don't fancy yourself to be the smart one, Eddy? Because you sure sound like you do."

"Hell, maybe I should start calling myself that! The deal was that I'd have the business acumen and you could be the detective-type, always keeping a close eye on all the little-shit details. But if you realized that they could have been the guys the cops were looking for, and you consciously fucking decided that they weren't, well, then… hell, there's no substitute for street smarts, I guess."

Double-D was getting exhausted just listening to this inanity. He needed to sit down on the couch. "Okay, then, fine. I feel stupid. Now what?"

"A-are you fucking with me!? You feel stupid, and then you want to change so you stop pissing me off! You should want to be better at doing your part in our partnership. It's called a partnership for a reason! For fuck's sakes, Double-D, when someone you care about is pissed at you, you're supposed to change so they aren't pissed at you anymore! Or do you not care about me?"

"Do you care about me, Eddy?"

"...Uh…"

"Would you change to stop irritating me, Eddy?"

And then there was silence. Double-D had a hunch that Eddy was working up the nerve to say something big, but he didn't know if it Eddy was gearing up to say no and telling one of his few allies in the world to make like a tree and screw off, or if he was trying to swallow his damn pride and say yes. But instead, Eddy went a third toute:

"...Whatever happened to the three of us, Double-D?"

Double-D leaned forward on the couch. "...I… beg your pardon, Eddy?"

"I mean, I don't know why that came out so weird, but… yeah, whatever did happen to us? We were a great team, Double-D. Brains, brawn and charisma. I mean, shit, even if we barely ever made any money off of those scams, we sure showed a hell of a lot more initiative than the other kids. We were on pace to get somewhere eventually. Maybe fifty years from now, but we would have gotten there. I… Jesus, I'm just gonna ask: are you and Ed… over it?"

"Over… what, exactly?" Double-D asked as he stood again.

"Listen, listen," Eddy said calmly, "I know it's past your bedtime, ain't it? We'll talk more about this tomorrow. But if you and Ed don't want to help me with my plans anymore… Christ, just say so. It'll save all of us a lot of time."

"Eddy, I-"

"One last thing, Edd? So, situation: your apartment catches fire. Your house doesn't burn to the ground, but you still can't stay there that night. You're a starving artist and you're flat broke, so you can't afford a hotel, and between you and your… roommate, I guess, whatever kind of roommate he is to you… neither of you have any friends, apparently, that you can stay with. Now, you might not have a lot of options, but is your first choice to drive all the way out to a junkyard in the suburbs hoping there'll be an abandoned car you can crash in? Actually, no, wait, fuck it, why didn't they sleep in their car? Or did they not have a car? Did they walk all that way? Is that what you'd do, Double-D?"

Double-D stood in his living room, staring at the wall, as Eddy waited for an answer on the other end of the line. But even Double-D's mind had its limits.

"I'm just saying, Double-D," Eddy continued, "I sure think that's a lot more unlikely than if they just waltzed out of the woods right next door, looking for a place to hide until the heat died down. But what do I know? I'm not the smart one. Alright. G'night, Edd." There was a click and then a dial tone, but Double-D held the phone to his ear for a few more seconds after that.

-IllI-

Back in the kitchen, Double-D double-checked all the sticky notes before he got ready for bed. He had already had his first day of summer vacation ruined; he didn't need the next one to be marred by a sternly-worded sticky note telling him that he had failed to fulfill his filial duties.

Everything seemed to be in order, but he wanted to consult one specific sticky note one more time. He knew the gist of what it would say, but he wanted to see whether there were any fine details he had missed.

The note was stuck right on the chin of the wall clock in the hallway, and was written in print with blue ink, a telltale sign of Vincent Lupo's handiwork contrasting to Sammantha's insistence on writing in cursive with a red pen. The note was already peeling a bit from the last time Edd peeled it off and reattached it; an adhesive can only last so long. Double-D plucked it off the clock, not intending to reattach it this time. Besides, he needed to get a close-up look at it to read the tiny text; Mr. and Mrs. Lupo had long since become experts at being as spatially efficient with their sticky notes as possible.

"Dear Eddward,

"I would like to remind you that your mother and I will be in Virginia Beach today. We will be home late tonight.

"Love, Father."

