The stickie note with my dad’s office number and the request that I call him is still sitting next to the land line phone the next day. I glance at it guiltily as I clear Noah's lunch of canned spaghetti and meatballs — one of the only things I can get him to eat at the moment. Noah’s been restless for most of the morning, clamoring for me to take him to the park he noticed a few blocks away when we first drove through town. But the park is going to have to wait a bit. First, I need to spend some time hunting for a job.

I put Noah’s bowl in the sink and slouch down on the old, saggy sofa with my laptop. Immediately, Noah comes to sit down beside me, a wad of blue Play-Doh in his hand. “Look, Mommy, a dinosaur!” he beseeches, holding up a blob that could just as soon be a bunny rabbit. Or a cantaloupe, for that matter.

“Nice, bug,” I smile at him and log into a local job search site.

“Wait, wait! How about this? Mommy, can you tell what this is?” I look over again to see he has ever-so-slightly modified the blob by sticking another blob on top of it.

“Hmmm, I’m not sure,” I frown. “Is it… a fire engine?”

“No!” he says crossly, genuinely disappointed at my lack of vision. “It’s Sponge Bob!”

I suppress a sigh, realizing that the “guess what this is” game is probably going to go on forever unless I do something to stop it. “Bug, I have an idea,” I say, sitting up and putting the laptop on the coffee table in front of me. “How about you watch some Paw Patrol? Mommy’s got a little work to do.”

“Okay!” Noah says happily. He is always up for Paw Patrol. I find some episodes for him on YouTube. Then, when he’s situated and quiet, I pull my cell phone out of my pocket and head into the bedroom to resume my job search that way.

Just as I sit down on my unmade bed to start looking, the phone rings in my hand, startling me. It’s my father, calling from his personal number. I suppress a groan and answer.

“Hey, Dad,” I say.

“Jenna!” his voice booms through the phone. “You haven’t called me yet.”

I purse my lips against his admonishment. “Well, we’re talking now,” I say, keeping my voice bright. “What’s up?”

“Checking in on my daughter,” he says gruffly. “You all moved in?”

“Yes,” I tell him, and lean back against a pillow. “Not unpacked, but everything’s in the apartment. By the way, I wanted to thank you for helping me out with finding this place.”

“Well, it sure ain’t much of an apartment, that’s for sure,” he huffs. “But with the budget you gave me there weren’t many options. I don’t know why you don’t just move into the house. God knows there’s enough room for the two of you there.”

“Thanks, Dad, but no.” It had been hard enough for me to ask my father’s help in finding the apartment. If there’s one thing I know about Dad from long experience, it’s that Abe “Triple A” Abbott’s help always comes with strings attached. He’s a born politician, and like all politicians, the main currency he deals in is favors. And the favors he demands in exchange for his help are too rich for my blood.

It is true, though, that there would be more than enough space for Noah and me at Dad’s place. Even though my mom has been dead for years, he’s still rattling around by himself in the house I grew up in. I’ve never been quite sure why, when it seems like he’d probably be much more comfortable in a smaller place. He has to hire a service to mow his lawn, and another service to clean his house. He works so much that he’s hardly ever home, anyway. It’s baffling. But maybe it’s just his pride as the mayor of Tanner Springs that keeps him from downsizing to a condo or something.

Dad’s still rambling on about how much more sense it would make for me to move back home with him for a while, like he hasn’t heard me refuse a dozen times already. I’m trying to think of a way to wind down the conversation gracefully, but apparently he’s not through grilling me. “You found yourself a job yet?” he barks. In the background, I can hear a door slam.

I roll my eyes. “Dad, I just got here yesterday. I was just going to start looking through some ads when you called.”

“You know, I’m sure if I asked around, we could find you something right quick,” he offers. “Probably better pay than you’re used to, too.”

I decide to ignore the dig, in part because it’s true. “No thanks, Dad.” The last thing I want is to be making some artificially bloated salary on some local business owner’s payroll just because I’m the mayor’s daughter. Whatever job I end up finding — even if it’s a crappy one — I want it to be on my own merits, however small they are.

Desperate to change the subject away from my considerable shortcomings, I turn the conversation to the one thing I know will distract him from grilling me about my future. “So, Dad, how’s the reelection campaign going?” I ask.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” he spits out in a disgusted voice. I hear him grunt as he heaves his hefty body into a chair. “That fuckin’ Holloway is gonna be the death of me. That little piss-ant came back to Tanner Springs after college with a two-bit MBA and a two-by-four stuck so far up his ass it’s tickling his tonsils.”

