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"I can't put this away. You gotta reach up and do it," Kahnso said, passing off a box of lasagna noodles to his daughter.

Alex looked at the noodles, started to grin (lasagna was one of her favorites), then frowned. Too short to be even eye-level with her father's navel, Alex moaned, "I can't put it up there!"

"Well, I can't either," Kahnso said, and shrugged. "So what are we gonna do, huh?"

Kahnso and Alex both rubbed their chins, humming thoughtfully. A few seconds passed and Kahnso cried, "I know!" with an index finger extended. "Two-stage liftoff."

"Oh! Yeah!" the girl agreed, and started to giggle - almost cackling. "Two-stage! Liftoff! Ready for takeoff, ground control!"

The tremendous fox squatted, grabbing his daughter from behind. His paws closed around her middle, almost completely enveloping her small body. "Three..."

Alex tensed her strong kangaroo legs - legs she inherited from her mother.

"Two..." Kahnso tightened his grip on her torso. "One!"

"Liftoff!" The father and daughter cried in unison as Kahnso thrust Alex into the sky, the girl shrieking and cackling, almost tossing away the box of noodles in her girlish delight.

Remembering the mission she needed to complete in orbit, Alex slid the noodles onto a shelf above the fridge and said, "Ground control, mission completed."

"Careful, that re-entry is rough," Kahnso said and brought Alex rushing down, twisting her, making her fly like a tiny, squirming superhero before he dropped her on her feet.

Alex, giggling riotously, raven hair strewn around like a witch's locks, clung to her father.

Kahnso smiled and patted the back of her head. "Nice touchdown. Glad to see the landing gear deployed this time." Veronica would've killed me if I scraped up her knees again.

The little girl tittered and pawed at Kahnso's stomach. She grinned up at him with gaps in her teeth where lost baby teeth had not been filled in yet by their permanent counterparts. "Good mission! Now I'm hungry!"

The fox pulled her up again, hooking an arm under her bottom and its twin around her back. She smooched his cheek with a big, wet mwah! and he smooched back with a bit more restraint.

"Hungry, huh? Usually zero-gravity makes astronauts sick, not hungry," Kahnso remarked.

"Well, I am the best," said Alex proudly, turning up her young snout in a smug gesture. "I want-!"

"Want, want, want," Kahnso tutted. "It's all about you. What about what I want?"

Alex grumbled, long kangaroo ears falling flat. "You got to pick dinner la-a-ast night, dad!" A thought occurred to her. Kahnso could picture the light bulb over her head. "But it's mom's turn to pick tonight. I'mma go ask her!"

"Mom's not feeling good," Kahnso said, and the firmness in his voice did not invite inquiry.

Being a seven-year-old, Alex lacked the decorum to respect her mother's privacy. "How come? She was okay when we were shopping."

"She's just not feeling good," Kahnso said, a little more gently this time. "What do you wanna get? Pizza?"

"Yeah!" Alex cried, forgetting all about mom for the moment. "Pizza!"

Kahnso smooched her on top of the head, set her down on her feet. "All right, sweetie. Go find dad's laptop. I'm gonna go see if your mom's hungry."

The little girl bolted off, big feet thudding on the floor. Telling her not to run was pointless. Knocking out four of her baby teeth had not dissuaded her from speeding in the halls; nothing could kill Alex Ryan's need for speed.

Kahnso walked up the stairs and into the west wing of his mansion. Gently he opened the double doors to his and Veronica's bedroom.

"Veronica? You okay, babe?"

No answer. No light in the room. Kahnso walked inside slowly, using the soft glow of the screen on his phone to check the bed. When he didn't see her he stepped into the master bathroom.

Veronica looked up at him from the bathtub. She was submerged to the chin, eyes puffy and damp, cheeks glinting from tears. "Hey," she said lamely. "I don't really-... you know."

Kahnso debated going further. He played with his wedding band, twisting it around on his finger and tracing its etchings with a claw. "Yeah. I know," he said, and began to walk in. A dome light above the bath cast a gentle, rosy glow on the tub; its sister above the toilet and sink, which gave a harsher, brighter glow was off.

The kangaroo sat up in the tub, unmindful of her naked body with Kahnso. They had made love countless times and he saw her in the humiliating and prone agony of labor. She was more comfortable with his eyes on her body than her own.

