Page 30 of My Redneck Baby Daddy

I nearly went face first into the macaroni. "Daddy, I am thirty-two years old."

His gaze never left Bobby Jo’s face. "I know exactly how old you are."

"Then why are you talking like he picked me up after prom?"

Hamilton suddenly found his plate deeply interesting. Regina kicked him under the table hard enough that I felt it through the floor.

"I ain't playing with her," Bobby Jo said. "I'm not gonna sit at your table and promise you a wedding I ain't asked her about, and I'm not gonna tell you I'll never mess up, because you'd know I was lying. But I can tell you, I’m not playing with her.”

My father leaned back in his chair. "I knew your daddy."

"I know. You told me at your counter."

I turned my head so fast my glasses slid. "You told him what at your counter?"

Nobody answered me.

"I watched Danny Joe Maddox get chance after chance in this town," my father said. "And I watched your mother work herself half to death behind him. She deserved better than what she got. I don't want that life for my child."

"Neither do I."

"How do I know that?"

"You don't." Hamilton must’ve had enough and everbody turn to look at him.

He set his fork down.

"Not yet," he said. "Mr. Ellis, I've worked for that man six years. He signs my check every two weeks and it has never once been late. When Jordan was born he told me to take the whole week and he paid it. When my transmission went out he handed me the keys to a company truck for five weeks and never mentioned it again." He shrugged. "Winter before last, work got slow. He took less home for two months before he cut one of us back to part time. His bookkeeper is my cousin, and he doesn’t know I know it."

"Hamilton," Bobby Jo said.

"I ain't finished." Hamilton looked at my father. "You can ask him about what he did when he was twenty-two. He ought to answer for it, and he did, right here at your table. But if what you're trying to figure out is what kind of man he is now, somebody ought to tell you what he's done since."

I looked over at Regina.

She was already looking at me, and she lifted her eyebrows about a quarter inch, and I understood right then exactly why my best friend had refused to tell me a last name.

Bobby Jo cleared his throat.

"I appreciate that," he said to Hamilton. Then he turned to my father. "But you ain't gotta trust me because Hamilton does. He's got a paycheck riding on me. That colors a thing."

My father's eyes narrowed slightly.

"You don't know me," Bobby Jo said. "I can sit here and tell you what I am all night and it won't be worth much, because the last man with my name sat in front of people and told them things too." He put his hands flat on the table. "So don't take my word for it."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Watch me."

He didn’t beg, and he did not swear on anything. He also didn’t ask my father to forget one single fact about him.

My daddy looked at him for a long moment.

Then he gave one small nod and reached for the chicken.

I walked Bobby Jo out to his truck a little after nine with my arms crossed against the cold blowing off the mountains and my whole face hot.

"I’m so sorry," I finally offered up.