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Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

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Jade’s daddy is trying to draw the lines again, and it just makes her itch all over. Jade loves her daddy, but he’s so embarrassing sometimes. He’s so tall, and so gangly, and so goofy, and his tones when he tries to speak the Common Language of China are enough to make children giggle and Jade writhe in mortification. (She’s in Grade 3 at her school, and the kids there are all much better at tones than Jade’s daddy. Her face burns every time she thinks of it.)

Her daddy is wonderful. She loves him more than she can say, but yes, he’s awfully embarrassing a lot of the time. And he is no good at all at doing the lines!

She can’t stand it any more, and she gets out a sheet of paper and some colored pencils, and starts drawing lines of her own to balance out the horrible jangle her daddy is making.

*               *               *

Jade’s mama is not at all like her daddy. Mama is … is a hunting falcon, all clean lines and ferocity and force and power. Her love for her husband and daughter is just as fierce as her intensity in the martial arts she practices with her Chosen sisters. Nobody messes with Jade’s mama! Once, when Jade got to accompany Mama to one of the centers where the Chosen meet and train and share tales of battle, a visiting laowai (Faith, they called her) stopped, gave Mama a critical look-over … and then nodded to her, and smiled, and moved on. It was like watching two tigers who decided they didn’t feel like fighting right now; all the same, neither woman had backed down from the other, and Jade’s skin had prickled all over when she looked at Faith but Mama was clearly ready to Go if that was how it was going to be.

(Another laowai — not one of the Chosen, an American that Dad had met through his business — had asked jokingly if Jade’s mother was a Tiger Mom. Dad had smiled right back and said, “No: Dragon Mom.” And Jade knew exactly what he meant.)

Jade can’t imagine having any parents other than the ones she has. She wouldn’t trade them for anything.

If only her daddy wasn’t so awful at the lines!

*               *               *

Jade knows that technically she’s half Meiguo‑ren (American), but she’s never lived anywhere but here, and that suits her fine. She’s Chinese, whatever her paternal ancestry, and she’s learned English and she knows some of the odd holidays her daddy’s people celebrate, and sometimes she watches movies or TV shows from over there, but those are all … add-ons, to the solid fact that she’s Chinese and always will be, no matter what else happens in her life.

That doesn’t mean she hasn’t gotten into some heated arguments at school, and a few very-near-fights, when anybody tries to tease her about her Dad being laowai, and even Meiguo‑ren. She gets embarrassed at her daddy sometimes, but she’s never been ashamed and she isn’t about to start.

Her parents talk now and then about eventually moving to America. Lots of Chinese live in America, and even more go there to study and then come back. Jade has a great deal of curiosity about what life there might be like, but she can’t imagine it could really compare to crowded, bustling, vivid, dynamic Hong Kong, much less the massive grandeur of the mainland. Besides, it’s been a while since Dad or Mama have brought up the subject, even in (they think) private discussion between themselves.

Not since Dad started trying to practice the lines, in fact, and Jade discovered she could feel it half a block away, every time he got it wrong. Which turned out to be … every time.

*               *               *

Jade isn’t the only one who feels that way. Whenever Mr. Jiâng stops by to check on her dad’s progress … well, she has to politely leave them to their adult discussions, but one of the vents in her room will carry sound to her from the living room if she angles her head just right, and Mr. Jiâng’s courtesy doesn’t keep him from regretfully withholding approval. “You have some of the technique,” Jade can hear him say, “but the result is still not adequate. I would not wish to entrust my family to such protection as these would provide; I doubt you would be any happier to rely on what you are already aware is not sufficient.”

“I know,” Dad says. “I know. If only it didn’t have to come from me —”

“A shield for your home,” Mr. Jiâng says patiently, “must contain something of yourself, Dan‑yel. Against the T’khoc’t, standard wardings would not be adequate, it must be personal. The portents foretell almost a certainty that they will attempt to strike against the families of the Liè‑rén, and for this we must be prepared.”

“And Li‑wei can’t do it,” Dad says in tones of resigned agreement, “because Slayers using magic is —”

“Inadvisable,” Mr. Jiâng finishes for him. “At best.” A sigh. “Your efforts are technically correct; perhaps some of the problem is there. You are trying to reproduce what you see, but this is not a task for a draftsman. Can you truly feel nothing in the strokes of the brush?”

