and the baby.
But as he drove to his first delivery, his optimism faded. He was still troubled by what had happened with Natasha that morning.
He remembered the long, heated battles he and Annie had over what to do about her unexpected pregnancy, with Neal arguing adamantly for an abortion. It was hardly an ideal solution to the problem, but to him, it was the only one that made any sense. Neither one of them were prepared to start a family. In Neal’s mind, it was better for him to finish all his education and get his medical career started before they had any children.
But Annie wouldn’t have it. Once she found out she was pregnant, she seemed hell-bent on giving birth to the child and keeping it, no matter what the price. She had finally told Neal that she would have the baby and raise it herself, and he could just do whatever he pleased. And, if not for his own history, he might have done just that. When Neal was 12, his older sister, Rhonda, had gotten pregnant, and he had spent his entire teenage years listening to what a “selfish prick” the father of the baby had been, some slick insurance salesman who disappeared as soon as Rhonda had missed her first period.
How could Neal do the same thing to Annie?
The answer was, he could not, and live with himself. If his family hadn’t known about the situation, he might have gotten away with it, but he had made the mistake of consulting his mother about the matter. “You need to do the right thing, Neal,” she had told him, and it was quite clear what she had meant by this. When he had turned to his father, whom he hadn’t seen more than a half dozen times since elementary school, the advice Neal got was, “Do whatever the hell you want, boy. But if you’re gonna screw up your life by getting married, you’re on your own.” That meant that he would no longer help Neal with his college tuition.
In the end, against all Neal’s better judgment and his deepest wishes for his own life and his future, he had finally married Annie. No fancy wedding, no honeymoon, not even any wedding rings—he couldn’t afford them. Just a little ceremony downtown at the Justice of the Peace. Afterwards, Neal went back to his dorm room and slept by himself, since they didn’t even have their own apartment then. He figured that he could make it all work, somehow.
But he had obviously been wrong.
He regretted that extra millisecond of pleasure more than he had ever regretted anything in his life.
“I love you,” Neal muttered, as he pulled the Snell van into the parking lot of his first delivery. “I doubt it, Natasha. I doubt it very much.”
CHAPTER 2
A little after eleven, in between two of his deliveries, Neal stopped at a bookstore to see if he could ease his mind about the incident with Natasha. No matter what Annie said, Neal still couldn’t believe he had imagined it.
He found a pretty young clerk working at the front desk. He asked her where the baby books were located.
“This way,” the girl said, with a knowing smile. As Neal followed her across the store, Neal puzzled over this. But by the time they reached the Family and Parenthood Section, he understood.
“The pregnancy books are right here,” the girl told him, with another little smile.
“I already
“Whatever,” she said, and briskly walked away.
“Stupid,” Neal mumbled, more to himself that to her. Why was he so embarrassed about having a kid? He was young, but so were a lot of fathers. But maybe he wasn’t embarrassed. Maybe he was just angry about it.
He picked up a book called
