“Well, welcome to womanhood.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Sometimes I don’t, either, but it is what it is.” I smiled, stifling the urge to kiss her. She wasn’t my child. Having the strange neighbor woman kiss her head might be too much considering everything else she’d been through today.
I turned my attention to the cartoon Cassidy had chosen. Apparently, the child felt the need to regress. I didn’t blame her. “You know, not every father would go out and get feminine plumbing supplies like that.”
“What?”
“Feminine plumbing—oh, you know, pads and tampons and such.”
“WellIdon’t want someone to seemebuying them,” said Cassidy with a shudder.
“Honey, it’s all perfectly natural.” I resisted the impulse to push her hair out of her face. After all, our current camaraderie had been forged out of necessity, and the closeness might or might not last.
“The boys at school make fun of us and are always asking if we have PMS or if we’re on our period or something. They made fun of one girl because they could see the outline of her pad through her pants.”
So eighth grade had changed very little.
“I’m going to tell you something, but you absolutely cannot tell your father that I said it.”
“What?” Cassidy was all wide eyes and freckles.
I dramatically looked to my left and then my right, even craning my head as though checking to see who might be at the front door. I leaned in to whisper, “Most eighth-grade boys are assholes.”
Cassidy giggled just as I had hoped she would.
“In all seriousness,” I said as I leaned back into the couch, “your father is quite a guy for going out to buy tampons and pads.”
“But shouldn’t guys do that? Especially dads?”
I paused. Mitch would’ve cut off his own arm before he’d buy a box of tampons. I knew because I’d once made the mistake of asking him to pick up some for me on his way home from work.
But the kid was right.
“Yeah, it is a low bar to clear,” I said. “I guess I’m saying I don’t know your dad that well, but he seems like one of the good guys in a world full of guys who haven’t emotionally left the eighth grade yet.”
Cassidy looked up at me solemnly. “Like your husband?”
How did she know about Mitch?
Vivian, she could probably hear the yelling over there.
“You are very astute.”
“What does that mean?”
“Ah, free SAT lesson: astute means you are very shrewd, very smart for your age. Don’t be like me. Marry a guy who’s willing to buy you a box of tampons.”
Cassidy nodded in confusion. She was probably wondering how her day had come to this. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that this was just the beginning of wild, weird womanhood.
I opened my mouth to change the subject, but Parker chose that moment to come through the door.
“Okay, Cass. Miss Vivian suggested all of this, so be mad at her if it doesn’t work.”
“Okay,” she said, but the look she gave me said that she couldn’t be mad at me in a million years.
My heart squeezed in on itself.
