…okay, remember how i said last chapter "this is a three parter?"

yeah, make that four? five? more? i know where this is going and it's not going far, but otherwise i basically give up trying to estimate thing thing. right now i want to say one or two more chapters and an epilogue set in the "present"/2030 (think the kids on the couch as ted wraps it up), but idk. put another way: the story is over when jenny finally gets around to talking about the wedding.

…just like ted!


Okay, right. Where was I? Not meeting Robin Scherbatsky outside your father's building, but before that. The story of when you were fifteen days old. The story of me saving your dad's butt.

That story.

Your father was sitting on the other end of my sofa-slash-bed; I was feeding you amid my stuffed animals and Urban Outfitters boho throw pillows — he'd grabbed one, gold chevron, and was holding it in his lap. I don't think he really noticed it; he was looking up at my ceiling. I noticed it, but only because I was holding you at my boob, and something about it kinda struck me — me holding a baby, him with a pillow. I thought it seemed vaguely symbolic. But knowing your father like I do now, he probably just needed something to grab, to have in his hands.

He said: "I can't go to my best friend's wedding, because my ex wife is going to be there." Not outright like that, but guiltier, with excuses and extra adjectives — your father is very good at saying a lot of things that mean nothing at all, and less so at telling the truth.

This was two weeks before I met Robin Sherbatsky, so my gaze whipped around from you to him. "You used to be married?"

Seriously. I'd met him in a bar, he was twice my age, a sleazy gross douchebag who acted like a fratbro. At the time, I couldn't have been more surprised if he'd admitted to being a Catholic priest. Actually, I would have been less surprised — everyone knows the church is crazy with scandals.

He gave me a look that, in retrospect, I'm going to call wounded — wounded bordering on offended, but unsurprised. He wasn't surprised. Who would be? Even your father, living in his fantasy universe, knew better than to be surprised. "Yeah," he said.

"Really?" He did that thing he sometimes does, where he squints and raises an eyebrow and looks incredulous. I guess I was being kind of rude, but a) this was blowing my mind, b) I didn't really believe it, and c) I didn't like him all that much, so who cares.

"Yeah, really," he sulked, looking over at my silent television.

"Was she a mail-order bride? Model looking for a rich husband?" I narrowed my eyes. "Former stripper with a heart of gold?"

I was sort of kidding, or anyway, my tone was joking but my guesses were deathly serious. I couldn't imagine anyone choosing to marry him, not back then. Not without another good reason. Your father is good looking, I mean, I did … go on a date with him… but he also has, I found out after that date, money. That was pretty much the only reason I could imagine a woman vowing to spend her life with him.

Your father gets loud and huffy when he's annoyed or embarrassed. He didn't get loud or huffy now. He stood up from the couch, his face tight and clouded. I sat there with you on my boob, watching him with wide eyes, dying to know the details — unable to read or understand his mood. I didn't really care about his mood. To me, this was only a story, some juicy bit of gossip — your sleazebag father, who'd once been married, who wanted to skip his best friend's wedding out of fear of this woman. I'd never seen him upset before.

"No," he said, standing there in my one-room apartment. I think he realized he had nowhere to go, nothing he could do to distract himself or me — he took a couple of steps towards my fridge, as my eyebrows raised, and then turned back and looked at me.

I didn't know back then, how fake your father is.

I didn't know how close to home my questions must have been, how he had been asking himself the same questions as me, but for longer, years longer — maybe even when he was married to Robin Scherbatsky, maybe even before. I didn't like him so I could see his faults clearly, without his better qualities to balance them out — his shallow flightiness without the contrast of his humor and hidden intelligence; his mean thoughtlessness without the generosity and loyalty. I didn't know back then that he saw himself the same way, that if we sat down and talked about it we would agree: he's vain and selfish and an arrogant ass, his whole 'awesome' schtick a pretty weak cover, transparent and unpleasant and masking something cold and calculating and slimy.

Why would she marry someone like him? Why would anyone? He wouldn't have wished himself on her or anyone else he cared about; that's why he met me, some anonymous drunken stranger on a rebound, that's why he'd set his sights so low in the years after his divorce — low, but to him, as high as he could reach.

