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“Are we really doing this?” Oswald said, steadying Jack Vessalius’s feet on his shoulders.
“Don’t be a wuss, Nii-sama,” Lacie said from the window where she was presently cleaning out the room inside of any and all valuables. “—And move a few feet over to the left, please, there’s a dear.”
Oswald did as he was told. “I am just unsure if this is the best course of action,” he said. “Surely there are better ways to extract your revenge on Miranda Barma than to—”
“There isn’t.”
“You are six weeks postpartum, Lacie.”
“So what?” Lacie said. “It’s not like Junior’s complaining.”
“It can’t speak, for one!” Jack said, and he and Lacie both laughed.
“That is not the issue here,” said Oswald. “We did not bring Junior along, and not only is it too young to have opinions, but its opinions on your housebreaking habit would be entirely irrelevant here.”
“Then what’s the issue?” Lacie said. “I’m having fun, Jack’s having fun, you’re having fun—”
“I am not,” said Oswald.
“—Miranda isn’t having fun, but quite frankly I don’t want to see the day when she does. What do you mean, Nii-sama, you’re not having fun? You have Jack on top of you, I thought you would adore that.”
Oswald was so flustered by this that he was entirely unprepared when Lacie and her bag of stolen goods climbed back out the window and down Jack; he lost his balance and fell and sent the three of them tumbling into the soft earth. Lacie cursed; Jack yelped; Oswald grunted with pain as one of them landed elbow-first on his stomach.
“What was that you were saying about me being six weeks postpartum, Nii-sama?” Lacie said, laying on top of him.
“That you shouldn’t be physically exerting yourself so much.”
“Yes,” said Lacie. “On that note, I think I might be bleeding again.”
The panic from that statement shot Oswald to his feet; ignoring this, Lacie opened her bag and presented it to Jack.
“Is this everything?” she said.
Jack peered inside. “Hm…I think so!” he said. “Other than the stuff she already sold on eBay, I mean. But there’s not much we can do to get that back now.”
“Hmph,” said Lacie, closing the bag and swinging it over her shoulder as she stood. “We’ll see about that—Nii-sama, what are you doing with your phone?!”
“I am contacting Oscar Vessalius, he should know what to do about—”
“Please, Nii-sama, I’ve torn my stitches a hundred and one times before, you don’t need to call him every fucking time. ”
“You don’t have any stitches right now, Lacie.”
“So what! You still can’t call Oscar!”
“Why not ?” said Oswald. “Is it the housebreaking? You and Jack have done much, much worse than that. You wouldn’t be in any trouble—”
“Of course not, I’m never in trouble,” said Lacie. “Jack, you explain it to him, I’m tired and want to go home.”
“Okay,” Jack said, as Oswald helped him to his feet. “I stole a couple things from Oscar and pawned them with Miranda, and now Lacie wants to give them back.”
“Jack.”
“That’s the truth, though, Lacie,” Jack said, tilting his head as though confused. “What did you want me to say?”
“It was much, much more than ‘a couple’,” Lacie said, brushing past him and starting towards their car. “You made 8k, at least—”
“Are you mad that I didn’t give you a cut, Lacie?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Lacie, “I can make 8k or more easy. 8k doesn’t matter to me, Jack, how much shit you stole from your brother does!”
“But you steal from Oswald all the time!”
“I do not!” Lacie turned to Oswald. “Nii-sama, plug your ears.” She turned away. “Of course I steal from Nii-sama, but not like that! Nii-sama is different from Oscar, he was meant to be stolen from and if I’m the one who’s doing it I can keep away other pests, like Levi. Oscar is paying for everything you have and also babysitting Junior and making sure it’s healthy, all for free! Who do you expect to take care of the baby if you drive him off?”
“Oswald,” Jack said promptly. “And why should I care about the baby?”
“It’s your baby too,” said Lacie. “You helped make it.”
Jack scoffed. “Please, I just poked holes in a few condoms, that’s all,” he said. “You were the one who decided to grow it and keep it and name it.”
Lacie rolled her eyes. “Well, I’m sorry you chickened out of your baby trap,” she said. “Really, truly, I am. But you still aren’t allowed to make your brother mad at us.” She tapped Oswald on the arm. “You can unplug your ears now, Nii-sama.”
He did so. “You are aware that I could still hear everything the two of you were saying?” he asked her.
“Of course, but pretend like you didn’t,” she said. “It’s all irrelevant to you, anyway. The important thing is getting all this junk back into Oscar Vessalius’s house before he notices it’s missing.”
“How long has it been stolen for?” Oswald asked.
