On weekdays, Leah always set her alarm to go off at seven, and without fail, she slept right to it. Never woke up early, never hit snooze. Daryl's sleeping pattern was less dependable. On this particular Tuesday morning, he woke up at six-forty-two, golden light sneaking through the window shades and hitting him in the face. His arm was numb. Leah was asleep on it, hair falling over her face, hands tucked under her chin. Daryl freed himself with carefully practiced maneuvers and shook out the abused arm as he rolled from the bed, walked around it to switch off the baby monitor. He dressed fast and left the room.

He managed to put on a pot of coffee before he heard Sydney. For the past month or so, she'd either woken him up or woken up minutes after him. She's like her daddy, Leah had said. Daryl had shrugged that off.

She was sitting up in her crib when he got to the nursery, not crying, just chanting. "Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da . . ." Her mother was counting it as her first word. She beamed when she saw him.

"Hey, kid. You sleep all through the night again?" He picked her up, smoothed her blonde hair. "That's my girl."

"Dada."

"Mm-hmm. Let's get ya breakfast."

He locked her in her high chair in the kitchen. She'd hated the thing, up until it had clicked that the momentary imprisonment always meant eating. Now, she was quiet other than banging a set of plastic keys against her table, her eyes glued to Daryl while he picked out a little jar from the cabinet overflowing with baby food.

"How 'bout peaches, huh? Your favorite?"

He pulled out a chair next to her. Sydney cried whenever a bib got close, so Daryl just tossed a rag on the table next to him. It'd have to do.

She was a good eater, when she was in a good mood. As messy as any baby, though. The food slipped from her mouth and onto her chest time and time again, and Daryl was thinking that he would eventually have to crack down and start snapping on the damn bib whether either of them liked it or not when the beep beep beep of Leah's alarm sounded.

"What's your mom gonna say when she sees the mess you've made, huh?" Daryl said, wiping the rag over Sydney's mouth. She gave him a disdainful look. He spooned her another bite, she slurped it down. Leah hadn't appeared. The kitchen was always her first stop in the morning, before the closet, before the bathroom. She said she needed coffee to function.

Daryl called her name. No answer.

Unease settled into the pit of his stomach. A year and a half, and he'd never seen her sleep through an alarm.

"C'mere." He cleaned Sydney's mouth one more time and lifted her from the chair. "Let's go check on your mama."

"Dada – dada!"

"Shh, we'll finish eatin' later. Here." He handed her her keys. She stuck them in her mouth and clasped onto his shirt.

Leah was still under the covers when they got to the bedroom. Seven-oh-five, the alarm clock read. Daryl kept one arm on Sydney as he sat on the mattress. The other he used to shake his wife's shoulder. "Leah. Hey. It's past seven."

She shifted.

"Leah. C'mon."

Her eyes opened halfway, found him. They closed just as fast and disappeared into her pillow. She rolled over completely, pulling some covers with her.

"Da-da-da-da-da-da." Sydney slapped the keys against the bed.

"Leah, what're you doin'? You sleep in, you'll be freakin' out in an hour."

A long sigh.

"Would you talk, woman? You sick or –"

"Go away."

"Da-da-da-da . . ."

"What you just say?"

"Go away."

Daryl stared.

"Da-da-da-da-da-da –"

A minute later, he was depositing their daughter into the playpen perpetually set up in the living room. Sydney dropped the keys and whimpered when he withdrew from her.

"You're fine." There was a stuffed dog on the couch. Daryl grabbed it and handed it down. "Play for a while."

She wailed one more time as he reached the hallway, but that was it.

Leah hadn't moved. Daryl went straight to her side of the bed. "Hey, you don't wanna get outta bed, fine, but don't blow me off like that."

She was still, a mound in the mattress.

"Leah –" Daryl grasped a handful of the bedspread and pulled.

It was like he'd opened a jack-in-the-box.

"I said leave me the fuck alone!"

Her hands rammed into his shoulders, but it wasn't the force that made him stumble back as he looked down at her, half-tangled in the sheets, teeth bared and eyes wild. "Is that too goddamn hard to understand?" she shrieked.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

"It's none of your fucking business if I wanna sleep all damn day! That's what the hell is wrong with me!"

"Like hell it ain't my business! I'm your damn husband now, remember? We got a damn daughter to feed, that makes it my fuckin' business!"

She scrambled from the blankets, sprang from the bed. Towards him.

"Then you feed her! If it's your fucking business, you fucking feed her!"

His chest and his shoulders fell under attack as her arms moved in a flurry. And Daryl wasn't giving a damn about being gentle when he caught her wrists, and he sure as hell wasn't giving a damn about it when he yanked her around, slammed her into the wall, and pinned her there.

"I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!"

"Goddamn it, Leah, shut up!"

The yelling melted into sobbing. "Fuck you . . . fuck you . . ."

It was quiet enough, then, for Daryl to hear the crying from the next room.

Leah heard it, too. He saw her look towards the door. "Oh, God," she said, and started sinking down the wall. Daryl held her up. He didn't know why. He hooked an arm around her and hauled her to the bed. She fell into it and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. Cried away. Cried and cried, wailing like her daughter. And Daryl couldn't muster up an ounce of any feeling that didn't burn.

Three months ago, they'd stood in their backyard, and she'd worn a cream-colored sundress and strands of her hair curled around her face and Daryl had never noticed the cold.

"You're insane," he said.

She sobbed. So did Sydney.

"You hear that? Hear your daughter? You gonna do somethin' about it?"

She did nothing about it.

The bedside table was right there. The baby monitor he'd turned off only a few minutes before was right there, the closest inanimate object, so he hurled it at the wall. It left a crack and chipped the paint.

"Crazy bitch!"

Then he got out of there.

Sydney was standing in the playpen, clinging to the rails, she'd only done that a couple of time before. Her face was red and tears poured down and she said Dada, dada and Daryl tried to pick her up, he tried, he couldn't.

"What?" His voice was wrong again, it was high, it was strangled, it wasn't him, he wanted to stop it – "What?"

That was worse and Sydney wailed louder and fell back, putting her fingers into her mouth and watching him differently than she usually watched him.

"You can't handle some screamin'? Some fightin'? Well, tough! You got born into the wrong damn house, kid! That's your mom! And that's me!"

She wrapped her arms around the stuffed dog and went on and on and then here she was, of course here she was, Leah to the rescue, she scooped up Sydney and held her close and the little girl kept crying anyway and her mother looked at her father with swollen eyes but said nothing, she didn't need to.

Crying and crying. The stuffed dog fell to the floor. Daryl watched it and couldn't feel his arm again, or his hands, or his feet, he couldn't feel any part of him but he felt the crying. Sydney. Sydney Rose.

He managed to reach the garage. Once there, he got in his truck and drove away.