Chapter 1

“Jane?”

Where am I?

I’m not in my bed. This is not my room. How did I get here?

Oh. It’s Leah’s room.

I rub my eyes as the events of the last several hours return to me. At circa three in the morning, my three-year-old daughter Leah burst into my room, informing me that she was unable to sleep. I was forced to join her in her bed, where she’s inched her way in my direction over the course of the night. I’m now smooshed against the wall, Leah holding a fistful of my hair in her chubby hand, which makes any movement very tricky (and painful).

“Jane!”

I disentangle my hair enough that I can sit up in the bed. My husband Ben is standing in front of us, his brown eyes slightly bloodshot, holding up my cell phone with an accusing look on his face.

“Your alarm went off,” he informs me .

“Huh?” I’m still half asleep. Leah kicked me awake roughly every twenty minutes last night.

“Your cell phone alarm was going off,” Ben clarifies. “I had to get up and turn it off.”

“Oh.” I rub my eyes until I can see clearly enough to notice that my husband’s hair is smooshed against his skull on the left side, fanning out in a lopsided Sleep Mohawk. Ben is adorable when he first wakes up, even though he’s crabby. “Sorry.”

He raises his eyebrows at me. “Well, are you getting up or what?”

I’d give up my pinky finger for another hour of sleep. Hell, twenty minutes. But I’ve got my first patient at half past eight. “Any chance you could drive Leah to school?”

Ben frowns. “Jane…”

“Never mind,” I say before an argument can break out. “I’m getting up. I’ll do it.”

I look down at Leah, whose mouth is hanging open with a bit of baby drool dripping out the side. Her red curls are shooting out in every direction like a three-year-old mad scientist. I never love my daughter more than when she’s completely passed out. I hate to wake her.

“Any chance you could help her get ready for school?” I ask Ben, before he can hustle back to our warm bed.

He sighs. “Like what do you need me to do? ”

I don’t get it. Ben has gotten Leah ready for school before on multiple occasions, yet whenever I ask for his help, he seems completely baffled. It’s not that complicated, really. She’s going to preschool, not preparing for a business meeting.

“Just get her dressed,” I tell him. “And change her diaper.”

Ben shakes his head dolefully at the package of pull-ups in the corner of the room. “When is she going to get toilet trained anyway?”

“Soon.”

“You know I think we should just put her in underwear for a whole weekend.”

“Would you clean up the pee on our carpet?”

“I’d help clean up the pee. I’d clean up at least fifty percent of the pee.”

I highly doubt he would clean up fifty percent of the pee. I’d be lucky if he’d clean up five percent of the pee. And after working all week, the last thing I want to do is be scrubbing ninety-five percent of the pee out of the carpet all weekend.

“Do we have to discuss this now?” I say.

He sighs again. “Fine. Go take your shower. I’ll take care of Leah.”

I climb over my sleeping daughter so that I can escape her room. This is no easy task, because Leah’s room is not exactly tidy. Her room looks like a Frozen tornado hit. In case you live in a soundproof booth and have never heard of Frozen , it’s this popular musical for kids about a girl named Elsa who has ice powers. Leah is obsessed with everything Frozen . She has a Frozen bedspread, Frozen dolls (Anna, Elsa, Olaf, and Kristoff), a Frozen lunchbox for school, and Frozen posters all over her wall. Right now, the floor is littered with Frozen figurines, playing cards, and other paraphernalia. This room looks like it’s one Frozen play-doh set away from being condemned by the Board of Health.

The second I get out of Leah’s bed, I step on a Lego from her Frozen Lego set. I scream in pain and grab my foot. There is nothing more painful than stepping on a Lego with your bare foot. I’d rather be giving birth—at least then I had an epidural.

Ben crinkles his brow. “Are you okay?”

“I stepped on a Lego,” I explain, still gripping my throbbing foot.

“Oh, that’s the worst,” Ben agrees. If there’s one thing you can share with your spouse, it’s the pain of accidentally stepping on your child’s various toys. Last week, Ben’s foot was impaled by a Barbie doll’s plastic arm.

When I get back downstairs after I dress and shower, I’m pleased to find that my daughter is shod and clothed, although Ben is still wrestling Leah into her hated winter coat. I don’t know what she hates about it—it’s neon pink with light pink fur on the hood. It has the maximum and requisite amount of pink. This coat should be a hit.

“Ben!” I say as walk closer and my daughter comes into focus. “Is Leah still wearing her nightgown ?”

