Eight-year-old brain working in an "ohnoIscrewedup' frenzy to find some kind of explanation for what she'd said without admitting she'd been talking to several members of their family, Natalie looked between her brother and young aunt with wide, helpless eyes. She was gonna be in so much trouble and there was nobody here to wrap around her finger as well as she had her daddy, uncle and grandpa wrapped!
And then the door swung open, but before Natalie could dive for Ben, who was closer to her, in order to have a safe barrier between herself and any stranger, she recognized who it was. She let out what would have been an ungodly high-pitched shriek to anyone unfamiliar with it, the word 'daddy' likely just as indistinguishable to ears that weren't trained to pick out that word amid girlish ear-deafening sounds, and tumbled off the bed.
The few seconds required to get from bed to door, as well as around Ben, felt like they took forever, but Natalie reached Dean in record time and threw herself at him and up, clinging like a monkey somewhere around his torso. Clearly, it was going to take a crowbar to pry this little girl off.
"You're here, you're here!" she declared gleeful, even as she scrambled to get her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, hardly noticing that the way he'd caught her very awkwardly. "You found us and I didn't have to say anything, can we leave, please, it's awful here and I wanna leave, pleaseeee?!"