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“I manage armed men across districts.”

“Parenting is learned on the ground, with both hands busy, while everything goes wrong.”

“Like your street fights,” she adds.

I look at her. She smiles into her tea.

The next serious mistake comes after lunch. Misha arranges wooden soldiers around the block garage. I move one closer to the door because the angle leaves the entrance exposed.

He moves it back. I return it. He pushes all the soldiers onto their sides.

“No soldiers,” he says.

“The garage needs protection.”

“No.”

“It has two open approaches.”

Misha gathers the soldiers and drops them into my lap. “Go away.”

I begin to explain perimeter coverage.

Vera looks up from her hospital tablet. “Aren’t you listening? He’s asking you not to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Turn his game into the corridor last night.”

Misha grips the yellow car so hard, his knuckles pale. I look at the open garage and the soldiers in my lap, and the linen closet returns in exact detail. I put the soldiers back in their box.

“What protects the garage?” I ask him.

Misha thinks, then places the green dinosaur across the entrance. “He bites.”

“Effective.”

Misha hands me the bear. “You can be this one.”

The bear has one eye and pink trousers. I accept it.

For twenty minutes, I crawl the bear through a garage where rules change whenever Misha starts losing. He fines me three blocks for parking badly, arrests me for stealing imaginary cake, and releases me when I agree to sleep beside the dump truck.

My phone vibrates with two routine updates from Kirill. I read the headers, see that neither requires an answer, and set it facedown. Vera watches from the couch, her tablet forgotten against her leg.

When Misha runs to the bathroom, she says, “You didn’t correct him.”

“He made up the rules.”

“He’s three.”

“And somehow I still lost.”

“He wanted you to stay.”

I look at the bear in my hand.

The bathroom door opens. “Papa, wash hands.”