“Not the way you mean, apparently.” Dad doesn’t try to defend or justify himself. “Li‑wei keeps saying I’m as sensitive as a brick, and it’s not always a complaint: if she’s right, some of the subtler magicks won’t touch me at all because of that, which she sees as an advantage. But if I need to do something —”

“Yes,” Mr. Jiâng agrees. “Any strength is weakness if addressed from a vulnerable angle.” A change in his voice that might come from him shaking his head. “I will provide you with different renderings of the wards, Dan‑yel, done by different practitioners. Even if any possible magickal sense is dead within you, perhaps comparing the variations in individual styles will allow you to develop an … artistic sense of what we seek.”

“I’ll do my best,” Jade’s dad says.

“As you have always done,” Mr. Jiâng acknowledges.

Jade doesn’t understand most of what they’re talking about — she’s eight years old, and school doesn’t cover any of this — but she can hear Mr. Jiâng’s doubtfulness as to whether her dad’s best will be enough.

*               *               *

They live in Hong Kong, even if Jade’s mama goes to the mainland almost every day, because that’s where most of the tasks of the Liè‑rén — the Chosen — are carried out. (Besides, Dad and Mama moved here from the mainland right after they married, and Jade’s grandparents still live there.) Dad goes to business offices most days, without leaving the Special Administrative Region, and Jade suspects (though she isn’t certain) that much of what he does is with the people Mama calls ‘watchers’. Most but not all of those are laowai, Westerners. Even so, they are generally … well, not actually more courteous than other Westerners, but at least more aware of the forms of proper courtesy.

They’re every bit as likely as Chinese, however, to treat her like a little kid. Jade hates that.

She doesn’t say so, though. You just don’t do these things.

“Do we have any idea when this is likely to happen?” Dad asks Mama. (They think she’s asleep. They think she can’t hear them. They don’t want to upset her. Jade loves her parents, but come on.)

“No,” Mama says. “We know the T’khoc’t are watching us. Waiting, scheming. They will choose a time they think best suits them: at night, almost certainly, for they are strongest then. That is when we will strike, when the warriors they send will leave their own gateways more lightly guarded.”

“I don’t want to sound like I’m panicking, Li‑wei.” Dad is trying so hard to be brave, and something inside Jade clenches even though she doesn’t really understand and knows she doesn’t. “It’s just, if we knew when, I could take Jade to … I don’t know, John’s home, or Chua’s, or Zhihao’s, somebody who can make proper wards.”

“Daniel, we’ve been over this.” Mama’s voice is firm; you can’t hear the tremors beneath the insistent confidence, unless you already know they’re there. “That would be forewarning to them, that would put everyone in greater danger. Even Jade.”

“I can’t fight the way you can.” Dad sounds tired … weak. “And I can’t protect our daughter even inside our home. What good am I?”

“You are my strength,” Mama answers. “You and Jade. You are why I fight. You are how I go on. Never doubt this.” A quick, too-bright change of tempo. “There are already plans for this. We know which homes will most need protection, and someone will be watching them. Apart from those of us doing the attack, there are teams of Slayers assigned to emergency status, they will go wherever need arises —”

“Like a Quick Reaction Force, in the army?”, Dad asks.

“Something of that sort. And more can be called for the purpose if the need proves greater than our first estimate. The sigils of the wards are so we do not need so many of them for that task, but they will be there. We will not be leaving our families unguarded.”

Sigh. “But the more Slayers they have to call up for this QRF — because people like me can’t make strong enough wards — the less the main force will have to fight with.”

“We have planned for these things, Daniel. The portents have let us know this is coming, and we have been preparing for nearly a year.” Softer, almost too soft for the words to reach Jade. “Do you think I could leave you, leave our daughter, go out to fight, if I did not know this?”

And then the voices change, and Jade turns over on her pillow and stops listening, because Dad and Mama are about to start in on that mushy grown-up stuff, and she already has to put up with enough of that when they’re talking right in front of her.

*               *               *

It’s all about harmony, equilibrium, things the West doesn’t really understand (or understands in an entirely different way that’s wrong). It’s the same principle behind zhēn cì (what English-speakers call ‘acupuncture’), or feng shui, or — ultimately — the bāguà symbol of the Tao: setting elements to balance each other, so that nothing is left so extreme as to pull the rest into disequilibrium. These are things Jade never had to learn, because they are simply part of how life is done in the culture where she’s grown up. It is this way even in the pell-mell, capitalistic bustle of Hong Kong; if anything, the people there more consciously embrace the principle as a needed balance (yes, balance) to the exaggerated Western forms that characterize so much of life and business in the ‘Fragrant Harbor’.

