She considered him her soul mate, which meant they were destined for each other and her life would not have been complete unless they met and fell in love. But the pregnancy had caused her to see a different side of Brian. What if he wasn’t the one? What were the chances of her soul mate being in the same town she had grown up in? The thought troubled her and she pushed it away.

Brian grabbed their fishing rods and headed to the car. He was backing out when Melissa approached, and he stopped. She got in the passenger side and they rode in silence. There was a lake Brian liked a few miles from their apartment. She liked to walk to the rocky waters near the cornfields, but he preferred a reservoir near a park. It was peaceful here with grassy slopes and quiet water.

After stopping at a bait shop, they sat on the bank and Melissa baited her hook with a minnow, putting the hook through the eyes. Brian would rather use worms, but the minnows were cheaper. Yet he struggled to work his hook into the minnow.

“What are you doing? You’ve got to hook it through the eye.”

“I know how to bait my own hook,” Brian said.

Fishing not only provided food, it helped him think. Casting the line and reeling it in. The back and forth and the waiting made his mind slow instead of spinning with all the questions and pressure he felt. Without all the anger and disappointment and whatever else was stirring, he got the courage to speak.

“Look, I can’t be a father right now. I can’t. Maybe one day, but I . . . we’ve got to finish school, I’ve got to get a job . . .”

“I can’t just turn this off, Brian. It may feel like you can because you’re not the one carrying it, but I can’t do that.”

“I’m just trying to do what’s best for us, Melissa.”

“I know.” Her voice was soft and it felt like she understood him. Then she said, “I just want to do what’s best for the baby.”

CHAPTER 5

Susan Colton opened the envelope, resigned to the feelings that rose once she saw the return address. She knew inside was an invitation to a baby shower. She took a deep breath, the same deep breath she took every year in May when Mother’s Day rolled around. That was a date she dreaded, an open wound that never healed. A baby shower invitation created the same pain.