“Who drew on this?” I held up my portable speaker.  “Someone scribbled on it with a pink marker.”

Lydia looked up from her seat in her mom’s lap across the room.

“Lydia!  You aren’t supposed to draw on things.  Scribbling on walls and bed posts and tables is not allowed.  You are old enough to know better.”

She shook her head.  “I didn’t do it Daddy.  Someone else did.”  She climbed down and walked over to my chair. She gasped in mock surprise, “Maybe a stranger did it.”

“No, Lydia, that is nonsense. Don’t blame things on other people.”

About this time Clara came wandering over from the kitchen where she had been shoveling the last of her strawberry sauce from breakfast onto her pajamas. “What are you looking at?”  She asked casually.

“Oh, just my speaker.  I think Lydia drew on it with a marker.”

I put the speaker down and looked back at the girls.  Clara was still watching the speaker with a sort of stricken look.  She glanced at me, and then quickly looked back at the speaker.

“Oh no.  Clara!”  Andrea and I said in unison.

The little girl with the strawberry sauce backed away into the center of the room.  She waved her hands around defensively, “Wait wait wait… Okay.. Let me tell you, a short story.”

We gave her a second to stare at the ceiling and think.  “Okay… so I had this pink marker…”