A daughter. He had a daughter. And not just any daughter. No, Alex—Alexis? Alexandra? It had to be short for something, right?—Donaghy Miller was short and chubby, with frizzy reddish-brown hair, freckles, and glasses so thick she could have been a geriatric librarian.

"Jack?" Lemon prompted.

With effort he tore his gaze away from the girl to meet Lemon's eyes. She raised her eyebrows as if to say, Do something!

So he did. He grabbed Lawrence Howe by the arm and yanked him from the room and down the hall, pushed him into the men's room, and locked the door behind them.

"That is not my child!" Jack hissed.

The lawyer was staring at him as if he were insane. "Legally, she's your daughter," he said cautiously. "You can run a DNA test to contest paternity if you'd like. I don't understand your change of heart."

Jack glared at him, breathing heavily. "I thought I was coming here to pick up a boy. Alex is a boy's name. I was not prepared for—for—that!"

Now Howe was starting to look angry. "That," he said coldly, "is a little girl who has just lost her mother and whose father just took one look at her and ran away. She isn't the problem here, Mr. Donaghy—you are."

Jack opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again. Howe was right. He'd opened that door prepared to see a miniature Jack Donaghy. He hadn't known what to do when confronted with a miniature Liz Lemon.

"You're right," he said grudgingly. "I'm sorry for my behavior."

The lawyer stared hard at him, assessing, then nodded and straightened his tie. "It's good that you brought Liz along," he said as they walked back down the hall. "At least we didn't leave Alex alone."

"Lemon's only experience with children has come from kidnapping them," Jack said, pushing open the door to the conference room. "We'll be lucky if they're both in one—" He stopped and gaped.

"So then I reminded your dad that he was Jack Donaghy, which meant that he could do anything, even act. Then he told me how totally awesome I was for helping him—well, not in those exact words, but that's what he meant—and he went out on that stage and did great. So, you see, your dad gets scared sometimes when he has to do something new, but he always comes through in the end."

Lemon was sitting in a chair facing Alex, their knees touching, holding the little girl's hands, smiling encouragingly. Alex was listening intently, her eyes glued to Lemon's face.

"Is she single?" Howe murmured to Jack.

"Yes, but she killed and ate her last three boyfriends," Jack told him. He stepped further into the room, drawing Lemon's and Alex's attention. He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry about my reaction before, Alex. I was just surprised. It's very nice to meet you."

Alex slid off the chair to her feet, still holding one of Lemon's hands. "Hi," she mouthed, so quietly he wasn't entirely sure she'd spoken. It occurred to him that if he hadn't raced from the room like a frightened schoolchild it might have been his hand that his daughter was now holding.

Lemon got up too, beaming down at the girl. "Alex and I were just discussing the fact that it's okay to be scared sometimes, even when you're a grown-up."

Feeling generous, Jack said, "Lemon's a very intelligent woman, Alex. You should listen to her."

Alex grinned up at Lemon and sidled even closer to her, pressing against her leg.

"Are we ready to go?" Lemon asked.

"Alex has her clothes and necessities here and some of Alice's friends are going to pack up more of her effects and mail them to New York," Howe said. "You can leave whenever Alex is ready."

Lemon knelt to look Alex in the eye. "Are you ready to go on a big private airplane?"

"I like to fly," she mumbled.

Lemon glanced at Jack and they shared a shudder.

"Great! Come on, we'll let the guys get the luggage," Lemon said. "Maybe you can tell me the story of Mr. Bear on the way out."

Mr. Bear, it seemed, was a stuffed bear that Alex snatched off of the table as they made their way out the door. There were a suitcase and a backpack leaning against one wall. Jack grabbed them both and followed with Howe at his heels. The driver loaded the luggage into the trunk and Jack told Lemon, "Why don't you girls wait in the car while I ask Mr. Howe a few questions?"

Lemon shot him a look—possibly at being called a girl, though she could also have been experiencing indigestion—but obeyed, tugging gently at Alex's hand to get her to slide into the back seat.

Jack faced Howe. "I'll be doing a DNA test when I get back to New York," he said. "What happens if it's negative?"

