The family's baby

Chapter 7

*Grace's P.O.V*

I decided to sneak in through the garage since it was open. My plan works out great since dad is in the back corner of it, at his wood carving bench. He seems to be inspecting a piece of wood so I take the opportunity to sneak up on him.

That's a good thing because there is a very small chance of injury with him just looking at a piece of wood. I say small because he might turn that piece into a weapon. The best scares are when he turns what he is holding into a weapon against himself. Hey, at least it's better than him doing it with something sharp! If it was something sharp, I would have to call this operation off. We might have all learned that lesson the hard way with very, very sore bottoms. We all decided by one way or another, looking at you Elena, that he doesn't play around with shop safety. It's one of the few times he actually used a physical punishment on us. The bright side about that experience was El got punished too for knowing better than to set me up like that.

When it was called for, mom usually handled it. I never asked why... I probably should one of these days. It was still pretty rare for any of us to get spanked though since we all were adopted pretty late and we weren't that bad. We all knew when to stop messing around, usually. Enough thought about my past, I'm close to him now...

"What are you doing?" I ask as I lean over his shoulder, purposefully talking louder. His hearing was a bit damaged from constantly going to concerts and not wearing ear plugs in his younger days. None of us had even known that was a possibility for him until Dad's doctor had told him that his hearing had been damaged for a while . He told us he thought that the muffled sounding voices were just a part of getting older so had never thought to bring it up with us. We had adapted quickly though, since it's not like it changed anything. We were already talking louder around him, we just had a reason why now. Plus he said it gave us girls a plausible excuse to yell across the house which mom hated. I can never understand why they purposely look for reasons to annoy each other. At least my dad does... my mom not so much. You think us kids would have done it enough but who am I to judge.

Dad visibly startles at the sound of my voice, turning around on his stool to look at me and almost hitting me with the piece of wood. I did say he might use it as a weapon. He almost seems to be in shock for a moment before he throws the wood to the side and wraps his arms around me in a giant hug. I return the hug, having to reach up to wrap my arms around his neck as lifts me off the ground, standing upright, making me laugh. I missed his hugs, dearly, while I was gone.

I wasn't that much shorter than him so I wasn't too far off the ground but it still sucked being the shortest in the family because I had wanted to be taller than at least one person in my family. I could still technically grow taller than Elena since she only had like three inches on me but that would probably never happen. A girl can dream though...

"How did you get here Gracie? I thought your mother and I were going to pick you up sometime next weekend? Who brought you here? Does your mother know and not tell me? Why do you feel so light?" Dad asks, rattling off like a million questions, the lower part of his face buried in the scarf that is resting on my head, muffling his voice. He's holding me like he never wants to let go and I believe if he could get away with it, he would.

"Yeah, Gracie. Tell him... tell him how you got home..." Zahira says and I curse her for following me up the driveway. My plan was to just put it off for as long as possible by deflecting or hoping they would be so excited to see me, they would forget to ask until it was too late to do anything about it but now that was impossible. Or was it?

"Can't explain, I have to go see mom," I say instead, slipping out of the hug and dropping to the ground before bolting for the door that led into the house. That was clearly the adult decision that I should make. It was what every sane adult would do after seeing the questioning look from their dad who now knows he is missing some very important information here.