Ben struggles to his feet like he’s an eighty-year-old man. It always hits me with a jolt of surprise to remember that my husband is now thirty-nine years old—less than one year away from the big four-oh. When we met, he was barely thirty. But in many ways, he doesn’t look all that different. He’s got a little gray threaded into the temples of his short brown hair and some new lines around his eyes that have actually made him several degrees sexier. But he still mostly looks the same to me. I wonder if when we actually are eighty years old, he’ll still seem like he’s not yet thirty. Or will I look at my husband and think to myself, Oh my God, how did I end up married to this old man?

Ben glances at Leah’s Frozen nightgown and gives me a pained look. “She wanted to wear it to school.”

“She can’t wear her nightgown to school!”

“For Christ’s sake, what’s the difference, Jane?” He shakes his head. “She’s three . Does she really have to live up to some sort of fashion code at preschool ?”

The truth is, I could care less if Leah wears her nightgown to school. For all I care, she could wear that same exact nightgown every single day for the rest of her life. But I know Leah’s teacher Mila is going to yell at me if she shows up like this. So I’ve got to choose: do I fight with Ben and Leah now or get yelled at by Mila the Preschool Nazi later?

“Fine,” I say wearily. “Just get her coat on.”

Ben kneels down to resume his struggle. Every time he gets the second of Leah’s arms into the sleeve, she pulls the other one out. It would be funny if I weren’t running late.

“By the way,” I say to Ben, “don’t forget that tomorrow is Leah’s winter concert.”

He looks at me blankly. Ben has always had a horrible memory. I have reminded him about this winter concert at least a dozen times, but he looks at me like this is the first he’s hearing about it.

“What’s that?” he asks.

I sigh. I should start tape-recording our conversations to save energy. “It’s a concert they’re doing at the preschool,” I explain to him. “It’s tomorrow at three.” And because I can’t help giving him a jab, I add, “I told you about this.”

“Oh, right.” He scratches at his hair, which makes it stand up more. “Well, I’m working from home tomorrow, so I guess it’s okay.”

Ben works for a large start-up company in Manhattan, but since we’ve been living out here on Long Island, they’ve been mostly letting him work from home. It’s a good deal, since the commute is hell and housing costs a fortune in the city. But even though he won’t admit it, Ben goes stir-crazy when he’s at home all day. That also probably explains why he’s packed on a good fifteen pounds since we moved out here.

“What kind of thing are they doing?” he asks. “Like, singing?”

“Well, it’s a concert,” I say. “So yeah, I’d imagine they’re singing.”

He rolls his eyes at me. “You know what I meant. Is there more to it than that? Like, a play or something?”

I look down at Leah. How could she participate in a play? We can’t even get her to use the toilet. “I think it’s just singing.”

“Okay, well…” Ben shrugs. He doesn’t seem particularly thrilled about this concert. I know that he adores Leah, but he doesn’t get too excited about most of her endeavors. I mean, I think the idea of a bunch of three-year-olds belting out songs in unison is unbearably cute, but he doesn’t. It’s a guy thing.

“Anyway,” I say, “don’t get there at the last minute. The parking is going to be a nightmare because of all the snow on the ground.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters as he finally manages to get Leah’s coat zipped up. The coat is so puffy that her arms stick out at right angles to her body.

“All right, Leah, let’s go to school,” I say, holding out my hand to her .

“Mommy!” Leah cries. “I don’t have my lunchbox!”

Oh crap. How did I forget Leah’s lunch? I give Ben an accusing look, but he holds up his hands. “You never said to pack lunch, Jane.”

Did I? I probably didn’t. Still. He should have known to pack lunch! Why wouldn’t I want her to have lunch? She has to eat!

“You should have known,” I mutter under my breath as I stomp to the kitchen. I grab Leah’s Frozen lunchbox off the counter, fling open the refrigerator, and pull out a smattering of food: bread, string cheese, some ham, Ritz crackers, a bag of Cheez-its. She’ll only eat like a quarter of it anyway.

As Leah and I walk out to the car, she starts singing. I don’t know how I ended up with such a musical daughter. I can’t carry a tune for anything and Ben’s about as techy as you can get. But Leah loves to sing. Moreover, she loves inserting me into every song she sings. I’m honored.

“The Mommy in the dell, the Mommy in the dell!” Leah belts out as I summon superhuman strength to cinch the straps of her car seat around Giganto-coat. “Heigh ho, the derry-o, the Mommy in the dell!”

“Stupid car seat,” I mutter as the buckle miraculously snaps into place.

“The Mommy takes a wife, the Mommy takes a wife,” Leah continues. “Heigh ho, the derry-o, the Mommy takes a wife! ”

I shut off the radio in the car, knowing that Leah will sing the entire way to the day care. It’s only as I’m pulling out of the driveway that it occurs to me that I walked right past my husband without even considering kissing him goodbye. I don’t think he noticed either.