Double-D had remembered them saying that they were going to a chemists' conference down in Virginia, but he didn't remember whether they specified when the conference ended. They had pulled out of the driveway before dawn this morning, even before Edd woke up to help Eddy with his disastrous little plan, and Double-D didn't know now whether his parents were still in Hampton Roads or just down the street. Double-D had actually left them a sticky note insisting that they stay overnight in a hotel down there - at least one night before or after the convention, if not both - for their own sakes, but they insisted that they could make the drive there and back, both because they didn't want to be away from home for too long and because they could probably make the best time when there were hardly any other cars on the road.

Double-D didn't remember offhand how long the drive was; he was tempted to turn his computer back on and go to Mapquest to see how long the drive would be, so he could extrapolate when they would be back if they left at a given time or another. But that would take a few minutes to wait for the computer to warm up, wait to dial up to the internet, and wait for the web-page to load. It was a shame that Double-D couldn't just pull something out of his pocket and access the internet instantly from that, but unfortunately such technology would be something Double-D would also have to wait for, and right now, Double-D didn't want to wait; he wanted to go to bed as soon as possible.

Then again, it wasn't guaranteed that he'd be able to sleep well anyway if he was obsessing over his worry that his parents would fall asleep at the wheel and drive off the bridge into the Chesapeake Bay. Double-D had spent plenty of time before wondering whether his constant concern over his parents' well-being was healthy. One might say that of course it's natural for a son to not want harm to befall his parents, but Double-D definitely knew plenty of people who would say that his concern for his mommy and daddy was a bit too much for someone his age. But even beyond the nay-saying cynics, those very close to him might propose that there was a selfish element to it: Double-D was well aware of the luxuries he was afforded as the dependant son of two successful intellectuals. If something Dickensian were to happen to them, Double-D would surely mourn them as a well-adjusted person would, but he would simultaneously lament the loss of all of his potential if he were to be shunted off to the next-of-kin.

Come to think of it, Double-D wondered, whom specifically would that be? His father's brother Francis was probably the next-most well-off of his relatives, running the Lupo family's decrepit but sustainable butchery shop back up north in Philadelphia, but Uncle Frankie was a grumpy son of a bitch just like Grandpa Lupo was, and Edd could see Francis simply refusing to take his nephew into his home even under the most tragic of circumstances. So failing Uncle Frankie, the next in line for emergency custody would probably be, uh…

...Oh, yeah: his other uncle.

Of course, if his parents had any say in it, that would never happen, and for reasons he still didn't fully understand. And being a proud autodidact, Double-D didn't like not fully understanding something. It made him feel uncomfortable and incomplete; his insatiable thirst for knowledge simply would not allow him to only know part of a story. But it would be quite a challenge to figure out what specific event or action was the impetus for Sammie and Vince to tell Ward to get permanently lost, a challenge that Double-D wasn't sure he would be able to tackle. After all, what could he do? Ask his parents? No, no, that would never work, because… because, um... hmm.

What exactly was stopping him from simply asking? The most direct answer was anxiety: fear that his parents would not only tell him that it was a matter between grown-ups and that it was none of his business, but that he was also being an insubordinate little delinquent for daring to pry for knowledge that was none of his business. At least that's what Edd was pretty sure would happen; his parents didn't raise him on the straight and narrow just to allow him to cavalierly demand privy information on interpersonal matters that only tangentially involved him. Yeah, he was pretty sure that that's what they'd do.

But he realized he wasn't certain that that's what they'd do. Double-D didn't like being uncertain about things.

His next inhibition up to bat was a worry that his parents would be thoroughly annoyed that to come home from a long drive and immediately be blindsided with a question of of the blue about a character who had, for about the last decade, been more of a mythical cautionary-tale urban legend figure than an actual person participating in their lives. But they would surely read all the sticky notes that their son had left in reply to them, written in his designated green ink, as soon as they got home, just as they always did. Tonight might actually be the best time to pop the question, strategically speaking: if they were heavily fatigued from their trip, perhaps they wouldn't have the mental energy to be cross with him. Maybe they wouldn't even think anything of it; this, of course, ran the risk of Mother and Father not even answering the question, but to yield no consequences would be better than to yield negative consequences, Edd reasoned. He wasn't sure which outcome was the most likely, and he didn't like being uncertain about things.

