“Wow, personal question,” he said, holding her eye contact, hoping to get her to at least acknowledge with a facial expression that she was vastly overstepping. But nothing. She was completely stoic. He decided to go another route and mildly shock her. “Mary and I haven’t talked about kids yet. We’re pretty new. But knowing us, if we did decide to have a kid, I think we’d just, you know, try pretty hard to make one.”

Mary made a snorting noise and covered the bottom half of her face with her hand. Naomi flushed and pressed her lips together. John felt that he might have won that round. He’d illustrated how inappropriate her question was by providing her with an inappropriate answer.

But apparently Naomi was not to be outdone. “And if the natural way doesn’t work? She’s almost forty, you know. Are you opposed to medical intervention for pregnancy, John? It can be a long, painful slog.”

John’s mouth dropped open. He hadn’t met this woman twenty minutes ago, and she was already pumping him for information on whether or not he’d be willing to jack off into a cup? Was there no line she wouldn’t cross?

“Mom!” Mary jumped to her feet. “For the love of God!”

“You have to have a plan for this kind of thing, Mary,” Naomi said, though she was starting to lose her cool. She looked far less confident than she had just moments before. “That’s just reality.”

John was about to jump in, but Mary got there first. “You’re saying the word reality, Mom. But what you really mean to say is fear. You’re terrified of me turning into Tiff. Of me making the same choices that she did.”

Naomi’s face went ash white. “Don’t even say that out loud.”

“I’m not trying to be melodramatic here. But don’t you get it, Mom? You can’t bully me into living my life on your terms. That doesn’t make me any safer from the boogeyman. Tiff made a hard choice at the end of her life. One I admire, not because it glorifies dying single, Mom, the way you seem to think it does. But because it was a full, independent choice she made, free from outside influence.”

Mary took a deep breath and John just gaped at her. Apparently she didn’t need defending in the least. She was doing just fine on her own.

Naomi’s mouth opened and closed. She looked utterly gobsmacked.

“You don’t want me to live in regret, I get that. You don’t want me to miss my chance at having a fulfilled life. I get that too. But you don’t get to decide what fulfills me. And, newsflash, having a kid out of fear of not having a kid never made anybody very happy. Maybe you know something about that?”