Chapter 11

Present

"So then Uncle Bobby and Daddy helped Mommy move her things in here," I concluded, waving my free hand to encompass not just the bathroom where we'd been working on getting the knots out of McKenzie's hair, but the house in all it's entirety. A building that, prior to the events in the tale I was spinning, had been little more than a physical structure where I could hide myself away from time to time. These days, though, it contained my whole world.

"And they all lived happily ever after!" Kenzie cried excitedly, even as the brush caught on yet another tangle, jerking her head to the side. Endings had always been her favourite part of a story, so it came as no surprise to me that she was attempting to draw this one to a close prematurely.

I shook my head, setting the brush aside so I could gather her hair up in the simple braid Steph had taught me for minimising the amount of tangles that worked their way back into the hair while she slept. "Not quite," I informed her. "The story is far from over."

I almost missed the confused expression in the mirror as I concentrated on getting my fingers in the right positions to manipulate her hair. Give me a gun to disassemble and reassemble blindfolded any day, at least all the pieces maintained a solid shape throughout the process. "But Mommy lived here," she reasoned slowly, shoving carelessly at a strand of hair that had fall out of my grasp. "And you live here. And you had me."

"Ah," I murmured, realising where her confusion was stemming from. "Mommy and Daddy didn't live together straight away," I explained. I'd obviously glossed over that detail while trying to edit out the less savoury details, like her mother's true nature and subterfuge.

"But you said Mommy moved in here," she pointed out with the kind of patience I was pretty sure she could only have picked up from Ella or my mother. "And you said it's your house."

"That's right," I agreed. "But I wasn't living here when Mommy moved in."

Her reflection frowned at me. "Where were you living?"

"At Rangeman like Uncle Bobby," I said, dropping her hair and regathering it to start again, Steph made it look so easy when she showed me, but every time I'd attempted it without her standing over me it all fell out of my hands.

"Why?" Kenzie asked.

I silently groaned. I really didn't want to get into a why conversation this close to bedtime, especially knowing the topic already. It was just going to end in frustration. "Because it was close to work, and easy to maintain," I explained honestly, even if the concepts were a little beyond her.

"But why did you have a house but you weren't living in it?" she pressed, swivelling to look at me directly and dislodging her hair from my grasp once more. "And why didn't you move in with Mommy? That's what mommies and daddies do."

The sigh I'd tried to suppress fell from my lips anyway, like the disobedient show of emotion it was. "I had the house because sometimes I needed a place to be by myself," I told her, spinning her back around and quickly taking hold of her hair, like grabbing up the reins of a runaway horse. Without wasting another second, I started passing the three strands I'd divided it into over and over each other until I had something that looked vaguely like what Steph had shown me. Close enough for jazz, I thought, securing the ends with an elastic and tossing the completed braid over her shoulder so she could see it.

She wasn't interested in congratulating me on my hair achievement, though. Still too bogged down in the details of my and her mother's living situation five years ago. "But you can't be by yourself in the house, Daddy," she pointed out, turning to face me again. "That's where mommy lived."

"Let me finish, Muffin-Head," I requested, dropping her brush and hair elastics back into the drawer below the counter she sat on and retrieving our tooth brushes from the cup beside her, handing hers to her while I squeezed out some toothpaste for each of us. "Before I met mommy, I used the house for being alone," I explained, while she started brushing her teeth. "But the house was a good solution for mommy because she had nowhere else to live."

"Buh wwwhhhhyyyyy din you lib wif mommy?" she asked, eyes wide an imploring as she practically foamed at the mouth with curiosity.

"I didn't know her, munchkin."

She levelled a look at me that reminded me so much of Phoebe that it sent shivers down my spine. The only thing that prevented it from being truly effective was the trail of toothpaste foam sliding down her chin. "But you're mommy and daddy," she pointed out. "You played together. And you had a baby. You passed the test and you had me!"

"Okay, I think we're getting a little ahead of ourselves here," I said, grasping her hand and guiding the toothbrush back into her mouth just as she responded with her signature plaintive Whhhyyy?. "A mommy and a daddy don't need to know each other to make a baby or pass the test," I explained.

"Why nof?"

This is the exact reason I'd been dreading a why conversation on this part of the story. In order to fully explain the situation to her, she'd need to have an understanding of the birds and the bees, and I was sooo not ready for that conversation with my little girl yet. I figured I had at least another seven years of blissful innocence before I had to have that particular chat. So I told her what my parents had told me when I'd enquired about the hard topics at a young age. "I'll explain when you're older."

Unsurprising she gave me the same response I'd used at her age: "But I want to know now!" although I don't recall spraying quite so much toothpaste across the bathroom when I did it. And in the next second, she was crying, and my heart was breaking for her all over again. It had been a long day at school, and then she'd had the horrible experience at dance class. She was already tired, and her emotions were close to the surface. I had been hoping we'd have a smooth transition to bedtime because of her exhaustion, but now I could see the error of my ways. Somehow, I always forgot that the combination of exhaustion and big emotions lead to a hard time getting her to sleep.

Taking the toothbrush from her hand and setting both it and my own aside, I used a damp washcloth to wipe the foam from her face and handed her a cup of water to rinse her mouth which she did on autopilot while hiccoughing and allowing frustrated tears to flow down her face. With that complete, I lifted her into my arms, a grim smile pulling at my lips as she automatically wrapped her legs around my waist and buried her face in my shoulder, tears seeping into my black t-shirt. I made shushing sounds as I rocked her gently back and forth, just as I had when she was a baby, and carried her into her bedroom, lowering us both onto her bed.

