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“No argument about my keeping the baby?”
He swallowed his irritation. The night they’d stumbled around Las Vegas now seemed like a mirage, and if he concentrated on his memories, the images wavered before disappearing completely. The alcohol and the lights had made every smile the secret smile of a lover, and when she’d slipped her hand into his, he’d felt as though they’d shared souls. Also the alcohol talking. The alcohol and being surrounded by the constant—fake—sounds of people winning had turned him into a man charming enough to pick up a woman in a bar.
Vivian would soon learn that the man who had made jokes and removed the sadness from her eyes didn’t exist outside of that night in Vegas.
But she’d taken a chance coming here. She couldn’t know for certain that he’d meant what he said when he’d spoken about the responsibility a man had to his family. Or that he would never argue about an abortion with a woman, because her body was her body and his faith was his faith.
That night she had also talked about the importance of family—had argued with him when he had referred to a “man’s responsibility to his family.” Every member of a family, she’d said, had responsibility for keeping the unit whole. She’d squeezed his thigh when she’d said that, probably more to make her point than out of any sexual advance, though he hadn’t had the wits about him to care either way.
Were the opinions she’d expressed about family a product of the night—as his sudden charm had been—or were they as heartfelt as his words, alcohol or no alcohol? It didn’t matter. She was pregnant and he’d learn about her dedication to family soon enough.
“I respect your choice, though you don’t need to be here in Chicago for me to send you child support.”
She drew back in surprise, covering her jeans and still-flat stomach with a hand. “You wouldn’t want contact with our baby?”
He thought about the tiny infant she would give birth to. With its small fingernails and fat face not yet grown into Vivian’s pointed chin. Food poisoning. Croup. The shattered glass of a car accident ripping a dimpled face to pieces. Better not to see the child at all. Better to get them both out of his apartment and back to Las Vegas.
“I would want to know you cared for it.” Him? Her? When could you find out the sex of the baby? What was he supposed to call it until then?
She folded her other hand over her stomach. There was a baby under there. “I need health insurance.”
“You said you had a job.” Back in his hotel room, when he’d been sober, and the harsh lights of the hotel bathroom had ripped the dream away, he’d accused her of marrying a stranger for money. She’d told him to keep his damn money and that maybe there was room for it wherever he stored his ego. She’d said she had a job and didn’t need to have sex in exchange for handouts.
“I lost it.” She kept her hands on her stomach, the twisting of her fingers another sign of her nerves. “I will find another—I was hoping to find one in Chicago—but until then, I need health insurance. The baby needs health insurance. I have no other place to go.”
Karl did some quick math in his head. They still had four days to get Vivian and the baby on his health insurance. “I’ll need the marriage certificate.”
“Just like that?”
“Double,” the bird squeaked, then whistled.
“Do you want health insurance?” At one time in the distant past, he’d thought he understood women. Exposure had cured him of such idiotic thinking.
“Yes, but, you didn’t say so much as ‘hi’ to me downstairs. You accuse me of trying to sell you a pig in a poke, insinuating I’m some kind of slut who bangs tourists for fun, but when I say I need health insurance for a baby you don’t believe is yours, you say ‘sure’?”
“Even if that baby isn’t mine, you should have insurance while you’re pregnant. And you are my wife. If the baby is mine, I can provide it with health insurance and child support. If it’s not mine, I can provide it with health insurance until you are able to provide for it yourself. I won’t force a fetus to get less care than I can provide because I don’t trust its mother.”
