care?” I ask.
Mom raises an eyebrow. “Day care is expensive.”
As if I don’t know that. We looked into a few places in our neighborhood back when Hope was first born before we decided I’d do homeschooling for a while. The cheapest one we could find was $425 a week.
“Maybe Grandma and Grandpa could help.”
“You can’t drive back and forth to Vermont every day, Ryden. Besides, they’re too old to take care of a baby.”
“No, I mean I could ask them for some money. To pay for day care.” After all these weeks of trying to figure out what to do with the baby when soccer starts up again, that’s the best option I’ve managed to come up with.
Mom’s expression doesn’t change. “You really think that will work.”
I shrug. “It’s worth a shot.”
Mom holds up her hands. “Well then, by all means, don’t let me stand in your way. Can’t wait for the checks to start rolling in.”
I may not know my dad, but there’s no question of who I got my sarcastic gene from.
I ignore her. “I’ll call them tomorrow.”
Mom gets up. “Great. Then tomorrow night, we’ll talk about plan B.” She’s about to leave, but Hope starts doing her baby talk thing again, and it sounds a lot like, “Da-da-da-da-da.”
Mom stops in her tracks and blasts me with the most massive, out-of-control grin I’ve ever seen. “Did you hear that? She’s trying to say Daddy! That’s right, Hope, daaaa-deeee. Daaaa-deee.”
It suddenly feels like there’s some sort of Panic Creature with lots of legs and super sharp claws crawling around my stomach, through my chest, and up to my throat.
There’s no way Hope is trying to say “Daddy.” She’s too young for that. Right? My fingers twitch with the impulse to grab my computer and look up “average age of baby’s first word,” but suddenly there’s something even more pressing, something I need to do right now, just in case she really is trying to say what Mom thinks she’s trying to say.
I can’t be Daddy. Not yet. Not before I know what it even means.
“Hey, Mom?”
“Daaaa-deeee. Daaa—”
“Mom!”
She snaps out of it. “Yeah, bud?”
“I need to ask you something, and I really hope you won’t get upset.”
She lowers herself back onto the bed, and the joy in her eyes melts into worry—the same worry that was in her eyes the day Meg and I told her about the pregnancy. To her credit, she didn’t freak out then. I hope she won’t now.
“What’s going on?”
I wish I didn’t have to do this. But I’m desperate.
“I…um…was wondering if you could tell me a little more about my father. Michael.”
I watch Mom carefully. The changes are small, but they’re there. A line of confusion between her eyes. A swallow of surprise. The downturn of her mouth as she deliberates. A rise and fall of her shoulders as she understands what I’m asking.
“Do you want to find him?” she asks finally.
I look away, and my gaze lands on the corner of Hope’s light green baby blanket sticking out through the slats of the crib. “Da-da-da-da-daaaa,” she sings.
I nod.
“Why now?”
I open my mouth to tell her the truth, but for some reason I can’t say it. “I don’t know.” It’s lame and obviously a lie, but Mom doesn’t push it.
“Okay,” she says after watching me for a second or two. Her voice sounds surprisingly steady. “I’ll tell you everything I know.”
I look back at her. “You don’t mind?”
She sighs. “I knew it was going to happen sooner or later. You know I was never keeping secrets from you, right?”
“I know.”
“But, Ry…” I wait as she seems to work something out in her thoughts. “I really don’t have a lot of information. The last time I tried to track him down, I hit a dead end.”
The last time she…huh? “You’ve tried to find him?”
“A couple of times. So I could have the information for you when…well, when this conversation happened. And…I guess I wanted to see what he’s been up to all this time. I wouldn’t mind some answers too, you know.” She fiddles with the frayed edge of her cutoff shorts, and for the first time, I see it: she was in love with my father. That’s why she doesn’t talk about him all that much. He broke her heart when he left her.
Suddenly I’m thinking about all the fights with Meg, her insistence on not terminating the pregnancy, her absolute refusal to even listen to my side of it. Even though she didn’t think