Free Life After Wife by Carolyn Brown Page A

she intended to call her. The new baby looked like an Emma-Gwen, not a Glory.
    Elijah was snoring in the recliner while someone made a touchdown on the television when she walked into the house. He roused up when he heard the front door open and opened one eye enough to see that it was Sophie and not a terrorist or burglar.
    “What’d she have?” he asked.
    “A six-pound baby girl that they named Glory Emma-Gwen.” Sophie sunk down into the corner of the sofa.
    “That ain’t even big enough for fish bait, and what kind of name is that? Sounds like something you need antibiotics for,” he said.
    “My Irish granny said that a woman could have them little, and they could grow big. They don’t have to start out at ten pounds. And the name is their choice. Theron says they’re goin’ to call her Emma-Gwen. Tina’s full name is Echo Martina, and Fancy’s real name is Fancy. It’s not a nickname. If she wants to name her child Glory, that’s her business. It’s not a bit worse than Elijah.”
    “Hey now, don’t be attacking me. I just spoke my mind, and besides, Elijah is a good, solid name right out of the Bible. It was my great-grandfather’s name.”
    “Yeah, well, so is Mephibosheth, and I don’t like it either. Gwen is Fancy’s mother’s name, and Emma was Theron’s grandmother.”
    “But I’ll bet you Glory didn’t come from anywhere in the family. Are they going to dress her in stars and stripes?” Elijah purposely provoked her. The madder she got, the more she’d hate living with him.
    Sophie cooled down enough to know she was being baited. “Of course. She’s going to have blue eyes and blonde hair like Fancy. Don’t you think she’ll be so cute next Fourth of July, all dressed up in a little outfit with red and white stripes? You’ve got to hold her. She’ll wrap a big, old fellow like you around her finger in no time flat.”
    “I doubt it. I don’t like kids. They grow up to be eighteen or nineteen years old and think they know everything. I’ve had to train too many kids already,” he said.
    “Is that what you did in the military? Train irresponsible kids?”
    “I did lots of things. That was just one of my many jobs,” he said.
    “And you really don’t like kids?”
    “I really don’t.”
    “Ever thought about having some of your own, or do you have a few floating around out there with your strange blue eyes?” she asked.
    He bristled. “My eyes are not strange. They’re not so different from Fancy’s, and you don’t think hers are strange. I think you just made a sly, little racial slur.”
    “And I think you are full of cow patties. I asked if you have any children. Are you going to answer the question?” she asked.
    “The answer is no, and I’m not having any, either,” he said coldly.
    “Want to hear a funny story? That’s the same thing Theron Warren said less than a year ago, and now he has two kids.”
    Elijah pondered on that for a while, trying to figure out how Theron got a child that was already three years old in less than a year. Surely there was an adoption, but hecouldn’t let it alone. Worrying with it for a few minutes like a hound dog with a big soup bone, he finally asked, “How’d that happen?”
    “He was married a few years back to Tina’s mother, Maria. She divorced him but didn’t tell him she was pregnant,” Sophie explained.
    Both of Elijah’s eyebrows shot up.
    “Turns out that Maria had the maternal instincts of a rock when the baby was born. She left Tina with her sister about ninety percent of the time. Three years later, she met a rich guy from California and decided to marry him, only he didn’t want children.”
    Sophie headed toward the kitchen to make a sandwich.
    Elijah’s curiosity got the better of his will power to not ask questions and not care. “Go on.”
    “One night out of the clear blue sky—actually it wasn’t clear blue because it was freezing drizzle and putting a layer of ice on everything in