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“I can still touch the bottom, right?” Troy asked.
“Absolutely,” she assured him.
“Then I can try,” he said. “I guess.”
Quinn reached out and hugged him, and he hugged back and said, “You’re a very good swimming teacher.”
Janey sighed in an exasperated sort of way, and Quinn sat up again and said, “Right. Now, the other thing to know about my cleaning day is that it isloud.”
“Uh …” Beckett said. “Loud?”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll be vacuuming and won’t be able to hear as well. I play very loud, very zippy music, and there could be some dancing, too. Many songs of female empowerment.”
“Oh, no,” Violet said. “NotI Will Survive.My mom plays that all thetimewhen she’s dancing around. Or gardening. She wears headphones, so you shouldn’t be able to hear, but shesings.”
“Definitely,” Quinn said. “Some things are classics. AlsoHit the Road, Jack,andKing of the Road.My playlist possibly owes a bit to my parents. AndLittle Rock,because Reba McEntire could really belt out an I’m-leaving song, and a little Chris Ledoux, because you live in Montana now, andWhat You Gonna Do With a Cowboyis one of those songs I can never hear enough, though it’s possibly not entirely appropriate, but oh, well. And, of course, much more. I play every song twice, so you get the chance to enjoy it and remember the words. So much better that way. What do you say?” She stood up, or maybebouncedup was a better word. “Let’s get this show on the road!”
“Yay!” Troy said, jumping up himself.
“Yip!” Bacon said, doing his favorite hind-legs dance.
“All right,” Janey said. “If we have to.” But, Beckett noticed, when he was running the hoover around upstairs and casting a glance into the bathroom, Violet and Janey were dancing around, waving cleaning rags over their heads, and singing along, because, of course, Quinn had a network of Bluetooth speakers up here.
It was a song calledShe’s a Bad Mama Jama.Which seemed to be about a woman with a … curvy body.
What the hell. He shoved the hoover into the corners and sang along himself. He could get behind that sentiment.
That was why, though, he’d had barely a chance to say three words to Quinn by six-fifteen, when he came home with Janey after her game. Troy had stayed home with Quinn this time, too, and the second Beckett came in the door, he and Bacon ran over. Troy threw his arms around Beckett’s legs and said, “Dad! You’re home!” Bacon, of course, jumped around, barked at a frequency humans shouldn’t be able to hear, and acted ecstatic.
Janey said, “You do realize thatI’mmeant to be the dramatic one here, right?”
Beckett said, “You were dramatic. You scored a point, and you saved another one. That’s enough drama for me.”
Troy asked, “Did you win the game, Janey?”
“No,” she said. “But we only lost by one.” Her cheeks were still flushed, and she was smiling. “It was pretty awesome, wasn’t it, Dad?”
“Too right,” he said, and put an arm around her and squeezed. “A pretty good day. You helping me with all those groceries and our other errand, and getting to watch you play? That’s a good day with my girl. I’m a pretty proud dad just now.”
“AndI cleaned,” Janey said.
“Definitely,” he agreed. “I’d call that teamwork all the way around.”
Troy said, “It was brilliant here, too. We made the dough for the cookies today instead of tomorrow, because Quinn said she had extra time because she didn’t have to go to the store, and the cookies are better if you put the balls of dough in the fridge overnight first, and we folded all the clothes and the towels and put all the sheets on the beds! And I picked up Bacon’s poo by myself!”
Janey said, “You are extremely weird.” Fortunately, Troy didn’t seem to notice.
Beckett asked, “Where’s Quinn now?” She’d put all the sheets on the beds? That shouldn’t be all right, should it? He’d had flatmates in the past, back before the dawn of time. None of them had ever put his sheets on his bed for him. Or folded his undies, either. He’d bet his clothes were laid out on his made-up bed in a neat pile. He’dbet.
Troy said, “She’s getting ready for her date. And we made a very big pot of chili, too, with meat from an elk that was in Quinn’s extra freezer in the garage, wrapped up in white paper. There’s heaps of meat out there, but not regular meat from the supermarket, with plastic on. It’s all in white paper and somebody just wrote what it is with a pen on the paper. Like ‘sausage’ or ‘steak,’ because it’sallmeat from an elk. An elkis a very big animal like a deer, but bigger, and her daddidshoot it, but she says that’s OK, because it helps the herd stay healthy, and the elk didn’t suffer, either, because her dad shoots them very carefully so they don’t even know they died. But I still don’t want to shoot an animal, and Quinn says that’s OK, and she doesn’t shoot animals, either. She just eats the meat, because it’s good for you, because the animals eat very nice grass.”
“That seems kind of weird,” Janey said. “Like eating bison meatloaf, but worse, because somebodyshotit.”
“You’re in Montana now,” Beckett said. “You’ve eaten roo before. That was hopping about before it got shot.”
“Only when I didn’t exactlyknowI was eating it,” she said. “When I wasyoung.What if I want to be a vegetarian?”
He needed to see about Quinn and this date. He needed to … “Do you want to be a vegetarian?” he asked.