So I was teasing him, picking on him, saying low things because I didn't care about your father, because I was tired and cranky and he was in my apartment when I didn't want him to be, wanting to take you for reasons I didn't want him to, and I didn't know how hard my points were hitting him. How true they were.

I mean, I'm assuming.

I don't know, maybe he just thought it was a little rich that some bottle-blonde (this was when I still dyed my hair) bimbo he'd knocked up was calling him pathetic.

Back then, he said no, and I raised my eyebrows and grinned and didn't read the mood and said, "So what? Shotgun wedding? You don't have another kid, do you?" My grin faded halfway through asking, because, um, ick.

"No!" He said. Your father doesn't get angry much — but his voice was tense, and this was about as close to annoyed as he does get. And justifiably, in retrospect. "No. It wasn't like that."

He frowned at this art print I had on my wall: the words think less, live more in some bold hipster font, a print I'd picked out in some young and optimistic living it up in the big city impulse, and in retrospect — meaning, my baby daddy staring at it as I fed our child — more than a little ironic. No offense, sweetie, but thinking less and living more is exactly what had gotten your father and I into this situation.

I was staring up at him, waiting for him to elaborate — I didn't know him well enough to realize he never, ever would — and he clenched his jaw and stared at my poster. "So what was it like?" I wheedled, moving you from my boob to my shoulder to burp you.

I think he must have answered because he wanted you, thought that if he fed me the gossip I'd give you to him, let him use you as his excuse to avoid Robin Scherbatsky. I think so, anyway. And it worked. "She was…" He trailed off, distracted, maybe wondering at his use of tense, putting her in his past for maybe the first time. Or maybe he just didn't know what to say, how to sum up the other great love of his life (besides you, sweetheart) in a sentence to a near-stranger: She was my friend. She was awesome. She was someone who I loved.

"She was Ted's ex," he said, which struck me as super weird but also just the kind of shameless thing I believed of him back then, oh, he scooped up his best friend's ex? Gross! Now I know enough to know that was him minimizing, reducing her to the thing she is the least, giving a meaningless fact instead of anything that could hint to his own feelings or any sort of depth. That's the kind of man your father is: the kind who finds it easier to let people think the worst.

So I said something really, really mean. I didn't know it was. I said huh and then I said: "No wonder it didn't work out."

He didn't flinch or cry out. He also didn't argue. He just stared unblinking at my wall, and then slowly, deliberately, after fifteen or twenty seconds, he turned away, turned around and sat slowly on my sofa. Closer, this time. "So I don't want to see her."

"When did you break up?" I asked, thumping your back and jiggling you and staring at your father openly, forgetting I was annoyed at him in my blatant curiosity.

He looked down at his hands. "Four and a half years ago."

That was weird. "Wait, seriously? It's been that long?" I could understand avoidance: I didn't want to see my ex at all, ever. But Douchebreath and I had been broken up for less than a year at that point. Four years, back then, seemed like a lifetime to me. "Holy crap," I said. Maybe a little more strongly. "What happened?"

I was assuming some kind of reality television, Real Housewives sort of breakup, full of trauma and broken objects, screaming and shrapnel.

"Um," he said. I was staring at him from two feet away; it was probably kind of unnerving, but I didn't think of that. "She travelled a lot for work."

"And?" I asked eagerly.

"And I never saw her."

I remember feeling a little let down, disappointed. "And?" I said, when I meant that's it?

His expression went tight. "I'd travel with her sometimes but she hated it when I did and I hated being that pathetic." Having to follow her like an extra piece of luggage, I think: being left in her hotel room and ignored until he was needed or wanted, and those occasions seeming less and less frequent, time moving slowly for him and quickly for her, waiting for her twelve or eighteen hour days to end and growing to resent them, seeing Robin Scherbatsky's devotion to her career as a choice, him and the news on a scale or a schedule and losing every contest.

