Chapter 169: Grace: Everything Goes Wrong

It takes us about two and a half hours to go fifteen miles.

The car seat started the entire fiasco.

Everything was going fine. We even snuck Sadie into the store under the guise of a service dog, even though I’m pretty sure I’m going to hell for doing so. But come on. It isn’t like we could just leave her in the truck, and the camper’s hot without the air conditioning running.

Granted... they did make us buy a leash first, and Caine seemed abnormally interested in how easy it is to pose as a service dog, but those aren’t the type of details to derail our trip.

It all started when Caine finagled the oversized box into our cart and we made the mistake of thinking we were done. I very clearly recall saying, "Well, the hard part’s over," because choosing one was a lot harder than I thought.

Seriously, why are there so many types of car seats?

But I digress.

Anyway—we thought we were done.

Hah.

Bun had other plans. Ron calls it an "epic blowout", I call it "sensory trauma". (For me—not her.) She thought the entire situation was hilarious. We unanimously disagreed.

Caine was forced to run back to the camper for the supplies necessary to deal with the situation.

Of course, things couldn’t end there. Oh, no. That’d be too easy.

As soon as we made it to the long line of self-checkout stations, Jer had to pee, this time declaring his entire brain was floating in it and he would burst like a bomb.

Well, guess what?

You get a lot of looks when you have a kid shouting about being a bomb. I’m half-convinced the cops were called.

Not to mention, we just came from the bathrooms. But it was fine. Lesson learned: never assume kids know if they need to use the restroom.

Sara insisted she didn’t need to go at all. (This

What happened next?

Ah, yes.

it sounds. We spent another thirty minutes in the heat trying to get

five minutes to install it

Five minutes.

truck and wondering if we needed a

became what the boys call hangry, which involved a lot of snapping every time someone called her name. Which

she desperately needed to pee,

of course, we pulled over at the next giant truck stop for gas station pizza, snacks, and yet another potty

the horror doesn’t

had another epic blowout,

she threw

Everywhere.

Caine insisted everything was fine, even though up to that point it was an entire dumpster fire. Maybe two

Silly me.

I believed him.

And now?

fifteen miles from where we started... and

section of wide shoulder Caine could pull onto, so at least the camper’s not in any danger of being rear-ended.

Sadie and the children in Andrew’s sedan in order to keep

to now, where we are three adults staring at the offending truck tire that’s become

asks, finally breaking our

question, but... "No

bridge of his nose with a long sigh. "Grace, let’s get the camper

whiz by, as if

find a place who will get our truck back to us before the end of business today, then call a towing service to take it

turn on his heel and stride back to the car, briskly following orders

surprisingly calm around Caine. I didn’t even spend a second thinking about it, but he’s adapted seamlessly into our strange little group. He’s been staying in the

a public restroom, I guess. He hasn’t done a single shady thing. Okay—unless you count the stalking. But aside from that,

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