What You Left Behind - Jessica Verdi

Chapter 1

If there’s a more brain-piercing sound than a teething baby crying, I can’t tell you what it is.

I fall back on my bed, drop Meg’s journal, and rake my hands through my hair. It’s kinda funny—in an ironic way, not an LOL way—that even with the endless wailing filling my room and ringing in my head, I notice how greasy my hair is. It’s gross. When was the last time I washed it? Three days ago? Four? I haven’t had time for anything more than a quick soap and rinse in days.

And to think I used to purposely go a day or two without washing it. Girls have always liked the chin-length hair that falls in my face when I’m hunched over a test in school and that I have to pull back with a rubber band during soccer practice. But now it’s gone past sexy-straggly and straight into flat-out dirty.

God, I would kill for a long, hot, silent shower. I would lather, rinse, repeat like it was my fucking job.

Ever since Hope was born six months ago, I’ve been learning on the fly, getting used to the diapers and formula and sleeping when she sleeps. I spend all my time reading mommy blogs, figuring out which supermarkets carry the right kind of wipes, and shopping at the secondhand store for baby clothes, because they’re basically as good as new and Hope grows out of everything so fast anyway.

The learning curve has been pretty damn steep.

I sit up. Tears squeeze between Hope’s closed eyelids and her little chubby feet kick every which way. Her pink, gummy mouth is open wide, and you can just begin to see specks of white where her teeth are coming in.

Her crib is littered with evidence of my attempts to get her to please stop crying—a discarded teething ring, a mostly full bottle, and this freakish, neon green, stuffed monster with huge eyes that my mom swore Hope liked when she first gave it to her, though I have no idea how she could tell that.

I pick up Hope and try massaging her gums with a damp washcloth again like they say to do on all the baby websites. It doesn’t do much. I bounce her on my hip and walk her around my room, trying to murmur soothing, shhhh-ing sounds. I rub her head, as gently as my clunky, goal-blocking hands can manage. Her hair is soft, dark, and unruly, like Meg’s was. But nothing works. The screams work their way inside me, rattling my blood cells.

Yes, I changed her diaper. I even brought her to the doctor last week to make sure nothing’s actually wrong with her, some leftover sickness from Meg or something. There’s not.

She always cries more when I hold her than when my mom does—but it’s never been this bad. This teething stuff is no joke. According to the Internet anyway. It’s not like Hope’s giving me a dissertation on what she’s actually feeling. Whenever I get anywhere near her, she shrieks her head off. Which means no matter how hard I try or how many books I read or websites I scour, I’m still doing something wrong. But what else is new?

Lately I’ve had this idea that I can’t shake.

What if I’m missing some crucial dad gene because I never had a dad of my own? What if I’m literally incapable of being a father to this baby because I have zero concept of what a father really is? Like beyond a dictionary definition or what you see of your friends’ families and on TV.

I have no idea what that relationship’s supposed to be like. I’ve never lived it.

And inevitably that thought leads to this one:

Maybe finding my dad, Michael, is the key to all of this making some sense. Maybe if I tracked him down, I’d finally figure out what I’ve been missing. The real stuff. How you’re supposed to talk to each other. What the, I don’t know, energy is like between a father and a kid. Not that I’m into cosmic energy bullshit or anything.

If I could be the child in that interaction, even once, for a single conversation, that could jump-start my being the father in this one. Right? At least I’d have some frame of reference, some experience.

But that would require getting more info about him from Mom. And I’ve already thrown enough curveballs her way to last a lifetime.

The music blasting from Mom’s home office shuts off. Five o’clock exactly, like always nowadays.

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