“I’ve never told anyone this, but anytime that I’ve felt sad or alone or angry or upset, I would pray to God to just make you come back. That I would do anything He wanted me to do if only you would walk through my door. You were the only thing that made me feel safe when the earthquakes threatened to break me. I needed you to come home because when you’re not here, I don’t have a home.”

“You were the only thing that made me feel safe when the earthquakes threatened to break me. I needed you here because when you're not here, I don't have a home.”

“Because you’re worried, Bear. And it makes me nervous. You know when you worry, I worry. It’s just something we do.”

“I wanted to tell her how that praise had made me feel, how starved I’d felt for any kind of attention, that I’d begun to think of my teacher Mrs. Terrance like she was my friend, like she was my mother, like she would take me home with her one day to her big house that would be warm and smell of fresh bread, and there would be gold stars all over the floors and ceilings, and she would look down at me as we walked through the door and tell me that this was my home too, that I would get to stay with her forever because she loved me too. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t say that to my mother. Even then, I knew the power words had. To heal. To hurt.So I held my mother while she cried, and eventually the tears subsided, and she began to hiccup softly, and this made me giggle, and she almost looked like she was going to smile at me, and I forgot about the house filled with gold stars because one smile from my mother was worth a billion gold stars and a billion Mrs. Terrances and a billion houses that smelled like fresh bread.”

“He gave me a lot, but it would have never been enough.” He looks thoughtful as he gazes back down at me. “It would never have been enough,” he tells me,” because it would never have been you”

“But Bear said I shouldn’t talk to strangers because they would be scared of me. I always thought I was supposed to be afraid of them, but Bear said I would just end up talking them to death and that any nefarious purpose they might have had would become moot. When Bear McKenna accuses you of talking too much, you know you have a problem”

“Had I known then what I know now, I would have clung to him. I would have looked him in the eyes to see that spark of mischief, that undying intelligence that belied his gruff exterior. If I'd known the inevitable, I would have said everything I felt in my heart and soul. I would have told him thank you for being my father. I would have said that if I'm ever going to be a good man, it's going to be because of the way he'd raised me... ...I would have told him I loved him. But I didn't. I didn't because I didn't know. I didn't even say goodnight. Or goodbye.”