"You can still hear the rest of the rest of the story, Kenz," I assured her. "All the details about how a baby is made and the test are just hard to understand, that's all."

"But I'm your smart girl," she pointed out between sobs, pulling back to spear me with her watery gaze.

"I know you are, sweetpea," I smiled, tucking the strands of hair that had already worked themselves loose behind her hair. "But if I tell you now, you'll just be confused. It's better if we wait until you're old enough to understand."

She sniffed and rubbed some of the tears away from her eyes, clearly not satisfied with my suggestion. "How old?"

As much as I wanted to avoid telling her about the birds and the bees forever, I knew that as a responsible parent I should inform her at some stage about the biological comings and goings of baby making, especially if I wanted to avoid becoming a grandparent prematurely. The problem was, she was asking me to put a number on it, to lay down a concrete timeframe of when I would tell her. And McKenzie Elizabeth Santos had a long memory. Knowing my luck she would recall this conversation and when the time came she would remind me that I promised to tell her about how you can make a baby with someone and not know them. I had to be strategic about this, make sure I picked an age where she would be old enough to understand, or would have already figured out the answer for herself by that point.

"Fifteen," I eventually said, knowing that if I planned on having a sit down talk about sex and puberty it would be much sooner than that, but at least it would prevent her from remembering my promise out of the blue and demanding answers that I wasn't mentally prepared to give.

Her eyebrows drew together. "Fifteen?" she asked, and I nodded. "How long is that?"

"Ten years," I said easily.

She let out a groan, flopping to the side so that she was lying half on the pillow and half on my lap. "That's too long, Daddy!" she told me. "I can't wait that long!"

"What do we say to can't?" I asked pointedly, reminding her of the motto that her school teacher had taught her class for when things were hard and they didn't think they could do it.

"GET RID OF THAT 'T'!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms and legs out wide and knocking me in the chest.

"Well?" I prompted, shifting so I could tuck her under the covers and hopefully contain those limbs.

She sighed like it was the most soul draining thing in the world. "I guess I can wait that long, but I want to know why you and mommy didn't live together."

Grabbing a book from the box beside the bookcase, I laid down next to her on the bed. "Like I said, Muffin-head, I didn't know her, and because I didn't know her, I didn't trust her very much. I wanted to wait until we knew each other better before we lived together."

"But why?"

"Because that's what grown ups do before they decide to live together," I explained. "Now, why don't we put the mommy story on hold until tomorrow and read this new book I got at the library today."

Her arms popped out from under the covers to cross over her chest as she glared at me, reminding me much more of my mother than her own this time. "You went to the library without me?" she accused.

"I had to, munchkin," I explained. "The books were due back, and we didn't have time to do it after school because of dance class." And I wanted to talk to that hot children's librarian without you around, I added in my head. And by 'talk' I mean 'flirt' and 'ask on a date'. I may not be the playboy I once was, but that didn't mean I didn't long for the company of a woman from time to time. I was much more conventional in my transgressions these days, though. I had Kenzie to consider, so I couldn't just go out and bed the first woman that caught my eye. I had to be careful.

My little girl huffed out another sigh, but didn't saying anything. Concerned that she was thinking about what had occurred at dance class this afternoon and was going to get upset again, I offered a treaty. "I only got the one book," I pointed out, holding it up as evidence. "Because I think it fits well with learning about Mommy. But we can go again on the weekend so you can pick out some books."

"The recital is this weekend," she pointed out, calculatingly.

"We'll go after the recital," I said, knowing that the entire pre-recital portion of Saturday would be taken up by last minute rehearsal, hair and make-up. "And if it's too late to go to the library after the recital, we'll get ice cream instead, and save the library for Sunday," I added, just in case. Contingency plans were always a good idea.

I could see the cogs turning in her head as she considered the deal. She wasn't happy about missing out on the library today, but if she was smart – which I knew she absolutely was – she would realise that I was offering her more than a simple library visit, especially if the dance recital finished after sixteen hundred hours. "Okay," she said, pulling the book out of my hands to look at it more closely. "What's the story?"

I relaxed, letting her hold the book for us. "What can you tell me about it from the cover?" I countered.

She moved her finger over the words, sounding them out slowly. "The… guh-err-eh-at… big… b-oo-k… off… fuh-a-mmmm-i-li-es…" She paused, her lips going through the motions again without the sound. I watched as her eyes shifted to the pictures, gathering the information to help her complete her task, then her fingers moved to cover up the g-r of 'great'. "Eat," she whispered to herself, and then sounded out the last word again. "The greet big book off families?" she tried.

"Good job, Kenz," I encouraged, genuinely impressed by her accuracy. We'd been working on letter recognition and sounds for as long as I could remember and between that, her love of books, and starting school this year, she was coming along in leaps and bounds. "Very close. There's a couple of tricky words in there. It says The Great Big Book of Families."

"Is mommy in here?" she asked curiously, flipping through the pages and looking at the pictures, looking for anyone who might resemble the photos on the mantle of her mother.

"No, mommy isn't in there," I told her. "But we might find a family like ours. Families come in all shapes and sizes."