Intemperance Epilogue Volume I
Copyright© 2026 by Al Steiner
Chapter 8: The Project
Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 8: The Project - Intemperance isn’t over yet—we still have lots of loose ends to tie up. Volume I picks up after Book X as Jake, Laura, Celia, Caydee, and the rest of the Kingsley orbit discover that life goes on, whether you’re ready or not. Expect music, love, grief, family, crows, weed, questionable decisions, and all the usual Kingsley antics along with the antics of the surrounding Kingsley orbit.
Caution: This Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa Lesbian BiSexual Heterosexual Fiction Polygamy/Polyamory
San Luis Obispo County, California
April 5, 2005
Jake steered the Navigator south along Highway 101, the early-spring light stretching across the vineyards and low hills. The sun was still well above the western horizon, bright without the late-day glow, casting everything in a clean, even wash.
Traffic moved steady but unhurried—no rush-hour squeeze yet, just the usual mix of locals, work trucks, and the occasional out-of-towner drifting through wine country. It was the kind of drive where you could settle in and let the road come to you.
That suited him just fine.
The trailer was gone. That alone felt like a small personal victory.
For the last 346 miles the big triple-rail, single-axle rig from Deluxe Trailer Rentals had been attached to the back of the Navigator like a stubborn barnacle, hauling three Harley-Davidsons all the way from Cypress County back to San Luis Obispo after their epic journey. Jake had delivered the bikes to The Campus after dropping his family and Tif and Owen off at their respective homes. Then he’d taken a few minutes to check on Drew Conners.
Drew was still installed in the upstairs living quarters like a particularly nervous houseplant.
Restless. Whiny. Bored. Complaining. He couldn’t go see a movie. He couldn’t go to the grocery store. He couldn’t get new games for his PlayStation.
Jake had stood in the doorway listening to the man talk himself in circles for a few minutes before gently reminding him of a basic fact. “You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to, Drew. This isn’t a prison.”
“But there are people out there who might kill me if they find me,” Drew had said, voice tight.
“That is true,” Jake had agreed calmly. “But we’re not holding you here against your will.”
Jake had done his best to play the role of soothing benefactor, but his patience was thinner than usual. He’d just buried one of his best friends yesterday and then driven more than three hundred miles today. Drew must have sensed the short fuse because the whining tapered off pretty quickly after that.
Now the bikes were safely tucked away at The Campus, the trailer had been returned to Deluxe Trailer Rentals in Atascadero without Jake jackknifing it into a row of parked RVs, and he was finally pointed home.
If all went according to plan, he was going to do absolutely nothing for the next forty-eight hours. Nothing. He intended to leave Kingsley Manor exactly zero times. And if he could manage it, at least twenty of those hours would be spent unconscious.
Beside him, Caydee sat with her feet tucked under her, gazing out the passenger window as the vineyards rolled past in neat green rows.
She’d insisted on coming along for the errand.
Even though she’d already been in the Navigator for the entire drive home from Cypress County that morning with the rest of them, Caydee didn’t consider that a reason to stay home when there was a perfectly good Daddy Mission happening.
She liked going places with Mommy and See-ya and even Yami too. But Daddy did the cool shit. Daddy flew airplanes. Daddy hung out with bikers. Daddy hauled motorcycles across county lines. And, on one memorable occasion, Daddy had put Drew Conners, the scumbag paparazzo, in his trunk and driven him all the way from the Campus to home in there.
That kind of thing carried weight with a seven-year-old.
They rode in comfortable silence for a few miles, the Navigator humming along at seventy.
Then Caydee spoke. “How long do you think it will take before Matt’s body is nothing but a skeleton?”
Jake looked over at her. Thought for a moment. Finally came up with a reply. “Two hundred and twelve days,” he said.
Her eyebrows went up a bit. “Are you making that up?” she asked.
“Would I do that?”
“Yes,” she said.
He smiled at her. “You’re harder to fool the older you get, Caydee-girl.”
“So ... you don’t know then?” she asked. “I tried to look it up on Google but it just kept talking about all these variables. Like what kind of coffin he has, if he was embalmed or not, what the weather is like. No friggin answer though.”
“Did you ask Kelvin?” Jake asked. “He could probably build an algorithmic equation and give you the timeline to within seconds.”
She smiled. “That’s a good idea, Daddy.”