I didn't really get what he meant back then; I thought he sounded selfish and whiny and pathetic, complaining about his wife's work keeping her from giving him her full attention: how gross, how misogynistic, girl power all the way. I understand it better now. Both sides. Since I started at the hospital… look, it's tough. I hate working twelve hour shifts, leaving you and Dave and your brother, being so tired halfway through the week. I know it's hard on you, I know you wish I had more energy and time, and you're right to feel that way. But I also know I love my job, I love having a real career, and even if it kills me I want it both: you and Dave and Sammy, my patients and the hospital and my ducky scrubs. I understand why your father felt unchosen; I understand why Robin Scherbatsky clung to her career.

"So she divorced you?" I asked, when I meant your whiny ass.

He sighed, loudly and exasperatedly and staring back up at my ceiling. "Why am I telling you this?" he asked, his voice all ironic and cool.

That was a pretty good question. I thought about it; you burped. "If you don't go to your best friend's wedding, he'll probably ask why," I said.

"Because you forced me to take my daughter for the weekend, while you went out partying and drinking and being crazy, and I had no choice but to be responsible and…" Your father stopped talking, probably because I was trying to murder him with my eyes and he knew he was never gonna so much as see you ever again if he didn't shut up.

"Freak you!" I said. Or something like that. "You're such a freaking butthole douchebag. Get the freak out." Or something like that. I stood up; he did too.

"Jenny, wait —" he said, realizing how badly he'd screwed up.

"No! What are you telling your friends about me? That I'm some kind of sleazy hobag like you? Get out."

He clenched his jaw; turned towards the door, turned back.

Your father is many things.

One of them is good at reading people. "I — She asked me if I was happy and I said no!" he said.

I'm not proud of it, but I stopped yelling. "What?"

"I said I wasn't happy. I wasn't happy. I thought if I said that, James — my brother — James is always going on about honesty and communication and how he got back with his husband because they had an open dialogue or whatever, you know, like Lily and Marshall lay it all out and then fix it, so I thought if I said I wasn't happy she'd lay it all out too and we'd fix it and go home!" His voice rising in frustration. He stared up at the ceiling and sped through it, names and references I had no way of understanding, but I was caught up in the gossip and the drama and the story and the way his eyes were glazed, bright as they focused on my ceiling fan. "So I said, I'm not happy. I was gonna wait for her to say she wasn't either, and then say something Ted style, some speech off the cuff like I know you aren't, baby, let's fix this." As he said it, his voice dropped an octave, got all smooth: I recognized it from the night we met.

You fussed on my shoulder; I didn't notice. Your father closed his eyes for a second. "Instead her face kinda shut down. Like — she blinked and she was this stone cold witch." That wasn't the word he used. His face was hard, clenched and unhappy. "She said if that was the case… then, you know. She wouldn't force me to stay."

I was biting my lip; I stopped. "And you just… slunk out with your tail between your legs? Just like that?"

"No," he said. He moved his jaw. "We had a huge fight first."

Here's what I think. I think Robin Scherbatsky heard him say that and thought the worst, thought it was over and she'd lost him, that if a man who spends his days in the pursuit of happiness is miserable with her, then she must be the problem, then she must have been the one to chase him away. That the best thing to do in response would be to protect herself and minimize her hurt, not give him any opportunities to hurt her more or let him know he had just told her she was a failure. In a magazine article printed in 2023, she'd speak out about her troubled childhood and struggles with relationships and infertility to prove how far she'd risen above it all: in a hotel room in 2016, she would have been alone and terrified. Your father had hoped by telling her the truth she'd pick him over the imaginary foe of her career; choose him in a way he then thought she never had. Instead, he'd told her I'm unhappy with you and in doing so called her a failure. In doing so he had broken her heart.

So she'd built up a wall, Robin Scherbatsky: a wall of cold courtesy and hidden feelings and buried pain. She'd pushed him away before he could tell her how much she'd failed him, before he could open his mouth and tell her something even worse. She'd done the only thing she could think of and cut him loose, set him free to be happy, telling herself then the way she was telling herself in 2020 that she was being selfless and loving and kind, closing her eyes and ears and heart to the way he must have looked after she told him to go, using his arguing, the subsequent fight, as evidence of his misery and her correctness and maybe trying, even then, to rewrite the story in her head, to see him like I used to see him, as bad traits and nothing good. Why had she married him? Why had she loved him? What did it matter to her, if he was happy?

