Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Bea
The smell of impending cold and snow hit my nose the second I stepped onto Bax’s front porch, and my anxiety about finishing the builds hit the roof.
Breathing deeply, inhaling the earthy scents of pine and spruce warming in the morning sun, I calculated in my head the tasks the crew and I could get done with only half a workday.
Saturdays weren’t mandatory, thanks to Brand, but most guys chose to work them for the extra hours and overtime.
I’d have a nearly full cabin crew today, but only for five hours.
The guys wouldn’t start till nine this morning, so I’d had time to eat chocolate-chip pancakes with Bax, Athena, and Shaylene. The girls snarfed down their breakfast in record time and had gone back up to Athena’s room to talk boys and clothes before Shaylene’s mom came to pick her up.
Bax had managed to make the pancakes without falling over, but he was covered in flour and batter, and the kitchen was a disaster.
I told him I’d come back after work to help him clean up.
He said he could do it, but I was betting the cooking and all the mischief we’d gotten up to last night had worn him out, and I had a feeling when I got back, he’d be asleep on the couch.
It felt really nice to know I had a warm home to come back to after work.
Even if the kitchen was still a dusty pancake disaster and the floors needed the kiss of a mop, Bax’s house would be filled with silly laughter and family, and I realized I hadn’t had that since I was Athena’s age.
The house itself was nothing special, but it was what it held within that made me feel safe and… hopeful.
Athena had asked if I’d help her shop for a dress for her dance, the one she would be attending with her boyfriend , who, if the look on Bax’s face told me anything, he wanted to murder.
I’d agreed to help after work. Although, I wasn’t sure what kind of assistance I could provide. I’d never been to a town dance before. But I’d been a friend, and something told me that was what Athena really needed.
Turned out what Athena had actually needed was a buffer and a wingwoman.
After I’d finished my half day and had sent Brand a text to fill him in on the crews’ progress, I stuffed a microwaved and lukewarm tamale in my mouth and chewed as I drove Bax and Athena along the western edge of Wisper till we hit the highway and then to Jackson.
Tourists were out in droves on every road, trying to force themselves to enjoy time away from their busy lives in the mountains.
All the businesses’ parking lots were filled to the brim, no matter what they sold: western hats and boots, scenic helicopter rides, hiking and horseback tours through Grand Teton.
Closer to Jackson, traffic was a bitch, congested and annoying. The day was warm enough for sweatshirts, but snow showed on the tips of the mountains surrounding us when they peeked in and out of the low clouds. In a few weeks, we’d need winter coats.
Sitting tucked between Bax and me, Athena chittered away the whole drive about her boyfriend and how perfect she thought it was that the dance fell on her fourteenth birthday. It had to be fate, she’d said. “Written in the stars.”
Bax hadn’t said a word except to grunt at me when I needed to turn. I couldn’t tell exactly what he was thinking, but I had a good guess. He sulked as Athena and I walked and he hobbled behind us from my truck to the second dress store after we’d parked near Town Square.
The antler arches surrounding the square were weird as shit, but kind of beautiful beneath the colorful cottonwoods and aspens, which I’d recently learned the locals called quakies after their scientific name, Populus tremuloides, meaning “poplar that trembles.” The common name, Quaking Aspen, had grown popular in the area, and it was fitting.
The aspens’ yellow fall leaves shivered in the wind as if an earthquake shook the ground beneath.
“How ’bout this one?” Athena said, pulling the skirt of a floor-length aqua-colored dress out from a rack stuffed with fancy silks and lace.
Bax had insisted on accompanying us, though I was sure Athena had hoped for a girls’ day of shopping.
We’d found a cute little boutique dress shop, but Bax was right when he complained that the store seemed geared more toward women than it did young teenage girls.
But the formal shop we’d tried first only had plain, satin getups, and Athena hated every single one.
“It looks like somethin’ a mermaid would wear,” Bax said, his eyes wandering the small store and landing on a menagerie of sequins and high stiletto heels displayed on clear shelves bolted to the wall behind us.
Again, I couldn’t decipher the look on his face; it was either fear or dismay at the thought of Athena going on a date. Or both.
Athena frowned. “Okay,” she said, dropping the blue fabric and pulling a different dress from the rack. She held it up in front of her. “This one?”
The sleeveless, deep-red, formfitting dress had a thin sheath of lace covering what looked like silk underneath.
It was a little skimpy for a not-yet-fourteen-year old, but it was pretty, and I had just been about to suggest Athena wear a sweater over it or a pashmina or something, until Bax opened his dad mouth.
“Are you twenty-seven?” he asked her.
“No,” Athena said, confused.
“Are you Ariana Grande?”
Athena and I both rolled our eyes.
“No, Daddy.”
“Are you Taylor Swift?”
Athena huffed her annoyance.
Bax crossed his arms over his chest and shrugged one shoulder indifferently. “Then no.”
“Well then,” she said, exasperated, “you pick! You’ve shot down seven dresses. Do you want me to wear jeans to the dance?”
“Yeah,” Bax said, sitting up straighter in the chair the saleswoman had dragged from the office in the back for him to sit on.
She’d done it with a flirty smile and shy laugh.
For the love of Pete, the man got hit on everywhere he went!
