While her big brother is excited about the idea of staying with Aunt Penny for a week, Emma is decidedly freaked out. For the last week, Emma has crawled into our queen-sized bed every single night to sleep. Fortunately, Noah and I sleep with a gap the size of the Atlantic Ocean between us.

“What’s wrong, honey?” I ask.

Emma’s lower lip trembles. She runs over to me and wraps her skinny arms around my hips. “Don’t go, Mommy. Please.”

“Emma…”

I attempt to pry her off me, but she’s stuck like glue. It’s sweet. As much as I dislike my husband, I love my children. I’ve always loved children. It’s part of the reason I became a teacher. Nothing makes me happier than seeing the smiles light up those little faces.

I reach down and wipe Emma’s damp light brown curls from her face. Her hair looks like mine, but it’s still baby soft. I lean in and bury my face in it—it smells like her watermelon shampoo. “It’s just a week, sweetheart,” I say.

She looks up at me with her little tear-streaked cheeks. “But what if something happens to you?”

I don’t know how my seven-year-old daughter got so neurotic. She worries about everything, including things no child has any business worrying about. Like when there was talk of a teacher strike last year, she was worried I wouldn’t have a job and we wouldn’t be able to afford food. What seven-year-old worries about that?

“Why are you so worried, Emma?”

She chews on her little pink lip. “Well, you’re going to be in the woods.”

I don’t blame her for worrying if that’s what she thinks. Neither of her parents is what you would call “the outdoorsy type” by any stretch of the imagination. “Don’t worry,” I say. “We’re staying in a nice hotel. It will be really safe.”

Her light brown eyebrows bunch together. “But I had a dream that…”

“That what?”

Emma scrunches up her face. “That a monster in the forest ate you up!”

It’s laughable, of course. We’ll be sticking to the hotel and its amenities most of the week, and if we do venture out, we will keep to circumscribed locations like hiking trails for lame-o city slicker tourists. And even if we weren’t, I’m sure whatever Emma is imagining is some sort of blue Cookie Monster-like creature appearing out of the wilderness and stuffing us all into his mouth in one fell swoop.

Yet Emma does sometimes have a strange intuition about things. One night she came into our bedroom at two in the morning, crying about a dream that Grandpa Joe had died. Two days later, my seemingly healthy father succumbed to a massive heart attack. Noah chalked it all up to coincidence, but I never forgot.