And when he had left, his tail between his legs, she'd probably sat on the bed that had been just twenty minutes before their bed, and he'd probably gone off in search of a drink or distraction, and she'd protected herself and thought she was setting him free, and he'd tried not to wonder when exactly she'd stopped loving him.

I think your father spent a lot of time trying to not think about that.

I think he spent years trying not to go over every event in his head, guessing and second guessing, recasting every memory in his mind until Robin Scherbatsky seemed as cold as she'd been in that moment in every one, until she'd never loved him, until their whole marriage had been a complete farce, a way for her to kill time, until eventually he'd half convinced himself he felt the same, that falling in love had simply been an interesting thing for him to try. Until eventually Tracy McConnell had invited him and her both to a wedding.

But at the time, in the moment, I didn't know anything but what your father told me, and I thought it was a little pathetic. But I was fresh off a breakup and I had some sympathy. And your father did look pretty unhappy.

I sighed. "Okay," I muttered, looking at the carpet.

"And then we — really?" Immediately, you father perked up. It was like he'd never been staring up at the bulb lamp with glassy eyes; like he'd never so much as experienced sadness in his life. I wondered if he'd faked the whole thing. "Awesome!" He reached for you and I pulled back, even as he was continuing, "I'll just take her and we're gonna have an awesome time at home and at the park and at the zoo —"

"— But I'm coming with you," I said. I had to restrain myself from saying it differently, but only if I may come with you. Making it an order instead of a request.

He blinked. "I don't want —"

"Yeah," I said, saving him from saying something awful, "I don't totally care about that? I wanna make sure you're not going to put Ellie in a drawer or on the floor or something." I sounded sarcastic but kind of meant it.

"Fine," he said. He rolled his eyes to let me know how dumb he thought I was. It was like none of the conversation we'd been having three seconds ago had even happened.

"Okay," I said. I was watching him, looking for some sign of his earlier sadness, but he was hiding it well. I say hiding it — I only realized this later, after some sleep, but he wasn't looking at me. Not even once, not even for half a second. He looked at the fridge, at my art print, at my stuffed animals. He never made eye contact with me.

But in the moment, I didn't know what exactly to think. I took a deep breath. "Here, hold her for a minute," I said, and handed you to your father. "Watch her head! Darn it!" I said, but he got your head and his expression changed again. He smiled at you in this gooey, sappy way that seemed foreign to his face, to me, but completely natural to me as your mom: who wouldn't look at you like that?

"Hey, Ell," he cooed, holding you up to his face and really too close — if you hadn't been sleepy from eating you'd probably have cried. I stood there for a second, watching him holding you, stroking your dark hair fuzz. I'd never seen him look at anything like that: with warmth, with love. It was also the first time I'd ever noticed the lines around his eyes, the shadows under them.

It was weird, seeing your father as a person instead of just some guy I'd met in a bar, who I'd been unhappy to learn was your father. It was weird, seeing him sad over his ex wife, seeing him holding you, seeing him as more than just some sleazy jerk, more than what he wanted to pretend to be.

It was too weird, in fact, for me to process in my 'haven't slept since giving birth' state: I turned away and packed your diaper bag. "Okay," I said, deciding to think about all of this new information later. "Let's get this over with."

"You should feel honored," your father said, holding you against his shoulder as I ushered him out the door. "Not many women get return visits to the Fortress. Just don't expect another ride on the —" I'm not going to tell you what he said, but it was rude.

"Yeah, maybe try not to shoot yourself in the foot while I'm letting you have my daughter," I said. "If I even let you have her." You hadn't actually been out of my sight since you were born, and I wasn't convinced I was leaving you with your father. But I was curious, about his weird moods and the story he'd told and the idea that he'd even been married once. I wanted to find out more, sue me. I had no real plan: I didn't yet know that the result would be me sleeping on his bed for fourteen hours and then saving his butt.

"My daughter," he said, back in the present of the story.

I locked the door and rolled my eyes at it. "Our daughter."

You were in your duck onesie, I was in sweat pants and a tank top, your father in an impeccable designer suit. We hailed a cab and headed uptown, him holding you and me holding your diaper bag.

What a sight we made.

What a family.