Father Found

That didn’t help. “Well, you’re unfamiliar to me!” she shouted back tearfully. “I don’t know my own husband! Can you have any idea what that feels like?” She put a hand to her stomach, her voice quieting a decibel. “I don’t remember making this baby. If I could, it might make up in some way for the fact that I look like a polar bear with a red wig! A polar bear with nothing to wear!”

Well, now he knew what the problems were—and there were several of them—but he couldn’t do anything about most of them.

He concentrated on the one for which he had a solution.

“He was conceived after we went dancing,” he said. She’d stopped at the window looking out onto the rainy meadow, an amusing picture in tennis shoes, a long slip, and a flannel shirt that didn’t close. “We’d had a little champagne and the orchestra played a tango.”

She turned to him in surprise. “We can tango?”

He grinned. “No, we can’t. And we proved it that night. We were at the American Legion dance in the Baptist church’s community hall and ended up in a very undignified pile at the foot of the stage.”

She winced. “What happened?”

He shrugged. “As I recall, it was a physics problem. I had swung you out and was reeling you back in when you tripped, crashed against me and we both went down.”

“Did they throw us out?”

“No, they applauded. I think they appreciated our guts. Or our stupidity. I’m not sure which.”

Her smile crumpled suddenly and a tear fell. “I wonder what happened to my guts,” she asked plaintively. “I’m scared and tired and…” She lost her last shred of composure. “Really, really fat!”

He wrapped her in his arms, half-expecting her to resist, but she stood docilely against him, weeping as he rubbed her back.