A Morning Like This by Deborah Bedford

isn’t a bed.”
    “Okay. Sleeping bag bugs, then.” With a light kiss on his son’s misshapen, bruised nose, David zipped the bag up to his chin
     so Braden would feel like he’d been tucked in.
    “Dad?”
    David bent low over him, worried that Braden might be woozy. He kept looking at things like Abby’s old pink cardboard jewelry
     box and David’s stack of
Money
magazines on the floor as if he’d never seen any of it before. “What?”
    “I like sleeping in your room.”
    “You do?”
    “I like the way it smells. The smell of Mom.”
    A melancholy grin. “I don’t see how you can smell anything through that nose.”
    “I just can.”
    “I see.”
    “G’ night, Dad.”
    “Good night.”
    David had just climbed up from all fours and was heading to turn out the lamp when Braden’s unsteady voice stopped him again.
     “Dad?”
    “Yes.”
    “Are you going to wake me up every twenty minutes all night long?”
    “Yes.”
    “To make sure my head’s okay?”
    “Yes.”
    “That means you’ll have to wake up every twenty minutes, too.”
    “That’s right.”
    “All night long?”
    David switched off the reading light and stopped with his hand on the doorjamb, staring back at the opalescent length of boy
     spread out on the floor. “I don’t mind doing it, you know. It’s worth it to make sure you’re safe.”
    No answer came in the stillness, only the arrhythmic breathing of the child and the panting of the dog.
    “Maybe I’ll stay awake all night,” David said. “That way I can be waiting every time the next twenty minutes goes by. How
     would that be?”
    “Good. Dad?”
    “Yes?”
    “What would happen to me if I didn’t wake up?”
    “Well, we don’t—” David paused. He had to think about that one. What did happen? What exactly would they do if something happened
     to Braden? “We don’t
know
.”
    “I’m scared to go to sleep.”
    David went back and crouched beside his son on the floor. “Here.” He unzipped the bag. “Roll over.” He shoved Brewster, damp
     warm breath and all, aside and lifted Braden’s pajama top. With an immense hand, he tenderly touched skin as treasured and
     newfound to him as the day this child had been born. “I don’t want you to be afraid.”
    He worked his callused fingers in circles on Braden’s back, stopping just beneath small shoulder blades that jutted like bony
     wings. As he etched shapes with his fingers—figure eights and stripes and big
W
s—David captured all the love he knew for this one child and held it within himself. His devotion to his son at that moment
     felt almost too delicious to absorb or grasp. It was so familiar that he’d almost been missing it, as if a wall had come between
     them because he saw his son every day and so never really saw him at all.
    It hurt, just wanting to not miss things he knew he was missing. Just wanting to see things that he saw, yet didn’t see.
    Go figure,
he thought.
Go figure feeling that way about your kid
.
    The misery that had been waiting in the recesses of David’s heart came full upon him, powerful, all encompassing. He couldn’t
     help imagining Susan’s Samantha, wraithlike and happy, the child in the school picture he’d looked at for the first time today.
     He envisioned her expectant wide grin, the strand of stray hair blown across her face as if she’d been running in the wind.
    “I love you, Dad,” Braden whispered again.
    “Hey. Come up here a minute. I know you’re almost asleep. Let me give you a hug.”
    David gathered his son in his arms and held him there, so close and hard he could feel Braden’s heart beating. He kissed him
     on the top of his head, in the midst of the wheat-yellow cowlick that would never lie down no matter how Abby tried to slick
     it. He buried his face into the dusty sweet scent of boy as if he could bury himself away from the world and from the bad
     moves he’d made.
    “Will you bring me my baseball glove, Dad? I can’t sleep