“No clue. Jack?”
Jack shrugged, and then said, “You know, Oswald, I figured you would be a lot more upset about the condom thing than you are. What gives?”
“Lacie likes the baby,” said Oswald. “Regardless of whatever it is you did, that’s what’s important here.”
“Also, Levi never gave us the talk so Nii-sama doesn’t know what condoms are,” said Lacie. “Don’t tell him, by the way, Jack, it’s much funnier like this. And if he finds out he’ll kill you dead.”
“Okay!” said Jack.
“This sounds like something I need to know, then.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Nii-sama, of course it isn’t,” said Lacie. She reached the car and knocked on its roof. “Unlock it now please, Nii-sama, don’t drag your feet.”
Oswald, the only member of their little trio to actually have a driver’s license, did as he was told. Lacie opened the car door and stretched out across the backseat; Jack took the passenger seat, and so, unhappy with his fate, Oswald got into the driver’s seat and backed out of the Barma’s neighbor’s driveway, badly.
“Put on your seatbelts,” he said.
“Already done,” Jack said with a grin, and then in case Oswald looked over to confirm it he pulled it over him and sat on the buckle.
“I’d rather die, thanks,” said Lacie, but she sat up and buckled herself in nicely regardless.
Oswald noticed both of these events, but did not comment on them as he made his way down the street at ten miles below the speed limit and Jack heckled him for his bad driving. Lacie was the best driver out of the three of them, keeping consistently to twenty above and weaving in and out of traffic like a needle in a tapestry, but her driving always made Oswald want to throw up and ever since she hit her fifth month of pregnancy she started claiming that driving was too rough on her body and so Oswald had to do it. Oswald was still unsure whether or not he was glad about this.
“Do you want me to take you directly to Oscar Vessalius’s house, or somewhere else first?” Oswald asked, once they were approaching the exit to the neighborhood.
“Take us home for now,” Lacie ordered. “We need to plan out exactly how we’re getting these things back where they belong without Oscar noticing anything off. And we’ll need your help for that, Nii-sama, I want it all to go right.”
Oswald nodded, turned on his turning signal, and waited until there were no cars in sight before creeping out onto the road. Here he hit the gas and very nearly approached the speed limit—close, but not quite, because if they got into an accident Jack would fly through the windshield and die, and he didn’t want that.
It had not occurred to Oswald that though nobody could fly through anything and die if you got hit while going twenty-three miles per hour only it was still dangerous to drive significantly below the speed limit, and it would not occur to him for quite some time—in fact, not until he had an object lesson in driving fifty miles below the speed limit on the highway. For now, though, he drove through town at an acceptable five to ten miles beneath the posted speed limit and pulled into the Baskerville driveway an hour and a half later.
“We are getting a chauffeur for the drive to Oscar’s house,” Jack said, “we have to, if I have to be driven around by Oswald for five more minutes I will go insane.”
“You’re already insane, Jack,” Lacie told him.
“Axe-wielding crazy insane,” said Jack, “I’ll get an axe and start hacking you apart, your brother I mean—”
“Wanna try again?” Lacie said sweetly.
“—The car, I’ll go crazy and dismantle the car. I really mean it!” he added when Lacie looked neither convinced nor worried. “I know that you guys have personal drivers—”
“Yes, I do, and it’s my Nii-sama.”
“Professional ones,” Jack corrected himself. “I’ve seen how Levi gets around.”
“We are not letting Levi in on this,” Lacie said. “He’d ruin it all. We’re leaving him at home with the baby, he likes it.”
“Does he?”
“Yeah. He even takes it out of the crib and plays with it sometimes, it’s crazy,” said Lacie. “I mean, I’ll do it too if I’m in the mood, but he does it every day. More than once, even!”
The three of them took a moment to marvel at the damage that baby fever had done to Levi Baskerville’s mind before heading into the house and up into Lacie’s bedroom to plan out how best to return the stolen goods. Lacie had already prepared a blueprint of Oscar’s house, and Oswald was prevailed upon to get his work schedule, and Jack had the keys, and so eventually it was decided that at the beginning of Oscar’s next shift the three of them would break into his house and return all that they had attained thus far; after that was figured out, Lacie got on eBay and began searching for evidence of what Jack and Miranda had already sold.
This was a fruitless task. At the end of the day, she only got eighteen addresses for her troubles, only seven of which were within a fifty-mile radius of town; she and Jack spent that night and much of the next day breaking into those seven houses and stealing back each of the items Jack had sold to them, as well as snacks and pocket money if they happened to run into any. Oswald was not invited; Jack claimed that he drove too slowly to be of much help in a robbery spree, and Lacie said that she wanted him to keep guard over the reclaimed stolen items so that Levi didn’t get his hands on them and Oscar did not learn of their condition. He also watched the baby, though he had not been asked to do this. He found such work relaxing. Babies, after all, never insulted you.
