Wayne was ecstatic when he got word that Terri RSVPed for dinner. At least Lady Bird thought he was ecstatic. It was a bit hard to tell over text. They went discussed the menu and settled on spaghetti with a white wine sauce and ground turkey with a side salad. Wayne was the only man that Lady Bird knew that was glad to cook a meal after having to work on a Saturday.

She didn't see the kid for the rest of the afternoon, but Number One reported that she had come out of the container a couple of times and that she seemed to be doing all right. It would probably be a few days before she spent significant time outside of the container. Lady Bird didn't mind since that meant she didn't have to worry about her accidentally getting into trouble or getting the minions into trouble.

Wayne came home with an armful of groceries and retreated to the kitchen, kicking out Chef in the process. All the minions more or less went out to eat on Saturdays or had leftovers, so he didn't mind not having his kitchen for a meal. Number One would stay though. He rarely went out with the others. She thought about asking him to join them, but he'd probably refuse. He did, however, show up unbidden near dinner time with a thick packet.

"These are suggestions for topics you two should go over with her." He explained as he deposited the packet into her arms with a loud thump. "You can choose which ones are most helpful. I've highlighted some of the more relevant ones for you to start with."

"Um, thanks Number One." Lady Bird struggled to contain the whole thing in her arms. It’d been a while since she saw something that contained that much paper. "I'm sure it will come in handy."

She wondered when he had time to do all of this. As far as she knew, he had been supervising the production line all day. She had never seen him slack off before, so she doubted he had done it now. His multi-tasking abilities were bar-none.

"Your welcome, Boss.” Number One start to glide away. His steps had never been heavy. “ Have a good dinner with Mr. Lady Bird and Terri. I'll keep an eye on things while you do."

After that meeting, she entered the cafeteria where Wayne was setting one of the tables. It was odd to see a normal round table with a tablecloth, but they didn’t have a proper dining room. If they ever needed to host a formal gathering, they always rented a hall. He happily hummed a little time while he did do. She sat the packet down at the place where she would sit.

"No work at the table," he chided as he eyed the packet and placed down a knife. "That's something we've always agreed on, Birdie. This is supposed to be a time we put that stuff aside and bond.”

"Actually, it's a list of questions that Number One gave to me to ask the kid. Probably supposed to help with bonding. He said he highlighted important ones." She attempted to slide the packet over to him, but it stopped a little bit away from her. Wayne put down the last utensil and picked up the packet.

"There's a lot of questions." He observed as he flipped through the packet, pausing a couple of times. "I'm not sure we need this many."

"I wasn't going to ask all of them, just a few." She took the packet back. "But at least we won't be going into the conversation completely blind. We can shred it once we don't need it anymore."

The oven dinged in the background and Wayne rushed to the kitchen to attend to the garlic bread. While he was gone, Lady Bird sat down and started looking over the packet. Some of the questions were obvious but some she never thought to ask. Did everyone who were adopting kids go through this too? If they were having to pick up this much stuff for just six months, how much did people have to do for a lifetime?

The door opened and she looked up. The kid was sticking her head in and looked at her, as if asking permission to enter. Lady Bird beckoned her over, much like one would do with a cat or dog they wanted to pet.

"You don't need to lurk in doorways, kid, especially not with a room like this. Like I said earlier, if you want something you need to speak up. None of us are mind readers here. Okay, maybe Number One, but the jury is still out on that.” She held the smile until she realized the joke had fallen flat. Yep, the kid was still as serious as ever.

The kid nodded and entered the room. She took a seat in the empty chair across from Lady Bird. Her posture was more relaxed than it had been that afternoon, but it was far from her being comfortable around her. But progress was progress she supposed.The stiffness would go away after a while.

"I didn’t want to arrive before Mr. Bird was ready with dinner." She stated as she straightened out the napkin so that it lined up perfectly with the plate. "I would've asked someone if he was ready yet, but I guess a lot of them have gone out tonight, being a Saturday and all I haven't really seen anyone around since lunch. But I guess that even minions need weekends.” Then she spotted the thick packet on her hand. "I'm sorry, Must've interrupted some important work." The kid ducked her head in apology.

"This?" Lady Bird waved the packet around. One page came loose from the staple and settled on the floor. “No, this isn't work. It's just something that Number One gave me to...help with conversing with you.” She sighed a bit as she reached down and picked up the fallen page. “Can I be honest with you, kid? I have no idea what I’m doing with this. I had no idea that the papers would actually make it through or that they got sent in. I didn’t know you were coming until yesterday. So if you’re expecting me to have some sort of cock-eyed scheme planned with you or this, you’re going to be disappointed.”

“We figured that out, Melissa and I did. She said it was about time a plan of yours went out of control.” She picked up her fork and looked it over. It wasn’t real silver, but at least it wasn’t plastic. “Though that doesn’t mean she’s not mad at you. Oh, she was mad. She tore the phone off the wall and threw it out the window. Then the landlord wasn’t happy.” The kid smiled a little bit. “Of course, the landlord is rarely happy with her. He likes me just fine. Melissa just has a tendency to be a bit destructive when she gets upset.”

“I’ve noticed.” Lady Bird replied dryly as she set the packet beside her. “So I guess tonight we need to go over a few important things so we have some place to start.”

“Actually, I’ve written down a few things that I think you and Wayne need to know. But we can look at that after we eat. We can use dinner to… chat.”

Lady Bird wasn’t sure what they would chat about. The kid wasn’t one for small talk and she and Wayne knew nothing about talking to teenagers. She certainly didn’t have a normal adolescence and he was a pretty boring teen from the stories he had told her. Soon, Wayne came out of the kitchen with the food on a trolley.