Howe shook his head. "There would be no way of knowing who her true father was, in that case. She'd probably go into foster care."

"I see. And what about her inheritance from her mother? The house, accounts, et cetera?"

"The house and most of her effects will be sold, per Alice's instructions, with the money put into a trust fund that I will manage for Alex until she turns twenty-one."

Jack nodded. He looked at the car and felt a surge of trepidation. His daughter was in that car. His daughter was alone with Lemon in that car.

"Can I give you some advice?" Howe said. Jack's eyes narrowed, which the lawyer seemed to take as agreement. "Alex is a smart kid. She's strong. You don't need to talk down to her. Treat her like a normal human being. She might be skeptical about you to begin with, but she's predisposed to love you. You're her father and she's been wanting one all her life. If you give each other a chance, I think you'll find that pretty soon you won't know how you ever lived without her."

"You sound like you're speaking from experience."

"More like hope," the lawyer said with a rueful smile. "I've been trying to adopt for almost a year now, but adoption agencies aren't exactly thrilled by the fact that I'm single and work 80-hour weeks." He hesitated. "If the result of your DNA test is negative…I might try to adopt Alex myself."

Something in Jack cringed at the thought of that particular possibility. "I don't think that will be necessary," he said stiffly.

They shook hands and Jack climbed into the front seat. He looked over his shoulder to see that Alex had curled up, her head resting on Lemon's arm and her eyes closed.

"Everyone okay?" he said.

"We're great," Lemon said, stroking the girl's hair with a soft look in her eyes that made Jack's chest ache.

Jack and Lemon were both on their best behavior for the flight back. Alex, who didn't seem to have slept much since her mother's death, climbed into Lemon's lap shortly after takeoff and promptly fell asleep.

"She seems very taken with you," Jack remarked, pulling Alex's backpack from under the seat in front of her and undoing the zipper.

"What are you doing?" Lemon stared as he began to rifle through the contents of the bag.

"Basic rule of management, Lemon: know your people." He pulled out two juice bottles, a coloring book ( he saw that she had inherited the Donaghy inability to color within the lines), an old stuffed frog that he thought had belonged to Alice, a Winnie the Pooh book, a surprisingly thick dictionary, and a small stack of laminated pictures of Alice.

"You're spying on your own daughter," Lemon hissed. "Jack, that's reprehensible."

"This is basic reconnaissance," he said dismissively. "When she's a teenager and I put hidden cameras in her car to see whether she's making out in it—of course she will, she's a Donaghy after all—that will be spying."

Lemon rolled her eyes, then grimaced. "My legs are going numb. Is that normal?"

Jack looked with some concern at said legs, which were clad in nicely-fitting jeans. "I don't know. Usually when I have someone sitting on my lap I'm too caught up in the erotic nature of our interactions to notice."

Lemon wrinkled her nose. "Gross, Jack."

"What does 'erotic' mean?"

Both adults blinked and looked down at Alex, who was gazing sleepily at Jack.

"Uh, Lemon, why don't you field that question?"

"I don't know, Jack, it seems right up your alley." Lemon smirked at him.

"I'll tell you when you're older," Jack told Alex.

Alex's forehead furrowed. "Can I have my backpack?" Jack and Lemon exchanged a glance. He shrugged and handed it to her. She pulled out the dictionary, flipped through, and, before they could stop her, said, "Erotic. Ad-jec-tive. Of or con-cer-ning sex-u-al love and de-sire." She read the definition silently a few more times, mouthing the words as Jack and Lemon stared. Then she began flipping again until she found another entry. "Sex-u-al. Ad-jec-tive. Of, re-la-ting to, or char-ac-ter-is-tic of—"

"Annnd, that's enough of that," Lemon announced, plucking the dictionary from Alex's hands.

"Do you carry a dictionary wherever you go?" Jack asked.

Alex shrugged and scratched her nose. "I like to understand things."

"Course you do," Lemon said, as proud as if Alex were her own kid. (He knew that Lemon took pride in having been a nerd in high school.) "Gimme five."

She held up her hand. After a moment of cautious consideration Alex high fived it.

They landed in New York amidst heavy rain. Jack's car stopped at Lemon's apartment first to drop her off.