"I don't want to talk about him," she warned.

Kahnso nodded. He knelt by the tub, rolled up his sleeve, and took the washrag she had slung over the edge of the tub. After dunking it in the soapy, warm water, he began to stroke gently down her back.

"Alex and I are ordering a pizza. You hungry?"

"I can't eat right now. I don't feel like it."

"You can't starve yourself over this," Kahnso said, sounding more like a dad than he wanted to. He leaned near, kissed her cheek, and then cupped a breast almost as an afterthought. "Alex asked me twice what's wrong with her mom. Eventually she's just gonna ignore me and start asking her yourself. What then?"

At first Veronica welcomed his touch. When he finished speaking she glared at him until he pulled away. "It's not any of her business."

"So what you're telling me is your dad - her grandfather - may actually want to patch things up, and you just want to shut her out? Look. I get it, with me. I'm not blood, I'm an outsider, but Alex-."

"You're not an outsider," Veronica said, sounding aghast. She reached for him with wet fingers, wincing as she touched his face. "God, Kahnso. I love you. You're not an outsider."

"Then talk to me about this. I cleaned up. I did that for you. There's no reason he couldn't do the same thing."

From outside the bedroom, "Da-a-ad, you in there? I found your laptop! I dunno the password!"

Kahnso sighed, smiled. Veronica smiled back, somewhat sadly. "After dinner? When Alex goes to bed? Will you please talk to me?"

"After she goes to bed," Veronica agreed. She kissed Kahnso on the lips and said, "Just get me the usual. Don't let Alex eat too much of that crap, though."

The big fox kissed her back and grinned. "Nah, she's my little girl, I get to spoil her and make her fat. If you wanna stop me, you better get out of the tub. I hate when your feet prune up, anyway."

"Shut up," Veronica laughed, smacking water at him.

Kahnso came out into the hall patting his crotch dry with a hand towel. "C'mon, Alex, let's go order some pizza," he said.

It was close to midnight when Kahnso finally tucked Alex into bed. A promise of a new video game the next day kept her from asking mom any hard questions; a mouth full of double-pepperoni pizza and bread sticks dipped in garlic butter kept her quiet too.

As her dad pulled her purple comforters up over her purple nightshirt in her purple-painted bedroom, Alex yawned and asked, "Is mom okay?"

"Mom's gonna be just fine," Kahnso affirmed, and pecked Alex on the cheek.

Alex threw her arms around Kahnso's neck and pecked back. "I love you-u-u."

"I love you too, sugar," dad replied. When she let him go, he smiled and smooched her again, then reached for the lamp on her purple nightstand. "Lights out. Think about what game you want tomorrow."

"Okay," Alex replied, yawning again. She rolled onto her side and Kahnso clicked off the lamp. Unlike most girls her age, Alex did not want or need a nightlight. She could not sleep except in total darkness.

"Night, Alex," Kahnso said quietly, and pulled the door shut until the latch caught.

Kahnso sat down on the couch beside Veronica and immediately she pressed close to him, knees on the cushions, her head on his chest. Softly he stroked down her back.

"You want to talk now?" he asked.

"I don't really know what there is to talk about," she admitted, closing her eyes in an attempt to marshal her thoughts. "I spent a lot of nights taking care of Aaron since I was old enough to stand. He was always my baby brother. My boo. He didn't really-," she sighed, "he wasn't always all street, you know? That dumb thug talk. He's smarter than that. I think it was how he coped with what was going on. If he could be all tough, then mom and dad being such pieces of shit couldn't hurt him."

She draped herself over his lap, facing up at the ceiling of the den. The TV was noise in the background. "He wrote a lot of checks he couldn't cash. Figuratively. His mouth got him into a lot of trouble. I got him out of most of it. I don't think you can say you love someone unless you get your ass kicked over them at least once."

"Or by them," Kahnso said, pensively rubbing his muzzle.

"Sometimes I feel bad that I punched you." She smiled. "Sometimes."

"Keep talking. You're paying me by the hour here."

"Funny," Veronica said. She touched his chest, listlessly dragged her fingers over it. "I was seventeen when mom died. They said it was a bad batch, or something like that. Her heroin had something in it that caused a massive coronary. I remember-," she rubbed her face, "I remember having to get Aaron dolled up for the funeral, and having to learn how to knot a tie for him because he was too stubborn to do it himself. And he kept telling me he didn't care, but when he saw her in the coffin he just broke down so hard. I've never seen my brother cry like that before or since."

