Dear X,

I keep telling myself that at some point I’m going to stop writing these letters. You know all about me by now. You’re probably even sick of me. I can imagine you opening this one thinking, God, just give birth to me already! Get it over with! Stop talking!

Sorry, X.

Of course it’s possible that in the next few days all that I’ll be capable of writing is UGHHHHHHHHHHHH.

It’s been a rough day.

Which brings me back to why I am writing this particular letter. My dad came to visit me today. I was genuinely surprised when Melly knocked on my door and said he was waiting for me downstairs. He never wanted to really talk to me, ever, even when I lived with him. For a guy who’s supposed to make his living relating to people, he doesn’t know how to talk to them.

I went downstairs to the living room and there he was, sitting awkwardly on the couch, his hands folded in his lap.

“Hey, Dad,” I said a little shyly. “Long time, no see.”

He stared at my belly. “You look—”

“I know.”

He shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe I could get myself in this situation. As if the thought of me having sex still shocked him to the core. “How are you feeling?” he managed.

I came right out with it. “Why are you here?”

He cleared his throat. “I wanted to see how you were.”

“You did? Why?”

“You’re my daughter.”

“Oh, okay. So why did you want to see me now? You weren’t so concerned before.”

“I’ve called,” he said.

“Once. In the five months I’ve been here.”

He looked down at his hands. “Evelyn and I are getting a divorce.”

I couldn’t help it—an incredulous laugh slipped out. “Oh my God. Why?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I think Evelyn’s a total she-demon, so it doesn’t seem that complicated to me.” I lowered myself carefully onto the couch next to him. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I’m fine.”

It struck me then that, in so many ways, he and I are exactly alike. “Are you sad?” I asked.

“I’m sorry about Evelyn,” he said. “How she treated you.”

“Which time?”

He gave a miserable, humorless laugh. “Do you want to come home? You asked me if you could come home, before. Did you mean it?”

My breath caught. Of course I’d said that. But did I mean it? Would I want to go home, if Evelyn was gone?

Dad glanced around the room, like he finally cared and was figuring out if this place I’ve been living in was good enough for his little girl. I was instantly aware of the shabby carpet, the dinosaur television straight out of the eighties, the faint stain on the couch cushion right under my leg.

Dad sighed. “If you feel like I pushed you into this—being here, giving up this baby, any of it, you don’t have to do it, honey.”

“You didn’t push me,” I said automatically. “I made the decision on my own.”

“But if you want to come home. If you want to bring the baby home, too, you can. I’ll help you. We could hire a nanny.”

I started laughing that self-defense laugh where I can’t stop. I laughed and laughed until I peed a little. Then I stood up.

“What about your constituents? It would look bad for you. You’d come off as a hypocrite. It’d hurt your career.”

“I could handle it,” he said.

I felt like I was going to throw up. I haven’t vomited in a while, I realized. Almost nine months in, and I’m finally past the morning sickness. Hooray for the small favors.

Dad stood up, too. He had come to tell me something, and he had. He could now check that errand off the list. It was time to flee. “Think about it,” he said.

“I will.”

I was thinking about it as I walked him outside and down the sidewalk to where he’d parked his car on the street. I was thinking about it hard.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said, which I thought was a strange thing to say to your daughter. It must have been habit—what he tells people at the end of a meeting. In touch. But that doesn’t mean he actually wants to touch me.

“Bye, Dad.” I went to hug him, but my belly got in the way.

I tried to imagine the life he’d just offered me: the big brick house on the hill, with him and me and no Evelyn and possibly a nanny. And you.

You. Who currently has the hiccups.

You could be mine again. I could hold you and talk to you and play you all my records and push you around in a stroller and actually be your mother.

The word felt like it got stuck in my throat.

Mother.

And then I thought, having access to a nanny doesn’t suddenly turn me into a suitable mother. The problem was never that I wouldn’t have childcare. It wasn’t Evelyn. Or my dad’s career. Or that I wouldn’t have money to feed and clothe you, like so many of the girls here at Booth have to struggle so hard to do.

