"SNAP!" Holly yelled.

"Shhh shh shhh, Aunt Marie's still in bed."

"Snap!" Holly whispered.

"I think you might win this."

"No, I might not!"

"Well you might not, but you are very very good at this game." Skyler helped Holly pick up and straighten the enormous pile she had just snapped.

"Are you trying, Mommy?"

"Yeah."

"Really?"

"Of course I am!"

"You're not very good!"

Skyler rolled her eyes. "Oh, way to insult me!"

"Finn is way better at it than you."

"I'm just a bit distracted, darling, but I will try harder."

"Ok. I'll go slower for you."

Marie emerged from her bedroom, walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge.

Skyler looked around. "Sorry, did we wake you?"

"No, no. Good morning."

"Are you sure? This one's been yelling, 'Snap!' really loudly."

"Mommy, come on! Let's play!"

"Hey you, Aunt Marie has just got up and she said something to us. What do we say to her?"

"You didn't say that!"

"I haven't said it yet, but I've been talking to her, and you've been ignoring her, which is quite rude."

"Good morning, Aunt Marie!" Holly projected.

"Oh, sounds like I'm a school teacher! Good morning, Holly."

"Now you say it." Holly pointed at Skyler.

"Good morning." Skyler and her sister smiled at each other.

"Come on Mommy, do the cards!"

"Alright."

Marie poured herself a cup of coffee and looked out the window. "Huh," she said. "Did Flynn move his car?"

"What?" said Skyler.

"Mommy, don't get distracted!" instructed Holly.

Marie opened the front door and stepped out. Flynn's car wasn't there.

"He's at the store, Marie!" Skyler called.

Marie walked back into the cabin, her mouth open in shock. "Flynn got up and left the building before 9 o'clock in the morning?"

"I know, right?" Skyler smiled. "He said he wanted to get some special things for the picnic."

"Special things?" said Holly.

"Snap!" said Skyler.

Holly's mouth fell open. "Oh."

"See, I was paying attention!"

"What special things?"

"I don't know, he said it was a surprise."

"Are some of the special things for me?"

"I think they're for all of us. Nice food for us to share on our picnic."

"Oh yay, we can share the special things!"

"Yeah." Skyler smiled. Marie watched her, thinking she hadn't seen her smile so much in a long time.

"Where's the picnic?"

"Oh, we'll just see where we want to go."

"That clearing would be good for a picnic," said Marie.

"It would."

"Can we go to the place we went to yesterday?" asked Holly. "With the voo?"

"The view? That place was a bit windy for a picnic - we can go back there if you want, though."

"That place was cool, I've never seen a voo before. I liked it."

"So did I, it was pretty amazing."

"You've seen a view, Holly!" said Marie. "From my house!"

"From your house?"

"Yeah, when you look out the back."

"Is that a v-vu-veeyuu?"

"Ooh, good job," said Skyler.

"Yeah that's a great view, you can see the whole city and the desert around, and on the other side you can see -"

"That's not as good," said Holly.

"Well. It's not the same thing as we saw yesterday, but -"

"What does veeyuu mean, Mommy?"

"It's where you can see a long way and see a lot of things that are far away."

"Usually from high up," Marie added.

"Yeah, Aunt Marie lives on hill, so she has a view too. But now we're on a mountain, so the view is bigger. Further and wider and more things in it."

"We can't see the va-yu from here, though."

"No, because we're in a forest."

"We have to go to the veeyuu place."

"Yep. Do you wanna go there later?"

"Yeah for the picnic!"

"Well the view place was very windy, so it'd be hard to eat a picnic there because the wind might blow our food away. But what we could do is we could have our picnic near there and then we could go to the view place afterwards."

"FINN'S HERE!" Holly jumped up and ran to the door, where she began awkwardly trying to turn the doorknob.

"Wow, she has good ears!" said Marie. Looking out the window again, she saw Flynn's car approaching about fifty yards away.

