“Oh, sure. They were fine,” I say with a little shrug.
“No troubles?” he asks. He stares hard at my face.
“Not a one.” I wipe a bug away that lands on my arm. “How was your mom?”
He rocks his head back and forth. “Strangely lucid the first day, and a little scattered on the second.”
“Did you explain about everything?”
“As much as I could. She did a lot of crying that first day, which upset Sam. Then Sam had a catastrophe herself on Saturday.” He cringes. “It wasn’t a great day, and I’m pretty sure she’s still mad at me.”
“What did you do?”
He scowls at me. “What makes you think I did anything?” He lifts Miles so he can blow a raspberry on his belly.
“Because you’re you,” I reply. “Duh.” He continues to give all his attention to Miles, which is nice, but it’s not answering my question. “So, what did you do?”
He rolls his eyes. “Sam got her period for the first time on Saturday.”
“Oh.”
He flinches.
“So what happened?”
“Let’s just say it involved her in the hotel bathroom screaming at me that I wasn’t her mom, and that I was absolutely useless in a crisis. So I left her alone in the hotel to go down to the gift shop to get some supplies.”
“Supplies.” I bite back my grin.
“Stuff. You know.” He glares at me like he’s willing me to understand so he won’t have to say the words out loud.
“You mean tampons and pads? That stuff?”
His cheeks turn red. “Yeah, that.”
I grin at him. “You can say tampon, you know.” I enunciate the word tampon really slowly.
He glares at me. “I’d rather not.”
“So you went to the gift shop. Please tell me you didn’t get anything in jumbo size.” I put my hands together like I’m praying. “Please.”
“I bought whatever the gift shop had.” He looks everywhere but at me.
“Whatever the gift shop had…?”
“Yes.” He is decidedly uncomfortable, if the way he’s fidgeting means anything.
“And then what?”
“And then I went back upstairs, where she was very quietly waiting, I might add.”
“So she’d stopped screaming?”
He grunts. “Right that second, yes.”
“Is she still hiding in the bathroom at this point in the story?” I work really hard not to laugh at his expression.
“Yes. She’s still waiting in the bathroom.”