Wayne set down the food and they put it on their plates. Lady Bird noticed that before the kid started eating, she bowed her head and said a little prayer. That would be something important to note. It wouldn’t be a problem, but it was something to be aware of. Wayne started the conversation.

“So Terri, what do you enjoy doing for fun? Video games? Shopping?”

“Well, I do like video games. But what I like most is bowling, though that’s not something I can do every day.”

“Bowling? That’s kind of… 80s.” Lady Bird said. Of all the sports (if bowling counted as one) she could like, why that one? Though that would explain why her right arm seemed to be better in shape than her left.

“I know, but I enjoy it. In fact, I’m pretty good at it. I’m on the high school’s bowling team, was on it, I mean. We recently had the state championship tournament and didn’t make it, so we haven’t been doing much for the last few weeks” She admitted before she took a bite of the garlic bread. The kid nodded in approval. “We got close though. Coach thinks that the next year might be the year.

“I know some of the minions go bowling once and a while. Maybe you could tag along with them. I’d go but…” Wayne rotated his left shoulder, which popped loudly. “I have a pretty bad shoulder.” One of the leftovers from their honeymoon. It bothered him whenever he lifted anything too heavy or the weather changed. “Lady Bird is pretty decent at it though…”

“The bowling alley smells like smoke. I don’t do smokey smells.” That was only partially true. Lady Bird just didn’t like bowling. She was always sore the next day after a game. “But speaking of school…”

The kid quickly swallowed the food she chewed on and answered. “If you want to homeschool me, that’s fine. I know that’s what most villains do with their kids. A lot of heroes do too. I was homeschooled until high school, so I know how it works. And since we’re out of the running for the State with bowling, I don’t really have a reason to stay there.”

Well, that part of the conversation went a lot better than she thought it would. Lady Bird flipped through the packet. Which question should she ask next? She picked up the page that was no longer attached and read the first highlighted question.

“Um, what do you prefer to be called?” Wait, didn’t she already know the answer to this?

“Terri’s fine, but you don’t have to call me that if you don’t want to, Lady Bird. That goes for you too, Mr. Bird. I don’t mind if you call me Kid like you usually do.”

“Please, call me Wayne.” He insisted as he took a sip of his wine (the kid had water of course). “I think living together for a while has granted you first name privilege with me. You don’t have to be so formal around me, around any of us really.”

“All right… Wayne.” The kid took a sip of her water, as if saying his name left her mouth feeling a bit funny. “It’ll take some getting used to though, calling an adult by their first name. I think Melissa was an exception since Mom and her were good friends.”

After they had eaten and conversed some more (Lady Bird made sure to ask all of the highlighted questions before tossing the packet aside), the kid pulled out a piece of paper and slid it over to them. Hers traveled better than the packet did.

“Here. I think we probably discussed a few of the things in there already, but I put down some important dates and things I’d like. I know some of these things might not be possible, but I thought I might as well ask. And if you can’t do these right away, I’d understand too.”

Lady Bird unfolded the paper and Wayne leaned over it to read it too. Most of the requests weren’t anything big, just permission to keep in contact with her friends and go out with them once and awhile, contact with her grandparents that lived out of state, for someone to pick her up on Sunday mornings for church, permission to visit her mother’s grave and so on. A couple gave them pause.

“Contact with Beretta?” Lady Bird questioned. She could only picture herself dropping the kid off only to get something like a safe thrown at her when she tried to pick her up. Or all of her plans getting foiled by her. “You do know we’re arch-nemesis, right? I get that you two are close, but I don’t think I can trust you not to tell her about my plans.”

“What about supervised visits then? That way, someone can make sure I don’t tell her anything. You have her number, right? You could set them up.”

There were some things she refused to budge on. “That would be im-”

Wayne interrupted her. “Something we would need to think about.” He quickly moved onto to a different topic. “What’s this about your father visiting sometime during the summer? I wasn’t aware that there was a father in the picture.”

The kid shifted a bit and started playing with the ends of her hair. “There wasn’t for a long time. But… it’s complicated. I just need to know if I can communicate with him too. I may need to tell him to wait to visit until later, but we do video chatting and stuff like that often.

Lady Bird nodded. “Sure you can, kid.” She wasn’t going to pry into her personal life, though she could tell that Wayne wanted to know more. It was clearly something that the kid wasn’t eager to share with them at this time. She slid the paper back to her.

“Other than the Beretta question, I think we’re okay with everything else. The usual rules about wandering around apply, though you’ve never been bad with that so we don’t have to go over those again. Just use common sense and you’ll be fine.

The kid picked up the paper. “Thank you, both of you. And I want to apologize for my behavior earlier today. It’s just… hard moving in with someone you barely know so unexpectedly. But maybe this will be a learning experience for all of us.”

Lady Bird could understand what she and Wayne would learn from this, but she wasn’t sure about what the kid would gain. But if she wanted to see the silver lining, who was she to stop her? As long as she didn’t get mushy about, there was no reason to discourage her.

“So, who’s up for some tiramisu?” Wayne asked as he got up. “I didn’t have time to make that, so I hope store bought is okay.”

“That’s fine with me.” Lady Bird informed him. “What about you, kid?”

“I don’t care. I’m not picky when it comes to food.” She also got up and started gathering the plates as he went back to the kitchen. Lady Bird watched her.

“You don’t need to do that. That’s what minions are for.”

“Oh. Sorry, habit I guess.” She put the plates down. “I always cleared the table at Melissa’s house.”

Lady Bird hadn’t even thought of chores. Did she need to give her some? Sure, the minions were paid to do the grunt work, but did the kid see it that way? But that thought would have to wait for later as the tiramisu came out. And even though it wasn’t home made, it was delicious. As they all ate their dessert, Lady Bird had one thought. Dinners like these should happen more often and if she had her way, they would.