Skyler had stood up to scramble after Holly. She saw the door knob give. "HOLLY! Stop!" she yelled.

Holly turned around, still holding on to the door knob and somewhat swinging off it as the door moved inwards.

"What have we talked about with cars?"

"Cars?"

"When you're in a car, you don't open the door yourself, do you? You don't get out by yourself."

"I'm not in a car."

"I know, but your brother is. Don't ever run towards a car, because if the car is still moving, it might hit you."

Holly's face fell. "Finn wouldn't hit me."

"Not deliberately, of course not, but all cars are dangerous, Holly. If you run out of the house suddenly and Flynn doesn't see you, his car could hit you. As could any other car - even if you're coming out of a building onto the street, if you're coming out of a store or Aunt Marie's house or day care or anywhere, you don't run. You stop and look and see where the cars are, so you can keep away from them."

"But I wanna see Finn!"

"Yeah, so we wait until his car stops." Skyler crouched next to Holly and held her as they looked out the door.

"It's stopped now!" said Holly.

"Has the engine stopped? If the engine's on, the car might still move. Oh, see, look, it moved again."

"It went back a bit."

"Yeah, see, cars move around when they're parking too. And you don't know where they're gonna go, so you stay away until you hear the engine turn off. Can you hear the engine?"

Flynn's engine stopped.

"It stopped!" said Holly, looking at her mother in intense concentration.

"Ok, off you go." Skyler let go of Holly and she charged down the steps yelling, "Finn! Did you get special things?"

Skyler grunted as she stood up.

"That was a very engaging safety talk," said Marie.

"I am not used to having a kid who just charges off! Watch her, please, you have to watch her all the time - yes she does have good ears and she will hear something or see something and before you know it, she's just launched herself - it terrifies me!"

"Oh yeah, we never had to deal with that before, did we?"

"No!" Skyler put her hand over her eyes. "Watch her, please, watch her all the time!"

"I will, I will." Marie nodded, and then raised a finger. "We did when they put him in a wheelchair. After he had his second operation."

"Oh! God yeah, I forgot about that."

"Hey Flynn, do you remember when you crashed into the kitchen counter?" called Marie.

"What?" said Flynn, who was attempting to extricate bags from the trunk of his car whilst trying not to trip over the bouncing child who kept saying, "Special things!" over and over. Skyler rushed over to help him.

Marie strolled casually behind her. "Do you remember when you crashed your wheelchair into the counter at my house?"

Flynn laughed. "Yeah. Ouch." He grabbed something out of the back seat. It was a stout white box in a plastic bag with cooler bags around it. The bag said, 'Gene's Patisserie'.

"Your mother arrived to find this sobbing kid who was even more injured than he was before!"

Skyler raised her arms as much as she could when they were laden with shopping bags and pointed at Holly's head. "Hey! I'm trying to teach this kid not to charge into things!"

"Yeah I know, it's a good lesson! Flynn got injured charging into things!"

"Yeah, but -"

"Uncle Hank was so apologetic!" chuckled Flynn, hooking the plastic bag onto the hand hold of one of his crutches and moving towards the house. Skyler followed with the other bags. Holly ran up the steps ahead of them both and into the kitchen.

"What do you mean he was apologetic?" said Marie. "Why?"

"Because it was his fault!"

"What?"

Flynn laughed. "H-he did a good job hiding it from you."

"What are you talking about? Skyler, did you know about this?"

Skyler, who was putting the bags down on the kitchen counter, was distracted by Holly asking, "What are the special things?"

"Well it looks like there's some cheese and some pepperoni, and… oh, some of those little cherry tomatoes you like…"

"Is there candy?"

"I don't know, maybe. Let's keep looking."

"What do you mean it was Hank's fault?"

"You like marshmallows, r-right Holly?" said Flynn.

Holly made an enormous gasp. Flynn discreetly pointed at one of the bags, and Skyler reached inside and pulled out a bag of marshmallows. "Tadaa!" she said.

"WOW!"