His last worry was about how to actually phrase the thing. He had never asked such a question of his parents before, and he was worried that it would come across as an unimportant question and a waste of everyone's time to answer it; the Peach Creek Lupos were not only wolves of science, but also of pragmatism, and to ask a question from which nothing is to be gained by finding the answer would be a foolish thing to do. And yet, Double-D thought, there may come a time when he had to ask a more pressing question, one that actually was important, that his parents may perceive to be unimportant, and he would have to challenge his parents and find a way to solicit the information from them; in that event, it will have been better if he had practiced asking such difficult questions now so that we will have been ready when the time came for asking something more urgent. He wouldn't want to be in such a position in the future where he didn't know how to communicate with his own parents when he really needed to; Double-D didn't like not knowing things.

In the hallway was a small closet with a thin folding door that the developers of Peach Creek Estates certainly never thought would be used almost exclusively to house sticky notes. Double-D grabbed one and made his way to the kitchen, grabbed the green pen, laid the note out nice and flat and sat down to try to try to think how to articulate his question.

Dear Mother and Father, he wrote; okay, so far so good. Now what? He was writing this in ink, so he hadn't any opportunities to make a mistake without having to start from scratch; his parents never left him a note with something sloppily scratched out, and Double-D had inferred that he was not to leave such a garish note himself. This was proving tougher than he thought.

Pardon the unexpected - wait, should he have written unanticipated instead? Too late now. Speaking of late, the clock was ticking, every passing moment meant increased fatigue and even less cogency, and for all he knew, his parents could walk through the front door any moment now and wonder what it was that he was writing them. Then he would have to answer them verbally. And Double-D knew very well that he was one of those people who was much more articulate with a pen and paper than with the tip of his tongue, especially when under pressure.

This was going to take a while.

-IllI-

Dear Mother and Father,

Pardon the unexpected question, but I was wondering about the whereabouts of my uncle Eddward; suffice it to say that my associates and I were discussing our respective extended families, piquing my curiosity. Please let me know if you would like me to provide any more-specific questions or a notebook for writing an answer too long for a sticky note.

Love, Eddward

Okay, so the sticky note actually turned into four sticky notes daisy-chained together, and he was worried that because he had failed to specifically ask what the hell did he do that you told him to fuck off forever? that his inquiry would simply yield a reply of his whereabouts are that he's still an uneducated police officer and a disgrace to mammalia as a whole, now why in God's name did you ask?, and he was feeling a bit self-conscious about his usage of the words "about" and "whereabouts" in close proximity, but that's what he came up with. The clock read 11:11 p.m. and Double-D was trying to remind himself that perfect was the enemy of good.

For lack of a better location, he left those sticky notes there on the kitchen table, with the sticky parts plastering down the loose ends of their respective predecessors, and hoped that his parents would not chastise him for his poor form. But it was now or never.

He went through his bedtime routine worried about the potential fallout of his query, running different scenarios though his head and planning how he would react to them, ranging from being scolded for asking a sensitive question out of turn to being met with confusion about why he would want to know about such a deplorable being. He even had some new scenarios pop into his head, like the idea that Ward had done something really bad and that it was actually his parents who were going to be nervous, dodging the question so as not to upset their son; but Double-D did not see this as a viable possibility. From what he seldom saw of his parents, fear of speaking the truth was not a state he'd seen them in.

Despite his racing mind, however, Double-D was still on the verge of passing out from sheer exhaustion. He skipped the warm milk and the foot lotion and many of the other pre-slumber habits that he was trying to kick anyway after that one night a few summers back when he had to crash at Eddy's house, when he tried to get Eddy to fulfill the duties usually performed by Sammie and Vince, only for Eddy to explode at him the next morning and tell Double-D that he hadn't been able to sleep that night because he was genuinely disturbed by the infantile nature of Double-D's secret home life; if the events of that preceding day had been some downright wacky antics that would make for a great episode of a beloved TV-Y7 cartoon, the dialogue of the next morning was so brutally honest and unfathomably awkward that it wouldn't make for good TV for any demographic.

