The crack of thunder echoed off the walls of the house, shaking it to its very foundation. Shawn sat upright in his bed, suddenly wide awake. Next to him, Juliet was also awake now, though she just adjusted her pillow, rolled over, and went back to sleep, apparently not about to let a simple storm interfere with her well-earned night of rest.

Shawn sighed, rolling onto his back and staring up at the ceiling as he began to count quietly under his breath. “Five…four…three…two…”

Juliet rolled over, propping herself up on her elbow. “What are you doing?” she laughed. “Measuring how far away the storm is?”

“Something like that,” Shawn nodded, returning the grin. “One.”

As he said “one”, he pointed at the door. As if on cue, it burst open and Will and Mattie came running in.

“Mommy! Daddy!” Mattie squealed, diving headfirst onto the bed and quickly working her way under the covers. “There’s thunder!”

Will was much cooler as he entered. He plopped onto the foot of the bed, apparently trying to look like nine-year-olds were too big to be scared of storms.

“Mattie was scared,” he told his parents, rolling his eyes.

Juliet smiled knowingly, scooching over as Mattie popped out on the other side of the covers between her and Shawn. “Really? Just Mattie?”

“Yes, just Mattie!” Will insisted. “I wasn’t scared. It’s just thunder. It can’t hurt you.”

Another clap reverberated through the room. Will jumped, diving under the covers with Mattie.

Shawn and Juliet smiled at each other, rolling their eyes and sighing as they made room.

“Daddy…” Mattie whispered, her eyes wide as she pulled the blanket up around her chin. “Grandpa said lightning is really electricity in the sky that can zap you if you’re not wearing your rubber-soled boots. You told me it was hungry angels with rumbling tummies.”

Shawn cleared his throat. “It’s…hungry…electrical angels…” he told her.

She looked up at him skeptically. “Do you have any scientific research to back that up?”

“Does Grandpa?” Shawn demanded.

“Yes,” she nodded. “He had a book…”

“Well, who are you going to believe?” Shawn snorted. “You dad or some book?”

She raised her eyebrows, then looked over at her mom. “The book, right?”

Juliet laughed, nodding. “Always go with the book.”

Will grinned at his father, resting his head against Juliet’s shoulder. “Who wants to read a book, anyway?”

“I do,” Mattie informed him. “But Daddy tells better stories than Grandpa.”

Shawn grinned, ruffling her hair as he snuggled up against his chest. “Of course I do. All of Grandpa’s stories have dead bodies, forensic teams, or fish guts.”

“Sometimes all three,” Will added, wrinkling his nose in distaste. “I stopped asking him to tell me stories after he told me what really happened to the Three Little Pigs…”

“What happened?” Mattie gasped, looking horrified.

Will’s eyes glinted with the evil pleasure of tormenting his sister. “The Big Bad Wolf was really a prowler,” he began, his voice low and ominous as he sat up and leaned in closer to Mattie. “And they didn’t have the proper security system installed--”

“Okay, Will,” Juliet cut-in quickly, seeing where this was heading. “That’s enough of Henry Spencer’s Fairy Tales.”

Will laughed, settling back into the pillow. “But we have to do something,” he insisted as another crack of thunder echoed through the room. “I can’t sleep.”

“Me, neither!” Mattie agreed. “I wanna know what happened to the Pigs!”

“The prowler got them,” Will told her.

“I said that was enough,” Juliet scolded him. “You’re going to give her nightmares.”

Mattie snuggled in closer to her father, who put his arm around her. “Will you tell me a story without security systems and prowlers?” she asked, blinking up at him with her innocent green eyes.

“A story?” Shawn groaned. “It’s really late for stories, Mattie-Cake.”

“Pleeeeease?” she begged, tugging on his arm. “Just one story?”

He groaned again, but didn’t bother protesting anymore.

No one was fooled for a moment, anyway.

“Fine,” he sighed. “What story?”

Mattie grinned victoriously at her inevitable victory, settling under the blankets. “Tell me about when you met Mommy.”

“At the diner?” Juliet asked. “But you’ve heard that one a hundred times.”

“Yeah,” Will agreed. “Tell us one we’ve never heard before.”

“Okay…” Shawn murmured thoughtfully, resting the arm that wasn’t propped underneath Mattie under his own head. “What about the first date Mommy and I ever went on? You’ve never heard that story.”

“What’s so interesting about that?” Juliet asked. “We just went out to dinner.”

Shawn grinned, arching an eyebrow at her. “That wasn’t our first date.”

“Yes, it was.”

“No, it wasn’t.”
“Shawn!” she snapped. “I was there. I think I remember our first date!”

“Clearly, you don’t!”

Will and Mattie exchanged concerned glances.

“Are they fighting?” Mattie whispered.

“I think so…” Will nodded.

“Is Mommy going to win?”

“Doesn’t she always?”

“Okay,” Shawn cut-in right there. “First of all, Mommy doesn’t always win. And secondly, I’m totally right! That wasn’t our first date, Jules!”

“Then, what was?” she asked, intrigued.

