When Olivia and I made it to down to the corral after finishing the last bit of cleaning up, Brian was waiting for us there with Duke and his own horse, Quincey. I rode on Duke on my own and Olivia rode on Quincey with Brian. Brian warned Olivia to hold on to him tightly and when she promised she would, he made her squeal with glee by racing ahead on their horse meaning that I had to give chase to catch them up. Because he was with us, he took us further out to the east than Guthrie and me would be allowed to go on our own, so it was also a treat for me. We arrived back at the house just as Adam and the others arrived home in the truck which was now piled high with firewood.

When we dismounted, Olivia and I made to disappear off towards the house, but Brian called us back.

"No so fast little misses," he said, gesturing to Duke and Quincey, "You can help me take care of these two."

"But the saddles are too heavy for us to take off!" I protested.

"I'll do all that, and then you can teach Olivia how to groom a horse after use."

I resisted sighing since Brian had been really kind to take time out of his day to take us for a ride.

I led Olivia to the shed to get all the necessary grooming equipment.

"Work on a ranch," I told her dramatically, "is never done."

/

Things were good until a little after supper when Olivia's mood changed very suddenly, and she became tearful. She had been fine at supper, talking and laughing with the rest of us and listening to Daniel, whose bandmates had finally left, talk about his rehearsals that afternoon and his upcoming concert. It was dark outside now, so we went upstairs to finish the coloring we'd been doing when we'd been interrupted by Brian calling us down about the burnt cookies earlier.

While we were coloring, Olivia became quiet and then she said she had to go to the toilet. When she came back, her eyes were a little red and she was holding some toilet paper in her hand which she seemed to be using as a tissue. She flopped down on the side of my bed and I looked at her in concern.

"Are you alright?" I asked her.

Olivia sighed. "I don't like night time."

"Why not?"

Olivia shrugged. A few tears spilled over down her cheeks and she wiped them away with her tissue.

I went to sit next to her on the bed and put my arm around her.

"I especially don't like night time since the shooting," she said. "I know the guy can't hurt us, but night always makes me think about what happened. Don't you ever think about it?"

"Not really…" I said, "I mean I do sometimes… but not a lot."

"You're lucky," Olivia said and took a shuddery breath. More tears fell from her eyes. "I want my mom and dad."

I felt out of my depth; I didn't know how to help her, or how to make her feel better, and I definitely didn't want her to go home.

"Can I go and get Adam or Brian?" I asked her, "They always know how to make someone feel better."

Olivia didn't answer me.

"Can I Liv?"

Olivia nodded.

I quickly hopped up off the bed and ran downstairs. Evan and Daniel were engaged in an arm-wrestling competition in the living room- best of three- with Ford as the adjudicator and Guthrie watching on. Their arms were locked together on the coffee table and both were straining and grimacing against the other.

"Guys, where's Adam or Brian," I asked the group in general when I reached the bottom of the stairs.

Nobody answered me and when I asked again, more forcefully this time, Ford waved a hand in my direction as though he were batting me away.

"They're somewhere," he said, unhelpfully, "Go look."

I went through to the kitchen; neither of them were there, but I did find them in the mudroom. Brian was taking a pile of washing out the machine and transferring it into the dryer and Adam was sitting atop one of the counters polishing his boots and talking to Brian.

"Guys!"

Both my oldest brothers looked my way when I called their name.

"What's the matter, Heidi?" Adam said.

"It's Olivia; she's crying. She says she doesn't like nighttime… I don't know what to do."

"I though somethin' like this might happen," Brian said, "I'll come upstairs with you, see if we can make her feel better."

"I can go," Adam offered.

"Nah, I've got this," Brian said. He gestured to the laundry. "Just finish this for me, will ya?"

"She seems really upset; I didn't know what to do," I said as Brian followed me past my other brothers, who were now on arm wrestle round two, up the stairs.

"She'll be alright," Brian said confidently.

Olivia was still sitting on the side of my bed when we got to my room. I could tell she was trying to supress her tears, but they kept spilling out and the toilet paper she had been using to wipe them away was now soggy.

I went back to sit next to Olivia on the bed. Brian came and crouched down in front of her, on the balls of his feet. He put a hand on either of her knees and then said gently, "Hey kiddo, Heidi tells me you're a bit upset."

Olivia nodded and took another shuddery breath.

"I want my mom and dad"

Brian squeezed one of Olivia's knees.

"We can go call your mom and dad for sure if that's what you want, but can you tell me what's wrong?"

Brian looked at me, "Heidi, go get Olivia some more tissue."

I went to the bathroom quickly to fetch some and when I got back, Olivia was telling Brian what she had told me about not liking night time and about how she felt worse at night about the shooting. I handed Olivia the new tissue and she wiped her nose.

Brian nodded, "I'm not surprised- what you and Heidi witnessed was very scary, even for adults and you were both very brave."

He looked at me and winked. I gave him a small smile.

"You know what I find to be really helpful when one of the kids here is feeling scared or sad?"

Olivia looked at Brian in interest.

"I find it best to keep them really busy. And I was just about to make Christmas cookies because it's never to early for Christmas cookies, right?"

When Olivia nodded, he said, "And I need a couple of helpers- you and Heidi want to help me?"

"Can I still call my mom and dad?"

"Of course," Brian said.

We used the phone in the upstairs hall and Olivia called home and spoke to her mom who'd picked up. She became really tearful again, but then Brian asked if he could speak to her mom and Olivia passed over the phone.

"Go downstairs and I'll be there in a coupla minutes," Brian told us, before he spoke to Violet.