"I'll see you again soon," Lemon told Alex, ruffling her wild hair.

Jack felt a sudden surge of panic at the thought of being left alone with his daughter. So far Lemon had been the buffer in all of their interactions. What would he and Alex have in common once she was gone?

Apparently in agreement, Alex demanded, with more energy than she'd shown so far, "Where are you going?" She latched onto Lemon's arm with both hands. "You can't go! Don't go!"

Jack said, "Lemon, maybe it would be best if you didn't go."

"I can't stay at your apartment," she said incredulously, though she wasn't trying to pull away from Alex's grip.

"Why not?"

"It wouldn't be appropriate! You've got a new daughter, and I'm your employee. What would people think?"

"I think they'd think that my friend Liz was helping me look after my daughter," Jack said mildly. "Lemon, no one's going to think you stayed over for—" mindful of Alex's linguistic curiosity, he changed what he'd been about to say "—anything inappropriate." When she glanced out the window as if still uncertain, he said, "Please, stay."

"Yeah," Alex said, tugging at her arm. In a loud whisper, glancing sidelong at Jack, she added, "You can't leave me alone with him."

That decided her. "Okay," Lemon sighed, slumping back against her seat. The car pulled away from the curb. "But just this once!"

They entered Jack's apartment some thirty minutes later. He'd had Kenneth refurbish one of his spare bedrooms while he was gone and was pleased to find that the page had done a good job. The queen-sized bed had been replaced by a child's bed with purple unicorns (though the sight of the unicorns made him shudder with memories of Kathy Geiss). There was a child-sized dresser and chair and a nice pile of stuffed animals on the floor.

Jack and Lemon worked together to unpack Alex's bags and put her things away while Alex roamed the enormous apartment, clambering over the leather couch and crawling among the stools at the breakfast bar.

"I appreciate this, Lemon," Jack told her as he carefully folded a pair of pants and tucked them into a drawer.

She smiled uncomfortably. "Hey, what are friends for? Anyway, she's a great kid. It's not exactly a trial."

"Still…" He sank down onto the bed. "Lemon, I've said it before but I'll say it again. I don't know what I'd do without you."

Lemon sat next to him and put a tentative hand on his back. "Hey, are you okay?"

"She's a girl," he said.

She snorted. "Yeah, I noticed that."

"I think Alice gave Alex a boy's name just because she knew I'd hate it."

"Alex is a fine name for a girl, Jack."

"She's statistically likelier to become a lesbian."

"I'm pretty sure that's not true. And even if it is, so what? You'll still love her."

He raised an eyebrow. "Love?"

"Of course. Don't you love her already? I do."

He smiled and looked over at her. "You'll make a great mother someday, Lemon."

"Yeah," she said wistfully, turning a pillow over in her hands. "Someday." She swallowed. "It's not the fact that she's a girl that's bothering you, is it?"

"Lemon, she's a girl."

"As in, she's not some imaginary kid in another state," Lemon said, filling in the blanks as she was so apt to do. "She's a little girl. She's your kid."

"Yeah," Jack said heavily. "Yeah. She's my kid."

Lemon patted his back again with a sympathetic smile. "We should probably put her to bed."

"You're just full of good ideas today, Lemon."

Fortunately, Alex didn't seem to be one of those children who threw tantrums when told to go to bed. Lemon made sure she brushed her teeth and helped her change into her blue pajamas and tucked her in as Jack watched. She kissed Alex on the forehead and shut the door gently behind her.

"Please tell me you have ice cream," she said.

He shot her a look that said: Who do you take me for?

Within minutes they were on his couch, digging into a pint of ice cream each and watching a rerun of MILF Island.

"She's just so beautiful," an 8th grade boy sighed, gazing worshipfully at Deborah.

"Liz?"

They turned in tandem to see Alex standing behind the couch, rubbing at her eyes with her fists.

"What is it, sweetie?"

"Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?"

A smile played across Lemon's lips. She glanced at Jack as if for permission, though she was already sliding off the couch. He nodded. "Of course I will," she said.

She took Alex's hand and led her back to her room. Jack watched them go.

"These kids," Deborah said in the background. "I just want to eat them up."