He wasn’t.

He wasn’t a bad man. I want to be fair about that. He never hit me. He never yelled at her. He just couldn’t stay.

He’d disappear for a weekend. Then a week. He’d come back with a sunburn and a story. A buddy needed help moving to Florida. A friend had tickets to a festival in Tennessee. He’d bring Ellie a stuffed animal from a gas station and act like he’d never left.

When Ellie was two, he lost his job at The Anchor. He said he was going to look for work in Columbus, two and a half hours away. He’d send money. He’d come home on weekends.

He came home twice.

The last time, Ellie was two and a half. He stayed for one night. He took her to the park and pushed her on the swings. He bought her an ice cream cone that she dropped on the sidewalk, and he bought her another one.

The next morning, he kissed her on the forehead while she was still asleep. He told me he’d be back in two weeks.

He never came back.

He didn’t call. He didn’t write. He changed his phone number. He sent forty dollars once, in an envelope with no return address, when Ellie was three. That was it. That was the only money I ever got from him.

I had to file for child support. The court found him once and garnished his wages for about four months. Then he quit that job, and nobody could find him again.

Ellie doesn’t remember him leaving. She was too little.

But she remembered that she was supposed to have a dad. Somewhere. Other kids at daycare had dads. Dads who picked them up and carried them on their shoulders.

And somehow, without anybody telling her, she decided he’d come back on her birthday.

Every year, on her birthday, she’d stand at our front window.

Starting when she was three. She’d drag a kitchen chair over to the window and climb up on it and stand there with her nose against the glass. Watching the street.

“What are you looking at, baby?” I’d ask.

“I’m waiting,” she’d say.

“For who?”

“For my daddy. It’s my birthday. He’ll come on my birthday.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t know how to tell a three-year-old that her father wasn’t coming. That he’d forgotten. That he’d chosen not to.

So I didn’t say anything. I just let her stand there.

She stood at that window on her third birthday for two hours. On her fourth birthday, she stood there for most of the afternoon. She wouldn’t come away, even for cake. I had to bring the cake to the window.

He never came.

He never even called.

I met Patrick when Ellie was four.

He was a pharmacist at the CVS on Elm Street, where I picked up Ellie’s ear infection medicine. She had a lot of ear infections that year. I was in there every three weeks.

He was tall and a little awkward and wore glasses that always slid down his nose. He had a nervous laugh. He talked to Ellie every single time we came in. Not baby talk. Real talk. He asked her what she was going to name her stuffed rabbit. He asked her if she liked the bubblegum-flavored medicine or the grape. She said grape. He said grape was the correct answer.

The fifth time we came in, he gave her a lollipop from a jar he kept behind the counter for kids. Then he blushed bright red and said, “Would it be strange if I asked her mom out for coffee?”

I said, “A little.”

He looked crushed.