When Alex was sure they were upstairs, she finally broke down. Year and years of pent up tension, fear, anger, and hurt came crashing down onto her head all at once. She couldn’t have stopped it if she’d tried. She turned off the burners under the griddle and slid down the cabinets, clutched her knees to her chest, and tried to keep her sobs as quiet as possible.

This was the moment she had long since given up on happening. She was finally feeling complete confidence that she wouldn’t have to deal with Gabe when it came to Emma. She figured that maybe Emma would track him down when she was older, but she hadn’t thought that he would just pop up like this.

After Emma’s first birthday came and went without a word from him, she’d pretty much given up. The no-contact clause hadn’t been enough in her mind in the beginning. She thought that eventually he would come for Emma, and that scared her almost as much as the thought of raising Emma alone.

The nightmare was always the same. Someone would pull up in front of the house in a big black SUV. The windows were tinted and she couldn’t see who was inside. A hulking guy would come out of the driver’s side and walk around the back to open the door for a tall, slender woman in a bright red suit. She would be able to see him sitting in the backseat of the car, but he refused to look her way.

The woman would walk to the front door and hand her a giant stack of papers and then direct the driver to take Emma away from her. Her feet were always planted to the floor, unable to move as the man ripped Emma away from her, both of them screaming and shouting for one another. She would try desperately to pull her feet up from the ground to go after her baby. Emma would scream and cry and try to beat up on the driver before he threw her in the back of the car.

Then the SUV would pull away and only then would Alex’s feet unstick themselves from the ground and she’d chase them until she couldn’t move any more. Then she’d shoot up in the bed covered in sweat and panting, her heart racing. It was a nightly dream for a long time after Emma was born, and then it eventually tapered off to only a couple of times per month and then eventually to only once or twice a year. She had a feeling that dream would be revisiting her soon.

She worried that her daughter would never know her father, but tried to do the best for her by herself that she could. She finished college with a degree in computer science and looked for flexible work that she could do from home while taking care of her young daughter. Other than sending the letters to his management office, she had no way of contacting him. None of the ways to contact him worked anymore and she wasn’t willing to go public. That would have just brought unwanted attention to them.

Now he was back out of the blue, saying that he never even received her letters. She was still so angry with him, though. Years of pent up rage don’t dissipate in an instant. And she couldn’t forget about him jumping into bed with Lesley when they had been broken up for less than twenty-four hours. And then it was months of a shitty pregnancy with two near-hospitalizations and the even harder infant stage where sleep seemed like something she’d imagined.

At least she’d had the money to help. Not wanting to spend more of the single ‘shut up and leave me alone’ check that she’d received, Alex had stuck to the barest-bones budget she could, while making sure that Emma had what she needed. Getting that check had been a final kick in the teeth to Alex. It signaled to her that he knew about them, but didn’t want anything to do with them.

But it all boiled down to the fact that he hadn’t been there. At the end of the day, that was it. She’d needed him and he hadn’t been there. She hoped he could be there for their daughter.

The thought that he didn’t know, couldn’t feel that he had a little girl out there made her want to lash out, as irrational as it was. He said he hadn’t received the letters, so she would take him on his word. The tears in his eyes when she told Emma he was her father confirmed it. She knew he was a good actor, but didn’t think he was faking that.

Now she hoped that his ability to be a dad didn’t mirror his track record as a boyfriend. She’d have to dig out the legal papers she’d had Jen draw up a couple of years ago, in case this day ever came. They were in her office somewhere. She shot off a quick text to Jen to let her know what was happening, then pulled herself together. Grabbing a few tissues and blowing her nose, she picked herself up, turned the griddle back on, and started in on the pancakes.