Stepping out of my room, I saw Dad walking past the stairs. "Daddy? Could you come up here for a minute?"
"Sure, honey," he replied. He climbed the stairs, then followed me to my room. "What's on your mind? Having trouble with Grampa's handwriting?"
"Not so far," I said. I showed him Mom's letter to me. "What's she talking about?"
He looked over the letter. "Well, there's a story about the female line of your ancestors," he said. "It always sounded far-fetched to me."
I cocked an eyebrow. "More far-fetched than turning invisible, walking through walls, and seeing through things?"
"When you read the story," he said, "you'll understand what I mean."
"Okay, but what about not following in your footsteps? Doesn't she want me being a detective, like you?"
"In a manner of speaking." He picked up my back issues of Teen Detective. "You know these kids?"
"The Problem Child Gang? They're the whole reason the book sells."
He handed me the comics. "Suppose I told you those comics are based on real people? Specifically, on people who live in this neighborhood?"
"You're kidding."
"I'm not," he said. "In fact, I was one of them."
I looked from the comic to Dad. "You were part of the real Problem Child Gang?"
He nodded. "I specialized in infiltration and espionage. Of course, the others just thought I was just very good at sneaking in and hiding. They didn't know what I could really do."
"So why doesn't Mom want me doing that? I could just let any attack that came go right through me."
"You could," Dad explained, "but your mother couldn't. And, even if the twins gain our powers, it'll be years before they'd come to the surface. In that time, they'd be as vulnerable as anyone else.
"That's why your mother's warning you away from what I did. We made real enemies, the Problem Child Gang did. And some of them wouldn't mind taking revenge, if not on us, then on our families.
"So, promise your mother and me: While you can still play with your powers around the house, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, you're just a regular big sister. Okay?"
"Okay," I said.
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