And Jade’s daddy doesn’t have it, doesn’t see it. He’s lived in China for eleven years, and he loves it, and he speaks the language (even if he does it so badly) and he knows the jokes and he’s properly polite in the proper places and he’s so adept with chopsticks now that he can use them to pick up a glass bead (Sometimes. About half the time.) … but he doesn’t understand the concept of balance, of harmony (or maybe he understands it but can’t feel it), and when he tries to draw the lines of what Mr. Jiâng calls ‘sigils’, his absence of comprehension just screams at the world.

Jade understands balance, always has. It’s just there, it’s the way life is to be done, and in many ways the cheerful dissonance of her daddy’s behavior is part of what she loves about him — you can never take anything for granted about him, he keeps startling you, making you look at things, reconsider, test your assumptions — but there are disadvantages, too, and Jade is absolutely seeing them now.

He doesn’t understand. He tries, but he simply can’t do it.

And it’s driving her crazy.

*               *               *

Jade gets lots of lessons. Because her parents want the best for her, and because it’s common practice for those who can afford it, she has tutors or instructors — even outside school — for those things that catch her interest, or that Dad and Mama believe would benefit her. Swimming, art, piano, skateboarding, French …

(She tried taekwon‑do, but quit after three lessons. It was just embarrassing, the comparison of her first clumsy attempts to the things she’s seen Mama and the other Chosen do in their casual sparring. Dad did his best to tell her that you’ll never get anywhere if you try and measure yourself against ‘Slayers’, that the proper yardstick is whether you are better today than you were yesterday. That makes sense, and Jade promised to think about it, and she will. But not any time soon, because she’s smart and she’s talented and she likes the feeling of accomplishment, and it feels horrible to fail so badly at something she’s watched the Liè‑rén do so easily. She’ll need a great deal more confidence before she makes another attempt at that.)

The lessons are supposed to prepare her, give her experience and competence in a well-rounded — balanced — manner. Maybe, then, they can help her here. Looking to what she’s doing with art is obvious: harmony and proportion and perspective are just what she needs to make her efforts counter and correct what Dad keeps getting wrong about the lines …

(… but, you know, some of the things she can feel in her piano practice might help her in this, too …)

“What do you think, sweetheart?” Dad came to pick her up from school today — he’s able to do that sometimes — and they’re heading for the subway. “Would you like to get ice cream?”

Jade loves ice cream, but right now, “Could you buy me some crayons?” she asks.

He pauses, gives her a perplexed look. “You already have crayons.”

She shakes her head. “I need more colors,” she tells him … and then, thinking of how much work it’s going to be to bring her dad’s efforts into harmony, she adds, “Lots more colors.”

*               *               *

Her search for ways to create balance makes Jade think of playing wéi‑qí with her grandmother. (Westerners call it Go, but that’s because they learned about it from the Japanese, who gave it that name when they copied it from China. Honestly, is there anything worthwhile in Japan that they didn’t get from China?) Placing the stones — black or white — trading movement and pattern with her grandmother … it calls for concentration and relaxation at the same time, being able to feel the rhythm and flow, and it forms between them a kind of communion and understanding that jumps generations. And, while Jade’s grandmother is quite accomplished at it (though she plays gently against Jade to encourage learning), Mama is not. She’s too direct, too focused on attack, more inclined to martial arts and, when it comes to games, chess. (Chess, too, originally came from China — xiàngqí, in its first form — but the West shaped it into something more linear, constrained … mechanical. Jade is faintly troubled that her mama should be so, so limited, in this area.) Dad and Mama regularly play chess together, and his devious, technical strategic approach is fairly well matched against her passionate aggressiveness.

Jade suspects that, if Dad played wéi‑qí instead — or something like it — they might not be facing this particular problem right now.

*               *               *

Jade goes to school. She takes her outside lessons. She visits her grandparents every weekend. She plays with other children in the recreational areas of the apartment compound where she lives. But through all that, she works on her drawings, she thinks about harmonies in the pieces she practices on the piano, she tries to come up with other ways to do what she knows she needs to do, and more than anything else she worries. She isn’t sleeping very well, and her mirror shows circles under her eyes, and she does her best not to let these things show but she can’t hide all of it.

Dad, ‘sensitive as a brick’ or not, sees some of this, and tries to soothe her with treats and stories and special outings or even just shared time together. It helps, but it doesn’t change the basic problem, and he doesn’t ask because … well, that’s just not the way he does things.