All for the best, perhaps. Although on a night like this, he wished that his parents were there to take turns reading him an article from Science Monthly or a passage from Tailor's World Encyclopedia, not because the readings themselves would give him comfort, but because knowing that his parents were home safe and sound would, along with knowing that the next time he saw them in person, the sticky note conflict would probably be behind him. The last thing that Double-D remembered thinking before he dozed off was that he no longer harbored his earlier sentiment that he was prepared for death at any moment, and not just because he was no longer fully convinced that he was a wanted fugitive (although that certainly helped); he wanted to stick around long enough to find out what was so irredeemably insidious about his uncle. Maybe after that, he would be prepared again.

-IllI-

It was the faint click of the door's latch scuffling that woke him up. The door began to open ever so slightly, not even enough to call it ajar, before it stopped in its tracks.

"Sammie! We shouldn't wake him up!" was the first of many harsh-but-hushed sentences he heard coming from the hallway.

"I know, but I don't want to wait until morning!" he heard as the door slipped back shut, but the latch didn't reengage. Whoever had their hand on the knob hadn't let go of it yet. There was a sliver of dim light coming from under the door, indicating that a light was on somewhere, but not the hall light immediately outside his door. "If it's something serious, I want to know it now!"

"So do I, but he's asleep, and we're exhausted, and all three of us will be much more clear-headed in the morning." Oh, what they didn't know.

"I don't disagree, Vince, but I won't be able to sleep if he knows something we don't know!"

Double-D sat upright in bed. He wanted to say something, but the words wouldn't come out. The last thing he wanted was to turn the target of the conflict upon himself. But then, the first thing he wanted was to know what information they thought he was withholding from them.

"What can you do with that information now that you wouldn't have to wait until morning to do?"

A cold shiver overcame him. Did they know of their encounter in the junkyard today? No, no, no, they couldn't have access to that information… or could they?

"Decipher how much of an idiot my brother is!"

...Okay, now Double-D was just confused. He didn't very much like being confused, and that dislike was even stronger than his dislike of getting between his parents. That was what got him to slide out of bed and make his way to the door.

"Well, then you really won't be able to sleep!"

Double-D grasped the doorknob and pulled on it without turning it, knowing it was already being held open on the other end. As his eyes adjusted to the faint half-light of the hallway, he could still see the startled looks on his parents' faces, and his mother recoiling her hand off the doorknob as if she just realized she'd laid her paw upon something filthy.

"E-Eddward!" Sammantha choked out.

"Apologies, Mother and Father, but I couldn't help but overhear your, um, conversation, as it were."

Sammantha and Vincent shot nervous glances to one another while struggling to find words appropriate for the situation.

"Oh, uh, uh- Son, it's no problem," Vincent sputtered, "I-i-if anything, you helped, uh… you helped us make up our minds. A-about whether or not to wake you."

"Mother, Father, is this about my note? I apologize if it caused you alarm; I just-"

"Edd-Eddward. Mellow out. We've had a long day, and it seems you have, too," Vincent continued. "We may or may not be about to discuss some serious family business, as a family, so you don't need to worry about formalities right now. We're not in public right now. We're not Mother and Father right now; we're Mom and Dad right now. And we don't want your precision of language to get in the way of saying what you think you might need to say. Sounds good?"

"Uh- Yes, Fa-" Double-D caught himself. "...Okay, Dad."

"Eddward, we're sorry for waking you up; we just wanted to ask some questions while they were still fresh in our head," Sammantha clarified. "May we take a seat?"

"Uh, y-yes, but, um… may I ask some questions, too?"

"Why, of course," Sammantha reassured her son.

"I'm just afraid we're not going to have all the answers," Vincent confessed.

The three went over to Edd's bed. Edd, having been the closest to it, got there first, and began to take a seat near the head of the bed.

"Uh, son, why-why don't you take a seat in the middle?" Vincent asked.

"Your father's right, we don't want you to feel like you're being edged out of your own space."

"Um…. alright, then," Double-D conceded as he scooted down the bed. His father sat to his right near the end of the bed and his mom sat down near the pillows.

"So… we have a lot of questions, but we don't know where to begin," Vincent decided to start off with.

"Especially me, since, you know… I might be more of an expert on this," Sammantha added. "But maybe it would be best if you asked us a question first?"

"What do you want to know about Ward that you don't already know?" Vincent asked.

