The family settled around to dinner, though there was a bit of nervousness on Martha's part. Part of her plan was to make sure that she and William would be able to assure their sons that the changes in their marriage weren't something that changed the love between them. She had always loved William and still did, and despite the complications that came in both of them becoming weres, that had actively raised the amount of love that both of them had for each other. Becoming a werecat had made her realize just how much she had been repressing her sexuality and that doing so was unnecessary. There was nothing wrong with being bisexual, and Martha had no problem with wanting have the experiences that she'd so heavily denied herself. However, that didn't mean her love for William had diminished.
In fact her love for William had even grown. At every demonstration of his bond to her, he'd reinforced his promise to be better and to not be so easily lead by his libido as he had in the past that had lead to their troubles in Minnesota. He'd doubled down on being supportive of her and trying to do what he thought would make her happy. To a great degree it wasn't like he didn't do this before, but now it was more frequent and even fiercer than before. And so far there was no sign that his bond would break and he had grown quite good in bed, far better than he ever had before. This had allowed Martha to experience much greater pleasure than she'd ever had before with William and began to open things up to give her the openness truly embrace who and what she was, and Martha was quite eager to enjoy it.
However, that had seemed to raise some issues with how Nate and Eric viewed their parents marriage when Eric brought home questions concerns over Martha bringing Kat home the day before. It was possible that they thought the move toward an open marriage was just a continuation of the problems the family had had in Minnesota. Martha and William had both felt that they had assured Eric that things were fine and that divorce was not on the horizon for them but that their time and love together was simply growing and opening up to new experiences, but they hadn't made sure of that with Nate. Originally, Martha had planned that dinner would be the time to assure Nate that things were fine while the Anderson marriage was openning up that there was no threat of divorce or anything that would break up the family, but with Alex's presence, that conversation could not be had as it really wasn't a subject to be voiced in front of Nate's boyfriend.
With that, Martha sat down by William and slowly prodded the fried potatoes on her plate for a few moments as she tried to think of something to say. It was ultimately William who spoke first as he sat down as well.
"So, did you all have a good day?" William asked.
"Yeah, it was a pretty good day," Eric spoke, "nothing truly out of the ordinary."
"Other than they didn't let us go outside for PE," Nate commented.
Martha looked up with some puzzlement at that and looked to her oldest son. Nate was presently placing slabs of pork steaks onto his plate from a platter before passing it on to Alex.
"You didn't go outside for PE?" Martha asked, to which Nate nodded.
"Isn't that something that would be left up to the teacher?" William wondered, "you know... his or her prerogative on issues of health and planning?"
"I suppose... but that wasn't in the plan," Nate answered with Alex nodding in agreement.
"Yeah, the teacher had told us we'd be going outside as much as we could while the whether was good," Alex added, "and the weather was good... but yet we didn't get to go outside."
Eric paid some attention to that as he listened in, as it related to seeing the high school's security officer on alert in the entryway as something that was odd. But from what they knew, there was nothing that was truly obvious that what things were going on were the result of trouble. All that Eric and Julie agreed they could assume at lunch was that while things might be bad, they might also be an exercise and that nothing was wrong.
"Did they say why?" Martha asked, remembering the lock-down that the middle school went into when the pursuit of the man who had shot Harry's brother had run by the building.
"No, and was something of a mystery," Alex answered, "though none of us would know enough to figure it out. Thus why Nate, Ben, and I settled on getting our homework done."
"Which is a good thing," William spoke, "At least the four of you managed a fairly normal day today."
That made both Eric and Nate blink. They looked to each other, with both brother only shrugging at the other's look. Alex was equally puzzled and piece of slightly chewed pork actually fell out of his mouth and the line. Thankfully it managed to land on his plate and the soft clicking noise of it hitting his knife sitting on the plate and that snapped Alex out of his surprise.
"Your day wasn't?" Nate asked to his father.
William nodded and then proceeded to explain what happened in the morning. With the apparent assassination attempt that that got Jenny and Harry pulled from his morning class and the following pursuit going past the middle school and sent the school into lock-down. This surprised all three of the teenagers as it in a sense solved the mysteries that had been there through the day. The high school likely turned something that was almost a lock-down situation as a safety measure just in case what was going on near the middle school wasn't an isolated incident. Nate and Eric were both also somewhat frightened by the prospect that the shooter could have gone into the middle school and thus been a threat to their mother as well.
"And you're sure he didn't go in?" Nate asked to Martha.
"Yes," Martha answered, "Not something that I'd ever dealt with before, and definitely nerve-wracking, but ultimately the pursuit either passed the school by or the guy was caught outside the school."
"I'm glad the guy didn't come in," Eric stated and watched as William reached over and took Martha's hand and held it gently.
"We all are," William answered, "though I'm sure it ruined Jenny and Harry's day. Which is why your mother and I will be heading down to the hospital... to check on them if they're still there."
Nate slowly nodded as dinner resumed.