Page 7 of Rocky Mountain Cowboy Christmas
Steve snorted a laugh. “You know more about mechanics than either of your brothers, so no. Besides, they just encourage chaos.” He turned his stern glance on Maya. “As does your sister, so she doesn’t count as supervision, either.”
Maya grinned. “This wasn’t even close to making it into Zoe’s top ten.”
Closing his eyes, Steve groaned. “Go ride your ponies. At least they don’t blow up.”
“You should make a mechanical horse,” Maya said as the two girls headed for the door, stopping to pull on boots and coats. “No, a whole mechanical cavalry! That would be a-maz-ing.”
“That’d take a lot of raw materials,” Zoe said, although her thoughtful tone told Steve that she was considering the idea. He squeezed his eyes closed, making a mental note to tell his brothers to let him know if any large pieces of machinery suddenly disappeared.
“Before you create a robot army,” Steve suggested dryly, “why don’t you focus on designing a solar stock-tank heater for the back horse pasture.”
Zoe’s face lit up with excitement at the idea of a new project, and he looked at his two girls, marveling that they’d be teenagers soon. That reminded him of what he’d picked up at the store earlier that morning, and he frowned uncomfortably. There was no sense in putting it off. Camille had said she’d gotten her period when she was eleven, and Zoe would be twelve in a month. She could get it at any time, and Maya probably wouldn’t be far behind.
“Girls.” They must’ve caught a different note in his voice, because they immediately turned toward him. “I got something for you at the store.”
They both lit up, and he tried to wave away their anticipation.
“It’s nothing exciting.” He felt his neck heat and mentally scolded himself as he rubbed it. This was basic biology, and the girls needed to know that it wasn’t anything to be embarrassed about. He wanted them to ask questions and tell him what they needed. He hated the thought of them going through the unnecessary humiliation and discomfort that Camille had experienced.
“What’d you get us?” They’d moved closer. His long pause must’ve intrigued them; he had their full attention.
“You’re getting older.” He cleared his throat, reaching for the grocery bag. He’d tossed it on the kitchen table when he’d gotten home just in time to witness Zoe’s explosion. “I wanted you to have these when the time came. I’ll put them in the bathroom closet. There are instructions, and you can ask me questions if you have any.” He remembered how he couldn’t even pick out the right products without Camille’s help. “If I don’t know the answer, we’ll…Google it or something.”
Opening the bag, he held it out to show the girls what was inside. They both peered into the bag, and Zoe’s eyes went wide. She jerked back, as if she could catch something from the contents, and her face flushed brick-red.
Maya looked puzzled. “What are they?” she asked.
Without answering, Zoe turned and hurried toward the door. Steve took a deep breath, trying to think of the best way to answer. Before he could say anything, Zoe called, “C’mon, Maya.”
“But what are they?” she asked, moving obediently toward her sister.
“Tampons,” Zoe whispered, yanking open the door.
“Oh!” The confusion cleared from Maya’s young face. “For when we get our periods!”
Steve didn’t think it was possible for Zoe’s face to get any redder, but somehow it happened. She seemed so embarrassed by just the sight of the bag’s contents that Steve knew his vague plan for having a father-daughters open discussion about puberty was not going to happen anytime soon. Zoe couldn’t run away fast enough.
“We’ll talk about it later,” she said to Maya under her breath, before basically shoving her sister through the door and following her outside.
Steve’s gaze stayed on the door after it closed behind the girls, a creeping sense of failure enveloping him. How had he managed to fumble that so badly? It seemed to be happening a lot lately, especially with Zoe and Micah. Until recently, he’d always taken pride in being a competent dad, but now he seemed to be missing more pitches than he was hitting. He wondered if once she was an adult, Zoe would tell the story of when she was eleven and her dad completely humiliated her by buying her tampons. He silently cursed, wishing for the thousandth time that Karen had lived and was part of their children’s lives. She would’ve known what to do. Unlike Steve, she wouldn’t be failing their kids.
The door swung open, jerking him out of his mournful thoughts, and Zoe stuck her head back inside. Her cheeks were still red, and she didn’t meet his gaze.
“Thanks for getting those, Dad. Love you.”
She quickly disappeared again, shutting the door behind her. After a few shocked seconds, Steve smiled. Maybe Camille had been right. Maybe he was doing okay after all.
Chapter 2
“Am I turning into a cliché?” Camille asked.
Lucy paused her grooming long enough to give Camille a scornful look before returning to licking her tail. It served her right, Camille supposed, for trying to hold an existential conversation with a cat. She didn’t need to hear the answer anyway. She already knew she was hurtling right through her quirky-cat-lady phase and heading much too quickly toward full-blown hermit-ville. The problem was that she didn’t know how to change course—or even if she wanted to. Change of any sort, especially the kind that involved interacting with people, was terrifying.
With an impatient huff, Camille grabbed a peanut-butter blossom and plopped down on one of the wooden kitchen chairs. This useless self-reflection was all Steve Springfield’s fault. She’d been perfectly happy living in Borne, finishing up another year alone, only talking to people online or if she couldn’t avoid them when running errands. More than once, she’d been tempted to move to Denver or Colorado Springs, figuring that people might be more inclined to ignore her in a big city than in tiny Borne, where everyone knew everyone.
This was her town, though. She’d lived in the same house since she was six and her mom had died of an overdose. Camille’s grandma had driven to Southern California to pick up her skinny, bewildered self, and they’d lived together in the little house on Pickett Lane until her grandma had passed away when Camille was nineteen. The only time Camille had gone away was for a miserable, anxiety-ridden semester in Boulder as a college freshman. After returning to Borne for winter break, Camille had noticed her grandma had lost weight—and most of her hair. When she admitted that she was being treated for cancer, Camille had switched over to online courses and moved back into her childhood home. In six months, her grandma was gone.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Camille asked Lucy, despite the cat’s complete disinterest in the conversation. “A thirty-two-year-old woman sleeping in the same bedroom as when she was six? I know I’ve taken down the unicorn poster and put away the stuffed animals…mostof the stuffed animals,” she corrected herself, since it seemed silly to fudge the truth while talking to her cat. “Still, I should be living in a trendy Denver loft or a suburban fixer-upper or a farmhouse with my husband and six kids by now, right?”
