It’s a broken, blue plastic Frisbee.
“Use your imagination,” says PopCorn. “I’m going to teach you to pan for gold like a hundred years ago.”
This turns out to mean standing in an icy creek collecting a lot of black sand with not a single speck of gold.
After about a quarter of an hour, Sumac’s feet are killing her. “No offense, but I’m not enjoying this.”
“Me neither,” admits PopCorn. “And it strikes me now that the water’s probably laced with contaminants from the mine. Sorry it didn’t pan out.”
Sumac moans, because PopCorn’s puns are the worst.
He clambers out and starts rubbing his feet on the grass to dry them. “Faro makes me feel fourteen again.”
Sumac thought adults were always wanting to be young again, but PopCorn says it kind of grimly.
Back in their B&B, when he finishes leaving one message (for someone called a chief geriatrician) and starts dialing again, Sumac asks quickly, “Why does being conservative mean your dad doesn’t like us?”
PopCorn presses the red button to cancel the call. “He doesn’t not like you, munchkin. He doesn’t know you yet.”
Sumac’s chewing her lip as if it’s licorice.
“Basically, the old buffer’s ticked off that I married a man instead of a woman.”
She stares. “But that was donkey’s years ago.” What, more than twenty? In the last century, anyway. Which is a long time to stay mad.
“Yeah, well, it’s hard to teach a dumb old donkey new tricks,” says PopCorn, and adds a pretty convincing hee-haw.
Not as good as Aspen would do it, but it makes Sumac grin.
Then PopCorn says he needs to go in the bathroom and have a Dull Conversation with the other parents by Skype before they’re all in bed, even though it’s only seven here in Yukon and the sun’s still high in the sky.
A Dull Conversation means an Adult Conversation, because Sic once heard the phrase wrong. Sic got to make up most of the family slang just by being born first, which isn’t fair, but there you go.
Sumac’s listening to her summertime playlist, but she presses pause when PopCorn’s voice goes up. “I know it’s a lot for you all to take in,” he’s saying, “and I’ve no right to spring it on you like this, it’s just that I’m in such a state, I can’t — a score of twenty-two counts as mild, but still, if that’s what it is, it’s only going to get worse.”
Sumac wonders what’s a lot to take in, and what PopCorn scored twenty-two at. Technically she’s eavesdropping, but it’s because she’s stressed and she needs more information so she can calm down.
“Only for a while, obviously, just to get him properly checked out and see what the options are…. You’ve frozen, hon.” That must be PapaDum he’s talking to. PopCorn lets out a growl of frustration.
Nothing for a minute. Then CardaMom’s voice, shouting: “— hear us?”
“Just audio, no video. This Wi-Fi’s pathetic,” PopCorn tells her.
“I was asking, what about a live-in?” That’s PapaDum, gruff.
“No, I suggested two of them, working in shifts, and Dad completely freaked out about strangers under his roof.”
A silence. “We’d be strangers too.” MaxiMum’s calm voice.
“We’re his family,” protests CardaMom.
Sumac wonders how the Lotterys can count as this grandfather’s family when they live five thousand kilometers away and he’s never met most of them.
“Only in a technical sense,” says MaxiMum.
“Do you have to sound like such a robot?” CardaMom roars at her.
At this point, Sumac puts her music on again, fast, because when sibs argue it doesn’t really matter, it’s just like weather, but when parents do it —
She listens grimly to two and a half tracks about walking on sunshine and fish jumping and cotton growing high.
Finally PopCorn comes out of the bathroom wearing a crooked kind of smile and says, “Guess what? We’re going to bring my dad home with us for a visit.”
Sumac tries to look pleasantly surprised.
At seven the next evening, PopCorn pushes open the front door of Camelottery. “Greetings, earthlings!”
Sumac’s behind the grandfather, looking at the worn-down heels of his boots.
Limbs flailing, knocking a long mirror askew, Aspen gets to PopCorn first and jumps to hang around his neck.
“You brung presents?” asks Brian, behind her.
PopCorn says, “Ah …”
Sumac’s face falls. They completely forgot.
“Where the presents?” demands Brian.
“I’ve got half a candy necklace,” Sumac offers.
“We’ve brought my dad,” says PopCorn, too brightly, gesturing toward the old man in a ta-dah way. “Everybody, this is Iain. Your fourth grandfather.”
Brian stares balefully. “That not a present. Where his eyebrows?”
Sumac tries to distract her with the candy necklace.
Brian scowls but puts it around her neck. “Where is they?” she asks again.