Family Camp (Daddy Dearest, #1)(2)

Lucy looked up at him, still wailing. Her eyes were big and dark, her face red with fury. Her black hair was so thick and straight it refused to hold the barrettes Geo had bought for her. Her expression was miserable and accusatory, and it made his heart ache. She looked like the worst fate in the world had befallen her, and it was all Geo’s fault.

“Aw baby, hush. Just let me look, all right? Your doggie must be around here somewhere.”

Her wailing changed in pitch, downgrading to a lower, steady cry, as if this was going to be a marathon not a sprint. Great. Geo opened the door wide and patted around the floor by her feet. The rubber mats were still relatively clean from when he’d detailed the car in preparation for the foster care inspection a few months ago. The dog doll was not there.

He heard the other back door open. He looked up to see Jayden getting out.

“Jayden, please stay in the car,” Geo said sharply.

“I ain’t stayin’ in there. Gonna fuckin’ bust my eardrums,” Jayden muttered, getting out and slamming the car door behind him.

Geo clenched his teeth. “Jay, it’s a busy road. Please. I don’t want you to get hit. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use that word.”

“Eardrums?” Jayden smirked.

“No, ‘ain’t.’ At least come over to this side of the car.”

“I ain’t gettin’ on the road. I ain’t stupid. What’re those?” He wandered closer, pointing to the base of the tall pine trees at the side of the road.

Geo brightened. “Those are pine cones.”

“Pine cones? That big?”

“Yup. Different kinds of trees have different sized pine cones. They’re basically big seeds. The trees drop them and some of them will end up getting buried in dirt and debris and will become a new tree. Cool, huh?”

Okay, so all that was hardly relevant at the moment. But Geo’s inner teacher popped up at the least provocation.

Jayden walked over to the trees and picked up a pine cone, studying it curiously.

Telling himself Jayden was fine, Geo bent to look in the car again where Lucy was still wailing.

“You’re not sitting on the doggie, are you? Are you sitting on the doggie?” He used a silly voice and widened his eyes, hoping she would respond to humor. She didn’t.

He patted around the soft knit aqua shorts and aqua-and-white T-shirt that said PRINCESS he’d bought her last week. He checked behind her back and along the bench car seat.

The dog doll, like her other dolls, had come with Lucy from the foster care system, so he didn’t know its origin. But he knew it was only a few inches long. It looked like a brown Scottish terrier with flocked fur. He checked the floor on Jayden’s side too. The dog wasn’t there.

Shit. Shit.

Those dolls meant everything to Lucy. There wasn’t a minute of the day they weren’t in her hands or spread out on the floor as she played with them. When she shut out the world, which was often, her dolls were her happy place.

Geo had tried to wash Mom doll’s hair once, because it was gunky with glue or oatmeal or something more nefarious. But any mention of touching the dolls, much less doing it, sent Lucy into a DEFCON-1 wide-mouthed grimace, preparing for total hysteria. He’d put his hands up in surrender. Back. Away. From. The dolls. So losing one was, in a word, apocalyptic.

Geo gave up looking and wiped his face in frustration. He bent over Lucy’s car seat. “Lucy, honey, look at me.”

She did, still crying. Her face was blotched red and wet from tears.

“Oh, sweetie.” He grabbed a napkin from the front seat and wiped her face. “When we get to the hotel, I’ll call the rest stop and see if they found your doggie. They can send it to us at the camp. Okay?”

Nope. It wasn’t okay. She went back to full-on shrieking.

Jayden appeared at his shoulder. “You’re gonna have to drive back and get it,” Jayden said, with a taunt in his voice. “So let’s do it. Ain’t like we don’t have to be in the car for another fifty billion years anyway.”

Geo swallowed and took out his phone. “Actually, we’re almost to Big Bear. And we can’t turn around now. There’s nothing for miles back the way we came.”

“So? We got water bottles. And you bought all those stupid snacks and stuff.”

Stupid snacks. Forty bucks’ worth. Thank you, Jayden.

“Because we, uh, we need gas.” He searched Google maps for nearby gas stations. The closest was ten miles ahead in Big Bear.

His heart sank further, and he felt a little sick. Ten miles. The way the car had sputtered it wouldn’t even make one. Please God. Just one break today. I’ll give up my subscription to Muscle & Fitness, I swear.

“Holy shit! We’re out of gas?” Jayden hooted. “Dude! How come you didn’t stop before? We only passed, like, a million gas stations!”

Because my gas gauge is broken, and I chose to spend every dime I’ve made for the past year on buying a little house and fixing it up so the foster care people would let me, maybe, finally, be a dad. And because I got distracted by Lucy going missing and possibly being dead and forgot to fill up an hour ago like I planned. But mostly? Because I fucked up.

“Get back in the car, Jay. I’ll take care of it.”

Jayden, still laughing at Geo, got into the car. “Oh my God, you suck at this whole ‘family trip’ thing, huh?”