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1. It starts at the hospital. The lights are bright, the room is cold, and a gown-clad Debbie is placing a tiny pink bundle into Ian’s waiting arms.
“You did it,” Ian breathes, gathering it close to his chest. “You did it, Debs, she’s perfect.”
“I don’t know about that,” Mickey challenges. “She’s got Milkovich in her, after all.”
But he smiles when Ian turns toward him, and his eyes are wet and shining.
“Do you want to hold our daughter?” Ian asks, and Mickey is already reaching out. He sits on the edge of the bed with the baby in his arms, and sighs.
Franny sits beside him, her short legs dangling. She leans against his side, but his arms are occupied.
“That’s your cousin, Franny,” Debbie says. Franny can feel her mom’s feet twitch under the covers. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
Franny considers the blob in her Uncle’s lap. It’s red and wrinkled and ugly, and he’s looking at it like it’s the best thing in the world.
“It looks like a potato,” she blurts. Jumps off the bed before her mom can kick her.
“I don’t like potatoes.”
2. It’s Friday afternoon, and Franny ran right to her room after school. She’s halfway through packing her overnight bag—pajamas, check, stuffed racecar from Uncle Mickey, check—when her mom catches up.
“Franny.” It’s a sigh, it’s always a sigh these days. Like she was named with the last bit of patience someone had.
“What are you doing?”
Franny looks at her bag. Looks at the blanket in her hand.
“Getting ready.”
“For what?”
“For movie night.”
“Fran, hon.” Her mom pushes off the doorframe, steps into the room. “You’re not going to your Uncles this week.”
“Yuhuh,” Franny argues. “We’re watching Cars.”
They’d made the plans weeks ago. She’d marked the days off on her silly princess calendar with the stickers Uncle Ian had given her.
“Not this week you’re not,” her mom says. “They’re busy with the baby.”
Franny thinks about this. Shrugs.
“She can come I guess.”
Her mom laughs.
“Fran, that’s not how it works. A baby can’t—“
Franny doesn’t hear the rest. She’s already halfway down the stairs, blanket discarded on the floor.
3. It’s eight o’clock in the morning, and Franny has never been this anxious for anything in her life. The table is still littered with sticky breakfast dishes, and her socked feet are wet and cold as the snow seeps through them.
“Where’s Uncle Mickey?” she asks from the open door, shivering in the December air.
“What do you mean?” The question comes from behind her, warm at her back. “He’s at home.”
“No he’s not,” Franny says. “They’re not here yet.”
“What…oh,no.”
Footsteps behind her. The door taken from her grip. Hands on her sides, picking her up—a grunt with the effort—and she’s set back down on the tile inside.
“He’s at his own house, Fran.” Her mother turns her around, looks in her eyes. “With Ian and the baby.”
“But they’re always here for presents,” Franny whispers.
“They’ll be over later for dinner with everyone else,” her mom answers, and that isn’t good enough. They’re not supposed to be everybody else.
4. Franny’s eyes are still smarting from the stage lights when she stumbles out of the dressing room and into her mom’s arms.
“Franny!” She’s picked up and whirled around, set back on unsteady feet. “You were great, honey, a real prima ballerina!”
But Franny isn’t listening. She’s looking for someone else, someone who promised he would be there.
“Did he miss it?”
Her mom stops talking.
“Who?” she asks, and Franny scowls.
“Uncle Mickey. Did he miss it?”
“Oh.” Her mom laughs. “No, he was here. He watched the whole thing.”
“Then where is he?”
He was supposed to bring her flowers. The good ones, their favorites. And then he was going to take her out for ice cream, and let her ride in the front of the car with him, and—
“He had to run,” her mom says. “Your Uncle Ian called, the baby had a fever, and—“
Franny started walking.
5. “Why is she here?”
It’s the first thing Franny says when she opens the door to her two Uncles and the baby-pink monstrosity of her cousin’s stroller.
“Uh.” Mickey answers first, exchanging a look with Ian and rubbing a hand over his chin. “She’s a little young to be home alone, don’t ya think?”
It’s light, like a joke. She doesn’t think it’s funny.
“But why is she here?” Franny emphasizes. “With you?”
He looks confused, now.
“Because I’m her dad?” he says. “Franny, what—“
“You’re supposed to be my dad!”
The silence after her outburst is deafening.
“You…”
Her eyes are closed. She doesn’t open them. She doesn’t even bother to slam the door when she turns tail and runs straight to her room.
He finds her there a few minutes later. Too long. Not long enough. He sits next to her bed with a groan as his knees fold, and leans his head back against the mattress.
He doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t either. But her sniffles dry up, and he pats her ankle where it hangs over the edge of the bed, and he stays.
“I know you’re not my dad,” Franny admits. The words are raw in her already sore throat.
“No,” Mickey agrees. “I’m better.”
It earns him a ragged little giggle, almost without Franny’s own permission.
“You know,” he starts once she’s calmed down again, “you’re kinda the reason we have her.”
And Franny doesn’t really like that.
“Why?” she asks, and thinks she knows the answer.
“Never thought I’d be much of a dad,” Mickey answers. “But hanging out with you…you made me realize I could.”
Oh. That wasn’t what she was expecting.
“I did?”
“Hell yeah, kid.” Mickey leans his head back, looking at her upside down from his place on the floor. “You’re a badass, and for some reason you seem to like, me, so…”
“You’re my favorite Uncle,” Franny tells him, and watches him grin.
“And you’re my favorite Franny.”
+1. The others are all there when they come back downstairs. Mom and Uncle Ian are exchanging weird looks, Uncle Lip is pretending to drink, and Tami and Uncle Carl are on the floor playing with Fred and the baby.
They all avert their gazes when Uncle Mickey, standing next to her, glares at them.
“You wanna come hang with me and Ian, kid?” Mickey asks her.
And she does. She really does. But she wants to do something else first.
“I want to play,” she says instead, and plops right down on the carpet next to the younger kids.
She knows the adults are all watching. She doesn’t really care. The only eyes she’s concerned with are Uncle Mickey’s, and the pale blue orbs on the face in front of her.
“That’s not how you do it,” she says, and takes away the block the baby is slobbering all over.
“Franny, why don’t you—“
She ignores her mom, and puts one block on top of another.
“You do it like this,” she says sternly, and then kicks the tower down.
The baby shrieks with laughter.
“Let them play,” Mickey says in the background. “My girl knows what she’s doing.”
Next time, Franny helps the baby knock the tower down.