Chapter 7

When he parked and got out of his car, Tawny had the same reaction she had the last time they had met like this. Her heart pounded and she felt waves of emotion wash through her. When he got in and looked at her, he looked like any other teenage boy. She felt a rush of affection for him, and his ready smile made her feel stronger.

“Well?” he said, eagerness plain in his voice.

“You have to have a measured reaction to the news,” she said, firmly. “You can’t draw attention to us.”

“I won’t,” he said. His eyes widened. “Does that mean you are?”

“Measured!” she said, leaning toward him.

“But you are,” he stated. He looked at her abdomen.

“We made a baby, Bobby,” she whispered.

He sat, frozen, long enough that she began to worry. Then he sagged in his seat.

“We made a baby,” he sighed. He blinked. “I made a baby! I had sex with a woman and made a baby in her!” His voice had started to get louder and she reached to put her hand in his lap.

“Measured,” she reminded him. “We don’t want people to take notice of us.”

He looked down at her hand and then at her face.

“I made a baby in you,” he whispered. “I had sex with the most beautiful woman in the world and she got pregnant.”

“Yes,” she said, squeezing the front of his pants. “We need to talk about that.”

He blinked.

“We do? I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“It is what I wanted. I’m very happy about it. But there are things that have to happen, now, and I’m not sure how to proceed.”

“What kind of things?” he asked. “I can’t believe I got a woman pregnant!”

“I need some legal advice, but I can’t afford to hire an attorney just yet,” she said. “Do you think you could ask your mother some questions get some idea of how we should do this?”

“My mother?” His voice raised an octave and his eyes widened. “No way!”

“I know she’s not a lawyer, herself, but she could still help us.”

“If I talk to my mother, she’ll know I got a woman pregnant and she’ll hit the ceiling and the whole town will hear her yelling,” he said.

“Bobby, calm down. She’s not going to know that. These questions don’t have anything to do with pregnancy.”

“My mom has voodoo powers,” said Bobby. “She knows stuff even though nobody tells her. She can read me like a book.”

“I need some answers,” moaned Tawny.

“What kind of answers?”

“I need to know if a divorce lawyer can also advise me on how and when to turn Murdock in. Do I need one lawyer, or two?”

Bobby blinked.

“Okay. So I go to her and I tell her I know this woman whose husband is a monster and she wants to turn him in to the cops and divorce him. And this woman asked me, for some reason, if she needs one lawyer or two. Is that about right?”

“This woman knows your mother works for a lawyer,” said Tawny. The way he had put it made it sound different than it had in her head.

“Okay. So here’s what my mother will do. First, she’ll say, ‘What woman, Bobby?’. And I’ll tell her that’s confidential, of course, and she’ll say, ‘And why is it confidential, Bobby? Why wouldn’t you tell me who she is? And how did you meet this woman? Why would she tell you this information about her husband?’ Gee, I can only think of about a dozen more questions she’ll fire off before I even get close to getting an answer to your question. And that’s assuming she’ll answer it at all! My mother might just drain me dry of information, like a CIA interrogator at a black site, and then decide I don’t need to be the go-between for some strange woman. What if she demands to meet this woman?”

“That’s off the table,” said Tawny, weakly.

“So I tell my mother that meeting this woman isn’t going to happen, and to never mind. Now she’ll watch me like a hawk. I wouldn’t be able to meet with you for months, for fear of her swooping in, yelling, ‘Aha! I’ve caught you with the mysterious woman!’”

“That’s a little dramatic,” said Tawny.

“You don’t know my mother,” grunted Bobby.

Tawny sat for a few minutes and then took out her phone. She started tapping the surface.

“What are you doing?” asked Bobby.

“I’m going to just call a lawyer’s office and ask the question to them. They’ll either answer it or they won’t.”

“And the first thing they’ll write down is what’s on the caller ID screen,” he said. “Now some lawyer’s office knows that Tawny Stevens, wife of the high school principal, is thinking about crime and divorce. Gee, nothing can go wrong, there.”

“Well what the fuck am I supposed to do?” she shouted.

“Shhh,” he said, looking around. There was nobody in sight, within fifty feet of them.

“What am I supposed to do?” she asked, her voice normal again. “Are you sure you can’t talk to your mother?”

He sat, thinking.

“I can’t,” he finally said. He looked at her. “But maybe you could.”

“Me talk to your mother,” said Tawny, her voice flat. “What are you thinking?”