It was two days later when they finally decided to return the stolen goods. Oswald had made Lacie catch up on the sleep she’d missed during her and Jack’s robbery spree; Jack had been told that he could do as he pleased, but Oswald suggested that this include resting, since he was the one of them who knew his brother’s house the best. Who knew if Jack actually had slept—but he was as bright and cheery as ever when they all piled in Oswald’s car early the next morning in the hopes of getting to Oscar Vessalius’s house soon after he had arrived at work.
He lived in a gated community, so this was tough; naturally, he would receive a notification if any of the Baskervilles entered to visit him. Luckily, Lacie and Oswald were in the habit of coming over to visit Jack—especially now that the baby was born and home from the hospital, and Oscar could be relied upon as a good free source of reliable babysitting. He liked babies more than Levi did, and didn’t stop liking them when they were loud or smelly; he knew how to care for babies better than Oswald did, and wasn’t apt to get sucked into some primary source and forget to feed them. It was hardly uncommon for one or the other of them to show up at odd hours, ostensibly to spend time with Jack but really to learn how to better keep a baby. Oswald would ask questions and take notes; Lacie would ignore Jack’s existence and follow Oscar like a shadow, observing everything he did in order to later attempt to recreate it, if she was in the mood. Now, the three of them were hoping that Oscar assumed that they were here to try something similar, if he saw the notification at all; it had occurred to exactly none of them that, like the Baskervilles, the future head of the Vessalius family did not have to work if he did not want to, and if he thought that the baby needed help or was being left alone in his house for long periods of time, he would come right back to take care of it.
They made it into the neighborhood with no trouble, giving Jack’s name at the gate and then heckling Oswald until he finally agreed to drive fifteen miles per hour. They parked in the driveway as if this were a normal visit and headed to the front door, bringing along the stolen goods hidden in a baby bag and a zip-up stroller, just in case Oscar thought to check his camera doorbell. Jack unlocked the front door with the spare key Oscar had given him and they filed inside, Jack and Lacie relaxed as ever, Oswald unnaturally on edge.
Once inside, they closed and locked the door; the stroller was taken to the guest room and its contents abandoned in the guest room crib, and then the baby bag was ransacked. Jack remembered where some of the items went; he was sent running off to restore them to their proper place. For everything else, Lacie and Oswald roamed the house like wild cats, placing things where they thought they belonged or where they might reasonably not have been missed. A handful of rare coins was shoved between the living room couch cushions; antique china was left to gather dust in the least-accessible kitchen cabinets; an armful of vintage clothing was hurriedly shoved into a dresser in a guest room, and then taken out again and folded neatly by Oswald. They had nearly managed to get everything back in place (or at least reasonably hidden) by the time a car engine could be heard pulling into the driveway; Jack glanced out of his brother’s bedroom window and then tore out of the room like a bat out of hell, grabbing Lacie first from where she was returning prescription medications to the back of a cabinet below the sink and then to where Oswald was carefully ensuring they hadn’t left a hair out of place.
“Oscar’s come back early!”
“Shit!” Lacie followed at his heels, slammed the cabinet door messy behind her. Oswald whirled away from his arrangements, making for the stairs. By the time the front door opened, Lacie was sitting on the kitchen counter, chatting with Jack about less than nothing while they broke into some pita chips and hummus; Oswald was doing the dishes while keeping a close eye on the baby, which had been placed on a cushion on the counter next to Lacie and was currently chewing on its fingers with its gumless mouth. It appeared that child endangerment had been their only immoral activity of the morning, which was a relief; they were still inexperienced in child endangerment and engaging in it while also pulling off a reverse theft had been nice practice for them. Oswald was the only member of the trio to feel a slight pang of conscience at this; Lacie was quite pleased with herself, sure that she had done a favor for a friend and repaid him some of the help he had given her when she was younger and in the hospital; not even Jack knew how he felt about any of this, but he seemed to be having a good time, at least. They were in some trouble, but not much; Oscar was used to these antics, and surely he had not yet had the chance to realize that Jack was stealing from him for pocket money that could have been easily gotten elsewhere, so he wouldn’t be really mad at them. Life was good, and what could have been a problem had been nipped in the bud; surely, all three of them must have been thinking, things would continue on like this for far enough into the future that nobody would have to worry about a thing.