The problem was that I’m not mother material. Not yet, anyway. Maybe not ever.

“Who’s that?” Dad said, and a car door slammed, and I looked up to see Ted ambling up the sidewalk toward us.

It was a full day of visitors here at Booth.

“Hi,” I said. “Long time, no see.” I meant this to be funny, since I’d only seen Ted a week ago.

“Hi.” He handed me something small and disc-shaped wrapped in brown paper. “They have these great chocolate chip cookies at the SUB today. I brought you one.”

“Thanks.” I stared at him, charmed and suddenly hungry and wildly confused. I like Ted. I think about him, probably more than I should. I mean, what pregnant girl gets a crush on her baby daddy’s former roommate who she hardly knows?

But, and I think this is an equally important question, who visits a pregnant girl at a home for unwed mothers to bring her a cookie?

“Oh. And I brought you this.” He handed me an envelope.

I peeked inside. It was the non-identifying information form I’d given Dawson last week, all filled out, it looked like, in Dawson’s messy scrawl.

“Thank you,” I said.

You shifted inside me. I instinctively put my hand on my belly and rubbed. It’s getting crowded in there.

It was getting pretty crowded out here, too.

“Don’t tell me this is the father,” Dad said then in this hard voice that made me turn to look at him. He seemed like a different person than he had ten minutes before, staring down Ted with this furious expression like he was considering taking a swing at him.

Ted looked genuinely alarmed and embarrassed, which didn’t help matters. “Um, sir, I—”

Dad kept going. “Where are you from?”

Oh, NOW he gets protective, I thought, now he cares. But then I watched his lip actually curl back, and I realized, he wasn’t acting like this because he was trying to protect me, his poor pregnant daughter.

Ted said the name of the college.

Dad shook his head. “No. Before that. Where’s your family from?”

Ted’s jaw tightened. “Uh, Homedale? I also have some family in Jerome. But my parents live in Homedale.”

“You should be ashamed,” Dad snarled. “You know you don’t belong with my daughter.”

Right. So this was because Ted doesn’t look white. Or white enough, anyway.

This was because, apparently, my dad’s a racist.

Excuse me, X, but I lost it for a minute.

“He is the father,” I blurted out. “So can he move in with us, too, Dad? Help raise our daughter? I could even marry him, if you wanted.” I tried not to notice the way Ted’s face went pale and slack with amazement. I kept on talking. “We’d be one big happy family then, wouldn’t we? That’d be nice. I can picture our Christmas card.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Dad cleared his throat again. “You’re doing the right thing with the adoption.”

At that moment I hated him, because I knew. It wasn’t only Ted my dad was rejecting here. It was you too, X, if he thought Ted was your father. Just like that, he’d decided he couldn’t love you.

But I pretended not to understand. “What, now I can’t come to live with you again, either? Why not? What’s wrong, Dad?”

He turned and unlocked his car. “We’ll talk about it later.”

“Will we?”

He didn’t answer. He got into his car and drove away.

So that’s a no.

I turned to Ted, who was still standing in the middle of the sidewalk with his shoulders kind of caved in, looking at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s no excuse for him.”

“What about you?”

“I don’t know why I said you were the father.”

“I do. You wanted to stick it to him.”

“Maybe.”

“I should go,” Ted said.

I tried to fix it. “Ted, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I just don’t really like being used. Enjoy the cookie.”

“Wait, can I at least call you?”

“Uh, sure,” he said, but I could tell he meant no. Then he got back in his car and drove away.

It’s been a lonesome afternoon. But today has been illuminating. It’s made me face two big truths that I’ve been dancing around lately:

I am doing the right thing with the adoption. I need to get you out of here, X, get you somewhere you’ll have a chance to grow up around decent people.

I can’t go back to living with my dad, not even after you’re born. I can’t go home. I’m not even sure, at this point, where my home is.

Now I only have to figure out where I’m going to go.

S