I can’t imagine he’d want me to keep the baby, and if I do, I can’t imagine he’d want to be part of the baby’s life. And then how will that be when Jessica and William are spoiled rotten by Daniel and child number three is always left home, left behind?

My God, what have I gotten myself into?

I bite my lip, bite hard, force myself to see this as it really is, not as how I’d like it to be.

Which room will be the nursery? (My office.)

How will this affect my business? (I’ll need a real nanny again—and God, professional nannies cost a fortune.)

How will this affect me personally? Beyond the whole body thing—God, I’m going to get big and fat soon—I’m going to feel sick and get queasy and barf. I’m going to have headaches and backaches and body aches and leg pain and weird dreams. Food cravings and mood swings and fresh stretch marks and possibly—although I pray not—hemorrhoids. I never got hemorrhoids or varicose veins with William or Jessica, but I’m not thirty-three anymore.

If I should ever want to date again, what man will be interested in a woman who has three kids, two by her ex-husband and one by some man she barely knew on a Hawaiian island?

How to explain to future men that I’m really not all that reckless and impulsive, that I’m not a risk and dating me isn’t asking for disaster, although, come to think of it, what man—never married and without significant baggage of his own—will want to take on a forty-year-old woman with three children under the age of ten? What man would want to raise two other men’s children?

My stomach churns. I don’t like thinking this way, but I can’t be naive, can’t just blithely assume that everything is going to be okay. For example, financially—Daniel can help provide for his two, but what about surfer baby? Will surfer baby be able to attend summer camp, get his or her teeth fixed, go to college?

Will surfer baby hate watching his or her older brother and sister travel the world with their dad while he or she sits home with me?

I’m jarred by the sharp rap of knuckles on my window. Opening my door, I see William standing there in his baseball uniform. “Mom, where have you been? The game started an hour ago.”

Game? Today? “The game’s Thursday, William—”

“Today’s Thursday.” He’s near tears, and his expression is tight, his jaw set. “Dad’s in San Jose, and he even called to make sure I wouldn’t miss the game. But you weren’t here and you didn’t answer your phone and I couldn’t get anybody else.”

“Where’s Lisa?”