Woke up at 3am to the sound of crying from across the hall -- third night in a row. The first night, it was thunder. The second, a coughing fit. I didn’t know what had scared him this time, but as I sat up to get out of bed and go comfort him, I beheld a flaxen-haired vision arising from the other side of the mattress. She’d apparently returned while I slept, and I never heard her.

“I got this one,” she whispered, and I listened for Sugarbear’s surprised reaction when he realized who was coming into his room.

The crying stopped almost immediately, and I heard him say, “Mommy! You came home?”

They talked in low voices for a few minutes, but I knew there was no way he was going back to sleep in his own bed. In fact, there was probably no way he’d do anything without her for the next 48 hours.

She carried him in and set him next to me on the bed, whereupon he started bouncing on his knees, digging his elbows into my ribs, and informing me repeatedly that Mommy was home.

“Let Daddy go back to sleep, Sugarbear,” she admonished as she slipped under the covers next to him. He obeyed immediately, turned to her for a nose-deep-in-the-clavicle snuggle, and settled in for the long haul.

“Thanks for taking such good care of them this week,” she whispered.

“No problem,” I mumbled. “They’ve been good.”

“So you really don’t mind doing it all over again next week?”

“...”

“Dan?”

“...”

“I guess Daddy’s already asleep again, Sugarbear....”

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