Back at the cabin, Cal sat Owen at their dining table and pulled out a thermometer. “Hold it under your tongue,” he said. “Let’s see how long you can do it. I bet you can’t hold it for all four minutes.” Owen never could resist a challenge. So, whenever Cal needed to convince his son to do something, he’d turn it into a game. The boy held up four fingers.
“That’s right,” Cal said. “Four.” While Owen held his fingers up, Cal counted down. “Three,” he said after a minute had passed, and Owen put a finger down. It was a math lesson as well as a temperature check. The interaction made Cal feel good about his ability to homeschool, which he had every intention of doing, starting next year. “Two.” Cal pulled out medication to reduce the fever he knew the boy was going to have. “And one.” He pulled out the thermometer and held it under the light. “Yep. You’ve got a bit of a fever. You know what that means. Straight to bed.”
“But I’m hungry,” Owen whined. That was a good sign. At least he had an appetite.
“I’ll make you some chicken soup.”
Cal made his son soup and tucked him into bed, combing through Owen’s nearly white hair with his large fingers. Owen’s grandmother would have called him a towhead, had she gotten the chance to meet him. Sometimes, Cal managed to convince himself that she was still around, watching over the boy along with Owen’s mother. “Your mother and grandmother are both angels now,” he had told Owen one day. “They look after us.” Of course, that had resulted in a flurry of questions Cal was only half prepared to answer, but he never minded taking the time. Educating his son was one of his greatest pleasures in life.
“You’ll be all right after a good night’s sleep,” he said, more to convince himself than anything.
Cal slept fitfully that night, getting up at least once an hour to check on Owen. He told himself everything was going to be OK. Kids got fevers all the time. They just needed lots of water and rest. There was no need to panic. It would only worry the boy.
In the morning, Owen didn’t hold down his breakfast, and Cal gave him more over-the-counter medicine to reduce his fever. He sat by his son’s bed and read him all his favorite stories. He played a memory card game Owen was fond of with some ancient, yellowing cards he himself had played with as a boy.
Before lunch, Owen said, “We have to feed Georgie.”
“Georgie can take care of herself,” Cal assured him.
“No, she likes her carrots. She needs them. She’s a single mom.”
That got Cal to laugh a little. “OK, chief. I’ll get her a carrot. You stay in bed and rest. Georgie needs you to get better.”
He went to the garden and chose a carrot. Cal had no doubt the rabbit could handle its own business, but when he made a promise to his son, he always, always kept it. It didn’t matter that the boy was so young he would probably forget a lie his father told him by the time he was a teenager. Cal believed trust was something that grew under the surface of a relationship. If he lied to Owen, then Owen might grow to doubt his father, even if he didn’t exactly know why. No, trust from the very start was too important to risk a lie, even a small one.
Cal brought the carrot inside and washed it, only so Owen could see he was doing the chore. The rabbit, of course, wouldn’t care either way. She frequently stole produce from the gardenwithout bothering to wash it at all. He chuckled at the thought of a rabbit washing its own vegetables.
“Does Georgie want it cut into small bites?” he asked Owen. But the boy had fallen asleep.
Cal tiptoed outside the cabin and found the hole in the lattice around the porch that served as Georgie’s front door. He held the carrot out and made a clicking sound with his tongue. After a while of quiet waiting, he saw movement. A twitching nose made an appearance, followed by several smaller faces. Georgie took hold of the carrot with her teeth and dragged it back with her under the porch. Her babies followed her excitedly, and Cal smiled.
“It’s tough to be a single parent, I know,” he said. “We could all use some help from time to time.” The irony of what he was saying did not escape him.
He went back inside, feeling his own stubbornness deeply enough that he had to start making dinner right away in order to get his mind off it. It wasn’t just the cost, although that certainly played a role. Years ago, Cal had a decent career in the military, which included health insurance. He’d tried to keep working after his wife’s death, but that required him to trust someone else enough to look after Owen. After his baby came home with a scratch or two, Cal couldn’t stand to leave him in anyone else’s hands. As far as he was concerned, he’d left his wife in the hands of the doctors at the local hospital. He’d trusted them to care for her while she gave birth to his son, and somehow, they’d failed.
Deep down, he knew it probably wasn’t their fault. The hospital staff had probably done everything they could to save her. But his heart told him differently. His heart screamed at him to never trust anyone with a loved one again, and after trying tobuck that habit for the first year of his son’s life, he finally gave up. It felt good to father his son regardless. A boy needed his father around. That’s how Cal felt about it anyway.
After Owen woke that evening, Cal tried to feed him dinner. The boy had failed to hold down breakfast, and he hadn’t eaten lunch. “Have a little soup,” Cal said.
Owen just shook his head.
“You’re not even a little hungry?” Cal asked. The boy was almost as pale as his whitish-blond hair. He looked miserable, and Cal began to worry for real. He pressed his hand to Owen’s head again and felt the heat and sweat he hadn’t wanted to feel. “Let’s take your temperature one more time, just to see how you’re doing.”
He pulled out the thermometer again and put it under Owen’s tongue. “I don’t feel good, Dad,” Owen said around the thermometer.
“I know, chief,” Cal said. “We’re working on it. Just hold that under your tongue like you did yesterday, OK? It’ll help.”
Owen dutifully held the thermometer under his tongue until Cal took it back, but the boy’s determined nature was gone. He didn’t look like a challenge would do much to motivate him now. Today, he held the thermometer because he was told to. Cal’s heart broke a little to see it, and when he held the thermometer up to the light, he saw why his son was so listless. Despite the medication he’d been given, Owen’s temperature had gone up.
No more waffling. Cal had made up his mind, and once Cal made up his mind, there was no more room for thoughts and worries. He was and always had been a man of action at his core. “We’re going on a trip today,” he said to Owen.
“Why?” Owen asked, his voice too quiet to be recognizable as his.
“Because it’s going to help you get better.” Cal packed a bag for his son, slung it over his shoulder, grabbed his own wallet and keys, and picked the boy up in his arms. “We need a little help,” he said.
Owen started to cry while Cal buckled him into the passenger seat of his pickup. “Don’t cry now,” he said as he pulled a comfort blanket over the boy. “Everything’s going to be OK.”
But Owen didn’t believe him. “You’re scared,” he said with a sniff.
