Free Separate Beds by Lavyrle Spencer Page B

that, Clay?”
    “I can try.”
    “Clay,” his mother's concerned voice began, “there's one possibility we did not discuss last night, although I'm sure it entered all our minds, and that is that she might possibly get an abortion. Forgive me for sounding like a grandmother, but the thought of it is utterly sickening to me.”
    “You might as well know, we talked about it,” Clay admitted.
    Angela felt a quiver begin in her stomach and travel up to her throat. “You—you did?”
    “I offered her money, which she refused.”
    “Oh, Clay.” The soft, disappointed swoon in her tone told Clay how it hurt her to hear the truth.
    “Mother, I was testing her. I'm not sure what I'd have said if she had agreed.” But then Clay swung around on the shiny table to face his parents. “Oh, hell, what's the use of denying it? At the time it seemed like an easy solution.”
    “Clay,” Angela said, as near to scolding as she'd been in years, “I fail to see how your feelings for that child as its father can be any less than ours as its grandparents. How could you think of—of denying it life, or of spending the rest of your own wondering where and who the child is?”
    “Mother, don't you think I've thought the same things all day long?”
    “Yet you don't propose to do anything about it?” Angela asked.
    “I don't know what to do, I'm just mixed up . . . I . . . oh, hell.” His shoulders slumped further.
    “What your mother is trying to make you see is that your responsibility is to make sure the child is provided for, and that its future is made secure. She speaks for both of us. It's our grandchild. We'd like to know its life will be the best possible, under the circumstances.”
    “Are you saying you want me to ask that girl to marry me?”
    “What we want, Clay, has been superseded by your thoughtless actions. What we want is what we've always wanted for you, an education, a career, a happy life—”
    “And you think I'd have those things married to a woman I don't love?” Suddenly Clay rose and walked to a window, glanced absently at the gathering dusk outside, then turned to confront them again. “I've never said it before, not in so many words, but I want the kind of relationship you two have. I want a wife I can be proud of, someone of my own class, if it comes down to that, whose ambitions match mine, who is bright and . . . and loving, and who wants what I want out of life. Someone like Jill.”
    “Ah . . . Jill,” Angela said with an arched eyebrow, then leaned forward intently, her petite elbow on her gracefully crossed knees. “Yes, I think it's time you considered Jill. Where was Jill when all of this happened?”
    “We'd had a fight, that's all.”
    “Oh, you had a fight.” Angela settled back again, her casualness belying the seriousness of the subject. “And so you took out Catherine to—to get even with Jill, or for whatever reason, and by doing so, wronged not one woman, but two. Clay, how could you!”
    “Mother, you've always liked Jill far better than any of the other girls I've gone with.”
    “Yes, I have; both your father and I admire her immensely. But at the moment I feel your responsibility to Catherine Anderson is far greater than that to Jill. Besides, I haven't the slightest doubt that if you'd wanted to marry Jill you'd have asked her years ago.”
    “We've talked about it more than once, but the timing just wasn't right. I wanted to get school behind me and pass my bar exam first.”
    “Speaking of which, I should like to point out a few facts you may have overlooked,” Claiborne said, rising from the loveseat and taking what Clay knew was his “counsel for the plaintiff” stance: both feet flat on the floor, jaw and one shoulder jutting toward the accused. “That father of hers could make more trouble for you than you might think. You are aware that your bar examinations are less than a year off, and that the State Board of Law Examiners goes to some