Four days later, after dealing with the aliens at the retirement home, the Tennysons and Lincoln were stuck in massive traffic due to massive construction on the side of the road. Gwen and Lincoln were sitting at the dinette table, getting bored.
"So what do you want to do?" said Lincoln.
"I have no idea, but anything would be better than this," said Gwen.
Lincoln grabs his backpack and looks through it. He pulls out playing cards. "We could play twenty-one?"
"What's that game?"
"Oh, it's easy. All you have to do to get close to twenty-one or have twenty-one without going over." Lincoln takes the card out of the rubber band and he begins to shuffle the cards.
"Uh-huh."
"Faces are 10s, aces are 1 or 11, and if you want another card, you have to say 'Hit me.'"
"And where did you learn this game, Lincoln?"
"Oh, pick this up from an old friend of mine." Lincoln finishes shuffling the deck and gives Gwen two cards, then himself two cards, and puts down the deck.
The two start playing the game, and Gwen quickly learns that Lincoln was really into the game, managing to get six wins over her as she keeps going over. On the next play of the game, Gwen looks to see if she got two fives.
Gwen thought she could win this if I got something other than a face card. She said to Lincoln, "hit me."
"Are you sure?" said Lincoln.
Gwen smiles. "I'm positive."
"Alright then." Lincoln takes a card from the pile and slides it to Gwen.
She looked to see if the card was an ace. Gwen smiled, getting the right card and maybe beating Lincoln.
"Do you want another hit?"
"No, I'm good."
Lincoln gets himself a card from the deck rather than another, and then he puts his cards down, "alright, I fold. What do you got, Gwen?"
Gwen flipped over her cards. "I got twenty-one."
"Ah man, you beat me." Lincoln shows Gwen that he has "twenty."
"Finally, you kept beating me. How did you get this good?"
"Well, use this game to win money off of some people."
"Oh."
"Yeah, not my proudest moment."
Lincoln reshuffled the deck, and he changed to the topic that Gwen didn't think he would talk about.
"So, what's your family like back at home?" Lincoln asked.
"My family is just normal. Why do you ask?"
"Just curious, that's all." Lincoln gives Gwen her two cards.
I might as well bite the bullet. Gwen thought she asked Lincoln, "Um, Lincoln, what is your family like?"
Lincoln paused for a moment but then said, "chaotic at best."
"How?"
"Well, let's just say my house is a madhouse if you step into it and get swapped up." Lincoln gave himself two cards.
"I see."
"Anyway, let's keep playing."
Gwen and Lincoln play the game even when they get out of traffic. At a truck stop, Max walks up to the two and checks on them.
"So what card game are you two playing?" said Max.
"Twenty-one," said Lincoln.
"Mind if I join?"
"Sure, grandpa, more the merrier," said Gwen.
Lincoln reshuffled the cards and gave Max cards; he soon learned that Max was great at winning more rounds than he and Gwen combined.
"Mr. Tennyson, how did you get so good at twenty-one?" said Lincoln.
"I picked this up with some friends during my job in Vegas," said Max.
"You mean you were doing a plumbing job in Las Vegas?" said Gwen.
Max lightly chuckled, "Yeah, there was a lot of plumbing to be done around the middle of summer."
Lincoln wonders what type of plumber would travel across the state, but he shrugs it off and continues to play the game.
Later in the afternoon, Gwen and Max went to a grocery store to get something to cook for dinner while Lincoln stayed in the Rustbucket. The two walk into the soup aisle, and Max grabs two cans of mushroom soup.
Gwen's stomach turns a bit, thinking about what her grandpa is going to make with mushroom soup. But one thing did come to her mind, so she said to Max, "Grandpa, I've got something to tell you."
"What is it, Gwen, you don't want any mushroom soup?" said Max.
"No, not that it's about Lincoln."
"What about Lincoln?"
"He told me a bit about his family life."
"Really? What did he say? "
"He says that his family is chaotic and a madhouse."
"Hm."
"So what do you think, Grandpa?"
"I think that might be one of the reasons why Lincoln would run away, but I feel like there is something else that happened in that house."
"But he won't tell us more about it."
"Just give it some time. I'm sure Lincoln will tell us eventually that now is the time to go to the meat section and get us some pork. "
"Great," Gwen thought.
Meanwhile, back in the Rustbucket, Lincoln looks at his alien watch and thinks about how the watch changed much of his life in the past couple of weeks, but he wonders about the obvious questions. "Where did the watch come from and who made it? I bet it was some genius alien who made this watch for some scientific reason in the galaxy. I bet if this watch came near my house, my life would be a lot better. " Lincoln then rolled up his sleeve to reveal a scar on his forearm, "or maybe a lot worse."
Lincoln pulls his sleeve back down as he sees Gwen and Max return to the Tennysons come into the Rustbucket, with Max holding two grocery bags.
"I hope you're ready for pork and mushroom stew, Lincoln," said Max.
"Joy," said Lincoln, who hoped that his stomach could take another of Max's cooking for the night.