It's Father's Day, and Sam is fatherless again. It's been nearly two weeks since Dad left to go track down a werewolf, leaving his two sons behind in a crappy motel in Glacier Springs, New Mexico. It's June, and baking hot. The school year is drawing to a close, and Sam is sitting at his desk in the fifth row of Miss Wilkin's classroom, staring at the bright blue sky. The landscape is flat, a tumble of low buildings giving way to paper-like desert. It's so unlike the craggy Rocky Mountains that they had been traversing only weeks earlier.

"Sam?" Miss Wilkins is standing above him, tapping one foot. "Why aren't you making a Father's Day card like the rest of the class?"

The boy starts slightly and stares up at his teacher with those big brown doe eyes that can make even the hardest-hearted principal soften.

His answer is whispered and ashamed.

"I don't have a father."

He doesn't mean that he doesn't have a father ever, he just means that he doesn't have a father right now. Dad is away hunting, and he won't be back for another week. By that time, Father's Day will have been long past. Besides, the Winchesters never celebrated those stupid Hallmark holidays, the ones that Dad swore were all fabricated by the card companies. A flimsy paper card would mean nothing to Sam's tough father.

Miss Wilkins sighed and smiled at him, even though her eyes looked sad.

"Why don't you make a card anyway, Sammy? Do you have an uncle or other man you want to give it to?"

There was Uncle Bobby and Pastor Jim, but they were at least a state away. Sam shrugged. Better to just go along with it. He hated breaking rules.

"Yeah."

So he grabbed a marker and started making his card.

I hate New Mexico. Dean Winchester tipped backwards in the folding chair, feet propped up on the flimsy formica table in the motel room. He had ditched school-what was the point of going anymore? It wasn't like he was going to be a doctor or a lawyer. Sammy, maybe. That kid had brains, no matter how dumb he acted sometimes. He had spent the day watching daytime TV, his trusty shotgun close at hand. He did feel a little guilty, now that the TV was off and the motel room dark and quiet. Dad would kill him if he found out that Dean had skipped school again.

Whatever, Dean told himself, it's not like we're gonna stick around here.

Someone knocked three times on the front door, Dean stood to peer through the peephole. Sam stood on the doorstep, looking slightly bedraggled.

Shit, Dean thought. Did I forget to pick him up?

Evidently Sam didn't mind, because he walked inside with a slightly dull expression on his face. Dean knew at once that there was something off about his younger brother.

"Hey, Sam-squash, what's wrong?"

Sam slumped onto the sagging twin bed, tossing his backpack onto the quilt next to him.

"We made Father's Day cards in school today," said Sam quietly. He knew that he shouldn't be complaining, that Dean would probably say that he was being a bitch, but he felt suddenly quite lost and lonely.

"Oh," Dean replied. He stood there, looking awkward for a moment, then took a seat beside his brother. "Well, how'd it go?"

Sam pressed his lips together.

"I don't have a father, Dean."

Dean frowned.

"Well sure you do, Sammy."

"Not here," Sam muttered. Both brothers sat in silence for a moment, and then Sam pulled a crumpled piece of blue paper from his pocket.

"Miss Wilkins said I could make a card for someone I loved instead."

Dean nodded, expecting to see Bobby or Pastor Jim's name scrawled in thick black marker. But it was a different name written there, a very different one indeed.

"I made one for you, Dean."