Charlie caught it; she had stellar hand-eye coordination, even as a human. “Brr! Cold!” She hopped from one bare foot to the other as she hastily shook out her coat and wrapped it around herself. “Did you take pictures, Dad?”
“What do you mean, take pictures? I was too busy holding your clothes and worrying about you breaking your neck.”
“Some super-sleuth you are!” Charlie declared, balancing on one foot as she tried to get her other bare foot into a boot without dropping the rest of her clothes.
“Could you get out of the middle of the road, please? I think I hear a car coming.”
“Spoilsport.” Charlie dashed across the road and threw open the back door of the SUV. Muttering a litany of “Cold, cold, cold!” she flung herself into the backseat and pulled her clothes in after her. There was some squirming and an occasional upthrust skinny arm or the flash of a flowered legging as she got dressed.
Sam strolled in a leisurely way back to the SUV as the low, distant rumble down the road became more audible. He knocked on the door. More squirming and then the window rolled down halfway. “What, Dad?”
“There’s definitely a vehicle coming. Sounds big. Are you decent?”
The squirming became more frantic. Meanwhile, a set of flashing yellow and blue lights appeared over the brow of the hill below them. By the time Charlie had finished dressing, the source of the rumbling engine pulled up alongside them. It was a snowplow, and it ground its way to a stop.
“You folks all right?” the operator called down from the cab.
“We’re fine!” Sam shouted up to him. “My daughter’s had a wardrobe malfunction, that’s all. We’ll be back on the road in a minute.”
“Dad!” came a yelp of deeply offended teenage dignity.
The snowplow operator waved, Sam waved back, and it lowered its blade and ground its way off with a deep scraping sound. They’d be following that the rest of the way, it looked like, Sam thought; just what this trip needed, another delay.
“Dad! What did you say that for? What do you think he thought, that I pooped my pants or something?”
“The best cover story is vague, yet implies it’s something that no one wants to ask questions about.”
“You’re so embarrassing.”
Sam decided to change the subject. “Just tell me you didn’t lose your mom’s necklace up there.”
“Good freaking grief on toast. I took it off before I got out of the car.” Charlie tangled her fingers in a sparkly chain and held it up. “See? Still got it.”
“Good job. If you’re done getting dressed, let’s get back on the road.” Sam checked his phone and tried, once more, to text the lodge and let them know that he and Charlie might be late. Once more, the mountains blocked reception and the text returned a sad failure message.
Charlie hopped into the front seat. “Let’s go, let’s go. Since you didn’t take pictures of me, I don’t even have anything for Instagram.”
“You were going to put pictures of your shift form on Instagram?”
“No, I was going to post pictures of a mountain goat I happened to see on the hills above the road. But now that’s not going to happen, so let’s go freeze to death in the middle of nowhere or whatever.”
Like she hadn’t just been running around naked in the snow. Sam suspected that for all her performative complaining about spending Christmas at the mountain lodge, his athletic, outdoorsy daughter was going to love it.
Even if there were way too many cliffs near the lodge for her to parkour down.
“Listen,” he said as he started the SUV. “I’m fine with you doing what you just did with supervision.” Well, fine wasn’t the word he’d use, but it wasn’t like he could stop her if she really wanted to, and having her do it with him watching was the lesser of two evils. “But keep in mind we’re pretty far from civilization,and these mountains can be treacherous in ways you don’t expect. Cell service is pretty spotty out here too. So tell me before you go anywhere. And you’re gonna need the parental sign-off before you do anything like what you just did, okay?”
“Way to turn this vacation into a joyless time-suck,Dad.”
“Didn’t I just let you run down a cliff naked?”
“Well ... okay.” She didn’t really have a good rebuttal for that. “But you always want to make rules for everything, and plan everything, and sometimes life just has to happen, you know?”
Sam felt a twinge that he knew was irrational. This was the same thing as Charlie arguing that she definitelyneededto stay up past her bedtime when she was younger, and he knew it. You had to have rules and preparation in order to run a successful business while also single-parenting a kid, and he managed to do both very well, thanks.
He also knew that any attempt to engage with her arguments would just make her double down, so he said, “When we get there, we’ll ask about ski trails and see if we can find somewhere nice for you to parkour around on.” He reached across to nudge her. “Hey, maybe there will be other mountain goat shifters, so you’ll have someone to parkour with.”
Charlie brightened. “That’s right, it’s all shifters there, isn’t it?” She looked ahead curiously, then frowned as the cloud of snow raised by the plow came into view ahead, and Sam hit the brakes to slow down. “I hope we’re not stuck behind a snowplow the whole way.”
