I wake up to knocking on the door.

"Elia," my dad says. "Open up."

"Coming," I say, looking for my discarded dress. I slip it on and open the door. "Yeah?"

"You ate dinner, right?"

"Yup." "Jeff and I have some business to talk about. I know that you're only scheduled to work during the day, but Danny needs someone. I promise, Jeff will be pay you extra."

"Sure," I say. "I wasn't doing anything." Besides sleeping.

"Great," my dad says. "I'll give you a minute. Just hop downstairs." My dad walks away and I close the door. I hunt for my bra, which has very mysteriously disappeared even though I was just wearing it. I look in my closet. I look on my chair. I even look on my door handle where, let's be honest, it ends up half the time.

No bra.

I yank open my top drawer to get out a new one and then immediately see my bra sitting on my bed. I can't even remember putting it there, but the sneaky little thing was sitting there all along.

"Gotcha!" I say. I pull my dress up so that it's sitting on top of my shoulders. I pull on my bra and slid my arms through the straps before yanking my dress down. I make a face at myself in the mirror. I'm all sleep-rumpled and not particularly appealing, but I don't want to keep my dad waiting.

When I go downstairs, I'm trying to get a hairband to stay in place with some bobby pins. My dad has his laptop in a bag, which is slung across his chest.

"Ready?"

"Yup."

We walk into the cool night air. I shiver a little. My sundress wasn't meant for nighttime. But it's just next door, so I start sprinting over. I'm not even wearing shoes, so my feet are freezing. When I get to the porch, I ring the doorbell at the same moment that Jeff opens the door. We're very close to each other, just inches apart. I can smell his breath from here.

He takes a step back. "Come on in, Elia."

I blink because Danny is sitting in a playpen, shaking a teddy bear.

"I'll take care of him. You two do whatever you need to do."

My dad and Jeff head to Jeff's home office. Danny is yawning and battling his eyelids, but he doesn't seem to want to go to bed. He is still vigorously shaking the teddy bear for an unknown purpose. When he finally drops it, he turns to me and holds out his arms.

"Out?" I ask. I crouch down to get him. I pull him into my arms and sit with him on the couch.

"Did you have a nice dinner, Danny?" I ask.

He puts his tiny head on my shoulder and lets his eyes half-shut. I begin gently rocking him the way my mother used to, humming a little to help put the baby to sleep. His little rosebud mouth opens with a huge yawn.

"Be careful, Danny! You could dislocate your jaw," I tease. I touch his tiny nose. His big eyes blink fully open before drifting downwards. He blinks a little more before he lets them stay closed. I carry him upstairs to pop him into his crib.  Danny sleeps better in Jeff's room, I know, but my dad would go ballistic if he found me in there. I put him in a crib in his own room, but I drag a chair over so that I can keep my hand around his. He grabs at my thumb, totally asleep, and I watch his eyes move while they're still closed. I hope he's having a good dream.

I pull my phone out of my pocket and settle in with a good book. Year of the Griffin is one of my favorite books ever, and it seems perfect right now. I fall into a story about griffins, kings, wizards, and emperors. I'm so deep that when the door opens behind me, I jump a foot in the air. My phone goes flying and hits a metal lamp. It makes a sound so loud that Danny wakes up. He immediately starts screaming.

"Danny," I say, pulling him into my arms and rocking him. "You're okay."

"Let me have him," Jeff says. "Your dad is ready to go home."

I whirl around, not eager to give him the baby. I notice the circles under Jeff's eyes.

"I'm okay. I can stay until he goes to bed. It's not like Dad is giving me a ride, anyway. We live next door."

"Okay," he says. He steps out of the room to yell down the stairs, "She says she'll go home after the baby goes to sleep."

"Roger that," my dad says. I hear the front door close. Then it's just the three of us, Danny now quietly chewing on the end of my hair.

"Don't chew on that," I tell Danny. He took advantage of a momentary distraction.