“Of course it is,” he told her, reaching over and ruffling her hair a little. “They taught me that in Daddy school.”
“They taught you to consult with Kelvin in Daddy school?” she asked, smiling. She knew there was no Daddy school you had to pass before you could reproduce, no Mommy store where you could buy a new Mommy if you needed one, no fat guy who delivered presents, no anthropomorphic rabbit who stole eggs and then hid them. But it was still fun, still Kingsley to pretend.
“They didn’t mention him by name,” Jake said as if he were explaining the obvious. “But they did say that you should always have a wise, pre-adolescent future evil overlord in your inner circle to help with these sorts of situations.”
Caydee giggled. “What do they teach in Mommy school?” Caydee asked.
“Well ... obviously I was not allowed to attend Mommy school, but I’m assuming it’s mostly about making arbitrary rules and learning basic first aid skills. That’s also where they instill Mommy kisses with healing power. You even notice that daddies can’t kiss owies away?”
“That’s sexism,” Caydee declared.
“You’re preaching to the choir, mija,” he told her.
They drove on in silence for a while, the Navigator gliding past the main entrance to The Campus without slowing. Jake kept his eyes on the road, the hum of the tires steady under everything.
Caydee shifted in her seat, turning toward him.
“Matt talks to me in my head sometimes.”
Jake glanced over. She didn’t look scared. If anything, she looked almost comforted, like she’d just remembered something warm.
“Does he?” he asked.
She nodded. “It happened even before he died. But it’s happened since he died too. It happened yesterday when me and Kelvin were out by the pool at Grandma and Grampa’s. Kelvin kept bothering me while I was trying to play my guitar. I told him to leave me alone. He didn’t. So I told him to buzz off.”
She paused, remembering.
“That’s when Matt talked to me in my head. He said ‘buzz off’ was fuckin’ lame and that I needed to come up with some better shit than that.”
Jake grinned despite himself. “So what did you say?”
“I told Kelvin to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. That’s one of the ones Matt taught me.”
Jake let out a low chuckle. “Did it work?”
“Fuckin’ A,” Caydee said. “He hauled ass and left me alone.”
She looked at him then, eyes serious again.
“That’s not like ... a ghost or anything, is it?”
Jake shook his head slowly. “As far as I know, there are no ghosts. But people can live in other people’s heads. Sometimes that’s not a good thing and you have to evict them. But sometimes it’s really cool. In your case, it sounds cool. That’s the Matt who lives in your brain giving you advice. It’s nothing supernatural. It just means you liked Matt and respected him enough to want to hear what he’d say. That’s all.”
Caydee thought about that for a moment, chewing her lip.
“That makes sense,” she said finally.
She watched the road slide by for a few seconds.
“Does Matt talk in your head too?”
Jake nodded. “He does.”
“What does he say?”
Jake smiled faintly. “Maybe in another eleven years I can tell you. But probably not.”
“What a rip,” Caydee said, shaking her head at the travesty of it.
Twenty minutes later, the Navigator rolled down the long drive and slipped into the garage beside Laura’s Lexus. Jake killed the engine and the sudden quiet felt good after the steady hum of many highways and interstates on this long day.
“Home sweet home,” he said.
Caydee popped her door open before he’d even finished the sentence. They came in through the kitchen door from the garage, and the smell hit them immediately. Garlic. Something buttery. Something roasting.
Jake inhaled deeply.
“Damn,” he said appreciatively.
Westin stood at the counter in a clean apron, sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms, working with the careful precision of a surgeon. A long sheet of marinated flank steak lay spread out before him like a red canvas while he arranged a careful line of filling down its center.
He glanced up as they entered.
“Ah. The prodigal travelers return.”
Jake leaned against the counter and sniffed again. “What’re you making?”
Westin didn’t even look up from his work. “Stuffed carne asada sheets,” he said. “With a roasted garlic, spinach, sun-dried tomato, and parmesan filling, finished with a reduced red wine and shallot sauce. Steamed asparagus on the side, and potatoes au gratin.”
Jake nodded solemnly. “Sounds like good chow.”
Westin froze. Slowly, he looked up.
“That word,” he said, “is forbidden in my kitchen.”
Jake blinked. “Chow?”
“Yes,” Westin replied flatly. “It should be removed from the culinary vocabulary entirely.”