"Where was your father?"

"He was there. He was... nice. I think it was the last time we were really a family, at that funeral. Everybody in the family knew what was going on with him and mom but I think they all figured we were problem kids. I didn't have any aunts or uncles I would've moved in with, given the choice."

Veronica sighed and rubbed her eyes as though she were tired. She sighed again, longer and louder, and barely choked back the urge to sob.

"My eighteenth birthday-," she swallowed, "was a month after that. After mom. Dad was so... absent after mom died. I just took Aaron with me and left. I took jobs washing dishes and doing other things like that, but I wasn't going to go back to that place."

Kahnso trailed a finger down from just below her breasts to her navel. "You did a good thing for your brother. That's noble."

"I guess. Yeah." She sniffed and whined. "He met Jamie after we moved. I thought it was just some dumb teenage love but-, well, clearly it wasn't. Jamie turned out to be such a good friend. She came from a happy family but she wasn't vapid or condescending, she listened and didn't there-there me. I think she saved both of us."

The fox smoothed Veronica's hair back. "And you never heard from your dad again?"

"No. Not until tonight. After we left, he never tried to make contact. I kept expecting the cops to show up. They couldn't take me back, but Aaron was still under eighteen. But they never came looking, and we never looked back, I guess."

Kahnso sat back, paw resting on Veronica's stomach, thinking briefly of the time when they had relaxed just like this, but her belly had been round with Alex. He glanced at the TV, picked up the remote and turned it off. "What will you do? Are you gonna talk to him?"

"I don't know what I'll say if he's different."

"You could start with hello."

"Oh, shut up."

"I'm serious. If he's clean, if he's better, you should be civil with him. What if you hadn't been civil with me after I cleaned up?"

She grunted. "You love bringing that up."

"I like to think my sobriety is a pretty big deal."

The kangaroo slowly sat up, twisted around, and sat properly beside Kahnso. Massaging her kneecaps, she said, "It i-i-is. I know it is. I'm sorry. Let's just go to bed."

Kahnso watched her stand and scolded himself for looking at her ass at a time like this. "What do you want to do about him?"

She bent and picked up the boxes the pizza and the bread sticks had come in. As she walked into the kitchen, she said, "I'm gonna call him."

Following closely, wearing a look of mild surprise, Kahnso said, "You're gonna call him."

"Yes. I am," Veronica affirmed as she put the leftovers in the fridge. Meeting his gaze, she said, "You're right, you know. You cleaned up. The last person anybody would expect to clean up, and you did it. For me." She looked away and fidgeted nervously. She said, "I appreciate that. I've loved you almost since I met you. You know that? If you hadn't gotten clean-, well, I don't know what I'd be like now."

Kahnso wrapped his arms around her. "I know," he soothingly said. "I love you too." He kissed her on the lips. "Tomorrow, Alex can go play with her cousins. I'll go away too, if you-."

"No. I want you here," Veronica said immediately.

"All right. You got it." He pulled at her arm. "Come on. Let's go to bed."

Veronica chuckled lamely. "No post-dinner exercise?"

"I'm thirty-nine and I'm tired. I'll exercise extra hard tomorrow morning."

"Until you slip on that, too," Veronica remarked. "Thirty-nine is damn close to that dreaded four-oh. You'll be old then."

Kahnso frowned, but his eyes were playful. "You're eight months behind me. You think you can find a hot new boytoy before you turn that dreaded four-oh yourself?"

She grinned. It felt nice to grin after so many heavy emotions. "I've got dozens on retainer. I have options, you know."

Kahnso smooched her cheek and smacked her ass. Veronica gasped, pressed into his arms, kissed him.

"Do you wanna do this right now?" he asked her.

"Yeah. Now. Before I change my mind." She kissed him, nibbled his lower lip. "I need to feel good. Please."

They raced up the stairs. Kahnso had his post-meal exercise after all. As he lay sweating and panting with Veronica, the two of them nude and pressed together almost as one body, his mind began to drift off to sleep. The last thing he wondered was whether or not Veronica's father really was clean.