When Jeff comes back into the room, Danny tries to wiggle out of my hold to get to his father. Jeff takes him and kisses Danny's hair.

"You can go home, you know." "Is everything good? It's not normal for you and my dad to have a late-night meeting like this one."

He rubs his eyes. "Your dad might need to go on a trip soon. Honestly, I need to go, too, but there's no way that I can leave Danny for that long." He hums a little bit and pats Danny's back. "And they won't come to the US."

"Where is Dad going?"

"China," he says. "We're having some problems with the quality standards at one of the factories that we've contracted production to. We want to be on the ground and see things for ourselves."

"What's going on?"

"There are some watchdog activists that are saying that there are major human rights violations going and trying to drum up negative press."

"But it's not real, right?"

"We don't know for sure, not until we audit them personally." "You should be there," I say.

"Not without Danny, and there's no way that I'm subjecting him to a flight all the way to Beijing and Lord knows whatever else." He shakes his head. "But enough about business. You should go home. We all have to be up tomorrow morning."

I walk over and kiss Danny's sweet little head. "Bye, little one." Kissing Danny's head puts me in very close proximity to Jeff's face. There's a tense, breathless moment, then I'm walking out. "Bye, Jeff."

"Bye," he says as I walk down the stairs. My heart is hammering like a team of particularly enthusiastic contractors on a roof. I need to go home.

When I get in the door, my dad is up a ladder.

"What are you doing, Dad?"

"Looking for a suitcase," he says. "A carry-on isn't going to cut it."

He must have found what he was looking for, because he grunts with the effort and pulls a giant black suitcase out.

"How long are you planning on being gone? A year?"

"No, a little less than that." My dad carefully comes down the ladder. I extend a hand to take the suitcase, but he carries it down, using only one hand to steady himself. "But there's no way that I'm leaving you alone in this house before you go to school." "Dad," I say. "I'm 19. One of my friends is married and has a baby."

"Camilla is 20," he says. "And Lincoln is capable of providing for her and the baby."

I stick out my lower lip.

"You're living next door until I get back."

My entire body flashes hot and then freezing cold. "What?"

"You heard me. I'm not leaving a teenager alone in my house for an indeterminate amount of time. I have no clue how long I'll need to be over there. I know you're going to school, so you might as well get ahead of the packing and do a trial move next door. You can go home for anything you need. By the end of the summer, you'll have everything you actually need for school."

"But I..."

"Not negotiable," my dad says, his voice as hard as nails. I know when he's putting his foot down, and right now he's basically putting a hole in the floor with the force behind it.

"Fine," I say. I turn and go up the stairs. Holy crap. I'm going to be living with Jeff. He has the space. I'm not worried about not getting my own room and bathroom, but what is it going to be like living with him?

I guess I need to start doing some packing of my own. My dad sounds like he's not expecting to come home before I go to school, so it'll be another 3 months or so at least. What do I need?

I start dumping all of my sundresses into a suitcase. Jeff keeps his house a little warmer than ours. I have a feeling that wearing Daisy Dukes around Jeff would result in a phone call with my dad. I pack some undergarments and some pairs of shoes. And I'm pretty much done. I go to my bathroom and pack all of my toiletries in a mesh beach bag. I only take the shampoo and conditioner that I use on a daily basis. After a few moments, I also take the only gel that makes my hair behave. Toothbrush and toothpaste, those are important, right? And cleanser.

I stand in front of my makeup kit and debate bringing it over. On one hand, it's pretty easy to move. It's huge but really well organized. On the other hand, maybe I'd get tempted to be...inappropriate while living with Jeff.

I agonize for a few more moments before I decide to take it. Maybe there'll be an occasion where I'll want to wear makeup beyond SPF 15 sunscreen and I'll need it. I ignore the voice in the back of my head saying that I can come home if that's the case.

And then I'm pretty much packed. I can bring all of this over tomorrow morning when I go over to watch Danny.