Unfinished

Piper winced as she made it to the bottom of the stairs, leaning against the wall to take the weight off her bad knee. 

Her dad wandered in from the kitchen, bowl of cereal in hand. He frowned at her, whilst she desperately tried to act like nothing was wrong.

"Your knee?"

"No!" She shot back, slightly too quickly.

Frank stepped aside and gestured towards the kitchen, with a bemused expression. Piper walked through, and did a small spin to prove her point. Her knee still felt unstable, but the pain of going down the stairs was ebbing slowly away.

"See: I'm fine," Bending down to select her own cereal, she heard her father's muttered retort.

"What was that?" She asked.

"That you shouldn't be tearing through the woods. There's proper jogging paths around here," He moved away from the doorway and sat at the dining table.

Piper put the bowl on the counter with more force than was necessary.

"You saw me?"

"Jane did." He referenced Finn's mother casually, but his lips tightened at the thought of her. Jane lived for sticking her nose into other people's business.

"I thought someone was watching me," Piper tried to shrug it off, grabbing a spoon and wandering through to join him.

His head flew up with neck-breaking speed.

"Why'd you think that?" He snapped at her.

Her mouth parted in surprise; she couldn't recall the last time Frank had spoken harshly to her. Then again, he hadn't ever seemed to have a reason to.

"I don't know, I thought he was watching the house the other—" She began, but was cut off  by her dad shaking his head.

"Couldn't be. People wander through the woods all the time. Although maybe not so much if you keep chasing them off," Although he finished with a joke, his small smile seemed forced.

Piper went to protest again, but he leapt in with his own question.

"When do you find out about Jack's?" 

"I don't know, Elodie said a couple of days or less."

"Huh, they normally decide quickly, that lot," He quipped, which did very little for her concerns.

"Do you think I should look somewhere else?" She stirred her spoon around the milk left in her bowl, frowning at it. Despite strongly disliking the taste of milk, she hated eating cereal with water even more.

"I'd say so. Take a drive to the next town over or something... Hey, I thought you couldn't have milk!" Frank stopped and stared at he bowl, seemingly running over everything her knew about her in his head.

"It's soy milk," Piper picked her bowl up and pulled a face at it, before reaching for his empty one, "I hate it, but not as much as cereal and water."

"We don't have soy milk." He let her take the green patterned bowl from him, brow still furrowed in confusion.

"We do now, I bought some when I was in town," She called over her shoulder as she disappeared from the kitchen.

As she tidied up, her father came in after her, quizzing her about all the properties of soy milk, and was it from a nut? And how many nuts must go in one carton? And—

"What the bloody hell is that kid doing?" Frank suddenly crossed the kitchen and threw open the back door, hollering at some unknown figure.

Curiosity successfully piqued, Piper peered through the window, watching a group of children hurdling towards the trees as fast as their legs could carry them, leaving a carton of eggs discarded on the ground. One ginger haired boy threw a glance over his shoulder and his eyes went as wide as saucers when he caught sight of her. He immediately picked up speed.