He called me at seven in the morning to ask where Mia’s school socks were.

Left drawer, I told him.

Ten minutes later he called back: she wouldn’t eat her breakfast.

She hates hot milk, I reminded him; she’s always hated hot milk.

A few minutes after that he called to ask how to put her hair in a ponytail, and I told him, kindly, to look up a tutorial and learn — because I was done being the invisible instruction manual for a life he’d never bothered to read.

When Mia came home Sunday night she was laughing, telling me how Dad burned the eggs and put her shirt on backward and got flour in his hair.