them run a test. It came back positive. I was fifteen and pregnant—something neither my mother nor I had imagined.”
“And how did your mom respond?”
Not the question she’d been expecting from him. “Well, she…um. Why does it matter?”
“Well, you must have been terrified, right? How your parents responded would be a big deal.”
No, this was going all wrong. Why was he being all sympathetic? He was supposed to be uncomfortable—weirded out.
“My father doesn’t know to this day,” she said. “Jean, my mom’s husband, might know. I don’t know. I’ve never asked and he’s never told.”
“So only your mom knows? What about Lorenz and his family? Did you tell them?”
“I did,” Rori said. “Which turned out to be a huge mistake on my part. As soon as my mom found out I was pregnant, her next step was to schedule an abortion for me. I was still young and in love, however, and somehow I thought that Lorenz and I would live happily ever after, and that the baby would only bring us closer together. So the second I had a chance, I got away from my mother and called Lorenz.”
She could feel Mike’s hesitation over the phone, thick and nervous. “Dare I ask?”
Rori laughed, the sound bitter even after all these years. “Well, I guess I’m too far into the story now to skip this part, right? The answer is that when he answered the phone he was all sweet talk and romance, but when I broke the news to him that he and I had made a baby, his first response was the same as my mom’s. He offered money—even recommended a hospital, as if this wasn’t the first time he’d dealt with the issue. When I told him no, he had it all wrong and I wanted to keep the baby, he grew quiet. He didn’t say anything for what seemed like forever, and when he did he said that fatherhood was not something he would be forced into, that he had no desire to see me again, and that if I had the baby he would offer me a settlement in exchange for the assurance that he was never in the same country as the child and that I never disclosed his name to the child.”
“Whoa,” Mike said.
Nothing more. Here she was pouring out her heart—telling him one of her darkest secrets—and all he could manage was a whoa? Men. What mean trick of nature was it that they were required for the continuation of the human species.
“Like any teenage girl, I was destroyed when he ended the call by insisting he never wanted to see me again. I swear I did nothing but lay in my bed a sob for a day. And when my mom came and told me to get into the car, I didn’t have the energy to fight her. And once we were at the clinic, I didn’t have to sign a document or anything. I was underage and in the country we were in only my mother’s consent was needed. All I had to do was pretend that nothing unusual was happening.”
“I… uh, don’t know what to say.”
“Yeah? Well, join the club. But the point of all this is that maybe some people have reasons for doing things the way they do. And maybe it’s not so weird that I want to start having babies at age twenty-five, because in my mind, anytime I allow myself to think about it, I know I should have a nine year old right now. And for some reason she’s always a girl with my crazy hair and Lorenz’s chocolate eyes. Sometimes she’s so real that I find myself missing her—missing someone that doesn’t exist, Mike. I know women deal with abortion in countless different ways. Maybe some women deal better when it’s their choice and not something they submit to in order avoid attaching scandal to their family’s name, but this is where I’m at, Mike. I want children, and I want a man who’s ready to have kids, too. And I want it to be a guy who is committed to them as I am, regardless of how he feels about me. Maybe it’s unorthodox, maybe it’s not up to your romantic standards, but after what happened with my parents and what happened with Lorenz, it’s what makes the most sense. So pardon me if I let your sister stick to her theory of finding guys she likes lick and sniff, while I