The Baby Agenda by Janice Kay Johnson Page B

breaking.
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    F OUR DAYS LATER , Will got on the goddamn airplane and felt like scum. Worse than scum. All he could see was her face, all he heard was the way her voice broke when she said, “Then don’t come and see me, and be nice, and…”
    Every time he thought about her, he felt as if his guts were spilling out, and it hurt.
    He shouldn’t have come at all. She was right. They didn’t mean anything to each other, and he’d let himself start thinking they did, as if there must be a connection between them if they were having a baby together. He’d never imagined having a child with a woman who wasn’this wife, a woman he didn’t love. Somehow he’d turned things around in his head and gotten to believing he felt things he didn’t. That was all this was.
    He closed his eyes and ignored his seatmates, who seemed to be ignoring each other, too. Three strangers, compelled by circumstances to sit shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, for hours.
    It was all Will could do not to jump up, grab his carry-on and bulldoze his way off the airplane before the door was shut. But he sat where he was, muscles locked with the effort not to move, and thought, What the hell’s wrong with me?
    Torturing himself this way was stupid. Moira had a mother, she had friends. Single women had babies all the time. He could tell she meant it when she said she really wanted this child. There wasn’t a reason in the world she wouldn’t do fine without him.
    So why was it killing him to know that he wouldn’t be in the States for another five or six months? That she’d already have had the baby by then? That at best he’d have a brief visit before he was off again?
    The expressions on his brothers’ faces when he told them hadn’t helped. He’d done it last night at the dinner table.
    â€œThis woman,” Clay had said slowly, as though to be sure he understood, “is having your baby while you’re off in Africa.”
    â€œI didn’t know her well. We had sex. I used a condom, but it apparently failed.”
    Jack had offered a profanity. Clay never took his eyes from Will’s face.
    â€œYou came back to make sure she’s all right.”
    He unclenched his jaw. “Yes.”
    â€œIs she?” Clay might be young, but he had theimplacable expression Dad had done so well. Funny, until that moment Will hadn’t realized how much his brother had come to look like their father. More so than Will did.
    â€œYes,” he said. “I, uh, went to the doctor with her. Heard the baby’s heartbeat.”
    They were all quiet for a moment. “Well, damn,” Clay said at last.
    â€œI don’t like it,” Will had told them finally. “I don’t like anything about this. The only thing that would have been worse is if she’d aborted my baby. Okay?”
    â€œThe timing is piss-poor,” Jack said thoughtfully.
    Will turned on him almost savagely. “You don’t have to tell me. I should have kept it zipped. Do you think I don’t know that?”
    Goddamn it, right now Jack looked like Dad, too. Dad had believed there was right, and there was wrong, and not one hell of a lot in between. He’d taught his children his unbending rules. Will couldn’t remember even hesitating about whether he’d come home and take Dad’s place after he died. That was the right thing to do.
    The plane was accelerating down the runway, then lifting off, tilting upward to climb. It was too late now to sprint down the aisle and beg to be let off. Sitting here, his body still rigid, Will thought, This is wrong.
    But, for one of the first times in his life, he had no idea what the right thing to do was. He’d believed he was doing the right thing. Maybe this was one of those hellish situations where there was no right.
    What stayed with him all the way to New York then across the Atlantic was the knowledge it