Mama, even if she doesn’t know exactly what is bothering Jade, somehow has an intuitive awareness of why. “It’ll be okay, bao‑bao,” she assures her daughter consolingly. “We take care of each other, my sisters and I. It’s not how it once was, in the days when there was only one of us. We have strike teams now, and support personnel, and medevac and special weapons; our job has become safer than that of most policemen.” She bends to kiss Jade on the forehead. “And we are sure always to take care of our families. Whatever concerns you, you can rest calm; anything that might threaten us, we already have measures in place to meet them.”

The same whatever awareness that tells Jade her daddy’s lines are wrong, likewise says her mama isn’t lying. Mama means it, she believes it, her assurance may not be quite as solid as she pretends but she does believe it.

She just doesn’t know what Jade knows … and, for some reason, Jade can feel that telling her won’t help.

No, something else will have to be done about this.

*               *               *

Dad says they won’t be going to Mass this Sunday, and Jade doesn’t like it. That happens occasionally — weather, or illness, or family obligations, or deadlines at work — but Jade doesn’t like it. Sometimes church bores her, and the Catholic liturgy does go on, but she likes hearing Mama in the choir, and there are other Chinese/foreign couples like Dad and Mama and most of their kids are cute and sweet and funny, and there’s something in the Eucharist that she can almost literally feel sometimes, as if it’s speaking to her. Mostly, though, she doesn’t like this because it’s part of the everything that’s creeping up on them, hanging over them, shadowing their lives and turning the days tight and tense.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Dad reassures her. “You know this kind of thing happens, we’ll be back next week.” His voice takes on that tone that he uses when he’s trying to cheer her up. “How about this, we can pick a time to go out to dinner and I’ll let you help me decide on which restaurant.”

Jade goes along with that, acts like she’s satisfied. Dad wants to make her believe it’s all okay, as if pretending will make it be okay. Well, she’s pretending, too … and, just like him, she’s doing something else, something secret, to try and deal with what he doesn’t want to admit is there.

Alone in her room, she goes through the familiar prayers. Not just the ones from the liturgy at Our Lady of the Rosary, but also others that she and her parents say at home in private devotions. Trying to get back a little of how things ought to be.

It helps. Some.

She needs more.

*               *               *

Jade’s school class has taken a trip to Victoria Peak, and she’s in a small group that includes a couple of her friends, Tian Haoyu and Cai Lihua. Even though he’s the same age — and a boy — Tian Haoyu is shorter than either of the girls, but he’s humorous and good-natured and they’re always happy to keep him around. Cai Lihua is maybe a little scatterbrained (though Jade thinks her friend mostly just needs to learn to focus her attention), but she’s also lively and affectionate, so the three of them usually have a lot of fun together.

Today, not so much. Jade can’t shake the preoccupation that haunts her nearly all the time these days. The other two seem not to notice, but at the same time they might be making a little extra effort to bring her out of herself today, Jade recognizes that without giving it a lot of attention.

“I’ve never been here before,” Tian Haoyu says. “Have you?”

He’s speaking to both of them, but Cai Lihua is the one who answers. “My parents brought me here a couple of times, but I was just a little kid then, I didn’t really pay that much attention. How about you, Shen Aiyu?”

‘Aiyu’ is Jade’s name in the Common Language; her parents call her by either name at home, but at school and with her grandparents she goes by the traditional name. It doesn’t matter, it still means ‘jade’. (And ‘Shen’ is the name of her Chinese family, of course.) “I came here with my Dad on one of his days off,” she answers. “He talked a lot about the history, but I didn’t really listen that much, I just liked being with him.”

“Okay,” Cai Lihua says. Jade can see that her friend’s mind is already somewhere else entirely.

(Dad and Mama have different ideas about ‘history’ there. Mama isn’t happy about continuing to name the Peak after one of the leaders of British imperialism. Dad claims it’s more complicated than that … which, Jade noted but didn’t say, isn’t the same as saying it’s wrong. Personally, Jade kind of likes what she’s heard about Queen Victoria: a woman at the head of a vast empire, exercising enormous power even though that power was technically supposed to be limited. It’s very … Chinese. Much like the Empress Dowager Cixi, in fact, cleverness and force of will driving beyond the limitations of birth and circumstances … and the two women lived and reigned at much the same times …)

Tian Haoyu fidgets in his seat, then stands up to look around. “Why is this tram so slow?”

