Mike taught himself baseball, taught himself how to talk to girls, how to repair the TV by himself. Growing up without a dad, Mike was used to it. His own father was hardly present in his life. Impersonal greeting cards and strange presents wrapped in stiff wrapping paper came in the mail once a year. As a child, Mike counted down the days to his birthday and waited next to the mailbox at the curb. Sometimes, his efforts were lost – his father would be off a few days or would forget to send something entirely. But still, Mike waited.

As a teenager, the birthday presents would come and Mike would toss them under his bed, next to unforgotten smelly socks and his secret stash of dirty magazines. He waited a couple days, maybe a week, to unearth them from underneath his bed. Mike ripped everything apart slowly, salvaging the paper, even though he was going to throw it away later. Happy Birthday to a great son! Mike's father's handwriting was a hasty scribble, and the ink was smudged downwards. Sometimes the cards didn't have a personal message in them at all.

The gifts Mike received were usually a hit or miss. One year, a brand new baseball came in the mail. Mike spent hours tossing the baseball back and forth at the wall, creating a noisy habit that annoyed his mother to no end. On his twelfth birthday, Mike's father sent him a kite. It was old-fashioned and stiff and didn't even work. Two years later, he was given a pair of socks and a matching tie. Once, he got a vintage wooden baseball bat. Mike cherished that baseball bat with his life.

As Mike grew older, the presents stopped coming. Cards no longer came in the mail. Instead of gifts wrapped in stiff wrapping paper, there were phone calls once a year. They were awkward and brief, full of short questions followed by yes-or-no answers. His father asked him about school and friends and sports. Mike could hear voices in the background, voices he knew belonged to his father's new family.

Along the way, Mike and his father lost touch. He grew up, went to college, started law school. The last thing on his mind was his estranged father. There were no letters, no birthday cards, no phone calls. Mike forgot, and so did his father.

Then, one night, the phone rang, startling Mike. It was his mother.

He wasn't surprised to hear about his father's funeral. The thought had always lingered in the back of his mind: my father must be dead. It had been years since they had been in contact. His mother's phone call only confirmed that thought.

He hung up the phone feeling no less different than he had five minutes ago. As a child, he'd spent days waiting by the mailbox, waiting for a sign that his father loved him. Waiting to be acknowledged. It was strange, how Mike had always wished for someone to teach him his way around a wrench, wished for someone he could throw a baseball with. And yet, Mike had managed to grow up without his father. He had managed to move on.

There was a loud knock on the door. "You pulling an all-nighter, Mike?" Jack asked.

"Something like that," Mike said, tossing his baseball back and forth in his hands.

"You did a good job in court today." The compliment seemed to have come out of nowhere, seemed to have been flung out of thin air.

Jack was gone when Mike looked up.

It was even stranger to realize that Mike didn't need his father anymore. In a way, Jack and Connie were enough for him.

A/N: This started out as an idea and became something entirely different. It didn't exactly end up where I wanted it to be, but I think I'm okay with that. Please review.