Page 34 of Mountain Men’s Nanny

I changed out of my wet and dirty clothes and got dressed in a hurry for the second time that day. Then made my way to the cabin to find everyone standing around the kitchen island, drinking coffee, while Lexi groggily drank her milk.

I hadn’t recognized it at first, but we had fallen into a routine. At first, they had theirs, and I just tried to find my place around it, but now we were fully in sync.

Gideon made the coffee. He knew how everyone liked it, and what mugs we all preferred. Tobias handled breakfast, while Gunner chased Lexi around at the start of the day, reminding her to brush her teeth, get dressed, and make sure she got downstairs to eat. I spent the morning sharing my plans for the day: what Lexi would be getting up to, and helped Gideon clean up after breakfast.

They had their way, and now their way had been modified to include me.

“What do you usually do for Thanksgiving?” I asked expectantly.

They hadn’t spoken about the holiday that the entire city back home had probably been planning for weeks. There would be posters in shop windows, sales and adverts, but out here nothing was a big deal and the only things that mattered were the things we decided mattered. The men had clearly decided that Thanksgiving didn’t matter.

Gideon raised an eyebrow. “Nothing.”

The men all looked at me as if I had sprouted a second head, while Lexi looked at me as if I had just made up a holiday she didn’t know anything about.

“The only special day we observe in this house is Lexi’s birthday,” Tobias shrugged. “Everything else is more work than it’s worth.”

I rolled my eyes. Who didn’t love Thanksgiving?

“Well, I’m here now, and I think we owe Lexi a proper all-American childhood.” I decided there and then that we were going all out. “Tobias, this is an emergency, so just for today, can we please put aside your rationing rules?”

“Please, Daddy,” Lexi whined, joining in. “We can have apple pie and turkey with stuffing and cranberry sauce just like Charlie Brown! Please, Daddy.”

Tobias closed his eyes, turning things over in his head. I could almost see the wheels and the gears shifting before he said it.

“Fine, we’ll do Thanksgiving, but we don’t have a turkey. The best I can do is that wild goose we have in the freezer,” he said with a sigh.

“I’ll get the goose out then,” Gunner said cheerfully.

The mood in the cabin shifted. Even Gideon mustered some cheer, showing Lexi how to make a paper turkey to use as a centerpiece, while Tobias fought back tears as he chopped all the onions we’d need.

“In the old days, did you celebrate Thanksgiving, Daddy, or is this your first one too?” Lexi asked.

“The old days,” Gunner snickered. “Is that when you were a child, old man? In the old days?”

“You were there too, though you wouldn’t know it just by looking at you,” Tobias hit back playfully.

The banter I had found on my first day here was back with a vengeance. Everything quickly turned into a competition. Gideon could move the dining room table single-handedly, Gunner had shot his first turkey when he was 8, which was (in his mind) far better than anything the other guys had ever gotten from the store, and Tobias had known the secret to the best sweet potato pie any of us had ever tasted.

We moved around each other with ease, bustling through the house as we set the table with makeshift decorations, prepared traditional Thanksgiving food, and started new traditions for Lexi.

“The youngest gets to taste the pie filling first,” Lexi announced, spoon in hand.

Tobias helped her get a spoonful of sugary spiced apples we had broken out from the pantry, and laughter filled the entire cabin.

We didn’t have everything we needed to put together a ‘real’ Thanksgiving, but we had enough to make it a happy one. I didn’t think about that life I had left behind, a life that had tried to break in just this morning. This was it, all of it. My life was complete right here and now. No past, no future, just what was happening in the moment, and I loved it.

Gunner and Gideon argued about what type of music to play. Tobias thought everything was over the top, and he was already dreading the cleanup and all the replenishing needed to get the food stocks back up. But overall, we were happy. There was an overwhelming sense of contentment in the cabin. We moved with ease, each of us satisfied with the space we held here. It felt like home.

In the midst of all the organized chaos, Lexi walked up to me with a shy smile.

“Brie,” she said softly, “I want to show you something special, but you can’t tell the others.”

A secret! As a little girl, I had many harmless little secrets. Being let into that world that was just my own was the ultimate show of trust. I knew exactly what this was. It wasn’t like the days Lexi spent with me because no one was around. She was inviting me in by choice. I couldn’t miss a beat. I told Tobias to watch the bird in the oven, handed Gideon the pumpkin seasoning, instructed Gunner to behave himself, and took Lexi’s hand.

I followed her upstairs, leaving Tobias to manage the kitchen and keep Gideon and Gunner in check without question.

“Where do you two think you’re going?” Tobias called out. “You’re the ones who wanted all this. You can’t just leave us down here.”