Her question was rhetorical and filled with sarcasm, but Bobby answered it.

“Look, if I talk to her, that will seem weird, for all the reasons I already mentioned. But if you talk to her, it will just be one adult woman talking to another. She won’t ask you all those questions, like she’d ask me.”

“So I’m supposed to just show up at your house and start asking questions?” scoffed Tawny.

“Of course not. I can introduce you. All I have to do is tell her you approached me at the hardware store and we talked about old times. You were one of my substitute teachers, you know, and she knows that. And I tell her you remembered she works for a lawyer and you have some very private questions you need answers to and you asked if you could come over some evening and ask them, woman to woman.”

“So then, instead of some anonymous lawyer knowing Tawny Stevens, wife of the high school principal is thinking about crime and divorce, your mother will know that,” snorted Tawny.

“No. You tell her you have a friend who has this problem, and you’re trying to help the friend.”

Tawny frowned.

“When you tell someone you have a friend who has a problem, that’s code for the fact that it’s really you who have the problem, and you just don’t want to admit it,” she said.

“It is?”

“You’re young,” she sighed. “You haven’t run into that problem, yet.”

“I ran into that problem about ten minutes ago,” he argued.

She sat, thinking, and was silent long enough that his attention strayed.

“You’re really pregnant?” he said.

She finally had something to smile about.

“What did you think would happen? You’re like a bull. You mounted me a dozen times and flooded me with your sperm.”

“Wow,” he sighed. “I’m going to be a father.” He frowned and looked at her face. “I’m not ready to be a father! I don’t know how to be a father!”

“You’ll be fine,” she said. “I wouldn’t have let you do this if I hadn’t been convinced you’d be a good daddy to our baby.”

“Do you know how to be a mother?” he squeaked.

“I’ll learn. I have nine months to study up. You do, too. It’s not an emergency, Bobby.”

“It sure feels like one,” he said.

“I wish we could be talking about this in bed,” she sighed.

“Me, too,” he said. “Um ... since you’re pregnant and all ... does that mean we won’t ... um...”

“Do it anymore?” she finished for him, using a valley girl accent. Then she changed back to regular Tawny voice. “I love you, you dope. As insane as it seems, we’re a couple now. I didn’t intend for that to happen, but it did. You’re going to make love to me many more times.”

“That’s good,” he sighed.

“We need to be very careful, though,” she said. “If anyone connects us, or sees you coming and going from my house, my pregnancy might cause questions we don’t want people thinking about.”

“So we’re a couple, but we can’t see each other,” he said. “Gee, that sounds super.”

“We just have to be patient,” she said. “There will come a time when you can ask me out on a date and we can let people see us together in public.”

“When do you think that might be?” he asked.

“After the divorce,” she said.

“And when might that be?” he asked.

“That’s what I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t afford to hire one lawyer right now, much less two. But I need some advice on how to move forward.”

“Then you need to run into me at the store and ask me if my mother could give you some direction,” he said. “You need to do it when somebody else is there to help, so they hear it, too.”

“And how do I pose it so she doesn’t think it’s my problem I’m asking about?”

“That’s going to be up to you to do,” he said. “If she likes you, she’ll ignore stuff. If she doesn’t like you, then it may not work out.”

“Why wouldn’t she like me?” asked Tawny.

“Because you’re beautiful,” he said, simply. “Some women don’t like beautiful women.”

“True,” said Tawny. She sighed. “I have to try, though. I need some preliminary answers.”

“Next Thursday, come to the store. Wander around until you see me. I’ll be stocking shelves somewhere. Do what I said. I’ll try to set something up.”

“I love you,” she said, softly.

“I love you, too,” he said for the first time. “That’s why I’m willing to risk talking to my mother for you.”

“You’re an adult, Bobby,” said Tawny. “You don’t have to submit to your parents like you did when you were in high school.”

“Maybe you could mention that to my mother when you talk to her,” said Bobby.

The “innocent contact” between Tawny Stevens, wife of Principal Murdock Stevens, and Bobby Martin, part time employee of Travers True Value Hardware, went well. Tawny came in and wandered the aisles. Judy Fillmore, a full time employee of the store, offered to help her, but Tawny declined, saying she was just looking. Phil Bigolow, another full timer, did the same thing. Bobby happened to be stocking sockets when she saw him. Most of the full time employees hated to stock small, specific items like sockets, bolts, and nuts, so Bobby always got assigned to do those jobs.

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