Shawn’s eyes flashed mischievously. “Don’t you remember The Record Room Debacle of 2009?”

A slow smile crept across Juliet’s face as the memory set in. “Oh, right,” she laughed. “But that wasn’t a date!”

“Of course it was!” Shawn insisted.

“What’s The Record Room Debacle of 2009?” Will asked, looking at his mom, then over at his dad.

“What’s a debacle?” Mattie added.

“It’s when you mess something up really badly,” Juliet told her.

“Oh,” Mattie nodded. “Then Will really debacled his math test.”

“Mattie!” Will hissed, elbowing her sharply. “Shut up!”

Shawn and Juliet didn’t hear them, though. They were looking at each other across the two quarrelling heads, remembering that day so long ago.

“That wasn’t a date,” Juliet insisted again. “That was just Buzz locking us in the record room by accident. He shut it behind him when he left, then couldn’t find the key. We weren’t even supposed to be down there.”

“Right,” Shawn agreed. “But once he locked us in, we were stuck there for five hours while the locksmith got the hinges off.”

“I remember,” Juliet smiled, her eyes sparkling. “We played Go Fish without any cards.”

“Who needs cards?” Shawn snorted. “I’m a psychic, remember? I just knew what cards you were thinking of.”

“You lost,” Juliet reminded him.

“I did not!”

“Yeah. You did.”

“I went fishing way more times than you!”

“Even if you did,” Juliet rolled her eyes. “That doesn’t mean you won. Actually, it means you guessed wrong more times than me, which means you lost. And it doesn’t even matter, because that wasn’t a date!”

“Hey, five hours together in a room with entertainment…trust me. It was a date.”

“It was not! There wasn’t any food involved.”

Will glanced over at Mattie. “Is this a story?” he asked. “Because it’s kind of a lame one.”

“Yeah,” Mattie agreed, rolling her eyes. “When they got locked in the room, I thought maybe a knight would save them or something…”

“There was totally food involved!” Shawn countered. “I shared my Mentos!”

Juliet laughed. “That’s true. You did share your Mentos.”

“So…” Shawn started counting off on his fingers. “Food…entertainment…conversation. Face it, Jules. It was a date.”

“I didn’t even like you then!” she insisted, not about to concede a single point willingly.

“Sure you did.”

“No, I didn’t!”

“But you wrote in your diary that I was totally dreamy! And you liked my awesome hair and sculpted biceps.”

Juliet’s jaw dropped. “You read my diary?”

“No,” Shawn shook his head, grinning manically. “But you wrote that, didn’t you? You totally liked me!”

“Fine,” she huffed begrudgingly. “Maybe I liked you…but I didn’t like you like you.”  

Will and Mattie groaned in unison.

“Are they ever going to stop this story?” Will asked, covering his ears.

“It’s worse than the fish guts!” Mattie agreed.

But their parents were far from over. “Even if I liked you just a little…” Juliet pressed on, slowly losing her foothold on this argument. “That doesn’t make getting locked in the record room a date! It was just an accident!”

Shawn grinned at her, raising a single eyebrow. “Was it?”

“Of course! Buzz just lost the key!”

Shawn gently extricated his arm from underneath his daughter’s head and crossed the room to his dresser. He opened it up and dug around for a minute.

“What’s he looking for?” Will whispered.

"An argument that’ll beat Mommy,” Mattie whispered back.

“Shawn,” Juliet asked. “What are you doing?”

He turned around slowly, dangling something from his fingers as he made his way back to the bed.

“Just looking for this…” he said casually, placing the small object on the comforter.

“What is it?” Will asked, pouncing on it.

“Let me see!” Mattie squealed, grabbing for it. “Will! Don’t hog it! What is it?”

Will opened his palm and looked down, his face twisting in bewilderment. He held the object up, letting it catch the light from a bolt of lightning outside. “It looks like a key.”

He looked up at his dad, suddenly realizing. “You stole the key to the record room?”

“Yup,” Shawn admitted, smiling at his wife.
“Why?” Mattie asked.

Juliet just stared at him, caught somewhere between awe and anger. “You stole the key from Buzz?”

Shawn’s smile just grew as he shrugged innocently. “What? I wanted a date.”

“You had to steal a key to get Mom to go out with you?” Will laughed, snuggling under the blanket again. “Dad…that’s pathetic.”

“It’s not pathetic!” Shawn argued.

“Yeah…it is,” Mattie agreed with a wide yawn.

Juliet’s shock faded in a smile as she met Shawn’s eyes across the bed, where Will and Mattie were curling up and starting to drift off to sleep. “He didn’t have to steal the key,” she told them gently. “I already liked him liked him.”

Shawn returned her smile. “I know.”

“Then, I guess that’s the end of the story,” Juliet murmured quietly, resting her head on the corner of pillow Will hadn’t commandeered from her.

“Not quite,” Shawn told her, trying to contort his body so he wouldn’t disturb Mattie as he laid down. “You forgot the most important part.”

“What’s that?”

“And they all lived happily ever after.”