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I could feel the mood changing and I braced myself.
“You’re more of an adult than I am, in some ways, and I respect that.” Maggie took a deep breath. “But when it comes to being a parent, you’re inexperienced. I’m the one with more knowledge here. You’re a lot of fun for her, Cal, you really are. She clearly likes you. But what about when the fun times stop and she’s in a bad mood, or she’s not eating the food you put in front of her, or she’s not listening to you? What about when she’s sick, or has problems with friends, or she wants your attention and you’re trying to get work done?
“Right now, I’m seeing that you’ll be great as an uncle kind of person, as someone she can have fun with. Someone who can babysit. But being a full-time parent? That’s a really hard, really demanding job, and I don’t know if you’re up for it. And I can’t accept anything less for my child.”
“I can handle her mood swings. I can be patient. I am patient.” I tried to keep my temper because Maggie didn’t sound accusing or angry. She didn’t sound the way she did the other night, ready to jump to the worst conclusion. She just sounded firm, and serious. I liked to think that meant I was making some kind of headway—but I was still frustrated that she was keeping me at arm’s length, ready to decide that I had failed before we’d even really begun.
“But what about when you get bored?” Maggie countered. “I grew up watching you with your art projects. You get all wrapped up in them, and you like to try new things but then you get bored with them and move onto something else. Fern isn’t a project that you can just leave whenever you decide that you’re finished.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions,” I countered, anger bubbling up in me. I wasn’t going to just abandon my daughter. What kind of person did Maggie think I was? “I’m not going to get bored of her.”
“And how do you know that, Cal?” Maggie sounded so very tired. I wanted to take her into my arms, give her a massage, and tuck her into bed so that she got some decent relaxation and rest. She sounded exhausted and that frustrated me to no end. She deserved better than to be run ragged like this. She deserved a youth, for one thing, a more carefree, self-focused college experience, but that had already been taken from her. Did she have to lose the rest of her time, too?
“You’ve never done this before,” Maggie went on. “I’m sorry but you don’t have any experience with this, and I do. I’ve been there day in and day out, through the awful times and trust me, as much as you love your kid, sometimes you want to strangle them. It’s hard work and it’s rewarding but it’s also exhausting, and how can you know that you’ll really stick it out if you’ve never experienced that?”
“You didn’t know if you could stick it out until you went through it,” I pointed out, frustration building. “And I haven’t exactly had the chance to prove that I can be there because I didn’t even know Fern existed.”
I knew that it was the wrong thing to say the moment the words flew out of my mouth, but by then it was too late. Maggie’s face went angry again, blank, and I hated how I now knew more about what she looked like angry than I did about what she looked like when she was happy. Once I hadn’t ever seen her angry, now it was all I seemed to be able to get out of her.
“You should go.” Maggie spoke quietly, and I supposed I should consider it a blessing that she wasn’t yelling again. Or that could just be because she didn’t want to wake Fern. “Thanks for coming over and spending time with Fern, she really enjoyed it. She likes you.”
Maybe it was just my paranoia, but I felt like there was a warning in there. I once liked you, she seemed to be saying, and you fucked that up. Of course Fern didn’t like me the way that Maggie had. But it was still caring about me, and the last time Maggie had done that, I’d been rude and hurtful. She obviously didn’t want the same for her daughter—and no matter what I did, Maggie was still more inclined to think of me as the enemy than she was to give me a genuine second chance.
“I’ll go,” I promised her, grabbing my shoes and putting them on, “but I’m not leaving for good. I’m not giving up on this, on being a father to Fern. I’m not saying I’ll be perfect or that there won’t be bumps in the road, but I’m here to stay, Maggie. And I’ll prove it to you, whatever it takes.”
