I crossed my arms. “Plenty of people grow up without mothers and turn out fine.”

She bit her lip. I could feel her softening. “I think it’s sweet,” she said. “I really do. But, Park, it’s not reality. This isn’t some romantic comedy where the clueless dad and a pair of charming, well-trained Labradors endure the hilarious misadventures of spit-up and dirty diapers. It isn’t that easy. Being a parent is really hard, and it’s real work. You have to be realistic about this.”

I nodded. I knew she was absolutely, one hundred percent right.

I would get a pair of Labs, too.

Greer MAY 22, 2011

I KNOW I DON’T HAVE time to date is sort of the refrain of my journal. But it isn’t an excuse, like my mother says it is. It honestly isn’t. It’s just that my life is so full right now.

But today was different. Today changed everything. I’m in Manhattan for the week to help Daddy, and I was rushing from a meeting in SoHo all the way back to Michael’s for lunch with a publisher who was interested in my writing a memoir. Me! I mean, I’m twenty-seven years old. What do I know?

I figured they wanted a McCann family exposé, which is laughable. If I’m not going to grant an interview—which I never have—I’m obviously not going to write a book about all my deep, dark family secrets. But that’s not the point.

The point is that I was running late, my driver was stuck in traffic, and I grabbed a cab. I paid the driver, dashed out, and a full half hour later I realized I’d left my phone in the back seat. My stomach sank. With thousands of cabs all around this city, how would I even attempt to find it? I was trying to focus on what the young, fresh-faced, and slightly nervous editor was saying about spreading my message of female empowerment and greater good to the world—I liked that a lot, by the way; I might have been wrong about the family exposé thing—and all I could think about was my missing phone. I was going to have to spend my afternoon going to the Verizon store, waiting in line forever, shutting my old phone off, getting a new one.

But I needed to be at a family foundation meeting that afternoon. I had some pet projects that I wanted to be funded this quarter, and they wouldn’t get done if I wasn’t there.

Even though I’m usually levelheaded, I could feel myself begin to panic, mostly because my phone was the keeper of everything. What if all my numbers weren’t backed up on the Cloud? What if I lost pictures and messages? What if someone found my phone, hacked into it, and stole my identity? I was about to say, I’m so sorry. I’m going to have to run, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.