Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cam was pretty sure by the time his collarbone healed up, he was going to lose his mind.
When the week of Christmas rolled around, his arm was feeling pretty good, even though it wasn’t healed yet. And the rest of his bruises had faded for the most part. The bonk on his head was not leaving any lasting damage that he knew of.
His biggest challenge was his collarbone, and he couldn’t hardly pick anything up still. He couldn’t pull, he couldn’t push, and he wasn’t allowed to ride his horses, which made him nuts.
Mitch was out working on a job. Not roofing. The weather wasn’t good enough for that, but he had branched out into crews that did flooring as well, since Mitch knew a lot of tile guys, and that was making him some good money.
Mark was working in the workshop out back, which he had outfitted real quick from an old utility shed. He was making some kind of thing for the kids. He had no idea what. It had to do with swings or something. Cam wasn’t sure.
So, it was just him and the girls inside.
Rachel and Bekka were making chocolate-dipped spoons.
The kind that you put in hot chocolate and let the chocolate melt into the liquid.
One way or the other, there was white and dark chocolate and sprinkles from one end of the kitchen to the other, and he was trying to avoid that while simultaneously making sure no one burned themselves while they were melting things.
It took him about twenty minutes, he figured, from the last time he’d seen her to realize that Sarah had gone missing along with Rosie. She hadn’t been particularly interested in chocolate dipping, but he thought she was watching a movie out in the front room, and she wasn’t there.
“Hey, Bekka, have you seen Sarah?” Cam asked.
Bekka had seemed to be in a better mood, so he was hoping he wasn’t pulling down fire on his head by asking.
A little frown pulled her eyebrows together, and she looked around the kitchen and then peered into the front room. “I’ll go check her room.”
“I can do that, kiddo. It’ll do me good to get up and move around.” He winked at her and she kind of chuckled. “You just make sure Rachel doesn’t pull that bowl of chocolate down on top of her head, okay?”
“Deal.” She nodded once, like that was that, and he supposed it was at least in her twelve-year-old mind.
Cam made his way to Sarah’s room, where he knocked on the door. When nobody answered, he peeked in. Black lace curtains, black satin bedspread, Wednesday Addams poster on the wall. No Sarah. That was worrying.
He headed back to the kitchen, where he stomped his feet into a pair of muck boots and threw a jacket over his bad arm while shoving his other arm into the sleeve. “You two be careful. I’m gonna go see if Sarah’s out with Mark in the shed.”
Bekka frowned at him, but in a worried, not mad sort of way. “Are you sure, Cam? I can go.”
“I’m sure, little mother. I got this. You just keep on with what you’re doing and keep that chocolate out of the front room. Deal?”
She nodded, so happy, so young. “I think Daddy’s gonna love it, having some fancy hot chocolate.”
“Oh, I think so too.” Personally, he thought Mitch would gag, but it didn’t matter. He had seen Mitch eat some shit Rebekka had made which would have made a lesser man die, and Mitch just swallowed and smiled like it was heaven.
The way from the house to the work shed was cleared, and the lights were on. The pellet stove in there was obviously going to town because smoke was pouring out the top of the chimney.
He made it about halfway there when he saw the bitty footprints along with great big dog footprints in the snow, pointed toward the barns.
That little shit.
Cam rubbed his forehead with his good hand. Sarah knew she wasn’t supposed to be out in the barns by herself.
He thought about going to get Mark, then he pondered calling Mitch, then he thought, Goddamn it, he was a cowboy. Those were basically his barns, and he was going to go tell that girl she needed to get inside and not go out to the barns when she alone and she knew better.
He grumbled and stomped, getting all the way over to the barns where he found Sarah with a Coleman lantern, a bunch of blankets, the dog, a bag of Doritos, and a bag of baby carrots.
She was all wrapped up on a hay bale, sitting there next to Copper Penny and Fire, who were stabled side-by-side, and she was reading to them.
Periodically she would stop to feed all three horses and Rosie a carrot.
He really needed to yell at her. It was sort of necessary, but this was so damn cute. So he got his phone out and started taping.
The horses stared at her as if she was the most fascinating thing ever, while Rosie was wrapped around her so tight that it was like she had a big black Rottweiler parka.
She’d talk for a bit, read a couple of pages, then eat a Dorito. Then Fire got a carrot, Copper Penny got a carrot, and Rosie got a carrot.
To his utter surprise, Sarah chucked a carrot across the barn into a bucket that was hanging on Olive’s stall, too.
Jesus Christ, this girl needed to play basketball.
He wondered if she even knew what basketball was.
He watched for a couple more seconds, and sure as shit, next time around, carrot, carrot, carrot. Whee, plonk, carrot.
He put his phone away. “You ever thought about playing ball?”
Sarah blinked over at him, orange Dorito dust around her mouth. “What kind of ball? I play kickball at school.”
“I was thinking basketball.”
“I don’t know that. I mean I know what it is, but I don’t know how to play.”
“I think you’d be good at it. Volleyball too. That’s really impressive with the horses.”