Caydee wandered to the refrigerator and leaned against it.
“Can I get a cheese stick before dinner?” she asked. “I haven’t eaten anything since those gross-ass McDonalds burgers we had on the road.”
Jake waved a hand. “Go ahead.”
Westin looked from Caydee to Jake with growing horror.
“You took your family through a McDonald’s drive-through?” he asked slowly.
Jake shrugged. “We were hungry.”
Westin stared at him as if he’d just confessed to clubbing a baby seal once just to see what it was like.
“After years of eating my food,” Westin continued, voice rising slightly, “and in the finest restaurants in the world, you stop there?”
Jake leaned back against the counter. “It was quick.”
“You couldn’t even go to a Black Bear?” Westin demanded.
Jake shook his head. “We wanted to get home. And you can eat a Quarter Pounder while you’re driving.”
Westin set his knife down with deliberate care and regarded him gravely.
“I have never,” he said, “seen such barbarism in what I thought to be a civilized household.”
Jake smiled. “It’s good to be home.”
“I need to go feed Pa-Ho and Josie Cuervo their popcorn,” Caydee announced. “I wasn’t here for the after-school feeding and they’re probably pissed.”
Jake snorted. “Pa-Ho and his old lady shouldn’t be too pissed about free popcorn.”
Caydee paused and gave him the patient look of a tiny scientist correcting a flawed hypothesis. “You can’t assign human emotion and motivation to a corvid, Daddy.”
Jake nodded solemnly. “That is a good point, mija. I’ll try not to do that.”
She nodded, satisfied, and headed out of the kitchen.
Jake stood there for a moment, then opened the refrigerator and grabbed a cheese stick for himself. He peeled it open and wandered after her.
When he stepped into the entertainment room, Caydee was already at the big popcorn container beside the sliding door that led out to the deck, scooping a generous handful into the little bowl she used for crow feeding. Now that Josie Cuervo had joined the chow line (or cuisine queue as Westin would probably call it) Caydee could no longer hold enough popcorn in her hand to complete the ritual. Westin had given her an old bowl under the directive that it never again be used for food intended for human consumption. “God only knows what diseases those flying rats carry!”
He’d declared this quite righteously one day while filling Pa-Ho’s popcorn container with freshly popped organic kernels—no salt or butter on them.
Laura and Celia were stretched out on the couch, both freshly showered and dressed down for the evening—loose cotton sweat shorts, soft pullovers with no bras, bright fuzzy socks on their feet. Cap was curled against Laura’s side, holding onto her like he thought she might suddenly fly away if he loosened his grip. He’d missed his mommy and daddy while they’d been gone, but he’d missed his Lala and Sissa even more. Especially Lala. Nobody cuddled like her.
Yami sat nearby working patiently through Kira’s hair, pulling twigs and leaves out of it one by one.
“How did you even get these in here?” she asked.
Kira shrugged. “It just happens.”
Yami sighed softly but kept working. She had only recently started trusting Kira to be out back by herself the way Caydee was. Kira knew how to swim if she fell into the pool and she had a healthy respect for the cliff beyond the lawn. Even when adults were outside, she never went within thirty feet of it.
Kira looked up when Jake came in.
“Jake, how long until we can start swimming again?”
“You can swim whenever you want,” he said, heading for the bar. “As long as your mom says it’s okay and there’s an adult out there.”
Kira wrinkled her nose. “The water’s cold though.”
Jake nodded gravely. “That’s because some idiot built this house right next to the friggin ocean.”
Kira burst into giggles. “That idiot was you!”
“Oh yeah,” Jake said. “I forgot about that.”
He took a bite of his cheese stick.
“If we get a couple of days of weather like today,” he told her, “the water will warm up enough so you won’t actually freeze your butt off. You’ll just make it numb for a day or two.”
Kira seemed perfectly satisfied with that answer. “I can’t wait.”
Caydee looked up from her popcorn loading mission. “Unless Daddy wants to turn on the heater and make it nice and warm first,” she said. “You know ... kick start it.”
Jake glanced over at her. “That sounds like a great idea,” he said. “We should totally do that.”
Caydee looked at him carefully. “Really?”
“Really,” he said. “I’ll go fire that thing up right now.”
“Oh ... cool, Daddy,” she said, smiling now.
