It had been raining for more than a week when the other shoe dropped. Typical Seattle weather. Sophie was preparing a presentation for the Starbucks annual shareholders’ meeting, and even though I made twice her salary and had ten times the responsibility at my job, I was pressed into daddy duty. Don’t get me wrong: I loved Aubrey. Being her dad was only one level below having a corner office with a view of the Duwamish River just south of Seattle, the building I was working in at the time she was born. I took the birthing classes with Sophie. I told everyone what kind of fruit or vegetable my baby grew to the size of each week as the iPhone app told me.

“Eggplant!” I’d say as though it were something that I’d done.

“Durian!”

“Head of lettuce!”

Being her father made me happy in all kinds of ways. Some professional—yes, my boss actually said at the time that I needed a bigger raise than a female peer because she was single and had no kids—and some personal. Saying I was a father made me feel like I was a grown-up. Finally. I know it’s stupid, but before Aubrey, Sophie and I were living the single life even though we were together. We traveled like we had flight benefits from every airline. In our first year or two of marriage we went to Fiji, Australia, Cancún, Maui, and Bethlehem. Pennsylvania, that is: Sophie’s aunt lived there. In any case, we went out to eat whenever we wanted to, and we fucked in every place we visited. Yeah, including some of the places we ate.

It was fun. Sophie was everything I’d ever wanted. And yet, all of that went poof when Aubrey was born. Just poof. Gone. And the weird thing? I didn’t miss the restaurants or the travel. The fucking, yes. But nothing else. My daughter was everything to me.

That all changed that one rainy, daddy-duty Monday morning.

Aubrey was due for her two-year checkup. Nothing wrong with her, of course, but when you have something as precious as a daughter, you don’t skip medical appointments. No matter how cursory they might be. What percentile? How smart is she? How tall will she be? No one has the fat gene in our family, does she? How can we tell?

God, she’s beautiful, isn’t she?

Dr. Mary was one of those no-nonsense types with her hair in a spray-on-tight bun and shoes that looked like they were fashioned of rubber and cardboard.

I bet she was wild out of the office.

She did her thing while I sat on a little stool and Aubrey stretched out on the paper-covered table in the examination room.

“Everything looking A-OK?” I asked.

“Yeppers,” she said.