Page 43 of My Redneck Baby Daddy

I thought it was the most obvious question anybody had ever asked me.

"Because you're pregnant," I said. "Because that's my child, and I ain't gonna be a man that has a child out there he don't take care of."

Her whole face changed.

"If I wasn't pregnant," she said, "would you be standing in this office talking to me about getting married right now?"

I hesitated.

That was the whole thing. That was it. Not because the answer was no, because the answer was not no, it had never once been no. I hesitated because two days ago we were not speaking and yesterday I did not have a ring and nobody on God's earth had said the word marriage out loud until it came out of my mouth forty seconds before.

But she saw it.

"Rue."

"That's all right."

"It ain't what you think."

"My child is not growing up without me." She said it flat, like she was reading it back. "That's what you're telling me. That's the whole reason."

Rubbing at my neck, I replied. "I'll do right by you."

"I don't need you to do right by me."

"That ain't what I meant."

"Then stop saying it like I'm another mistake you're fixing." Her voice cracked on it. "You fix things, Bobby Jo. It's what you do. You see a cabinet door hanging crooked and you go out to your truck. And I am not a cabinet door."

Something in me went up hot, and I said the worst thing available.

"I ain't Danny Joe."

She stopped at my office door.

"I know you're not." She was so quiet. "That's exactly why I'm not going to let you marry me because I'm pregnant."

Then she was gone across the gravel, and I stood there and let her go, which I would be answering for the rest of my life.

Hamilton came into the office at seven the next morning and found me in the same chair.

"Rue's pregnant," I said.

He stopped with his hand still on the door.

"Damn."

Then, careful, "Congratulations?"

"Yeah."

He came over and got me by the shoulder and shook me once, grinning, and then he got a good look at my face and the grin went away.

"What'd you do?"

"Why is it automatic that I did something?"

"Bobby Jo."