Free Bundle of Joy by Barbara Bretton Page B

acceptance of responsibility?
    Gone, that's what. He'd had a chance to think, to reevaluate, to consider his options and he'd done a great job of it. Besides, everything she'd told him last night at the restaurant was true. This wasn't the dark ages where an illegitimate birth could blight a woman's life forever and ever. This wasn't the era of Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It to Beaver where families were arranged with the precision of a Japanese centerpiece. The perfect lockstep arrangement of mommy/daddy/child was as much dream as reality these days, a joy if you were lucky enough to have it but certainly not necessary for happiness.
    And, oh, how much Caroline wanted to believe that was true as she climbed into her low -slung sports car and headed it toward home.
     
    #
     
    Bill O'Rourke gave Charlie the night off and he didn't ask questions. You didn't find many men like that these days, but Bill was one of a kind. "I owe you one," said Charlie as he headed out the door.
    "Damn straight," said Bill with a bemused grin. "And I'll make sure you pay up one of these days."
    Charlie had no idea where he was going; he only knew he had to get the hell out of Rocky Hill as fast as he could. The walls were closing in on him. There was only one cure for the way he was feeling and that was to jump into his car and drive as far and as fast as he could.
    It didn't work. He got as far as Reisterstown, Maryland. "Better get yourself together," said the highway patrolman who had decided to let him go with only a warning. "Keep breaking speed limits and you'll end up on a slab some place."
    The notion wasn't one Charlie felt like dwelling upon. In the past the idea of dying didn't unnerve him any more than it did the average man. Now that he was about to become a father, the thought of dying before his time held a poignancy that nearly buckled his knees. He didn't want to care this much but there didn't seem like there was anything he could do about it.
    You can run from your values but you can't hide forever. Even two hundred miles away from Rocky Hill he could see the fear in Caroline's eyes and the loneliness and that fear and loneliness spoke to him in a way few things in his lifetime ever had.
     
    #
     
    "It doesn't have to be forever," he said to her later that night as they sat in a diner in Belle Mead and talked. "After the kid's born we can dissolve the marriage, but at least we'll have done things right."
    Caroline was silent. Her sandwich and glass of milk were both untouched. "That seems so calculated," she said after a few minutes had gone by. "Does it make any sense to marry with divorce in mind?"
    "I think it does."
    "We could have your name on the birth certificate without marrying, Charles."
    "Take it or leave it," he said, his dark eyes fierce with determination. "The world may have changed but it still matters to a kid that his parents cared enough about him to try to give him the best shot in life they could."
    She wanted to argue with him that his thesis had enough flaws in it to drive an eighteen-wheeler through, but she also knew that at the core of his argument was a truth so basic, so visceral, as to be unshakable. Why make their child go through his or her life carrying their excess baggage? How much easier it would be to say, "My parents split up," than to explain about an evening that never should have happened. About a pregnancy that no one had planned for or wanted.
    "You're right," she said with a sigh. "Our child deserves more."
    "We'll get married?"
    She nodded. "We'll get married."
    They stared at each other across the remains of Charlie's cheeseburger and her untouched sandwich.
    "I guess we should set a date," said Charlie.
    "The sooner the better," said Caroline. "I'll be showing any day now."
    "Saturday?"
    "Saturdays are pretty busy at the store." She ran through her appointments in her mind. "How about Sunday afternoon?"
    It was Charlie's turn to hesitate. "I had tickets for the Yankees against