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but with her friend Stephanie. (“She has a massive front porch,” he explained.) And yesterday, Stephanie had texted Trent, telling him she was three months pregnant, and adding, It’s Maury Povich time .
    “I don’t think I’m ready to be a father,” Trent said.
    He and Brenna were in the waiting room of the paternity testing place that Stephanie had sent him to—ClarkLabs—which, as it turned out, was just five street blocks away from their office.
    It was, Brenna realized, her second waiting room of the day, and so much more bare-bones than Lieberman’s. A handful of scuffed white plastic chairs, a wiry gray rug thrown over an ancient parquet floor, a couple of magazine racks, stuffed with brochures about fetal nutrition and unplanned pregnancy and STDs. No beanbag chairs here. No glossy teen magazines or bright colors or stuffed animals staring out of baskets. This waiting room didn’t pander to its visitors; it scolded them.
    Trent’s words hung in the air. I don’t think I’m ready .
    “One step at a time,” Brenna said. “You don’t even know anything until you take the test.”
    She glanced at the only other person in the waiting room—a serious-looking guy with big shiny eyes like black coffee poured into white saucers. He was slumped in the corner, either waiting for someone to get tested or waiting to be called, Brenna wasn’t sure. He’d come in after Brenna and Trent, but she’d never noticed whether he’d signed in.
    He wasn’t all that young—closer to Brenna’s age than Trent’s, and he wore casual Friday clothes—a blue and white striped oxford shirt, khakis, loafers—as though he were coming in on his lunch break from some traditional job, even though it was Saturday. He didn’t seem like the type to be an unintentional father. But the truth was, what the man seemed like didn’t tell her anything. Anybody could be an unintentional father—that upstanding-looking, sad-eyed man or Trent or anybody in between, which proved to Brenna for the millionth time that nature was neither fair nor rational, that life didn’t give you what you wanted, or even what you deserved. It just happened, like waves crashing over rocks until they lost all their sharp edges, until they looked more like dull clay and it was pointless to keep battering them, but still those waves kept at it, turning them to sand, and for no good reason at all.
    Life just was .
    Or, as Trent was fond of saying , It is what it is . Trent, who, when it all came down to it, would probably make a much better parent than either of Brenna’s had been . . .
    “Trent LaSalle?” The receptionist’s voice cut off the memory.
    Trent stood up. “Oh boy,” he said, and for a moment, she looked past the spray tan and the “Orgasm Donor” T-shirt (not the ideal thing to wear to a paternity testing) and saw only the frightened eyes of a boy. “You’ll be fine,” she said. “No matter what happens. You can handle it.”
    Trent headed toward the waiting lab tech. A better parent , Brenna thought, her gaze on his tensed-up shoulders, because he cares .
    As soon as he was out of the room, the memory re-formed—two days ago. Brenna sitting on her bed, Nick Morasco next to her, the envelope in her lap.
    “You know what’s in here,” Brenna says. “You’ve already read it.”
    “Yes.”
    “And you think I . . .”
    “You should do whatever you want.”
    Brenna’s mouth is dry. She’s aware of the humming radiator and the itchy blanket beneath her bare legs, of Nick Morasco’s hand at the small of her back. She wants to brush it all away. She slips the papers out of the envelope, skims over her father’s name and address and her mother’s name under witness. Her eyes scan the report and settle on one word. Every muscle in her body contracts—her thighs and her chest and her neck and her stomach. Especially her stomach. It hurts like a kick and she can’t speak, she can’t breathe. All she can do is read the