Double-D found something off about that question; it was if they genuinely didn't know how deprived of information he felt himself to be. "Um… Well, the, uh-"

"Son, don't worry about perfect sentence structure; just tell us what you're thinking," said Mr. Lupo.

So Double-D went for it. He delivered the following paragraph while looking into his palms:

"Well, Fa- Dad, it's funny that you should say that, because, uh… I realized recently that I don't know much about Uncle Ward. I know what you and Moth- what you and Mom have told me about his gluttony and slobbish-ness and ignorance and belligerence, and I remember him acting in such ways at times, but… I… I also remember you alluding to other, more terrible things that he's done, and I realize that this is purely anecdotal, and that I didn't witness much of this myself. I-I-I- Please don't interpret this as my calling you two liars, Mom and Dad, but, it's just… I started wondering if it's right to hate someone just because I was instructed to hate them. Or at least I feel as though it was that I was led to hate him. I certainly recall him being markedly improper, but never evil as I feel I've been led to think of him. I suppose my one main question is… was there one specific action of his, or event, that inspired you to tell him to never come visit us again?"

Only then did Double-D dare to look up and face his parents. First he looked to his Mother, then his father. Despite his vast vocabulary, the closest word Double-D could think to come up with do describe the look on their faces was spooked.

"Well, um..." Vincent said as the first to attempt a sentence, "...that's a lot to unpack."

"Maybe we should have asked the first question," Sammantha wondered.

"I'm sorry, Mo-"

"Nonononono, it's fine!" Vincent reassured. "That's what we needed to hear!"

"This gives us invaluable insight into where your head's at!" Sammantha assured.

And then for a moment, there was silence. It was abundantly clear that Double-D's parents were in no hurry to actually answer their son's question.

"So…" Double-D coughed out; he was having trouble psyching himself up to talk to his parents informally, so he tried to imagine he was just shooting the shit with the boys. "What did he do?"

"Huh?" the Lupo parents asked more or less in unison.

"Neither of you actually answered my question."

"Oh, well, uh…" Sammantha began.

"W-we're still unpacking it!" explained Vincent. "In-in our heads."

"What was the question again, son?" asked Sammantha.

Never in a million eventualities would Double-D have thought that this conversation would see him getting frustrated with his parents' coyness rather than the other way around.

"Was there one specific thing that he did that inspired the two of you tell him not to come see us anymore?"

"We-w-well, uh, it was more of your mother's prerogative," Vincent said, "seeing as it was her brother. The guy was practically a stranger to me!" Vincent was obviously giving his wife a help me out here look that Sammantha looked to feel conflicted about receiving.

"Your father isn't wrong, Eddward," she said, "It was my place to be the one to tell him to get lost. B-but, um… like most things in life, it happened for more than one reason!"

"What were those reasons?" Double-D asked without hesitation. Seeing as he wasn't 100% positive anymore that all of this wasn't just a really annoying dream, he decided he might as well push the envelope to see where it would go.

"Well, he was a loser," said Sammantha. "He was a slob, he… he had no manners, he barely had a job-"

"I remember clearly that he had become a police officer," Edd interjected, "and that he worked night shifts."

"Well, yes, precisely!" Sammantha said. "So he couldn't come over because he was working when we would be asleep! Plus we didn't expect his employment to last long…"

"And he had fleas, so that didn't help," Vincent added.

"He did!?" Double-D exclaimed. "Eew…!"

"He didn't, actually," Sammantha mumbled.

"He didn't?" asked Vincent incredulously.

"That was something I made up to help get you to agree that we should tell him to stay away."

"Sammie!" Vince growled a bit.

"I lied to accomplish something and it helped me accomplish it," Sammantha stated unapologetically.

"So let me get this straight," their son piped up. "This was a concerted effort to forbid him from our home?"

"Well, yeah," Sammantha said. "Between all those things-"

"I had already heard of all those things - that he was impolite and ignorant and all of that," Double-D said. "But was that really all? By these rules, Uncle Francis would be eligible for banishment as well."

"Okay, now you say that you already knew all that, and that honestly scares us," Vincent said rather forwardly.

"What do you mean?"

