AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Was that possible?
It had been over so quickly, and I had put the whole incident out of my mind. But, of course, he hadn’t used a condom and I knew how human biology worked. I thought of Doris, whom I’d just met on the stairs. She’d had her third child only a few months ago and always looked tired and worn out. She seemed dreadfully unhappy. It didn’t help that her husband was unemployed and spent all day glued to the screen, playing videogames.
I tried to think clearly. I had options; I wasn’t a teenager. I could go to a doctor, talk about it. But the thought of getting rid of a baby was too horrible. I thought of my mother, getting pregnant at twenty-two and how she’d had me despite everyone telling her to give me away or have an abortion. I was only a year older than she was then, but my situation was not that different. I knew she would be terribly disappointed. She’d always wanted more for me than she’d had and even though she hadn’t complained, I could see how difficult it was to raise a child as a single mother. Was I ready for that? I couldn’t face the thought of telling Matthew, but it was his child. Didn’t he have a right to know? I thought of how weird it had been between us the last few weeks, the way he’d been avoiding me. He clearly wished we’d never slept together.
I waited for my mother to come home from work and then I told her the news.
“Oh, Lauren,” my mother rushed towards me, hugging me tightly.
“Are you sure?”
“Three different tests,” I smiled wryly.
“Who’s the father, Dax?”
I paused. I’d never told my mother about what happened with Matthew. I’d gotten together with Dax a few times in the past two weeks. He’d started contacting me again, pestering me to go out for a drink or for coffee. I finally relented and it had been fine. I could tell he felt bad about what had happened between us. He apologized for messing around with Mandy and swore they hadn’t slept together. I wasn’t sure that I believedhim. We hadn’t done anything apart from drinking coffee, though. There was no way it could be him.
“No.”
Reluctantly, I told my mother about Matthew and the one time we had sex in his office.
“You never told me that!”
“I know,” I said sheepishly. “I was embarrassed. It was such a stupid thing to do.”
“Not stupid,” she said with a tender smile. “Just spontaneous.”
“You’re not mad?”
“How could I be mad?” my mother stroked my hair and I burst into tears.
“This wasn’t planned at all!”
“Of course, it wasn’t! But that’s what life is! Life is what happens when you make other plans, remember?”
“John Lennon,” I said, remembering one of my mother’s favorite quotes. We sat on the couch, and she stroked my hair.
“Have you told him?”
I shook my head.
“You’ll have to do it,” she said.
“Did you tell my dad? When you were pregnant with me?” I asked, pulling away. My mother’s face went blank, she bit her lip. She didn’t like talking about my father and had always avoided the topic. I only knew that I had been conceived with someone whom she never saw again.
“That was different,” she said, slowly.
“How?”
“He was married,” she said, quietly. I was shocked. She’d never told me this before.
“I didn’t want you to know,” she said, looking down. “But I knew he already had children with someone else. He was older and not someone who could help me with a baby. When you have a child, you need reliable people in your life. He wasn’t.”
“Who is he?” I demanded to know.
“I will tell you more,” she promised. “Just not right now, please, let’s deal with this first. You have a lot to think about right now.”
I nodded.
