Page 123 of Summer with the Single Dad

Guilt ripped raw and acidic through him. But he shoved it down. This wasn’t about him. This was about Emme and helping her. He wrapped an arm around Justine and pecked her on the side of the head. “How can I help her?”

“Knowing is a big part of it. Now, you can consciously be aware of the demands you’re putting on her and put on less. Gently push her to take more risks—benign ones. Help her see that it’s not the end of the world to sometimes make a wrong decision. Shame ran deep inside me. Shame over upsetting my parents. Over making the incorrect choice. I see the same in her. Help remove the shame.”

“How’d you overcome it?”

Her laugh was humorless and airy. “I haven’t. I still have so much of it. But I’m aware of it and working on it. She’s young though, and she has a father who doesn’t want her to end up like me. That’s a huge proponent to helping her through this.”

“If she turned out like you, that wouldn’t be so terrible.”

“I ended up in the hospital with an ulcer because I couldn’t decide on a specialty. Neuro, cardio, or ENT? I was so afraid of making the wrong choice that it made me sick. You don’t want her to be like me.”

Now he was sad for a whole new reason. He squeezed her tighter. “How’d you finally choose?”

She huffed another humor-free laugh. “Would you believe my roommate and I let her cat decide?”

“What?”

“Bethany had a cat—Caterina Felina—” She paused while he snorted, and she smirked. “And we put three pieces of paper with the specialties written on them in front of the cat and waited for her to touch one. Whichever one she touched first, that was my declared specialty.”

“You’re kidding! You do not strike me as the type to leave anything up to fate, let alone a cat.”

“I couldn’t decide. It literally gave me an ulcer. So I had no other choice. I let Caterina Felina decide for me.”

“Well, she chose well.”

Justine’s face said she wasn’t sure if she agreed, but he didn’t say anything. “I think I will go to the beach. Unless you need a hand here?”

He pecked her on the side of the head again and released her. “We’ve got it. Jagger’s mediocre at best, but he’s better than nothing.”

“Hey!” Jagger called out from the bedroom. “Fuck you.”

Bennett grinned. “Have fun at the beach.”

She tossed him a wink and a smile, then headed out.

“Well, she took the news rather well,” Cam said, testing out the cabinet door he’d just installed. It swung back and forth beautifully.

Bennett nodded. “She hasn’t been here long, but the island is doing her a world of good. She’s working on herself and her stress.”

Cam’s eyes turned sympathetic. “I hope you don’t mind that I was eavesdropping a little on what you’re going through with Emme.”

Bennett shook his head. “No. Not at all. It’s all very new to me, and I’m trying not to let the guilt swamp me because it’s not about me. I … I hate that I’ve forced her to grow up faster than she has to. A lot of it is because she is the oldest of the kids. And she is responsible, and mature, and a natural-born leader. We can trust her to not get into trouble and to look out for her sister and cousins.”

“I get it,” Cam said with a nod. “I’m going through some similar stuff with Francesca actually. And I’m in the same boat. I’m a fixer, you know? I see a problem and I try to fix it. But with anxiety … and little girls in particular, it just doesn’t work that way. We can help, but we can’t fix.”

Bennett wasn’t entirely sure of Cameron’s story, but he was a Caucasian man raising an Asian daughter. Francesca was in the same class and grade as Talia. She was as sweet as could be, very polite and, according to Talia, ‘crazy-smart’. So Cam was doing something right.

“We adopted Cesca from China when she was an infant,” Cam went on. “Then a week later, my wife was in a building when it collapsed because of …” Anger filled his eyes. “Anyway, she didn’t make it. So then I was left with this six-month-old little girl and I had no idea what to do. I was fine with being a father. But if Joelle decided she didn’t want kids, I was okay with that too. I just wanted her. But she was consumed with becoming a mother. We just couldn’t do it naturally. So we got on the adoption list and I’d never seen her happier than when she was with Francesca. Then she died, and I was suddenly responsible for this little life and I was lost. I feel like I’ve been screwing her up since the day Joelle died. You know?”

Boy, did Bennett understand that. Of course, he loved his daughters, but they were emotional little beasts and Carla had always been so patient with them. She nurtured their feelings and encouraged them to express themselves. No emotion or feeling was too big. She was a passionate Latina, and she said she was raising her daughters to be the same. But when Aya lost her mind over something Bennett considered a small problem, he struggled. He would say to her, “This is a small problem.” But that only seemed to make things worse.

“I do a lot of reading on anxiety and kids,” Cam went on. “On helping them cope and finding outlets for their emotions and stress. We have a mini-trampoline in our house that Cesca goes and bounces on when she’s frustrated. The vestibular movements help with her emotional regulation. I’ve also learned that what we may think is a “small problem” is in fact a “big problem” to them. We should be grateful that our kids don’t actually know what true big problems are.”

“Dude, you’re like in my head, and in my house,” Bennett said with a lighthearted laugh. Cam chuckled too. It did make him feel better to know that he wasn’t the only dad going through this. The only parent going through this.

“It’s seriously like an epidemic or something.” Cam shook his head.

“Oh, great. We just got through a pandemic now we have an epidemic?”

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