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alone.”
    “She told us to call her Jasmine.” Jenny shrugged, like it didn’t matter, then she blew her bangs out of her face and went on, fists on hips, daring him to disagree. “And she does too leave us home alone. A lot. I know how to take care of myself. And of Ellie. So we don’t have to go with you.”
    To hear such adult statements coming out of a girl so small, a girl he remembered being born, brewed a mixture of anger and heartbreak in Mike’s gut. Anger at his ex for being such an irresponsible parent, then heartbreak that Jenny had skipped from eight to eighteen when he wasn’t looking. Jasmine had never been much for being reliable or warm and fuzzy, but he’d always figured she’d been a decent mother. For the thousandth time, he wanted to kick himself for living too far away to be more than a greeting-card parent.
    “So just go, dude,” Jenny said, returning to her paper, her hair swinging in front of her features again, her voice small and soft and resolute. “Just go.”
    The time clicked by on the kitchen clock. Humid summer air hung heavy in the room. On the TV, the annoying sponge show ended and a commercial for a water park came on. Jenny just stood there, waiting for him to leave.
    “I’m not leaving without you two,” Mike said. “Where I go, you guys go.”
    “Whatever.” Jenny scoffed. “You say that today, and then tomorrow, you’ll—” She shook her head.
    “Tomorrow I’ll what?”
    “Leave,” she said, quietly, almost under her breath. “Like you always do.”
    A scythe scissored his heart into two pieces. He had no argument against the truth, and didn’t have a solution for the future. Yeah, he was going back, but this time, he vowed to return more often and to keep better tabs on Jasmine.
    “Just go, dude.” Jenny waved toward the door. “We don’t need a babysitter.”
    That scythe made a second slice of his heart. Was that how they saw him? As a babysitter, instead of a dad?
    What else would you call a guy who showed up a couple times a year for a few days?
    God, he sucked. This wasn’t how he’d planned it to be when the girls were born. He’d made a stab at the family-man thing, trying over and over again to work it out with Jasmine, to stay in one place longer than a few days, but every time he’d failed. The problem?
    Mike hadn’t the slightest freaking clue how to be a father. How to be anything other than a hard-charging, detail-oriented military man.
    He had thirty days to make the transition from babysitter to dad. At the very least, maybe it would be enough time for his daughters to begin seeing him as something other than the night warden.
    He cleared his throat and wished he had one of those newsstand magazines right now to tell him what to say. Instead, he just stood there like an idiot, as if some parenting genie would appear and guide the moment. “Jenny, I…”
    Jenny’s lower jaw wobbled and her nose wrinkled. “Will you just go to your stupid barbecue already?” He knew that tone, the one that said,
Leave, because I don’t want to count on you being here
. It rocketed Mike back twenty-five-plus years, to a moment on a sidewalk in a sunny neighborhood in Sarasota. Mike’s father, climbing into his bright white Buick sedan, giving Mike a short, staccato wave, then driving away. Mike had stood there on that sidewalk, holding in his tears until the Buick’s boxy tail disappeared around the corner.
    The Buick had never returned. And neither had his father. A few weeks later, Mike had been dragged into a whole different kind of hell, one no child should endure. No way was he going to let anything like that happen to his kids. Which meant he had to find a way to reach his daughters. To be a dad.
    Mike bent down and waited until his oldest daughter looked at him. Jenny had his eyes—the same ocean blue he saw in the mirror every day—but hers were filled with wary mistrust. She was such an echo of him, and she didn’t even know it.