We headed downstairs into the living room. Evan had won the arm-wrestling competition and was lording it over Daniel who had now swept everything off the coffee table and was goading Evan into another tournament. As Olivia doesn't have any brothers, she always finds the goings on around our house thrilling and fascinating and so this was the perfect distraction after speaking to her mom and her getting so upset.

Brian arrived downstairs not more than 5 minutes later.

"Ready to leave these clowns to it and go bake?"

Guthrie looked at us from his place on the couch.

"What you doing?"

"We're going to bake Christmas cookies with Brian," Olivia said.

"I want to help!" Guthrie said.

The four of us went into the kitchen to bake the cookies. Adam was there too, drinking coffee and he teased us three younger kids by constantly pinching bits of the cookie dough. Soon Olivia was laughing and completely engrossed in the activity, her earlier insecurities forgotten. Brian showed us which settings to use on the oven to bake cookies properly, but he reminded me again not to use the oven without permission.

"Until you're fully confident with it," he said.

"That's right, I heard about your little misadventure with the cookies early, young lady," Adam said, giving me a pointed look.

After the cookies had baked, Brian let us ice them, which was all of our favourite bit. Guthrie and I both love icing sugar so it was fun to lick the spoon. We were nearly done when Daniel, Evan and Ford came rounding through to the kitchen. Daniel held his hands up in the air in a victory pose.

"Behold the winner of the McFadden arm-wrestling competition."

"I won the first tournment," Evan said grumpily.

"But who won the whole tournament?" Daniel said. He pointed to himself with both hands, "Oh yea: it was me."

"You cheated," Evan said.

"You can't cheat in an arm wrestle, little brother, don't be a sore loser," Daniel said.

They started to bicker further, but then Adam got up and shoved a cookie into both of their mouths, to shut them up. He didn't do it harshly or anything, and it was pretty funny, because he stopped them mid flow. Us younger kids giggled.

"These are pretty good," Evan said when he had finished wolfing his down. He reached round me to take another one, which had yet to be iced, off the plate.

"I haven't iced it yet!" I protested.

"Who needs icing?" Evan said.

Ford, Evan and Daniel grabbed a couple of other cookies off the plate.

"Brian- tell them to wait so we can finish icing them!" I said.

"Wait so the babies can finish icing them," Brian said obediently.

"You'd better take a few and put them aside for you to eat," Adam told Olivia. "Round here, a plate of cookies doesn't last very long."

Olivia laughed, but then we did put a few aside on a plate and Adam told the others they belonged to Olivia and me and not to touch them.

"I can't make any promises," Ford said but when Olivia looked at him in alarm, he smiled at her to show he was kidding.

Daniel wanted to know then when we would be going to get our Christmas tree.

"We'll go when Crane comes home," Adam said.

"When's that?" I asked.

"End of next week, right Brian?" Adam said.

"Yea, I think that's what he said," Brian said.

"I can't wait! I love Christmas," Guthrie said.

I loved Christmas too, and this year it would be special too because Crane would be home with us. Not that he wasn't home the other years too, but it felt extra special because he would be home for a couple of weeks instead of for a long weekend or a few days.

After we cleaned up from making the cookies- the second clean up of the day- Olivia and I ate ours with a glass of milk. We hung around in the living room with everyone else for a while and then Adam told us- me, Olivia and Guthrie- that we needed to be heading up to bed. I looked at Olivia, feeling a bit nervous; she seemed fine now, but going to bed might bring up all her bad feelings again. Plus, at her house, we had stayed up until midnight when I had slept over, but I knew that Adam would never let us do that here.

Olivia didn't appear to mind though. We went upstairs obediently and got ready for bed. Brian read to the three of us in my and Guthrie's room, and then when it was time to settle down for the night, he took Guthrie off to sleep in Daniel's room so Olivia could sleep in his bed.

Although Brian turned off the lights when he left our room, Olivia and I continued to chat. She didn't bring up being upset earlier and I didn't mention it either. We faced each other, her cuddling her stuffed bear, Gordon, and me cuddling Rocket.

"You know," she said, "Brian's kind of like a mom."

"What?" I said.

"Adam's like a dad, and Brian's like a mom."

"You think so?" I asked. I had never really thought of Brian in that way.

"Yea, he does the things a mom would do- well I think he does anyway."

"I guess so," I said, thinking about it. Brian could be stern, gruff, short tempered, impatient. But he also did a lot of the things around the house- things I knew that mothers did, like cooking and making school lunches, and doing laundry- things like that. He could also be gentle and loving like he had been this evening. And he always kind, even behind the bluster. I had nothing to compare it to though. It was amusing to think about what Brian's reaction would be if we started calling him mom.

/

Olivia's dad picked her up the next morning. When he arrived at our front door, he greeted Olivia with a one-armed hug and then let her go.

"Did you have fun?" he asked her.

"Oh yes!" Olivia said enthusiastically, "we played with the animals and then made cookies and almost burnt the house down and then Brian took us for a ride on the horses and we then made more cookies and the boys ate them all in about 20 seconds!

Olivia's dad looked at her fondly. "Sounds like you girls have been busy!"

He turned to Brian and said, "Thanks a lot, Brian. Violet and I are really grateful- I think this has been exactly what Olivia needed."

He looked down at her and pulled her into another hug, holding her to his side this time.

"In case you hadn't noticed," he said with a wry smile, "Violet and I have got quite the little drama queen on our hands."

Brian smiled and then he put one hand on either of my shoulders and pulled me back gently against him. He squeezed my shoulders.

"No problem, happy to help; we've got our own resident drama queen, so we know what it's like."