"His behavior and demeanor were all the reasons that we saw, but…" Sammantha trailed off for a moment. "...We were afraid he might have done something else. That we didn't see and couldn't prove, that is."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Well, you know," Sammantha said, "He didn't have any woman in his life, he didn't have any real friends-"

"If you're saying that he seemed antisocial, Moth- uh, Mom, that's what confuses me. He always seemed quite friendly - to me, at least."

"Okay, now that scares us even more!" said Vincent.

"Mom, Dad, I must say that I'm thoroughly confused by what you may be leading to."

"Oh, Eddward," Sammantha cooed, "I'm so sorry, we shouldn't have woken you up at this hour. You're sleepy and disoriented-"

"Edd," Vincent asked, "is this suspense making you nervous?"

"Extremely."

"Did he hurt you?"

"Wh-what!?"

"Vincent!" Sammantha shrieked.

"What do you mean by hurt?" Double-D asked.

"You know! Did he- did he molest you?"

"Vince, what the hell is wrong with you!?" Sammantha hollered. Edd, for his part, was busy trying to figure out in which direction he ought to focus his eyes.

"I can't stand pussy-footing around this anymore! We're all dying of anticipation, so I just asked the question we were all wondering and got it over with!"

There were no words for a bit as Vincent took some deep breaths to get his frustration out of his system. Edd himself was reeling because he had only ever heard his parents use explicit language fewer than a dozen times combined, and now they each used some definitively impolite verbiage after an extremely blunt and blindsiding question.

"I-I apologize. F-for my language. Pardon my French, but I'm glad I ripped that band-aid off." Vincent turned his attention back to his son exclusively. "But yeah… did he?"

Double-D did not remember the last time he felt so uncomfortable in his own bed, barring some physical ailments back during flu season.

"I… I do not remember Uncle Ward being anything other than friendly and kind to me," Edd asserted as calmly as he could. "And if he had done something malicious, I would have told you."

Vincent and Sammantha exhaled deep sighs of relief. Vince even collapsed backward onto the bed and stared blissfully at the ceiling for a moment.

"Well, that's good to hear!" Sammantha finally said.

"Is that what it was all about? You thought he… he assaulted me!?"

"I mean, yes and no," Vincent said as he sat back up. "It wasn't so much about did as much about what we were afraid he might have done. And that's both a past- and future-tense might."

"Quite honestly, Eddward, we were afraid he was getting too friendly with you," Sammantha said.

"What did he do that made you think he did that!?"

"Like we said, it wasn't what he did. Heck, I think I even remember your mom and I discussing that he wouldn't have had the opportunity to… um… do anything, because we never left you alone with him for more than a few minutes. And at a certain point, we didn't leave you alone with him because we didn't know what he would do."

"I don't know if it was a joke he wouldn't let die or if he actually believed it, but no matter how many times I reminded him that you were named after his and my father, he insisted that we named you after him. And he was always so excited to see you. He always wanted to play with you, or talk with you, or sit you on what passed for his lap-"

"-And it all could have been innocent! It could have been! We might have misjudged him; I acknowledge that! Maybe you were the only person in the world he was nice to! But it also could have been a blood-red flag waving two inches in front of our faces. So we erred on the side of caution."

"And knowing what we - what I - know about the rest of the guy's life, I think we made the right decision. I don't care how innocent it might have been; nobody's favorite person should be their nephew."

"Or their uncle," Vincent added.

"Exactly. If nothing else, we were forcing him to get his own life instead of inserting himself into ours. The Woodlands are fucked up enough-"

"Sammie!" Vincent sounded more concerned than offended by his wife's language this time.

"Vince, I'm tired. And thinking on my brother brings forth the vocabulary he and I were raised with." Sammantha turned her head a bit and stared into space for just long enough to put a thought that had been forming in the back of her head into words. "Oh-! I'm going to be so pissed if this turns out to be a case of a repressed memory! I'll kill the son of a bitch."

"I haven't repressed a memory; he never hurt me!" Double-D barked.

"You don't know that," Vincent muttered defeatedly. "And neither do we."

"And he might not know either depending on whatever drugs he might have been on," Sammantha said.

"Uncle Ward does drugs!?"

Sammantha just scoffed. "Probably."

"'Probably'?"

