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

What happened next?

Ah, yes.

sounds. We spent another thirty minutes in the heat trying to get it installed without being slightly tilted to the right, before Caine reluctantly agreed to

us five minutes to install it in

Five minutes.

the truck and wondering

when we thought we were free and clear, Sara was hungry. So hungry she became what the boys call hangry, which involved a lot of snapping

desperately

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

the horror doesn’t end

epic blowout, all over Ron this

she threw

Everywhere.

up? No. Caine insisted everything was fine, even though up to that point it was an

Silly me.

I believed him.

And now?

from where we started... and we have a

insane miracle, the flat occurred near a section of wide shoulder Caine could pull onto, so at least the camper’s not in any danger of being rear-ended. Still, the road isn’t

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

are three adults staring at the offending truck tire

have triple-A?" Andrew asks, finally breaking our

but...

long sigh. "Grace, let’s get the camper

whiz by, as

place who will get our truck back to us before the end of business today, then call a

Alpha." He’s quick to turn on his heel and stride back

about it, but he’s adapted seamlessly into our strange little group. He’s been staying in the background, something he’s probably used to

children to 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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