Page 25 of Bear’s House

I nodded, embarrassed and sorry.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Don't worry about it right now. Tell me what happened."

So I told him everything. The whole week. The ladybugs, the principal, the class that disappeared, the late lesson plans. He listened to all of it without interrupting, and when I was done, he pulled me in and held me.

"Oh, sweetheart. You carried all of that by yourself all week. I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault!" I said again, feeling worse because now he felt bad too. "I deserve a punishment for not telling you. Please, Daddy. I feel terrible about it."

He looked at me for a moment with those eyes that always seemed to see more than I said, and then he smiled — which immediately made me feel better.

"All right. I'll give you one. But only once you're feeling better. Deal?"

"Deal. I'm sorry."

We hugged again.

"Don't worry," he said. "What matters is you're here now. And I'm going to help you feel better, okay?"

I nodded.

"It's going to be just you and me today," he said, and something warm moved through my chest. "Your brothers are already at work. We'll go to the living room, you can sit on the couch and eat your breakfast there. I'll get you some Tylenol for the body aches. Today you rest — and if you're not feeling better tomorrow, you're not going in then either."

"Can I play video games?" I asked.

He nodded and kissed my forehead.

"Of course. But only if I get to play too."

We both knew Daddy had no idea what he was doing with a controller, and all three of us loved him for it. We called him old man about it, even though the age gap wasn't that extreme — he was forty-two — but it was one of our running jokes and this time was no different.

"If you play, I'm going to win every single time," I told him.

"You little brat," he said, and gave me a light smack on the behind as we headed for the stairs. "We're playing something cooperative and if you can't teach me how, I'm adding it to your punishment."

I laughed despite myself.

We settled onto the couch. I turned on the game and ate forkfuls of pancake between turns, and honestly I was already starting to feel better — or at least distracted enough that the body aches faded into the background.

Daddy came back with two white tablets, a glass of water, and — I stared at it for a second — a thermometer.

"Take those," he said, handing me the tablets, "and then drop your pants, hands and knees on the couch, facing away from me."

"What?" I said.

"Which part was unclear, boy?"

"What exactly are you going to do, Sir?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

He gave me a deeply evil smile.

"In this house, you know we take temperatures the old-fashioned way."

This was, obviously, said by the man who ran a technology company.

"Daddy, absolutely not," I said. "I'm way too old for that."