"Daddy, can we get ice cream after this?" Stella asked, bouncing in her chair as she watched me work through a stack of intelligence reports. Her black hair was messier than usual. She'd spent the morning building something in the workshop.
"After what?" I asked. She had what looked suspiciously like motor oil on her sleeve, for someone who'd told me she was working on theory.
"After you finish all those boring papers." She made a face at the files spread across my desk. "You've been doing them forever."
"It's been forty-five minutes," Reika said, coming in with a tray of snacks. "Though I suppose that is forever when you're twelve."
"See? Forever." Stella grabbed a biscuit off the tray in triumph. "And it's Saturday. Saturdays are for fun things, not work things."
She had a point. The reports would keep. Time with my family wouldn't.
"All right," I said, and closed the folder. "Ice cream. But first, show me what you've been building."
