“Children!” Rod shouted, stamping into the playroom. “Why’d I ever have ‘em?”

“Di’nit, Papa.” Three-year-old Gregory peeked over the top of an armchair. “Mama did.”

“Yeah, sure, and I was just an innocent bystander. Geoffrey! Cordelia! Stop it!”

He waded into a litter of half-formed clay sculptures, toys, and pieces of bark twisted together with twigs and bits of straw that served some fathomless and probably heathen purpose known only to those below the age of thirteen. “What a mess!” It was like that every day, of course. “Do you realize this room was absolutely spotless when you woke up this morning?”

The children looked up, startled, and Cordelia objected, “But that was four hours ago, Papa.”

“Yeah, and you must’ve really worked hard to make a mess like this in so short a time as that!” Rod stepped down hard—into a puddle of ocher paint. His foot skidded out from under him; he hung suspended for a split second, arms thrashing like the wings of a dodo trying to fly; then his back slammed down to the floor, paralyzing his diaphragm. For an instant of panic, he fought for breath, while Cordelia and Geoffrey huddled back against the wall in fright.

Then Rod’s breath hissed in and bounced back out in a howl of rage. “You little pigs! Can’t you even clean up after yourselves!”

The children shrank back, wide-eyed.

Rod struggled to his feet, red-faced. “Throwing garbage on the floor, fighting over a stupid piece of shelf space—and to top it off, you had the gall to talk back!”

“We didn’t… We…”

“You just did it again!” Rod levelled an accusing forefinger. “Whatever you do, don’t contradict me! If I say you did it, you did it! And don’t you dare try to say you didn’t!”

He towered over them, a mountain of wrath. “Naughty, stupid, asinine brats!”