Cai Lihua laughs. “Because it’s going up such a steep hill, silly.”

“It could still go faster,” he grumbles.

Jade isn’t sure about that. Like she said, she wasn’t too interested in the history, but she paid attention when her dad took her on the Peak Tram. It’s got a funny name (the word she can’t quite remember is funicular) that means the main carriage is counterweighted by another, one going down while the other goes up. It operates on a single track, so there’s a passing loop where the two carriages can go by each other, and there are a couple of curves that might not be safe for the tram to take too quickly.

One against the other. Balanced. It seems that everything is about balance these days, but Jade still can’t find the sense of balance that’s right for what she needs to do.

“Maybe they’ll let us get ice cream at the top,” Cai Lihua muses dreamily.

Jade remembers her daddy offering her ice cream the last time they were out together. Normally she loves ice cream, but she can’t really make herself get excited about it, not right now. Still, shutting away her friends won’t make anything better, so she forces herself to say, “We can ask. I don’t remember what’s at the top, but we can ask.”

Balance. Harmony. She still doesn’t have it, not yet, but maybe — maybe — she’s getting closer.

*               *               *

Dad and Mama get into a fight. It’s short, sharp, and over in seconds, both of them very clearly making it stop because now is not the time for such things. And, just as clearly, it’s not because of real problems between them, but because of the big problem they won’t talk about when they’re aware Jade can hear it.

It makes her stomach hurt: not just the fight, not even mostly that, but the reason for it and the knowledge that the reason is still hovering above them all.

She pulls out a sheet of blank paper and begins putting together a … something … maybe a ‘sigil’ of her own, to ease and offset the turmoil. The uncertainty. The … the it that’s come to feel like dread.

That’s what she hates most. Not the threat: the dread.

*               *               *

On Saturday, they all go to the mainland to have dinner with her grandparents. This is something they do at least twice a month, sometimes more. The meal, the visit, is lively and relaxed and cheerful, and Jade gives herself to it as freely as Dad and Mama do.

Her grandparents don’t know about the Liè‑rén, or what Mama does in that sisterhood, and they absolutely know nothing about what’s been building for weeks now. Maybe it should put even more pressure on Jade and her parents, having to pretend everything is normal when the truth is something so different. Instead, she finds it’s a relief to be in a world where nobody even thinks to worry about such things.

It’s an illusion, and she knows this, and she throws herself into it full-force.

The evening is wonderful, warm, happy. Welcome.

Interlude, to what still waits in the background.

*               *               *

Mama is out, doing what she does. Dad gets a phone call. It’s still nearly two hours till Jade’s bedtime, but Dad sends her straight to her room. She doesn’t argue.

The thing, the it, is happening. NOW.

She sits in the chair of the small study alcove in her room, looking around, taking everything in, doing what she can to absorb and understand the growing reality. She wishes suddenly that she’d studied something other than piano: flute, violin, even guitar, something she could have in here with her, would let her make a rhythm to counterbalance the currents gathering around her home.

Because Dad is making the lines again. More care, more feeling, more of him in them. He’s tried so hard, and he really is better than he was, and it’s still wrong. And he’s humming … no, chanting softly, this is new, and maybe it’s something he wasn’t supposed to do until the right time came, and it adds layer and meaning and depth and it’s not enough, it’s just not enough. Is her hair stirring? it feels like it is, and she doesn’t know if that’s her body reacting to danger or if there’s an actual force in the air that’s affecting her.

And a chill goes through her, suddenly she can’t hear Dad, and he sent her to her room but she pushes her door open and now she hears him. His voice is faint, and strained, like he’s fighting to breathe through something sitting on his chest, and the force beats against him, and the lines and the chant beat back against the force …

It’s not enough. It won’t work, it’s wrong, and with sudden unreasoning foreknowledge Jade snatches up her new crayons and dashes for the door. Another moment would have been disaster, she reaches him just as Dad chokes and wheezes and falls to the side, his eyes rolling back and a trickle of blood running from one nostril.