“It was cold,” she explained. “I didn’t want to stand up, but I didn’t want Olive to feel like she was left out.”
“That’s really cool. You do know you’re not supposed to be out here?”
She gave him an arched eyebrow. “Daddy said I couldn’t mess with the horses. I’m not messing with anything, I’m reading and sharing my carrots. That’s not messing.”
Oh, these children were too damn smart for him. “I think what your Dad meant—”
She shook her head, cutting him right off. “It’s what he said. I cannot be responsible for what he meant.”
“You can’t huh?”
“Nope. He said don’t mess with the horses.
I haven’t opened the stalls. I haven’t even really touched the horses much.
They may have touched me with their lips when they got the carrots, or when I got into reading and forgot to give them a carrot.
So they may have touched me, but I did not even touch them. ”
Yeah, he was totally gonna have to call Mitch. There was no way that he was qualified to deal with this. “Don’t you think you ought to come inside and help your sisters?”
“Do what? Dip plastic spoons into chocolate? So my options are — eat Doritos and read and love on the horses, who I didn’t touch? I can choose this, or go in there and get chocolate all over my clothes for some stupid Girl Scout project that my sisters have?”
He was drowning here. “You don’t have a project for Girl Scouts?”
“Teresa and I are having our own project that does not involve dipping plastic spoons in chocolate.”
Oh, he didn’t want to know, did he? “What kind of project?” Why did I ask?
“We are going to tell everybody about Christmas ghosts. Apparently there are lots of Christmas ghosts, so we’re going to talk about that and also about stuff that people did back in the olden days, like when they wrote the Scrooge book.”
“Oh, well, that’s pretty cool.”
She nodded, her dark eyes lit up. “I know. We’ll talk about food and stuff too. Like figgy pudding.”
“Speaking of food, I think the horses have had enough, and I think if you feed Rosie any more carrots he’s going to poop orange for a month.
So why don’t you come on in the house? You don’t have to dip spoons in chocolate.
I don’t care, but it’s cold, and cold makes my arm ache. I think you should come in.”
Please don’t argue, little girl.
“Okay.” She gathered all her things and handed him the lantern. “It’s going to get dark soon. I think that’s why they talked about ghosts all the time at Christmas because it’s so close to dark all the time.”
“I bet. It gets dark in London at like, three in the afternoon this time of year.”
“Does it?”
“Yep.” And cold as a witch’s tit, and everyone got the lurgy, as they called it. His momma called it the lung crud or the creepin’ crud.
“Wow. That’s great for ghost stories, but how do they ever go outside and do anything?”
“That’s a good question.” He tried not to trip over Rosie. If he went down, he would never get back up.
She chattered at him all the way inside, cheerful as all hell, and he didn’t have the heart to tell her off. He really didn’t.
Not that it mattered because when he came inside with Sarah, Bekka saw all the things they were hauling. Her eyebrows flew up, and she pursed her lips. “Sarah, you’re not supposed to be out in the barn with horses when no one’s with you. Daddy said so.”
Sarah looked at him and he zipped his lips with his hand, like, “Nope, this is between you and your sister.” Cam was not gonna get in between Bekka and her mommy duties again, if he could help it. He would referee if it got ugly, but that was it.
Sarah tipped her chin up in the air. “Daddy said I couldn’t mess with the horses, and I didn’t. I didn’t touch them. I didn’t get in their stalls. They couldn’t hurt me.”
“But what if they had, and Daddy Cam was the only one here? You could have gotten him hurt. You have to think about things, Sarah. At least you should ask.”
That got him a guilty look from Sarah. “I’m sorry, Cam. I should have asked you.”
How would Mitch handle this? Cam thought about that for a full five seconds, probably, and then he nodded. “Thank you for that, Sarah. I appreciate your apology. And Bekka, I appreciate you taking up for me and making sure your sister stays safe.”
Both girls looked a little relieved at his words. Happy he wasn’t mad at them, he thought, which made him grin. “So Sarah says she doesn’t need to do this project with you guys, right?”
Rachel dipped a spoon and then pulled it out, chocolate flying. Her tongue stuck out between her teeth. “Nope. Sarah’s going to do her own thing.”
“Cool, then it’s okay if I take Sarah to the front room and we watch A Christmas Carol?” He thought the Patrick Stewart one was not so scary that Sarah couldn’t watch it. She’d watched scarier things at Halloween.
Bekka nodded and waved him off, and Sarah rolled her eyes, her bag of Doritos still clutched in her hand. He noticed that the carrots had been left on the table.
“Come on, frozen little girl. Let’s go watch Victorian ghost stories about Christmas.”
“Okay,” she grinned at him and ran to cuddle on the couch. “The horses like it when I read to them, you know?”
He wasn’t going to argue with that. “They do seem to listen, don’t they?”
“Yeah, they sure do.” She wrapped them both in the huge comforter that lived on the sofa. “Love you, Daddy Cam.”
“I love you too, you little dork. Come on. Let’s see if we can’t get Scrooge redeemed.”
He felt like he had been this afternoon, for sure.