“No signal?” Rose asked, looking over her husband’s shoulder.

Leonard shook his head, biting his lip under the dad-stache he’d been cultivating since the birth of their second child. He hadn’t felt like much had changed after Jocelin - he was still the same hard working musician waiting tables while his wife answered phones in the call-center, taking advantage of his parents’ doting retired freedom to watch over their baby girl while they both worked, but by the time he hit his thirties and Louis came around something had changed. Time and gravity had drawn his thin frame into a comfortable dad-bod. He’d cut his hair. He’d traded in the torn denim for khakis, and the septum piercing for the mustache.

“No.” He looked up at the kids, burning the ends of sticks in the campfire so they could draw on the large flat rock near the tent. Jocelin’d just finished high-school with honors, and Louis had another year of Junior High, but sometimes they were so alike. So enthusiastic. So full of energy, like their mother. She hadn’t changed nearly as much as he had, still kept her hair buzzed short, still got a new tattoo every year on her birthday, to the point where they jumbled together and tumbled down her arms to the wrists, stopping there so she could wear long-sleeves and pretend to be a square mom at PTA meetings early in the year, get on enough committees so that by the time she showed up to the bake sale on her Honda Shadow she’d already won the other moms’ trust and it was too late to take it back, she was already “oh that’s just Rose.”

It was a good bit, being a social chameleon, but Leo felt like he’d been wearing the mask so long that it’d become his face. Dulled his reflexes. Soften his resolve, now, when he needed it most. Now when he and Rose had something important to protect.

He put the phone in his pocket. “We should tell them.”

“We’ll tell them something.” Rose clapped to get their attention. “They don’t need to know everything.”

“Oh god no, not everything.” Leo agreed, putting two fingers in his mouth to whistle, succeeding where his wife had failed. “Okay, Blanc family, listen up! Who wants to stay out here another week?”

“Yay!” Lou’s cheer was simple, reflexive, joyous. The kid fuckin’ loved camping.

Jocelin grinned, though it faded after a moment’s reflection. “Wait, can we just do that? What about work?”

“Hold on, let me ask the boss,” Leonard put on a serious face, turned away from the kids. “Hey, me, can I have another few days off?”

He turned the other way, putting on a stern expression. “I don’t know, Blanc, these requisition forms won’t fill themselves out.”

“Daaaad,” Lou rolled his eyes in an exaggerated fashion.

Leo ignored his son, a pleading creeping into his voice. “Awww c’mon, man, please? I’ll get it done when I get back!”

“Well, okaaaay,” boss-Leonard allowed. “In fact, why don’t you take the whole week?”

“A week?” Leo’s voice pitched up. “A whole week?”

Jocelin gasped, turning to her mother. “We don’t have the supplies for a week.”

“Wanna bet?” Rose opened up the back of the car, revealing a fully stocked supply of camping equipment, food, and extra suitcases from home.

“How… why… when did you get all this?” their daughter asked, the disbelief in her voice tinged with awe rather than distrust.

“A magician never reveals his secrets,” Leonard tapped the side of his nose.

Mom shut the hatchback. “But since your dad isn’t a magician, we kind of thought you guys might want to stay out longer so he went back into town last night and picked up some extra stuff.”

Dad threw his hands up. “Camping!”

“Camping!” Lou echoed his father’s cheer.

Jocelin stepped closer to her mother. “Are you guys sure about this?”

Rose exchanged a quick glance with her husband. “Just go with it. Dad… your father… it’s your last summer break before you go off to school. You know how he gets.”

Leonard very carefully focused on his son to keep his reaction to her lie to their daughter from ruining their childhood. “Camping!”

“Camping!” Lou jumped up and down.

Rose stepped in next to her husband and put a hand around his waist. “Why don’t you two go get that stuff out of the car.” She whispered in Leonard’s ear. “You sure this is the way you want to do it?”

His tone grew flat, but his expression remained unchanged. “Let them have this week. One last week of childhood. We’ll tell them what’s going on… when we have to take that away from them.”

“Okay,” Rose said. “Okay.”

The Blanc family obviously has a secret.  Is it sinister, beneficial, or mundane? The readers voted for sinister!