Page 38 of My Redneck Baby Daddy

"How late are you?"

"Two weeks. A little more."

"Did you take more than one?"

I pointed toward the hall. "How many?"

"Three. Different brands."

She closed her eyes and put her hand flat on the table, and when she opened them again, whatever had been holding her face together let go.

"Oh, baby..."

That was all it took. I came apart right there at my own kitchen table and started snotting and crying all over again. My mama came around and pulled my head against her stomach the way she had when I was seven. She didn’t read me a riot act or say one thing about being careful.

"Does Bobby Jo know?"

"No."

She stroked my hair. "Are you going to tell him?"

"Of course I am." I wiped my face. "Mama."

"I had to ask." She pulled the other chair around beside me. "Now I need you to answer something else, and I want the true answer, not the one you think I want. Is this something you want?"

I had been turning it over since the bathroom floor, in my car, through third block.

"I think I do." My voice came out unsteady. "I didn't plan it, and I'm terrified, Mama. But every time I think about not having it, something in me just hurts. I can't explain it better than that."

She nodded slowly. She did not clap her hands and start talking about names. She had concerns, and I could see every one of them sitting behind her face.

"Then that's what we're doing," she said.

My daddy came through the door twenty minutes later because my mama had called him and told him to get in the car.

He took one look at my face, and then at my mother's, and put his keys down on the counter.

"I'm pregnant," I said.

"By Bobby Jo?"

"Daddy, who else would it be by?"

He didn’t appreciate that. He started walking, kitchen to doorway and back to the counter, hands on his hips and then off again, and I let him do it because he has never in his life been able to think sitting still.

"Three months," he said. "You have known this man three months."

"I know that."

He stopped and turned around. "This is exactly what I was afraid of."

Something in me came all the way up off the floor. "Say that again."

"Rue."

"No, say it again, because I want to be sure I heard it." I stood up. "You have been waiting three months to be right about him, and you finally got a reason, and you couldn’t even get through the door before you said it."

He frowned. "That’s not what I meant."