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“Grow up, Steve. Do you think your new girlfriend will look any different when she gets pregnant?”
“I’ll be more careful. I don’t want any more kids.”
“Does your girlfriend feel the same way?”
“Yes, she does. No kids.”
“I never thought it would end like this,” Annie said. “I thought we’d fight, I’d beg you to stay with me, you’d ask for a second chance. But to just say it’s over, well, it’s a shock. I don’t even know what to do with myself.”
“Just stay here. I’ll go back to the apartment.”
“Yeah, well, you’d better be sure Alfonso isn’t there, because I saw him go up there with Lola Beaumont this afternoon.”
“No way.”
“Oh yeah, go find out yourself.”
“Someone’s gotta tell my mother,” he said. “This is getting ridiculous that he’d see her right in town. Right in the apartment.”
“What are the chances that Beverly would come looking for him?”
“Zero chance. She’s out cold by now.”
“Then you can’t really blame your father for looking elsewhere, can you? He’s still a young man who needs companionship. Also, I don’t want to stay in this house, so don’t worry about me.”
She got up and went into the kitchen to start dinner. If he was going to go out, that was fine, but she still needed to eat for the baby. Lighting the broiler, she’d cook a steak and fix tossed salad and a baked potato.
“I’m going out,” he said.
“Steve, wait. What are we going to do?”
“Get a divorce,” he said, leaving out the door and closing it quietly behind him.
Appetite gone, she turned off the broiler and stuck the steak back in the fridge. It wouldn’t kill her to skip a meal. The beep had been Maggie, and though she didn’t like calling her at night in case Justin was there, tonight she had to do it. She had to be honest with her dearest friend, swallowing her pride.
“Well, I’m getting a divorce,” she said when Maggie answered.
“No way.”
“Yes way. He’s seeing a student teacher. A goddamned college student, over at the middle school. Katrina and I found him there with the girl. He doesn’t want to be married to me, doesn’t even know me, he said. And evidently has no desire to fix anything between us. It was only lust, and now that I’m big and pregnant, the lust is gone.”
“Honey, I’m so sorry,” Maggie said. “How can I help?”
“Let me live with you. I might even move into the rescue if we can spare some of the room for me and the baby.”
Not responding immediately, Maggie didn’t let too much time pass because she didn’t want to come across as not wanting to help after offering.
“Of course you can live with me,” she said. “I’ll find out tonight if Kat is coming back, and when she vacates, you can move in. We’ll talk about the rescue. I’m not sure you’d really want to live there with a new baby, would you?”
“Oh god, I don’t know! I need a real job, a social worker job, where I can support my child,” she cried. “I can’t believe I really thought that this would work with Steve.”
“Look, let’s slow down here. You said you need a place to live now, and I’ll have a spare room as soon as Kat decides what she’s doing. And if she’s not moving soon, you can share a room with her, or one of you can sleep on the couch.”
“She found a house on Main Street tonight when we were looking for asshole.”
“Oh! What kind of house?”
“I think it’s called a Creole cottage. You know how a shotgun has the rooms all in a row? This is like a four square with a room in each corner. She called the Realtor, but I don’t know more than that.”
