“You don’t have to wait.” When she reached into her purse, I frowned. When she pulled out a baggie, my eyes widened. “I got her baby’s pacifier and his brush.”

“Oh, my goodness,” I said, slipping the baggie from her fingers. “How?”

“I told you I hung out with her all day yesterday. Whew.” Dru leaned back in the seat like the thought of yesterday exhausted her. “When she’d asked me if I wanted to hang out, I thought she would be taking her son to the park or something. But no, that chick had me in her car all day long as she ran errands. And she got out of the car one too many times leaving me alone with her baby and the diaper bag. That’s when I came up with the idea to....”

“Steal the child's pacifier?"

She nodded as if what she’d done was no big deal. "I took the pacifier and the brush because I wasn’t sure which would work better for DNA. I’ve never done this Maury Povich stuff before, but I kinda like it.”

“I can’t believe you did this,” I said, looking down at the bag.

"Look, desperate times call for desperate measures. She wasn’t giving up any information about the father and truthfully, even if she’d said it was Jeremy, this is what you’d need. You have to have a DNA test done so that you can know for sure. If he’s not the father, this will give you peace. And if he is, you need to go to him with more proof than just Sharonne’s word.

“Locked and loaded,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s one way to put it.”

As I sat staring at the baggie, I couldn’t believe my life had come to this. First sitting in front of the house of a woman who might have been my husband’s jump off and now, I was holding a baggie with DNA stolen from a baby who may or may not belong to Jeremy. I hadn’t been raised this way, but I guess that wasn’t any kind of insurance policy from having to deal with this kind of reality television drama.

Dru gently took the bag from my hands, as if she knew I was in a fragile state. “We have to do this, Ginger. You need to know definitively one way or the other. You need to know in order to make any decision. Because honestly, if it’s just Katrina, then....”

“You think I should stay and work it out,” I said before she could finish.

She nodded. “But this, a baby....”

“Changes the game,” I interrupted her again.

“It does, though I’m not saying that means you should leave.”

“Are you kidding me? My husband fathers a child out of wedlock and I’m supposed to stay? You know who you sound like, right?”