“Do you want a banana or apple?” I asked the girls. The fruit, at least, was fresh.

“Banana,” answered the younger two.

“Apple,” said Millie.

“Anybody want bacon?”

All three nodded enthusiastically. Bacon was one of those rare things we all agreed on.

I sipped my coffee and tossed some strips into a pan, then ran down to the basement to rewash the load of darks I’d forgotten about last night. While I was down there, I scooped a load of whites from the dryer into a basket and noticed there was a decidedly rosy hue to everything. That’s when I saw Winifred’s red sock in the basket along with everyone else’s white socks and underwear.

Great. Just what I needed—pink socks.

Cursing under my breath—at least no one heard me this time—I left the basket there and went back to the kitchen, where I flipped over the sizzling strips of bacon, gulped more coffee, and watched Winifred smear maple syrup all over her mouth. “It’s lipstick,” she said proudly.

“You’re getting it in your hair,” said Millie, moving her counter stool away from Winnie’s.

Someone dropped a fork, and it clattered noisily onto the floor. A couple minutes later, someone’s elbow knocked over a glass of juice and it spilled over the edge of the counter down the front of a cupboard. After cleaning that up (and adding fifty more cents to the swear jar total), I was supervising Felicity slicing up her banana at our tiny kitchen island when the kitchen began to fill with smoke. I turned off the gas under the bacon, pulled the pan from the burner, and opened the window.

“Ew, it’s burnt,” said Millie.

I closed my eyes and took a breath.

“That’s okay, Daddy,” said Felicity. “I like my bacon black.”

Winifred coughed, and I opened one eye and looked at her. “Are you choking?”

She shook her head and picked up her juice.

“Good. No choking allowed.” I put the overdone bacon strips on some paper towels. “Guess we’re eating it extra crispy this morning, girls. Sorry.”

“Oh Daddy, I forgot to tell you. Millie broke my glasses,” Felicity announced as she returned to her spot at the counter with her sliced banana.

“I did not!”

“You did too. You sat on them.”

Millie scowled at her. “Maybe you shouldn’t leave them on the couch.”

“Maybe you should look where you put your big butt.”

“I don’t have a big butt! Daddy, Felicity said I have a big butt!”

“No one in this house has a big butt,” I told them, setting the extra crispy bacon in front of them. “Now finish your breakfast. Felicity, I’ll look at your glasses in a minute.”

I managed to get everyone fed, repair Felicity’s glasses, clean up the kitchen, fold some laundry, get dressed, shovel my drive and Mrs. Gardner’s, and start my SUV in time to drive Millie to ballet—barely.

“Okay, let’s go!” I shouted from the front door.

“But my hair’s not done,” Millie cried, hurrying down the stairs in her black leotard and pink tights, her blond hair still a tangled mess.

“And Winnie never got dressed,” said Felicity from the couch in the living room, where she was playing on her iPad.

I looked at Winifred, who was lying on the floor in her Hufflepuff pajamas watching cartoons. “There’s no time now. Winnie, put your boots and coat on over your pj’s. Felicity, get ready to go and make sure you and Win both have hats and gloves. It’s freezing.” Then I looked at Millie. “Go get the bun stuff. I’ll get snow everywhere and I don’t want to take all my crap off.”

Felicity pointed at me as she slid off the couch. “That’s another fifty cents, Daddy.”

“Crap isn’t a swear word,” I argued.

“Can I say it at school?”

“No.”

“Then it’s a swear.”

I sighed heavily as Millie came down the stairs with a hairbrush, ponytail holder, and a dish of hairpins. Five minutes later, I’d managed to wrangle her thick honey-colored hair into something resembling a ballerina’s bun. I frowned at it. “Not my best work today, Mills. Just gonna admit it.”

“My bun is always the worst one there, Daddy. The other girls laugh at it.”

Something tugged at my chest. “Sorry. I do the best I can.”

“We’re ready,” said Felicity. “But my boots are so tight, I can barely get them on. And Winnie can only find one mitten.”

I closed my eyes for one moment and took a breath. “We’ll get you some new boots this week, and there are a million mittens in that bin. Go get me one, please.”

“It won’t match.”

“It doesn’t matter. Hurry, or your sister will be late.”

“I’m late every week, what’s the difference?” Millie muttered, slinging her bag over her shoulder. She was about to move past me out the door when I caught her by the elbow.

“Hey. I’m sorry. I’ll try harder to get you there on time from now on, okay?”

She nodded. “Okay.”

I let her go, hurried Felicity out the door in her too-small boots, and stuck a random mitten on Winnie’s hand before picking her up and carrying her out into the snow, pulling the door shut behind us.

I’d had way more disastrous mornings in the last nine months, but I’d had more successful ones too—although not many. I really was doing the best I could, but goddammit, Millie deserved a better bun and Felicity deserved boots that fit, and Winifred deserved a dad that had remembered to dress her and get the syrup out of her hair before taking her out of the house.

And they all deserved a mother who hadn’t deserted them—she’d only seen them twice in the last nine months.

As for me, I’d take a morning to myself. One morning without being entirely responsible for anyone else. One morning to feel like a man and not just Daddy. One morning to curse without putting money in a jar, to remember there was life beyond laundry, lunches, and little girls. Was that horrible of me?

Probably.

But still.

One morning. That’s all I wanted.

 

 

Frannie

 

 

The bride had toilet paper stuck to her shoe.

I was at the reception desk of the Cloverleigh Farms Inn, which the wedding couple had rented out for the entire weekend, when I saw her exit the lobby bathroom, trailing six or seven embarrassing white squares behind her. Quickly, I scooted out from behind the desk and hurried toward her before she could re-enter the inn’s restaurant, where the reception was taking place.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Radley?”

The bride, a forty-something woman with deep chestnut hair and a slender figure, turned to me and smiled at the use of her married name. “I guess that’s me, isn’t it? That will take some getting used to.”

I returned her smile. “Congratulations. Um, I just wanted to let you know you’ve got some toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe.”

She looked down at her feet, clearly visible beneath the knee-length hem of her ivory bias-cut dress. “Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much—that would have been very embarrassing.”