Caitlyn’s eyes go wide. Then, she clenches them shut, and presses a hand to her forehead.

There it is.

“Brain freeze?” I ask.

“No,” she grunts, squeezing her eyes closed even tighter. “I’m … I’m thinking really hard.”

“Riiiiiight.”

I watch in amusement as it passes. She finally relaxes, takes her hand from her forehead, and opens her eyes.

“There. I’m done,” she says.

“You’re done ‘thinking hard’?”

“Yep.”

“And what were you ‘thinking hard’ about?”

“Um …” Her eyes dart around as she searches for an answer. “The house.”

“Really? And what about the house?”

She continues glancing around—and then she finds something. “We should get a pool!” she quickly says.

I raise an eyebrow at her and twist in my seat to look at the counter.

There’s a guy sitting there on one of the stools, reading a paper. On the front page is a story about the measure to build a public swimming pool in Kingsbrook. I turn back to Caitlyn.

“A pool?”

She nods.

“A pool for swimming?”

“Yep.”

“We have a place to swim. It’s called a ‘lake’,” I smile.

Her face slowly drops and she looks down at her empty glass. “I’m sorry … I wasn’t thinking about the house … I had brain freeze.”

“No kidding.” I laugh.

She’s embarrassed but not mortified.

“Since you bring it up, what do you think of the house?” I ask. I realize that I haven’t asked her how she’s doing with everything, yet, and I can’t help but feel a little guilty.

Now, she’s really thinking.

“I like it,” she finally says. “It’s kind of big.”

“It is, but we’ll get used to it.”

She shrugs in a way that says she’s not convinced.

“Do you like your room?”

She nods, more certain of her answer. Then, she gets quiet. “Do you like your room?”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“Are you ever going to sleep in it?”

“I … Yeah …”

“… Okay.”

She seems worried and I’m not sure where this is coming from. It might be from finding me on the couch the past two nights.

“Daddy had some bad dreams, that’s all, and I wanted to sleep on the couch.”

She runs her straw through the dregs of her milkshake.

“You shouldn’t sleep in your room,” she says.

“Oh? Why is that?”

“Because then, you won’t have bad dreams.”

I smile. “Bad dreams are nothing to be afraid of. They’re just dreams.”

“Okay,” she sighs, as if to say I tried to help.

*