“Trying to quit?” he asked.
“What do you want?”
He lit up, took a short drag, blew the smoke away from her. “You know what I need. I need to see my kid.”
“Over my dead body.” Boo hoo. She had no sympathy.
“Is that a threat?” he teased.
She spoke slowly. “I don’t have beef with you. Don’t start beef with me.”
“I would never.”
“I’m minding my own business. You do the same.”
“Or else what? Look, Ronnie. I’m tired of being blackmailed by you.”
She laughed. “You don’t know what that means.”
“I’m not ashamed of what I did. Everyone makes mistakes.”
She saw black and red. A red streetlight two blocks away reflected in the water on the windshield.
“Let me put this in basic terms. You have something I want. You have all the power in this relationship.”
“There is no relationship.”
“I’m willing to compromise. You aren’t. Eventually you have to meet in the middle. Fair’s fair.”
“You’re making me uncomfortable.”
“Sorry. I’ll go.”
“Now.”
“I’m going. Think about it. That’s all I’m asking.”
He still had shiny bronze skin, freckles, smelled like cologne, and filled out his tight uniform in a way she liked. He still had acne on his neck and beneath the uniform a jagged scar on his chest shaped like Japan from the time a homeless kid, not her, knifed him.
I will never have a change of heart. Fifty percent of nothing is nothing. She isn’t your daughter.
He opened his wallet, folded something, tucked it in her cupholder.
How many other fifteen-year-old girls he had slept with? She wondered where he met them. If he made them promise to keep it a secret. If he pressured them to get an abortion, then acted like he had no idea who they were, like they were strangers meeting for the first time, when they crossed paths in the check-out aisle at the Big W.
She sighed. “Does Rainbow have other half-siblings I should know about?”
He appeared genuinely surprised. “I told you. You were the only one.”
“The only one who got pregnant?”
“I messed up one time. I’ve been faithful to my wife. I would pass a lie detector test right now.”
She believed him. Brad was a selfish prick, but he had never lied to her. She hated how easy it was to forgive him.
She watched him get out of the truck, close the passenger door, and get into his squad car in the rain, then waited for him to drive off. He seemed to do the same.
She turned on the engine, glanced at the patrol car again out of the corner of her eye, then put the truck in drive. The patrol car flashed its headlights.
