Author's Note: This one-shot is a follow-up to The Ultimate Betrayal (and with the ideas I've had for this fic's chapters lately, I suspect this won't be the only follow-up one-shot I write, haha). Enjoy, readers! :)

A Weird, Cultish Family

All in all, dinner with Grace's boyfriend could've been a whole lot worse. Not that Tony was a problem—really, the boy was nothing but polite and respectful; the real issue was, of course, Neil. Eva had spent about half her time during the meal kicking him under the table to keep him from saying something rude about Tony, and afterward, she'd had to glare at him when Grace suggested she and Tony go to her room. Neil scowled back at her, but didn't verbally object, which Eva counted as a victory. Grace had been too happy about having Tony at their house to notice her father's distinct lack of happiness, and Eva didn't want to have her daughter's bubble burst if it could be avoided.

In any case, all Grace and Tony did in her room was play videogames, so really, Neil was just being an overprotective idiot.

Said overprotective idiocy continued on into the next day, not long after Grace left to have lunch with Tony.

"We shouldn't have let her go," Neil was saying as he stood in front of the kitchen counter, spreading mayonnaise on one of the two slices of bread before him.

From where she stood behind her husband, Eva rolled her eyes. "Neil, stop acting like a perfectly nice boy is plotting to kidnap our daughter," she chided, taking a sip of her tea.

"Well, he could be!" he insisted without turning to look at her. "For all we know, he could be trying to lull us into a false sense of security before he snatches Grace up and takes her to his dragon lair."

"His dragon lair," Eva repeated, deadpan. "If that's a joke, it's officially your worst one ever."

"Who said I was joking?" Neil asked rhetorically, moving his mayonnaise-covered knife to the second bread slice.

Eva grunted, taking another sip of tea in an effort to calm herself. "You're ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous."

"I'm concerned, Eva, not ridiculous."

"Grace wouldn't even have a boyfriend if it were up to you."

"Hey, there's nothing wrong with her staying single forever." With both bread slices now slathered with mayo, Neil placed his knife on top of the open mayonnaise jar nearby and stepped over to the refrigerator. "Think about it," he went on as he opened the refrigerator door. "The three of us could live together as a family for the rest of our lives."

"Yeah," Eva said, shaking her head. "A weird, cultish family."

Neil almost dropped the packs of cheese and bologna he'd just dug out of the fridge. "Excuse me?!" He quickly placed them on the counter and closed the refrigerator before whirling around to face Eva, his brow furrowed in indignation. "I do not want our family to be a cult! Cults do seriously evil crap like brainwash members and murder kittens! I just want our girl home with us forever! That's not cultish!"

"Are you even listening to yourself?" Eva set her tea down on the small counter next to the oven and turned to Neil with a flat stare. "What part of Grace being stuck at home for the rest of her life doesn't sound cultish?"

"Oh, come off it. Lots of families in Europe and Asia live together in multigenerational homes, and no one bats an eye about that."

"We don't live in Europe or Asia," Eva pointed out. "And 'multigenerational homes' tends to mean parents, children, grandchildren, and children's spouses all living together."

Neil scowled at her very much deliberate emphasis on "children's spouses." "Must you remind me of the thought of Grace getting married?"

"Well, Neil, children having spouses is usually how we get grandchildren."

"Grace could always take her kids and move back in with us after getting divorced."

"And now you're living in a fantasy world," Eva said, rolling her eyes again. "Even if that ever happened, Grace would probably still want a house completely separate from ours."

"And she'd want that, why?"

"To have her own life, perhaps?" Eva pinned Neil with a pointed look. "Like any other young adult wanting to leave home?"

He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it after a moment. Wordlessly, he returned his attention to his half-made sandwich and pulled a bologna slice out to place on one of the bread pieces.

As he placed a cheese slice on the bologna, Eva walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "You know," she said, "Grace having a life of her own wouldn't mean she'd be deserting us."

"She'd be leaving home," Neil reminded her, sounding rather miserable as he placed the second bread slice on the cheese.

"She'd still visit."

"It wouldn't be the same and you know it." He drew away from Eva's touch and turned around to face her a second time, grabbing his finished sandwich and biting into it. He chewed and swallowed, grimacing as though he was tasting something bitter. "She wouldn't be talking to us every day, or eating with us all the time. Is it really so awful of me to want Grace living with us forever?"

You're romanticizing, Neil. Their jobs alone could make it difficult to spend quality time with Grace, especially during winter, and even if that wasn't the case, there were quite a few occasions when Grace spent more time with friends than with her parents. Even so, she was their daughter, someone they'd loved and cared for from the moment she was born. It really wasn't that surprising that Neil had such a hard time with the prospect of Grace leaving the nest.

With all that said, however...

"When it makes you sound like a cult leader, it is," Eva said out loud.

Neil pouted. "That's just mean, Eva."

"But true," she countered. "If Grace ever decided she did want to live with us for the rest of our lives, I'd rather it be because she chose it instead of you choosing for her."

"I wouldn't be choosing for her," he muttered, taking another bite of his sandwich.

"Only because you have me to curb your overzealous paternal instincts," was all Eva said before she returned to her cooling tea.