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named Dianne was clearly dating him. Among other flirtations, she wrote, “Here’s hoping that you stay with your word and stay off the booze … Take up women. I’ll clue you in, they’re a lot more fun.”
    My dad wanted everything to seem okay from the outside—he wanted teachers and adults to think he was squeaky clean. His classmates’ opinions show a very different side of my father.
    He wasn’t just being a kid; some of his troubles were serious. In his senior year, he started hanging around with the wrong crowd—one boy in particular was bad news. He tried to get Tom to steal cars and commit petty crimes. He and Tom got into a fight one night. Apparently, Tom wanted out; he didn’t want to be associated with the gang anymore. This one boy wouldn’t allow Tom to leave that easily. He continued to bully Tom to do things he didn’t want to do. Dad got sick of it. He swiped a gun from his parents’ attic and threatened the boy with it at their next confrontation. They fought. My father shot the kid square in the shoulder and then ran away. He ditched the gun somewhere, hiding the evidence so his actions wouldn’t come back to haunt him. As my dad suspected, the kid never reported the incident. Years later, after he was married, his parents confronted him about the missing gun. He acted like he didn’t know what they were talking about. But that night, he told my mother the real story. That was the first time she was truly scared of her husband.
    My dad told me about the incident, too. When I was younger, he’d use it as a warning to hang out with the good kids and stay on a straight path. When I was older, when things got really bad, Dad told me he had shot one kid, and he’d be happy to shoot me, too. There were two sides to my father, Good Dad and Bad Dad.
    He told me how hard his life was growing up. He complained that his dad was never home. He told me that his father liked his brother better. Tom hated Ken sometimes. He hated Ken because he loved him—if that makes sense. My father held on to deep resentment while constantly striving for his father’s approval. Ken rarely gave it. He was kind, but he did not know how to praise, acknowledge, or pat his son on the back. Tom could be an actuary ten times over, and it would still not be quite enough for Ken. At least, not in my father’s eyes.
    Tom did not think he could please Ken by staying in the military, so after his brother died, Tom left. My father used the sole surviving son military rule to get himself discharged. No questions were asked, and Tom was no longer a Marine. Ken called my dad The Baron, and the sarcasm must’ve stung. My dad would never be a pilot.
    Once out of the Marines, my dad was a mess over Bill’s death. To make him feel better, his parents bought him a cool convertible, a Plymouth Barracuda. But a car didn’t do the trick. Tom took off for Tahiti, where he lost all control. He was a big drunk there, he admitted to my mother. He came home only when his visa expired and the country kicked him out. Then my father accepted the car, cleaned up his act, and enrolled at Mizzou. The rest is history.
    I can remember Dad studying for the rigorous, infamously difficult actuarial exams, which he had to pass to get his license. Once he did, he immediately found jobs and worked his way up to partner in various actuarial companies. His career kept him out at all hours of the day and night. At least, that’s what he told us—it was business that made him late all the time. I missed him terribly when he was gone.
    I was a little girl, and I didn’t know about his past. I just knew he was my daddy who hugged and kissed me. He lavished me with attention, and I could see no wrong in my father.
    He was just it for me.

Happy Baby
    have a favorite photo album from when I was young. The cover is bright poppy red, and the edges are so dog-eared that brown cardboard pokes out underneath. The requisite words Photo Album are written in gold,