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It was the quiet giggling, neatly amplified by the absence of shrieking and other after-dinner horseplay, that alerted Chuck that something just might be amiss. He paused at the bottom of the stairs, Dad Senses tingling. Awesome had an early morning surgery, which meant early-to-bed, which in turn meant Ellie had claimed that evening for her own. Usually at this point, she and Violet usually romped around outside for a little bit, but drizzling rain had kept them all in the house all day. A bored child made it harder to work, so Ellie had stepped in to give Chuck some time to get some work done.
But now, Chuck was wondering if that had been a bad idea. That giggling sounded like plotting.
Cautiously, he peeked around the corner of the stairs and into the kitchen/dining room area. Ellie and his somewhat-less-than-angelic offspring were at the dining room table, heads bent together. Chuck could see a trail of glitter across the floor, and bits and pieces of construction paper. Clearly, some sort of craft battle had been waged, and the victors were clearly his sister and daughter.
As he stood there analyzing the scene, Violet let out a shrieking giggle and rocked her chair back on two legs. Ellie, with the ease of long-time practice, steadied the chair with her free hand as she held out the glue pen.
“What d’ya think?” Vi asked as she took the pen.
“Hmm.” Ellie studied their creation—which Chuck couldn’t see from his angle—with a finger on her chin. “I think it needs…more.”
“More what?”
“More…” Ellie paused dramatically. “More everything!”
“I knew there was a reason you’re my favorite,” Violet told her aunt very seriously, and bent back to her project.
Chuck decided that if he waited on the stairs any longer, it was going to verge into creeper territory soon. “’Lo, fellow adventurers,” he said, rounding the corner. “Am I interrupting anything?”
Violet gasped and whirled, her elbow sending a tube of purple glitter to the ground. Ellie winced. “No, Daddy! Don’t look!”
“What?” Chuck asked.
His five-year-old pointed a very imperious finger at him. “Turn around! You can’t see yet!”
“Wait, is that for me?” Chuck asked.
Violet moved over, guarding her artwork from his sight with her torso. Whatever it was, it had taken a lot of glue. Chuck could see globs of white dripping onto the table. “No, but it’s a secret, and you can’t see.”
Chuck glanced at Ellie, who gave him the ‘it’s okay’ signal they’d worked out years before. “Oh-ho-ho,” he said, waggling his eyebrows at her as he very slowly and obviously made his way to the refrigerator. Violet let out an indignant squawk and moved, still blocking the whatever-it-was from his view (not very well; he could see that it was large, pink, and heart-shaped, which was what he’d suspected in the first place, given that it was February 12th). Grinning to himself at Ellie’s amused eye-roll, he opened up the fridge.
Violet began hopping from foot to foot, face growing red. “What are you doing!”
“All that work I’m doing is making me thirsty. I want orange juice.”
“Okay, but hurry.”
“Sure,” Chuck said, but he took his time rooting through the cabinet for a glass, grinning to himself every time Violet made an annoyed grunt that sounded disturbingly like Casey. By the time he’d located just the right glass, Sir had realized that there was another human in the kitchen, and this one was less likely to abandon him for glue and glitter. The large-pawed puppy ambled over and bumped his nose against Chuck’s hip. Horrifyingly, he barely had to lift his head to do so. “Well, hey, boy!” Chuck knelt to give him a good ear-scrunch.
Violet growled. “Daddy, you need to go!”
“But he wants to play! Look at that face.” Chuck made a show of turning Sir’s scrunched up face toward Violet, even while the puppy struggled to get away from him. He had to push Sir off of his chest in retaliation, of course, but it was worth it to see the way Violet’s eyes bugged out in disbelief.
“Sounds to me like he’s stalling, Vi-Baby,” Ellie said, smirking at Chuck. “Should we kick him out?”
Chuck had been in the game long enough to know that when his sister got in on the shenanigans, it was time to abandon the battlefield. “I’m going, I’m going,” he said. With Violet pushing on his lower back and Ellie on his shoulders, he was literally shoved out of the kitchen, Sir romping happily at their heels, thinking this was clearly the most fun game ever invented.
He did get a really good look at the valentine as he left, though. He wondered if he should warn Sarah. In the end, he decided he’d better not. She was starting to like being surprised by Vi.
At the knock on the door, Sarah checked the surveillance feeds in the basement, which Uncle Sam had finally gotten around to renovating. “Stow the gun,” she said, setting the file down. Chuck stood on the front porch of the Spy Casa, pretending to be unaware of the camera (when in reality, he and Sarah knew every camera location—and subsequent blind spot—quite intimately by this point). “He’s got Violet with him.”
Casey glanced at the monitor and snorted. “Looks like you’re going to put on another dog and pony show, Walker.”
“What are you talking about?” They headed for the stairs together.
