“Maddie, wash up and get your sister inside, too, please.”

Maddie turned around and screamed her sister’s name, making him jump a few feet.

“Madeline!” Kelly’s voice wasn’t loud, but had that mom-command in it. “We’ve had a talk about that before. Daddy could have yelled for your sister, too. But he asked you to get your sister inside and you know what he meant.”

Maddie’s mouth turned down. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Your uncles and I still do that.” Vaughan winked as Kensey came running in.

“You don’t haveta yell,” she told her big sister.

Dinner went well but as they were cleaning up, they hit another snag.

“Don’t I need to sign something?” Kelly asked Maddie.

“I only have a few math problems left. I’ll do them on the bus tomorrow morning.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll go bring your homework down and do it here at the table. Then I’ll go over it and sign it.”

“It’s two questions. They’re easy. I still have to shower.”

“None of those things you said are an answer to anything I told you to do.”

“Daddy said it was okay.”

Vaughan sat back in his chair. “I did?”

“Today. I showed you my work and said I had some left and would do them tomorrow and you said that was fine.”

“Do you think I’m ever going to find that an acceptable excuse?” Kelly shook her head.

“Aren’t we supposed to obey our parents? He’s my parent.”

Vaughan knew his kids were strong-willed. It wasn’t that they were always angels with him, either. But this day-to-day stuff was unexpected. Kelly seemed far more at ease dealing with it than he was.

Kelly sighed. “I’m so disappointed in you, Madeline. He didn’t know the rules and you used that to get the answer you wanted. Now go get your homework and bring it down immediately. I’m seriously wondering if an end-of-school party is the best idea for you if this is your attitude.”

Maddie burst into tears and threw her arms around Vaughan, babbling at him that she was sorry. He patted her shoulder, feeling like an ogre.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. I did say that.”

Kelly’s posture went stiff and then she narrowed her gaze at him enough he knew he was in trouble.

“You do still need to obey your mother right now.”

He kissed the top of Maddie’s head before she left the room.

“I didn’t know she wasn’t allowed to do that.”

Kelly’s eyes went wide and then narrowed. “Wrong thing to apologize for. She knew you didn’t know the rules. That’s why she asked you instead of me. And then I called her out and told her it was disappointing. And you said hey no big, I said that thing you manipulated me into saying.”

“I just wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. We don’t need to be so harsh.”

“Oh, we don’t? Your nearly three weeks of full-time parenting has made you a big enough expert to tell me the years I’ve put into helping them be better people is harsh?”

“That’s not fair. I’m trying.”

“I just gave you a gold star. It’s invisible but I promise it’s there. Now to the actual point instead of your hurt feelings. I’m trying to teach them how to understand that what they do impacts other people. It’s a big-picture thing, Vaughan. She’s in fifth grade, of course she doesn’t want to do her homework. But she used someone else’s ignorance to get away with breaking a rule. It’s not the homework, it’s the way she needs to have empathy. That’s not harsh, that’s our job as parents. They need to be adults someday. Adults who can stand by their words and deeds.”

Like he hadn’t. She didn’t say it aloud, but he heard it anyway. And she’d been right.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

“You don’t need to be sorry.” Kelly shook her head. “We’ll talk about this in private later.”

He wanted to hash it out right then, but the girls were hovering, he knew. They’d get back to it that night.

* * *

ONCE KELLY HAD gotten all the homework handled, the showers done and the clothes laid out for the next day, it was time to put the girls down. Then Kensey got up because she needed a drink of water. The next time, ten minutes later, Kelly’d been walking down the hall toward her room when she caught Kensey with her headphones on, playing a video game.

It was after taking away the video game and headphones and tucking them into the time-out drawer that she realized something pretty important. Enough that it brought her to a complete stop.

Vaughan had been in their house for three weeks. And until very recently they’d treated him like a guest. But over the past several days there’d been a return to their usual behavior. On the whole, great kids, but they could act up like anyone else. And they did.

The girls were getting used to him being there. They’d stopped using their company manners and were giving their dad a taste of what day-to-day parenting felt like.

She walked to his room and tapped.

He opened up, holding the neck of his guitar. Then he got that grin and impossibly enough she wanted to kiss him and kick him in the junk at exactly the same time and in equal measure.

“Not even, sport. We’ve got miles to go before we’re in that neighborhood. Kensey keeps getting up. I’m going to take a shower so I need you to put her butt back in bed when she gets up next.”