Joy separates from Charlie and turns to me. “We have to tell Dad!” she says.
I run scenarios in my head. She’s right. We should tell Justin that Charlie can remember her outside the dream. But he’s on his private and secret romantic time with some dreamer. Do we wait? Do we tell him now? What should we do? No. She’s right. We shouldn’t wait with this news. “Let’s go now. Kids, get into your regular clothes.”
Charlie looks down at himself and he’s back to wearing jeans and his favorite T-shirt with the condor on it.
“No fair!” Joy says.
“We’ll wait for you, Joy. Come on, Charlie, let’s give her some privacy.” We turn our backs and wait while she changes out of her bathing suit and into her regular clothes.
Master Mind approaches me. “If we interrupt the pirate’s meeting with the mother of his false child, he will not be happy.”
I have to shake my head at that. “What do you mean the mother of his false child?”
“Master Mind!” Justin chides him from behind. “Her name is Sandra! I am forbidding you from calling her that!”
Master Mind lowers his head. “I apologize and accept your command. It was but a fact. I am 56% saddened that my statement hurt you, 42% happy that it did, and 2% of me does not care.”
“Let’s go!” Joy taps me and Charlie on our backs. “Put on your jetpacks!”
We turn around and start putting on our jetpacks. “What did he mean by the mother of Justin’s false child?” I ask Joy.
“He didn’t mean anything.”
“Does Justin have another child?”
She straightens and looks at me with fire in her eyes. “I’m his daughter!”
“Of course you are. But does he have another daughter?”
“I’m his daughter!” she repeats louder.
Charlie whispers, “I’ll explain it to you.”
“You’re wasting time, slowpokes!” Joy hits a button on her jetpack and rises into the air. Master Mind follows her.
I hang back and look at Charlie. “Sandra,” he whispers, “dreamed that she was married to Joy’s dad. And she dreamed that they had a boy called Luis.”
“Oh.”
“We met him.”
“Oh!”
“But he’s just a dream and Joy isn’t.”
“Ah!”
“Bye bye!” I hear Joy’s faraway voice carried on the wind. I look up and I can see she and Master Mind have entered the sun without the elevator.
“Let’s go,” I tell Charlie.
And we rise into the air.
(To be continued…)
—Told by Grampa Walt