“There’s something you need to know about your mother, Melissa. She was pregnant with your oldest brother before she married your father. That’s the main reason they got married. I advised against it, but she was headstrong. She said she could settle your father down.”

Addie took her glasses off, her pupils the size of pinholes. “I want you to look at me. Your mother did the best she could. But there’s going to come a day when some fellow is going to tell you that you hung the moon and be all sweet to you. Choose a husband carefully. Don’t pick one you have to change.”

Melissa had spent the next year sizing up young men in the school hallways. She dated a few who needed a lot of changes, guys she knew Addie wouldn’t approve of, but then she met Brian. She wouldn’t have changed a thing about him. Until, that is, this situation with the baby.

She’d taken Addie’s wisdom to heart but had never introduced her godmother to Brian. Addie’s health had declined again soon after their talk. She’d been in and out of the hospital and then a nursing home. Melissa hadn’t visited or even called her. Then came the call that Addie had died, all alone. Now, as Melissa tried to make the biggest decision of her life, she wished she could talk with her one more time.

When she hung up with the adoption agency, she felt hopeful that things were going to work out. But she worried that as the baby grew, the complications with Brian would increase. That afternoon when he came home from looking for a job, she confronted him.

“I need to know if you’re going to be ashamed of me when my belly gets big.”

“Of course not. Why would I be ashamed?”

“You suggested I go live somewhere else.”

“I was thinking of you, Melissa. If you stay here, people are going to talk. And everyone will find out.”

“Are you scared of that?”

“I’m fine if you are. I just don’t want you to have to go through anything harder.”

“You can’t control hard, Brian. Hard’s part of life.”

Brian pulled into the apartment parking lot, his gas gauge on empty. He’d now applied for a job at six places in the last few weeks and as much as he needed the money, he hoped none of them would hire him. All were minimum-wage entry positions, but so far he hadn’t received a call.

He stared at the radio that he could only hear through the right speakers, and all he could think about was the $220 that had been flushed down the drain. How many tanks of gas could he have bought with that?