And the paper with the ‘sigils’ is right there on the table in front of him, and the crayon already in Jade’s hand goes there and makes a different line, and she does another and another and it’s time for a different color, a different position, a different angle. The forces are beating against her now, and Jade is beating back, and she can feel it all firming and aligning and that’s not enough either, she needs more … the chant, she doesn’t know the chant but it needs to be there, and her heart sinks inside her but she takes a deep breath and opens her mouth, and what comes out isn’t what Dad was saying but it was already there waiting:

“Visit this place, O Lord, and drive far from it all snares of the enemy; let your holy angels dwell with us to preserve us in peace, and let your blessing be upon us always —”

Over and over and over, and more lines now, smaller and surer since the necessary foundation has been set, and Jade draws and chants and makes it all be what it’s supposed to be, until there’s a BUMP! so hard that it almost knocks the front door out of its frame and the lights go out, and she sighs and lies down and lets herself drift away.

*               *               *

Jade is in her bed when she swims back to awake, and at first she thinks that Dad brought her here, but as awareness firms into focus she knows that she must have come back to semi-wakefulness and crawled here herself, instinctively, because if Dad had found her unconscious beside him he’d be in here with her right now, and he isn’t. She knows he isn’t, because she can hear him and Mr. Jiâng in the main room of their apartment:

“— know how, I was sure it was too much for me, I could actually feel myself being rolled under.” (Dad.)

“Well, you clearly did well enough, Dan‑yel. I kept your concerns in mind, I did my best to be sure there were near reserves that could come to your aid if it had been needed. — I would have been here myself, I assure you of that, but we had so many doubtful areas we had to cover and I did have a certain confidence in you. And, clearly, I was right, you held, and the Slayers we had reserved were able to concentrate their forces into more direct application, and that made a difference I truly do not know how to calculate.” A new note now, wry and mock-teasing and more than a little surprised: “My confidence might perhaps have been less if I had known … Dan‑yel, truly: crayon? What in the name of Heaven were you thinking?”

And the silence that follows is ominously long, and Jade is thinking, Uh‑oh, and then Dad’s voice comes again: “I guess … I guess it must have seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Crayon!” And Mr. Jiâng’s laugh is loud and unforced and very unlike him. “Oh, Dan‑yel, the stories we will tell about this! And yet, you held. You and four others were the ones that most concerned us, and you held. I do not know what was the margin of victory, but I suspect it was more narrow than we would have preferred, and your own efforts may have been that slimmest edge that tilted the margin in our favor.” A gusty sigh. “By all our ancestors, crayon! And yet, it seems your instincts were true. You have my congratulations and my respect.”

“I’m just glad it worked.” Dad sounds … distant, shaky, distracted. “This one, well, it literally hit a lot closer to home than I would have liked.”

“Yes,” Mr. Jiâng says. “Very much so. The disadvantage, I suppose, of our reaching the point where the Liè‑rén can afford to bear children, can have families. Still, it is a great relief to know that situations like this are so rare as to be the enormous exception.”

“Right,” Dad says. Then, “You’re sure Li‑wei is okay?”

“I spoke with her,” Mr. Jiâng assures him. “The moment her own mission was finished, she insisted on knowing of you. I was much relieved to be able to report to her that you and your daughter were safe.” A change in tone. “I am surprised that Jade slept through the, the upset.”

“Yeah.” And there’s a funny note in Dad’s voice that Jade hopes Mr. Jiâng can’t hear. “Well, I gave her an early bedtime, and she sleeps pretty soundly.”

What a fib! But Jade stays where she is and says nothing.

“Yes, yes. Well, I have many other pressing duties. If all is well with you, I will leave you here. Once again, my congratulations.”

The farewells are brief but heartfelt, and she hears Mr. Jiâng leave. Then, as Jade holds her breath, listening, the door of her room is pushed open a few inches. “Sweetheart?”

Later, she will wonder why she didn’t even consider pretending to be asleep. Truthfully, it simply didn’t occur to her. “Yes, Daddy?”

(She never calls him ‘Daddy’ anymore, that’s baby stuff. Right now, though, it feels like the thing to do.)

He pushes the door wide enough to let in light from the main room, and comes in to sit on the edge of her bed. He doesn’t speak. Jade doesn’t speak. At last, very softly, he murmurs, “Crayon.”

Jade cringes, just a little, but she whispers, “Yes, Daddy.”

There’s another long silence. “I’m … I am just too fried to deal with this right now. But I think, tomorrow, you and I need to have a very long talk.”

“Yes, Daddy.” She tries not to whimper.

He, on the other hand, makes no attempt to hold back the laugh. “Oh, honey, I’m not mad at you! In fact … in fact, I think you’re going to be seeing a LOT of ice cream tomorrow.”

Squealing with happiness, she throws her arms around him, and they hug each other fiercely.

Jade loves ice cream!

But not as much as she loves her daddy.

 
end