Joe was starting not to believe the doctor, but maybe it was the sheer energy of two little girls that had Dad looking so tired today. “I’ll get them into a vacation program,” he promised his father. “Day camp, or something.”
“Horseback riding camp?” said both girls together, in identical and intensely hopeful voices.
Joe sighed. “Maybe horse-riding camp. We’ll look into it.”
He didn’t know where this horsey thing was coming from, but it was rabid. The girls had a shared subscription to a pony magazine, and the walls of their room were covered in horsey pictures. They had a whole shelf of horsey books. Not just stories, but books on how to ride and groom and look after your pony. They had a plastic pony play-set, and plush ponies that they slept with every night, and unicorn socks—apparently unicorns counted as ponies—as well as horseshoe bracelets and pony T-shirts and pony pajamas.
Now that he and the girls had left California and come back east, it might actually be possible for them to meet a pony or two, face-to-face.
“You don’t have to shove ‘em into some day-camp program just because of me,” Dad said.
“Pony camp! Pony camp!” said the girls.
“Well, I won’t, not unless it’s one they enjoy,” Joe promised, but he knew he might be stretching the truth.
They might be forced to enjoy it whether they wanted to or not, because Dad really could not look after the girls all summer, five and a half days a week. The whole idea of Joe being here in the garage was to give Dad a break until they decided whether to sell the place or close it down. His taking care of the girls was a stopgap measure until the three of them got settled, because they’d only moved from California two weeks ago and still weren’t fully unpacked.
Holly and Maddie had spent half their lives in day care and day camp in the four years since Joe had had full custody, because he’d had no other choice in the matter. Even so, all the child care was still way better than what they’d had before they’d come to him. He’d spared Dad most of the details on that, and it was cute…and warming, somehow…that Dad, in his innocence, viewed professional child care as such a poor option.
He would try to get a little more of the unpacking done tonight after Dad and the girls had gone to bed, he promised himself, so that at least his father didn’t have to deal with the mess. Joe didn’t really have time to devote a whole precious evening to going through cardboard boxes. He had studying to do. But if he didn’t take care of Dad…
“Ready to close up shop?” Dad asked now, betraying his eagerness to get home and take it easy.
“Not quite. I have a phone call to make, and she’s probably going to want the loaner car, so I’ll have to arrange that. Why don’t you take them home and put them in front of TV, while you get a break? If they’ve had ice cream, they won’t be hungry.”
Wrong.
“Yes, we are!” Again, Holly and Maddie spoke in unison.
They did this all the time quite unselfconsciously, and Joe was used to it. Didn’t even hear it, half the time. Grandmotherly women thought it was “adorable,” but when it came to things like begging for riding lessons, it just doubled their pester power. In his darker moments, Joe considered identical twins to be a whole lot less cute than they were cracked up to be…and still he loved these two with every particle in his soul.
“Okay, they are hungry,” he said. “There’s a bag of potato smiles in the freezer. Put half of them in the toaster oven. Girls, if Grandad doesn’t hear the oven timer when it goes off, you tell him, okay? Don’t try to get them out of the hot oven yourselves.”
He knew they would, if he didn’t specifically forbid it. They were incredibly ambitious when it came to attempting practical tasks that they weren’t ready for yet. He’d caught them trying to fry their own eggs when they were
two.
Dad, Holly and Maddie left again, and Joe found himself wondering just how quickly he could arrange to get the loaner car to Mary Jane, assuming she wanted it, because he really didn’t want to leave Dad on his own with the girls for much longer.