“Kid’s carrying something big and pink and I hear civilians think today’s a holiday.”
“Yeah, it’s a shame nobody in the military ever celebrated Valentine’s Day. Think of how much money AAFES could make in chocolate sales alone.”
Casey glowered at her, which Sarah considered a victory. She didn’t even need to steel herself before she opened the front door to see Chuck and Violet standing there, thankfully with no Sir in tow. “Well, this is a surprise! Hi, guys.”
“Sarah!” As ever, Violet burrowed in for a hug as though it had been years, and not less than a day, that she’d last seen Sarah. As she did, something attached to the pink thing she had clutched in one of her hands clattered to the floor. Sarah looked down to see…a piece of candy in the shape of a heart? “Happy Valentine’s Day!”
“Thank you.” Sarah looked at the pink thing, which looked like it might be some kind of construction paper heart. She knew people customarily exchanged gifts on Valentine’s Day—she’d picked up a cover-appropriate silly stuffed dog for Chuck that had reminded her of Sir, to give to him later, and a little box of chocolates for Violet—but she’d never actually received one, herself. She and Bryce had never had the chance to celebrate conventional holidays. “Is that, um, for me?”
“Nope. I got you this.” Violet dug in her pocket for something and handed Sarah a small red envelope. “This,” and she held up the pink monstrosity of glitter, construction paper, lace, and paper hearts, “is for Major Casey Sir.”
“What?” Casey asked.
“What?” Chuck echoed.
It took Sarah everything she had not to start laughing at the utter shock on the men’s faces. The valentine was huge, crafted from bright pink and red paper. It had a smaller heart in the middle, upon which Sarah could make out some writing. Tiny candy hearts were glued to the edges, making the card flop about. Glitter rained down onto the front hallway floor from yet more heart outlines on the card.
Casey stared in obvious shock and dismay at the small creature before him, proudly holding her prize aloft.
“Well, Casey,” Sarah said, “aren’t you going to take it?”
Casey didn’t move. Sarah nudged him. Hard.
Slowly, reluctantly, Casey reached one hand out and gingerly took the homemade card. Sarah made a mental note to save the day’s footage and get a screenprint of his face, though she knew even pictorial evidence was not going to convince others of the sheer horror on the NSA Agent’s face as he stared at his valentine.
“What’s it—what’s it say?” Chuck asked, coughing to keep obvious laughter down.
Casey made a whimpering sort of noise.
“Don’t you like it?” Violet asked.
Sarah nudged him again.
“Yeah,” was all Casey could manage. “Yeah, it’s—original. Really good.”
Sarah hoped the NSA trained its agents to lie better than that, though it certainly would explain some of the security SNAFUs in the last decade.
Violet hopped insistently, twice. “Aren’t you gonna open it?”
Casey looked like he’d rather be facing down an armed bomb while naked in the middle of the desert, but he pried the card open, sending a waterfall of yet more glitter to the ground. Finding glitter throughout the house for months was going to be totally worth it just for the look on Casey’s face, Sarah decided. He took his time reading the words inside. “Thanks, kid,” he said after a minute.
“Aunt Ellie helped me make it! She said we had to make it extra special for you,” Violet said. “And we worked on it all night and I added all of the glitter, but Aunt Ellie thought we should add more even though it made the card really heavy. So what do you say? Did you read the poem?”
Sarah glanced at Chuck, who mouthed, ‘It has a poem?’ at her. She gave him a shrug; she couldn’t see the inside of the card from that angle.
“I did,” Casey said.
“So what do you say? Are you? Are you, are you?”
“You know what? It’s cold. Let’s get some hot chocolate.”
“I don’t think that,” Chuck started to say, but Violet had already let out a shriek and raced by Casey and Sarah to get to the kitchen, possibly more accustomed to Spy Casa than the oversight committee heading Project Bartowski liked. Chuck obviously saw a losing battle, for he sighed. “Guess today’s going to be a hyper day.”
“You started it,” Casey said, slapping the valentine into his chest.
“Hey, it was all Ellie this time, not me.”
“Yeah, Casey,” Sarah said. “What’d you do to piss Ellie off?”
Casey grumbled something about insulting morons where their sisters could hear and stomped off to supply the promised hot chocolate. Sarah waited until he had rounded the corner—and burst out laughing at the same time as Chuck. She laughed until her ribs hurt, giggles dying to hiccups until Chuck opened the valentine and started laughing all over again.
Inside was a poem, written in Violet’s large, childish handwriting:
Roses are red,
Violet is me,
Will you be my valentine,
Major Ca-Sey? (sir)
Nothing, Sarah thought, could top that, not even the little store-bought valentine that featured a picture of Tinker Bell and the words, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Sarah! PS – You’re still cooler than Tink!” Though it did come close.