"Edd, don't you ever just get an intuitive read on a guy? And you feel like you can successfully guess a whole bunch of things about their lives?" Vincent asked. "That's what's going on here."

"Your father and I didn't bust our asses to become intelligent people just for anybody at all to come along and tell us that our educated guesses were anything less than intelligent."

"Mom, you've been, uh, rather profane tonight."

"Yeah. Honey, are you still drunk?" Vincent asked.

"I'm fine, Vince."

"But… he did actually brutally assault a civilian for jaywalking while he was out on patrol, right?" asked Edd.

"Probably," Vincent quipped. "If not for jaywalking, then something else incredibly minor, I'd bet. A busted taillight or something, maybe? That's just the kind of guy he is."

"Did he- did he actually ever beat a woman he was dating?"

"If he ever found a woman, I'd bet he did! The asshole..." Sammantha mumbled. "The man's been lonely for so long, he'd probably have no idea how to treat a woman right."

"Edd, the point is, your mother and I feel confident in saying that, even if he never did any of the things we can feel in our bones that he's probably done - or something similar - if he didn't want us thinking so lowly of him, then he shouldn't have been such a… such an unpleasant person in our presence," Vincent explained. "Let this be a lesson to you, Eddward: if you're unpleasant enough as a person, people will take creative liberties in negatively rewriting the story of your life, and they'll feel completely justified in doing so. Or it can work the opposite way! George Washington never chopped down that cherry tree and told his dad about it, but we say he did because that's just the kind of guy he was - he probably would have done something like that. Being a good person really is rewarding."

Double-D was speechless. How the tables had turned, and in a complete three-sixty: first he was afraid that his parents would think he was asking stupid questions and begin to condescendingly explain things to him; but when his parents actually talk to him, they're shaking in their boots as they fear they're asking their son stupid questions; then the answer to their question is anticlimactic, which inspires him to ask questions about their questions, which they think are stupid questions, leading them to begin to condescendingly explain things to him.

But the things they were explaining to him were… strange, to say the least. Controversial may have been a word.

"Hey, Vince?" Sammantha asked, "Did you ever for a second think my brother was gay?"

"No, I think if he were, he'd have bathed more oft-"

"So has he ever been with a woman or not?" Edd asked, "Have you not even spoken to the man in the last - what? - six or seven years?"

"Sometimes Gramma tells me things about how he's doing, even though I don't ask. She knows we don't talk," Sammantha answered. "I think he's still a cop, and he actually got promoted a few times."

Double-D bit his tongue.

"Remind me to drive especially carefully in the city, just to make sure he doesn't pull us over," Vincent remarked.

Double-D just wanted to go to bed. "Mom? Dad? I think I've had all my questions answered."

"Are you sure?" Sammantha asked.

"For now, yes."

"Alright," Vincent said as he stood from the bed. "We all ought to be getting to bed."

"Indeed," said Sammantha. "If there's anything else you want to ask us, just leave us a note."

"You know, that's probably a good reason we had this talk in person," Vincent said, "because I don't know how many sticky notes this would have taken!"

Sammantha guffawed as Edd pretended to chuckle. Sammie rose and walked toward the door, and her husband put her arm around around her shoulders as they walked toward the door. Being a Woodland wolf, she was tall, and she was maybe but a tinge shorter than her husband.

"I'm gonna take you to bed, honey," Vincent joked, and Sammantha chuckled again. They stopped at the door and turned back to their pup. "Goodnight, son."

"And if you remember anything happening to you, you let us know ASAP!"

"Yes, Mother."

"Alright. Goodnight," she said as she walked out the door, her husband following and closing the door behind them and turning off the light.

"G-goodnight," Double-D mumbled, but they probably didn't hear him.

He got back under the covers and tried to find a comfortable position. He was grateful that he had gotten the hour or so of sleep earlier, because he wasn't sure when he was going to fall asleep again. His head was already spinning with worries over his uncle's unclear past, the strangers' uncanny refinement, he and his friends' unsettled schism, and his own uncertain criminal record. Now added to that whirling gyre was the fear that his parents weren't the noble empiricists he had always made them out to be. But maybe such mischaracterizations are inevitable when you communicate with someone for years but almost never hear them speak.

The sirens in the distance didn't make sleep come any easier, either.