“Or better yet, don’t go at all. Why don’t you stay home?
We could do movie night instead. Invite all your friends.
I’ll order pizza and get some of those gooey chocolate-donut things you love from the new French bakery in Wisper. That sounds like fun, right?”
Athena’s face was quickly becoming the color of a tomato. “They’re called éclairs, Daddy. And all my friends are going to the dance. It’s on my birthday. I’m goin’ to the dang dance on my dang birthday!” She turned toward me. “Help?”
Okeedokee then.
Fixing my hands over my hips, I took control of the quickly spiraling shopping trip.
After all, on the Bea-Baker personality scale, I was a #1 Man Bosser.
“Bax, how about you pull that hat down low over your eyes and take a nap? That’s what dads are supposed to do in these situations. Nobody wants your opinion.”
He grumbled something under his breath, but then did as I’d asked.
He tightened his arms over his chest, and his biceps stretched the sleeves of his gray T-shirt, his fingers digging into his skin as he clenched his jaw and fought the urge to say more.
Miss Flirty behind the counter looked like she might melt into a puddle of drool.
She licked her lips like a hungry coyote, but finally, she emerged and tried to help us.
She pulled five more dresses for Athena to try. Three were knee-length cocktail dresses, and two were long and flowy. Athena liked the shorter dresses best. She looked good in all of them, and they weren’t too short.
“What’s your favorite dress you ever wore, Bea?” she asked through the dressing-room door as she changed out of a salmon-colored dress into the last option.
“Me?” I checked over my shoulder, making sure Bax was still in compliance. His eyes met mine, then narrowed beneath his hat, but he shook his head and looked away. “Oh, I don’t remember. I’ve never been to a dance. I think the last dress I wore was in elementary school.”
“Really?”
Actually, now that I thought about it, the last dress I’d ever worn was to my mama’s funeral, but Athena didn’t need to know that. The last thing I wanted to do was remind her that her own mom couldn’t be here to help her, and instead she got stuck with me.
“Yeah. I like long skirts ’cause they’re comfy, as long as they have pockets, but I’ve never been super girly.”
“It doesn’t matter what you wear,” Athena said. “Can you zip me up?” The door creaked open, and she stood with her back toward me. “You could wear a garbage bag and you’d still be pretty.”
Stepping into the little closet-sized cubicle, I swept Athena’s braid over her shoulder, zipped her up, and met her eyes in the mirror. She smiled softly and fiddled nervously with the neck of the dress.
Normally, I would’ve ignored her compliment or dismissed it with a self-deprecating comment, but it seemed important to show her that accepting a compliment like the one she’d just given me was a good thing to do.
When I pictured someone telling her she was pretty and her blowing it off because she didn’t believe it was true, like I normally did, it made me sad.
“Thank you, Athena.”
When she came out of her dressing room and spun slowly in front of a mirror, fluffing the skirt as she turned, I couldn’t help my smile, and said, “You’re a knockout.”
Athena beamed. “Thank you.”
The lavender dress she’d finally chosen fell to just above her knees, cinched at the waist with a ruffled band, and it had a matching high, lace neckline and lace-capped sleeves.
The lace highlighted the freckles on her arms and added a simple, feminine edge to the dress, and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, but something about the design said “western.”
Bax tipped up his gray hat with a finger. He’d been silently peeking and watching us the whole time, his body rigid. I’d bet my truck he wished he could snatch his daughter up and run out of the store, but at least he’d kept his mouth shut.
Now, as he looked at the stunning young woman she had become, he was just speechless.
He tossed me a quiet smile, a “thank you” that tried to stop my heart, and he told Athena, “She’s right, baby. You look just like your mama.”
Athena’s eyes lit up. Tears filled the corners, and she smiled so big. “Thank you, Daddy. Do you really mean it?”
“I do. You’re beautiful, and the color is perfect.
I’m sorry I was grumpy before, but I still remember when you were little and I was the only guy you wanted to hang out with.
It’s hard sometimes, seein’ you so grown up.
” I saw something glisten at the edge of his eye, too, but before Athena noticed, he nodded down to the tennis shoes she’d worn to go dress shopping and cleared his throat.
“You gonna wear your trainers to the dance?”
She giggled and looked at her shoes. “No.”
“Well then,” Bax said, pulling his wallet from his back pocket. He held it out to her and she grabbed it, and then he pushed himself up on his crutches. “Guess we better head over to the boot shop and get you some fancy purple cowgirl boots to match, and then we can grab some dinner.”
And just like that, the little pinch and burn was back, the one I’d felt in my chest when I’d first arrived in Wisper and realized that the rude, argumentative man I’d met back in Sheridan was nowhere to be found.
The pinch had carved a tiny hole inside me that first night, and it had been silently and steadily growing.
Now, it was a gaping chasm edged with girly flowers and hearts.
The void had been there a long time, I realized. I’d just never found anything to fill it that fit the shape.
This man and his daughter had filled the space inside me easily. I would never have thought it possible a month ago, but they’d packed me full of laughter and light and family, and they had me questioning my own resolve to leave when my job was done.
Thinking about driving away now made the pinch feel angry and raw, and I thought I’d do anything to stop it burning.