"Now, what do you say?"

"Please!"

"Yes, and what do you say to Flynn?"

"Thank you, Finn! Thank you, Finn!" Holly jumped up and down.

"Flynn, what are you talking about?" said Marie.

"I wouldn't tell you this if he was s-still alive, because you would get him in…so much trouble. A-and actually he paid me not to tell you because of that." Flynn giggled. "But he was…pushing me along the hallway several times. Including before that, l-like the…two times before that th-that I went to your house, he was…pushing me around the house really fast…a lot. And it was so much fun."

"He pushed you into the counter?"

"N-no, then I said I wanted to go by myself, without him…pushing me, and he was k-kind of, you know, taking care of me, l-like he said we couldn't do it in the living room or anything, it had to be…in the hallway because there was no furniture. But u-unfortunately I didn't aim my steering very well, and I c-clipped the wall at the end of the hallway, which changed my direction, a-and I kind of overbalanced a bit, and then I…crashed into the counter."

Marie's jaw dropped. Skyler had stopped unpacking groceries and was staring too. Holly, her mouth plugged up with a sticky marshmallow that was smeared all over her lips, looked innocently up at all the adults wondering why they had stopped talking.

"Did you know about this?" said Marie to Skyler.

Skyler shook her head. "Did you say that he paid you not to tell?"

"Yeah. 10 bucks."

"Oh my god," said Marie, leaning back against the door and looking at the ceiling. "10 bucks?" she said, looking back at Flynn. "Cheapskate!"

"I know, I sh-should have fleeced him for a lot more, shouldn't I?"

"I hope he at least took care of you after!"

"Yeah!"

"Yeah, he did," said Skyler. "He called me right away - was it right away?" she asked Flynn. "He didn't try and pep talk you first, did he?"

"No, I was blubbering and screaming 'Mommy!', h-he definitely called you right away."

"Good. Well I went right back there, and I was really impressed - Hank had him on the sofa surrounded by pillows with multiple ice packs going along both his legs and a huge bowl of ice cream with - was it Maltesers?"

"N-no, crushed up Oreos."

"Oh right, that was your Oreos phase."

"I did not have an Oreos phase, I have…always liked Oreos, y-you just never got them for me! Now I can get my…own Oreos - there's some in that bag."

"I remember you saying that you were really touched by what good care Hank was taking of Flynn," said Marie. "And I was really touched by it too, I was really impressed by it, and now I find out it was just his guilty conscience!"

"No, he-he would've looked after me either way."

"He said that the two of you were just walking through to the kitchen when you took off without any encouragement or input from him."

Flynn snorted. "No."

"Oh my god!"

"Actually h-he was in front of me. He was…already in the kitchen and he was meant to be, like, s-stopping me at the end of the hallway. So h-he was right there and he…picked me up and righted the chair and everything r-really quickly. And he did take very good care of me."

"He better have," said Marie. "He paid you?"

"I d-definitely should have asked for more," said Flynn.

"An officer of the law giving a bribe to an eight-year-old child."

"I was nine."

"To a nine-year-old child."

"You're pretty mad, huh?"

"I am… flabbergasted."

Flynn giggled. "Th-that's a good word."

Marie turned to Skyler. "What about you? You're not saying anything! Aren't you concerned that your brother-in-law threw your son into a kitchen counter and then paid him not to tell!"

"Well, it doesn't sound like he threw him. If I know Flynn, I'll bet he was hassling and hassling and hassling Hank to let him do that. The good thing about that particular incident was that it meant you were once bitten twice shy, and you stopped trying to roll away from me all the time!"

"Oh, so you think Hank did you a favour?"

"I think this kid would not have let up. He would've said, 'Come on Uncle Hank, come on, come on, come on, let me do it, come on, come on, come on,' and Hank didn't have the resistance powers that I have."

Flynn laughed out loud. "I-is that what you were doing for my entire childhood? R-resisting me?"

"Yeah. It was hard. But I did it." Skyler winked.