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“Everybody ready?” Helen asked, “Buckled up? Dominos on?”
“Yup,” Violet confirmed, taking a moment to fix Jack-Jack’s.
“Great!” Bob said, “Let’s get this show on the road.”
The Incredibile pulled out of the hidden driveway and was off down the street. It was a tradition in their family that one night in December the whole Parr family would load into the car and they’d drive around to look at the Christmas lights, then stop for hot chocolate and cookies on the way home. This year they were doing it as the Incredibles. It had been Bob’s idea. He’d come up with all sorts of justifications, like deterring crime and reassuring people by having a visible presence or showing people that heroes were humans just like them. They all knew that he really just wanted an excuse to drive the Incredibile around town, but no one saw the need to call him on it.
“Look at that one!” Dash pointed out the window at a house that had set up two inflatable decorations. The first one depicted Santa climbing the Christmas tree to escape from a guard dog. The second was a dragon, probably sold as a Halloween decoration originally, had been set up by some morbid or mischievous soul to loom over the inflatable tree as if it was about to eat the unaware Saint Nick.
“You would like that one,” Violet groaned, “I like that one better.” The house she pointed at had tall hedges around it, which they’d covered in blue, green, and purple lights. The color scheme continued onto the house itself and to the modest nativity scene in the upstairs window, making the whole house look almost like it was underwater. Helen could see why Violet would like it.
Jack-Jack burbled and laughed, a bit young still to have opinions on house lights. Helen’s personal favorites were the ones where the lights dimmed and brightened to look like fireflies or stars. Bob preferred the more colorful decorations. There were always a few houses that went full hog on decoration, and those were always guaranteed to make the whole family ooh and aah. Like that one up ahead…
Helen felt her eyes go round. Dash’s jaw sagged open as Bob blindly pulled off to the side of the road to gawk. Violet slowly climbed out of the car, the rest of the family close behind.
The house and yard in question were almost entirely covered in red christmas lights, with a red, white, and gold tree in the window. But that wasn’t the remarkable part. The remarkable part was the huge picture of their family on the garage door that had been lit up with small floodlights, taken the day of the Everjust crash and edited to give them all santa hats. The remarkable part was the version of their “i” logo on the roof made out of red, white, and yellow christmas lights. The remarkable part was that the lights in the yard spelled out “thank you”.
Helen covered her mouth, stunned. Bob laid a hand on her shoulder, utterly beyond words as he stared.
One of the upstairs windows had a light on, and a little girl quite literally flew past it. She paused when she spotted the Incredibles on the sidewalk below, hovering under her own power, then flew back further into the house. She came back a moment later with a boy around Dash’s age who would have looked exactly like her if not for the way his eyes glowed. His eyes visibly widened when he spotted them, and both children waved excitedly.
Tears beginning to fall, Helen waved back. Bob pulled her up against his side, still gobsmacked. Dash and Violet jumped up and down as they waved back, cheering.
A woman who was probably the children’s mother came to the window to retrieve them, only to freeze when she spotted what the two of them were looking at. Even silhouetted in the window, Helen could still see the mother’s mouth move. She was whispering “thank you.”