“Dad, why is Mom making us go away without her?” Brian asked.

“Yes, why isn’t Mom with us. We’ve never been on a trip without Mom. Why this time?” Rachel asked. “And where are we going, anyway?”

“We’re almost there, kids.” I said. “Mom has this big project for work that she needs to finish and we were distracting her, so she rented us a vacation home that she thought we’d all enjoy. This way we’ll all be out from underfoot and she will be able to focus on completing her project.”

“A vacation home?” Brian said. “Does it have a pool?”

“Is it in the mountains or by the ocean?” Rachel asked.

“I don’t know, but Mom said it was a fitting place for us and we should be arriving any minute now,” I said.

Brian screamed out. “Is that it? OMG! I love it. It’s a giant Beagle dog!”

Rachel said, “It’s just our dog, Ralphie. He’ll love it. Dad, isn’t this cool?”

“Yeah, cool,” I said. “But I think it’s your mother’s way of telling me I’m in the dog house for a while.”

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Written for Christine Bialczak’s Simply 6 Minutes Challenge. Image credit: Alan Levine, published under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic licence.