By the Numbers by Chris Owen and Tory Temple Page B

good. She also wasn't shy about asking all sorts of other questions.
    "Did you meet Dad at work?" She was sitting at the kitchen table with a huge pad of paper and a box of colored pencils. Deuce wasn't sure what she was drawing, but it seemed to be taking sheet after sheet of paper, most of which were landing on the floor.
    "Not really." Deuce was making coffee and Trey was taking his turn with the dogs in the backyard. Deuce had expected Lacey to run after them as she had every other time, but apparently she had other things on her mind. "I met your dad when he saved Q from a fire."
    "He does stuff like that," she said agreeably. She didn't look up from her current picture, which seemed to be mostly green. "But you're the first one he let move in. Do you think he'll get more?"
    Deuce tilted his head. "More roommates?" he finally asked. "I don't think so. He'll run out of bedrooms."
    "I'm not sharing with anyone!" She looked up and grinned. "Except the puppies. And a horse."
    "You're going to get a horse? Cool." Deuce was pretty sure she wasn't getting a horse.
    Lacey waved a hand at him. "When I'm big. It'll stay in the yard, though. So how come you moved in here?"
    So Deuce explained about his apartment, and how most places wouldn’t let him move in with a whole bunch of dogs, and how her dad was all right with just three dogs. Lacey seemed to think about for a bit, but mostly she seemed happy that Deuce wasn't the first in a line of stray people her dad would bring home.
    Later that afternoon, Deuce answered questions about not having a wife or kids, and where he worked, and what games he liked, and what books he read, and how come Q had such a weird name. He left his bedroom door open while he unpacked, so he'd seem friendly and not like he was hiding, and wound up with three dogs and a little girl curled up on the floor while he folded his shirts.
    "There's nothing on TV and Dad says I can't help him cut up vegetables for supper 'cause they gotta be thin. Like, really skinny. I don't see anything wrong with thick slices, do you?"
    Deuce eyed her. "Is this a trick question?" He added a T-shirt to the stack.
    "What's a trick question?"
    He explained trick questions and worried that Trey would be unimpressed with him. His little girl really liked the idea of trick questions.
    "Can I help you unpack?" she asked, and Deuce was trying to find a polite way out of that when Trey rescued him with many apologies, though none at all were needed.
    Deuce was just glad that she hadn't run away from him, crying.
    That was just day one. Things did calm down after that as the novelty of the new guy wore off, and Trey took her out somewhere for the second afternoon, which left Deuce with time to explore the house and backyard and settle himself in.
    After supper on day two, the three of them had watched a movie that Deuce had found hysterically funny but Lacey had deemed weird, and then Lacey had taken Six and Pi to bed. All three of them had gotten up crazy early, and Deuce had taken the pups outside to do their thing, just to make sure it happened without mayhem.
    By the time Lacey was ready to go back to her mom, Deuce was exhausted from trying to impress her and was very glad he wasn't the guy she'd be asking for a car when she was a teenager. He was almost ready to give her anything she wanted already.
    When Trey had taken her for the drop off, Deuce gathered his laundry and got that chore underway and tried to get his head back into an adult frame of mind. He had to figure out the quickest way to his office, see if he could bike it without hurting himself, decide what he'd do to keep fit if he couldn't do that, and get his clothes ready for work. His room was clean, not having had time to degrade to the stage where he'd need to tidy up, so that left a bit of time for him to fill.
    He got his laptop and settled at the kitchen table to look at maps, plotting various ways to get to work. The sound of a truck door slamming came not