“Of course ... we do have to get Jill to sign off on something like that first,” Jake said in his best ‘just a little formality’ voice. “She is our accountant.”
Caydee’s face fell. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know Jill had to sign off on it.”
“Accountants rule the world,” Jake told her. “Even our world. But Jill is reasonable. If there’s a good reason to heat up the pool, she’ll give her approval.”
“She will?” Caydee asked, allowing a little hope to reappear.
“Absolutely. All you need to do, mija, is call her up and explain to her that you want to burn three hundred dollars worth of propane heating up the pool so your little butt won’t get cold.”
“I have to call her?” Caydee said, fear in her eyes now.
“It’s your idea,” Jake said.
Caydee thought this over for a moment. “Or,” she said, “we could wait until the sun warms it up by itself. It’ll just be a few more days.”
“That also is a good plan,” Jake told her.
With that, she opened the door. The moment that happened, two crows started calling “Kay-Dee, Kay-Dee, Kay-Dee!” from the trees.
Jake reached into the bar refrigerator, pulled out a cold bottle of Lighthouse Ale, pried off the cap, and poured it into a chilled pint glass. The foam settled with a soft hiss. He carried it over to the sectional and dropped down between Laura and Celia, the couch sighing under his weight.
“‘Sup, Da-dee,” Cap said, lifting his head from Laura’s side long enough to acknowledge the new arrival. He squirmed, elbowing Laura in a particularly soft spot.
“That was my boob, Capster,” she said with a wince.
“Saw-wee,” Cap replied. It sounded genuine.
Celia chuckled. “Definitely a Kingsley.”
Jake took a long pull from the glass, the cold beer cutting through the road dust in his throat. He leaned back, exhaling.
“You two smell good,” he said.
“Of course we do,” Celia replied, stretching her legs out on the footrest.
Laura tilted her head toward him and wrinkled her nose. “But you don’t. You need to take a shower, sweetie.”
Jake grinned. “I thought you liked me all sweaty.”
“I like you stage sweaty,” she corrected. “Fresh sweaty. Not driving-all-day-and-fucking-around-with-motorcycles sweaty. You smell like the boys’ locker room in high school and grease from the auto shop at the same time.”
“How do you know what the boys’ locker room in high school smelled like?” Jake asked.
Laura gave him a look. “Don’t be naive, Kingsley.”
Jake chuckled. He knew damn well Laura hadn’t even kissed a boy until college. The thought still made him smile. “I’ll shower as soon as this beer is in my belly and doing the Lord’s work,” he said.
“Da-dee is neeve!” Cap declared, loud and proud.
“Yes,” Celia said dryly. “That’s how he reeled in two women, mijo. His hopeless neeve-ity.”
Kira looked up from where Yami was still picking the last leaf out of her hair.
“Can I go watch Caydee and Pa-Ho and Josie Cuervo?” she asked.
Yami nodded. “That’s fine, beti. Stay where I can see you from the door.”
Kira stood up from the floor, padded across the room, and pushed through the sliding door to the deck. Jake drained the last of his beer and stood, carrying the empty glass back to the bar. He set it down with care. That glass was staying there. He fully intended to refill it once he’d taken a shower. And then there would be wine with dinner. And probably something stronger after that. It had been a long couple of days.
“I’m gonna rinse the road off,” he said.
Laura waved a hand lazily without looking up. “The world will thank you, sweetie.”
Jake chuckled and headed down the hall toward the master bedroom.
The house grew a little quieter once he disappeared. Laura shifted slightly on the couch, easing Cap into a more comfortable position against her side while Celia stretched her legs out and leaned back into the cushions. Yami leaned back and stretched, her shirt riding up just enough to show a flash of the bare skin of her belly for the briefest instant.
The three women talked—as women will do. For a minute the conversation stayed light. Celia told Yami about the ride from Vegas to Heritage, the odd quiet of the highway through the desert. Laura told about how the city had turned out for the funeral, and about the crowd at the ballpark. Yami told them about how Caydee’s vice principal had called and expressed the opinion that missing two days of school for a non-related guitarist’s funeral did not, under the spirit of the rules, constitute a valid death-in-the-family excuse for absence. Celia’s eyes lit up and she begged Laura to let her make the return call to that puta (and Laura was seriously considering it, picturing a Papa Valdez-style Venezuelan Spanish profanity beatdown).
