“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