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damp with sweat. He made a ball-and-socket of his hands and pressed his thumb knuckles hard against his mouth. Studying her, sealed within her armor of indifference, he wondered how to proceed. Life, it seemed, set no precedent for a situation such as this—sitting with a belligerent woman, a veritable stranger, discussing the son you never knew existed.
    â€œI was . . .” He had to clear his throat and start again. “I was afraid so. It doesn’t take a genealogist to spot the likeness between us.”
    She said nothing.
    â€œWhy didn’t you tell me?”
    She rolled her eyes and said, “Isn’t that obvious?”
    â€œNo, I guess it isn’t. Not to me. Why?”
    She flashed him an angry glance. “By the time I found out, you were already married to her. What good would it have done to tell you?”
    â€œBut I’m his father! Don’t you think I should have known?”
    â€œAnd if you had, what would you have done—just what?”
    He replied honestly, “I don’t know. But I’m not the kind of man who would have left his care entirely up to you. Iwould have helped however I could, even if it was only financially.”
    She let out a disdainful huff. “Would you? If I remember right, your fiancée was already expecting a baby when you got married. I was no more a part of your future plans than you were a part of mine. I didn’t see what good would come of telling you, so I didn’t.”
    â€œBut didn’t you . . . didn’t you think that was deceitful?”
    â€œOh, please . . .” She pushed back her chair and rose with reproof in the trim of her shoulders. Moving away, she stationed herself amid the boxes in the living room behind him. He pivoted on his chair seat and followed with his eyes, crooking an armpit and wrist over the chair back. “We had already made one mistake,” she went on. “What good would two have done? You told me that night of your bachelor party that you were marrying her under duress, but you were marrying her nevertheless. If I’d found you afterwards and told you I was pregnant, I might have broken up your marriage, and what purpose would that have served?” She clapped a hand to her chest. “ I certainly didn’t want to marry you.”
    â€œNo,” he replied, coloring faintly. “No, of course not.”
    â€œWe were just . . . that night was just . . .” She shrugged and fell silent.
    Just a hot-blooded June night that never should have happened. Eighteen years later they both knew it and were suffering the repercussions.
    She admitted, “It was as much my fault as yours. Maybe more, because I wasn’t on any kind of birth control, and I should have insisted on you using something. But you know how you are at that age—you think, ‘Oh, it’ll never happen to me. Not from just one time.’ And when I went there, Inever dreamed anything like that would happen. Like I said, we were both equally to blame.”
    â€œBut you weren’t the one getting married the next weekend.”
    â€œMaybe not, but I knew you were, so which of us is more guilty?”
    â€œMe.” He got up and followed her to the living room, where he propped his hips against a stack of cardboard boxes facing her, a goodly distance away. “It was an act of rebellion, plain and simple. She was pregnant and I was being forced into this wedding I wasn’t ready for. Hell, the ink wasn’t even dry on my college diploma yet! I wanted to teach for a while, have a few years of freedom, buy a new car and rent an apartment with a swimming pool, live with the guys. Instead I was visiting gynecologists with her and trying to scrape together enough money for the rental deposit on a one-bedroom apartment. Getting outfitted for a tuxedo I didn’t even want to wear, for heaven’s sake! I just . . .