I know already that my father is worried that his challenger, Jarred Holloway, is pulling ahead of him in the mayoral race. Holloway’s younger, hungry for power, and good-looking in a frat bro kind of way. According to Angel, he’s making his campaign about Tanner Springs needing “New Blood, and New Ideas.” It’s even on his campaign signs, which I’ve already seen scattered throughout the town. Dad’s taking it as a personal affront, and it’s kind of consuming him.

“That underhanded son of a bitch is spreading all sorts of bullshit about me to anyone who’ll listen,” Dad’s ranting. To me, it sounds like maybe Holloway has learned a few things from my dad’s playbook and is threatening to beat him at his own game. “What in the hell has that arrogant pile of shit ever done for this goddamn town? These people are a bunch’a ungrateful sons of bitches. I have sacrificed everything for this town. Everything, do you hear me?”

His voice is rising now, and I imagine that his secretary and other employees can hear him on the other side of his office door. “Dad, calm down,” I soothe.

“Calm down? How the hell am I gonna calm down when that fuckin’ wolf is breathing down my neck?”

“I don’t know, Dad,” I sigh. “But I’m pretty sure you aren’t doing yourself any good letting yourself get worked up like this.”

Well, I got him to change the subject away from me, all right. But if anything this one’s almost worse. I try again to steer the conversation to something a little more neutral before he works himself up into a heart attack.

“Hey, Dad, I was wondering if you know anything about which are the good preschools in the area.” I want to get Noah enrolled in something soon, for some socialization with other kids his age. I’m hoping Dad will bite, and he does. Abe Abbott loves to be asked for advice, even if it’s on a subject he knows absolutely nothing about. His tone changes from angry to authoritative in an instant as he begins to rattle off names of different places in the area. For each one, he interjects comments about whether their directors have supported him or not during his mayoral campaigns. I listen with half an ear as I absently finger the ring I wear on a chain around my neck.

“Of course, I don’t think you can afford that one,” he says as continues to editorialize about one of the preschools he’s heard good things about. “It’s probably the best preschool in town, and it ain’t cheap. Not a lot of bartenders’ or waitresses’ kids going there.”

His bluntness probably isn’t meant to be cruel, but it sure feels that way. My breath hitches a little at his words, and he must hear it, because his tone instantly softens.

“I’m sorry, Jenna. I didn’t mean it to sound that way. I guess I just wish you’d finished college, is all,” he says, sounding momentarily subdued. “Maybe if you had you wouldn’t be in the ‘situation’ you’re in right now.”

“That makes two of us, Daddy,” I murmur under my breath. I know he means well. But sometimes I wonder if his concern about me not finishing college has more to do with feeling that a mayor’s daughter shouldn’t be slinging drinks at a bar.

“Well,” he says abruptly, his voice returning to the rapid-fire bark I know so well. “You let me know if you need me to find you something. And come by the house this weekend. Bring your boy with you. It’s not right that I haven’t seen my grandson yet.”

“I will,” I promise him, even though I know from experience that he’ll spend about a minute fussing over Noah before forgetting he’s even there. I say goodbye and hang up the phone, heaving a deep sigh. Only one day back in Tanner Springs, and I feel like the four-plus years I’ve been away never happened. I’m back to fighting my way out of the shadow of Triple A Abbott.

A wave of anger wells up in me, followed by a wave of reluctant sympathy. In many ways, my father is a bastard. But he is my father. I lie back on the bed for a moment, staring at the cracked ceiling. Dad has changed so much over the years. I remember how it was when I was young. When my mom was still alive. He was so different back then. Oh, he was still a wheeler-dealer, someone who always strove for power and recognition. But still, he was so proud back then. Proud of his family, proud of his beautiful wife, proud of his new political career.

Now, despite the hard exterior he presents to the world, there’s an undercurrent of loneliness and paranoia that I always notice whenever I talk to him. To the rest of the world, he probably still seems like the same old Abe Abbott. But to me, underneath all the bravado, he just seems… a little broken. I’m not quite sure when or why it got so bad — maybe it was a combination of things. But I’m almost positive about when it started: my mother’s death.