Eventually the conversation drifted into more personal matters. Celia tilted her head toward Yami.
“We’ve been so busy these past few weeks,” she said, “with the TSF and Matt’s death and the funeral and all that, we haven’t really had much time to talk. How goes The Project?”
She didn’t need to explain what she meant. The Project was well known to everyone in the room, and to Westin, Sean, and Jake as well. It was nothing more—or less—than the plan to give Sean and Westin their very own baby. Yami would provide the female gamete and carry it for them after conception. One of the two men would provide the sperm for the operation. Yami would sign parental rights to them from the start but remain part of the child’s life for as long as circumstances allowed.
The idea had been born during a long weekend of getting stoned out on the Kingsley deck (and while platonically naked in the hot tub) while the Kingsley family had been away on an adventure of their own. Eventually they had brought the proposal to the Kingsleys, who had listened, discussed it privately, and then agreed. As long as the work they were being paid to do still got done, the household staff were free to collectively reproduce.
That had been the last any of the Kingsleys had heard about The Project. Events had overridden it.
Yami folded her hands in her lap. “We’ve been planning,” she said. “And we came to the first decision.”
Laura leaned forward slightly. “Can you share it?”
Yami nodded. “We decided that it will be Westin’s sperm that does the deed.”
Celia raised an eyebrow and studied her for a moment. “Interesting,” she said. “Why Westin?”
Yami shifted slightly on the couch and looked down at her hands.
“Because Westin is better looking,” she said.
The answer hung in the air for a moment. Laura blinked. Celia tilted her head. Neither had ever thought of Yami as being shallow before, but...
“Because he’s ... better looking?” Laura asked. “That’s it?”
Yami’s eyes widened and she immediately shook her head, the color rising in her cheeks—as much as her Indian skin would allow, anyway.
“No, no—that’s not really what I meant,” she said quickly. “It sounds bad when I say it like that. I mean ... that is kind of what it comes down to, but not in the way you’re thinking. It wasn’t my decision anyway. Sean is the one who pushed for it.”
Laura leaned forward a little. “Okay ... so what was the thinking?”
Yami took a breath, trying to organize it the way Sean had explained it.
“Westin actually wanted Sean to be the one to provide the sperm,” she said. “He said Sean is the smarter one of the two of them, and that intelligence is a big advantage in life. So he thought the baby should have that advantage.”
Celia nodded. That sounded like Westin.
“But Sean disagreed,” Yami continued. “He told Westin that yes, he might be a little smarter, but Westin is still a very intelligent man. He said he is well above average, and that intelligence alone does not decide everything in life.”
She hesitated a moment, choosing her words carefully.
“Sean said that being attractive also makes life easier for people,” she said. “Especially if the child is being raised by two homosexual men. So his argument was that the baby would probably still be plenty smart, but if Westin was the father ... it would also be very attractive.”
She cleared her throat slightly, embarrassed now.
“The way Sean actually said it was that their child would be ‘fucking hot no matter what gender.’”
Celia let out a soft laugh. Laura covered her mouth.
Yami shrugged helplessly.
“Sean said that a mixed-race child from two attractive parents is a very good combination. He believes that being good looking and reasonably smart is better than being extremely smart but not especially attractive. Eventually Westin agreed with him.”
Celia leaned back into the couch cushions, thinking it over. “Well,” she said respectfully, “that actually makes a lot of sense.”
Laura nodded. “Sean really is a genius.”
Just then Sean appeared in the doorway with a dust rag in one hand and a bottle of furniture polish in the other.
“Who says that I’m not?” he said.
“Literally everybody,” Yami said teasingly. Something she never would have dreamed of saying in any context prior to living with the Kingsleys.
“Quaint,” Sean said, though with clear affection. “What are we talking about in here?”
Yami giggled a little—something else she had rarely done before her current job. “The Project.”
Sean brightened immediately. The polish and rag were forgotten as he came into the room.
“Ah,” he said with satisfaction. “Excellent. Have we reached the part where we discuss the brilliance of the plan?”
Laura smiled. “We just heard the first piece of it.”
Sean looked to Yami. “Did you tell them who the bio is going to be?”
“The bio?” Celia asked.
“The biological father,” Sean clarified. “One must keep the terminology straight.”
