8:46 A.M., Friday, November 13, 2015

PLUR-MAkKikM, just outside Honolulu, HI

The bags were packed, the car was loaded, John and Rosi had already left via taxicab and would meet them at the airport. The two-bedroom apartment in Kapa’a, on the island of Kauai, had already been rented and prepared. The children would take turns living there with Rosi and John, and a toss of a coin had determined that Paul would make the trip first.

This first time, the kids would be able to say goodbye at the airport, but beginning at noon today and lasting until the court order was rescinded they would have to maintain a distance of at least one thousand feet (305 metres), nor were they allowed to communicate with each other in any way.

Ted Michaels and the children exited the front door; the Tesla Model S had been summoned and was waiting for them. The doors were already unlocked and the ventilation was running. But just before leaving the front porch, Paul Macon called for a halt.

“Yes?” Ted asked.

The little boy hung his head, but somehow didn’t quite manage to look contrite.

“We ... did something last night. Something we weren’t supposed to do.”

Ted thought he knew where this was going.

“Actually,” Paula was telling the grown man now, “we did something we deserve a spanking for.”

Last night as he had sent the children out to the treehouse he had mentioned that he needed to express a concern to his friend Cassandra.

“Kids,” he had told them, “I need you to leave the room a minute early so I can tell Cassandra something. Now, that means you aren’t in the room while I’m talking to her. For instance, don’t you dare go just around the corner and listen in.”

The kids looked at him as if not sure what to make of this.

“It would be easy enough for you to do,” the man continued, “but you absolutely must not eavesdrop. Of course, I wouldn’t really be able to tell if you did, but if you did and I did find out, well, I would be very angry.”

Paul and Paula were grinning slightly.

“I would be so angry,” Ted continued, “that I’d probably have to spank you.”

The legal guardian had never spanked either child, or threatened to.

“If you did that,” he continued, “and if I found out about it. So don’t you DARE let me catch you doing that. Got it?”

“Got it!” the children crowed together before almost skipping out of the room.

Once they were gone, Ted turned to Cassandra and, without bothering to keep his voice down, began to voice his concern.

“Since the court order forbids any communication between the kids, we have to hope that it doesn’t occur to them to leave each other notes in the treehouse.”

“Where in the treehouse could they hide messages?” the woman asked, also not bothering to keep her voice down. “Oh, maybe in that Prohibition cabinet?”

In the treehouse was a little china cabinet which contained a hidden liquor cabinet. This sort of thing had been popular back in the days of Prohibition, when liquor and even wine or beer had been illegal. The last of the liquor had been consumed by some of Ted’s relatives from the Mainland eleven months ago during a New Year’s Eve party. Ted hadn’t bothered to replace the booze before Paul and Paula showed up, so now the secret compartment contained empty bottles, with the idea that maybe someday they would be filled with colored sand.

“That would be the place,” Ted agreed. “Of course, the note would need to be left just before one kid heads to the airport, and retrieved, read, and destroyed as soon as the other kid gets back from the airport.”

“Well,” Cassandra nodded, “we just have to hope that they don’t think of that.”

“Oh, I’m sure they won’t,” the older man agreed. “They’ve got to be halfway up the stairs by now.”