—she should have said no; it was that simple. Should have, but she’d been too caught up in being an object of desire for the first time in her life. This was now her problem, hers and hers alone. She didn’t want anything to do with him, this man who might one day learn to regret the brash actions of youth but for now only looked upon her as another easy lay. There might be a note of fear in his voice right now betraying his bravado, a note that told her he knew what was coming, but in his eyes there was nothing but amused contempt, and she felt dirty and diminished for having shared her body with him.

“Nothing,” she said, never taking her gaze from his face. “Just...nothing.” Then she walked away. For just a second there she’d wanted to say Have a nice life or Good luck or something like that, something to let the man he’d someday become know there was no bitterness in her heart, but that wasn’t true. She was bitter. And that made her too much like every other woman in this town.

It wouldn’t happen to her. She’d have the baby, and she’d raise it like a good and loving mother should, and if that earned her the scorn of her father, so be it.

Even a whore knew how to show tenderness.

* * *

This is how the Bad Time ended:

It was a Wednesday night, right after dinner. Dad was still floating around in a constipated cloud of resentment and only looked at Lucy when it couldn’t be avoided. When dinner was finished, he pushed away from the table and went into the living room to read the paper. Mom chattered away about everything and nothing, her voice the background noise of a radio playing in some distant room, tuned to a station no one ever listened to. Lucy busied herself clearing the dishes, then wiping off the table and kitchen counters. She was two weeks into her third month. The tension was killing her; between Mom and Dad and the people at work with their forced civility and snickering behind her back and whispers and disapproving glances, she felt like a leper. God, how she hated small-town minds. She knew she shouldn’t let any of it get to her, and she tried to keep on keeping on, as the song said, but for the last several days her appetite hadn’t been what it should have, and she wasn’t sleeping for more than a few hours at a time. The only real comfort she had was knowing that Dad would probably change his tune once he held his newborn grandchild for the first time.

As she was preparing to do the dishes, she thought back to her visit to her O.B.G.Y.N. that morning, how she’d had that sudden attack of the Weepies on her way out, and had sat down on one of the outside benches. There had been that little boy, Ronnie, who’d come over to talk to her, who’d asked if he could touch her and feel the baby, and that had damn near made her day—except for the moment where she could have sworn he’d muttered part of the “Mirror, Mirror” nursery rhyme—but that was probably her hormones shifting her imagination into overdrive. He’d been so sweet to her, had made her feel so much better…and there was something about his touching her that sent a…a tingling sensation through her. It was such a lovely moment. No woman in her right mind could feel depressed after that.