Laura nodded. “That makes sense. Since you’re both going to be fathers.”
Sean tilted his head slightly. “Not entirely true in a sociological sense,” he said thoughtfully. “Westin will assume the role of father figure to our offspring, while I will take on more of a maternal role in the household dynamic. It only makes sense. I am the more nurturing personality between the two of us—not that Westin is some kind of emotional pit the way his father was—but I will be the primary caregiver.”
Yami raised a hand slightly. “Me too.”
“Yes, of course,” Sean said immediately, acknowledging the point. “You will provide the actual female role model with your breasts and your periods and all that girl stuff. I will presume the maternal role of parent, however.”
Laura exchanged a look with Celia. “It sounds like you three have thought this through.”
“We have,” Sean said with quiet pride. Then he turned back to Yami. “So, I ask again. Did you tell them who the bio is going to be?”
“I did,” Yami said.
Sean turned back toward the couch, clearly pleased with himself.
“Isn’t it a glorious plan?” he asked. “Can you imagine how beautiful the child will be with Yami’s Indian skin tone mixed with Westin’s retro-Hollywood physical attraction?”
Celia and Laura both considered that image for a moment.
“Yeah,” Laura said finally. “That kid’s probably going to grow up quite becoming.”
Celia nodded. “No question.”
“Our child,” declared Sean, “as an adult, will be fucking hot. And that’s the shit right there. Looking hot takes you far in life. Tif, for example.”
“Don’t be mean,” Laura warned.
“I’m not being mean,” Sean said. “I love Tif like a sister. She is the most brutally honest person I have ever met and she does not give a rat’s ass what anyone thinks of her. That is pure bliss. But you have to agree that she would not have gotten as far in life as she has with only average looks.”
Laura and Celia both knew Sean was right. Neither wanted to admit it though. It was a violation of the sisterhood code. So Laura changed the subject.
“Do you three have any kind of timeline yet?”
Sean spread his hands. “We are still working on the logistics.”
Yami nodded. “I’ve started tracking my ovulation very carefully so we’ll know when the time is right and can plan for it.”
“Plan for it?” Laura asked.
Sean brightened again. “We’re looking into fertility clinics. IVF is an option if it becomes necessary, but there are also services that provide supplies for home insemination.”
Laura tilted her head. “How does that work?”
Yami slipped briefly into the calm, precise nomenclature she’d used during her pre-med days.
“The male provides a full ejaculate into a sterile specimen cup,” she explained. “It is then drawn into the introduction device, and the female releases the ejaculate into her birth canal.”
Laura and Celia looked at each other for a moment. They had both quietly assumed the conception would happen the traditional way.
Apparently not.
Neither of them made an issue of it though. Both women were more than familiar with the many variations of human sexuality and family structures. They were, in fact, both considered queer by gay and straight culture alike (even if they did not embrace that label themselves). They understood that some people didn’t want their parts in certain places even if they did fit.
“That sounds very intense,” Celia finally said.
“It really is,” Yami agreed.
For the next several minutes the conversation drifted through practical matters—fertility services, ovulation schedules, pregnancy timelines, and the various ways modern medicine could assist nature if there was an incompatible parts issue.
When the sliding door opened again and Kira and Caydee came back inside, the subject changed immediately to something more suitable for small ears.
Dinner was served at exactly six o’clock, just like it always was. It was delicious and deeply satisfying, just like it always was. Westin’s stuffed carne asada sheets came out of the oven perfectly browned, the roasted garlic and wine reduction tying everything together in a way that made the long day feel a little less long.
When the plates were cleared, Westin moved into the kitchen to clean up while Sean began making his quiet circuit through the house, straightening things that didn’t strictly need straightening and polishing surfaces that had probably already been polished earlier in the afternoon. It was part of his evening ritual.
Yami gathered Kira’s gymnastics bag and headed out the door with her a few minutes later. Kira had signed up for the class along with Caydee a month earlier, but Caydee had lasted exactly two lessons before announcing that gymnastics was “boring shit” and “not where my life is leading me.”
Kira, on the other hand, loved it. She looked forward to the twice-weekly sessions like they were Christmas.
Caydee stayed home and worked on her piano and guitar instead of falling off balance beams and thumping to her boo-tee—as Cap would say—after a bad somersault.