house. Neither he nor Tess had grown up camping, and the first baby had come too quickly in their marriage to explore it as a recreational possibility. So he'd grabbed the two that the boys brought to slumber parties. SpongeBob SquarePants and Buzz Lightyear. He unzipped them flat, intending to sleep sandwiched between their layers. Good thing. They were so short and narrow that one wouldn't have contained half of him.
As it was, his feet and shoulders stuck out of each end. But it was enough. He was warmed by being able to gaze on the small cottage that housed his four children and his wife. Flat on his belly, he toed off his shoes and stacked his hands to support his chin as he watched No. 8 through the tent flap.
The low lights coming from the windows wavered in his vision. He was exhausted. Early to work, late to work out, followed by the grinding quiet of the empty house meant he'd slept little since Tess and his children had left him.
In his dream, he was swimming in the ocean. Two seals floated close, their bodies pressing against his. He put an arm around each, riding alongside them toward shore, as happy as he'd ever been in his life. As happy as he'd been from the day he'd met his wife until the morning he'd turned forty years old.
Then something kicked him in the nuts. He awoke with a jerk and a curse. What the...?
"Knock knock," his brother-in-law's voice said from outside the tent.
"Griffin?" David craned his neck to peer out the flap. There he saw the other man, flat on his back on the sand, staring up at the sky. "What's going on?"
"Just a little stargazing."
It was then that David realized the "seals" he'd dreamed of were instead his middle children, Duncan and Oliver. At some point during his doze, he'd turned over. One of his little guys was plastered against his right, the other his left. The knee to his nuts had to have come via Oliver, who'd been a restless sleeper since the womb.
Tess had despaired during the pregnancy that he was going to be one of those kids who could never sit still. But while Oliver was all boy and as fidgety as the rest of his gender, he became even more active in sleep. When off in the Land of Nod, he twisted and turned and flipped and flopped. His rowdy nocturnal gymnastics were what she'd experienced while he'd grown in her belly.
When Oliver crawled into bed with his parents following a nightmare, they'd learned to stuff pillows around him. David didn't have any such protection now.
"How come they're here?" he whispered to Griffin, even as he tightened the arms he'd placed around his sons while dreaming.
"Tess and your daughter are at a movie. Jane - " the way Griffin said the word held a wealth more information than four letters should allow " - said we would watch your boys. Russ is snoozing back at the house with her, but these dudes were still squirrelly. We went for a walk, saw the tent, and while I thought you might be a vagrant, they recognized the sleeping bags."
"Ah." David hesitated. "You're probably wondering what's going on."
"Actually," Griffin answered, "I'd rather not know. Keep it your business."
His avowed disinterest surprised David. Maybe his brother-in-law had his own surfeit of problems. "This Jane..."
The ensuing quiet spoke yet another volume. Finally, Griffin broke the silence. "She's worried about Rebecca."
"'She'? Your Jane - "
"Not my Jane."
"But she's worried about my daughter." David drew his boys a bit closer. "Why?"
"Jane says girls of Rebecca's age are prone to rebellion. Your teenager is threatening to get pregnant out of boredom."
It surprised a laugh out of him. "Tess wouldn't let that happen."
"You sure?"
Of course there were no absolute guarantees, but his wife had her reasons to be on the watch for unexpected babies. And as for his daughter... "Girls of Rebecca's age are prone to dramatic statements too."
Griffin made a sound of assent. "Christ, they grow up too fast."
"Yeah." David felt that familiar claw tearing at his insides. His little girl was a teenager! They were talking about college, and she was talking about pregnancy, and if he blinked a time or two more, both would be real. He was on the verge of losing one of the precious jewels in his life, and finding a way to survive the idea of that kind of loss was why he'd taken to