Ann held the phone so hard she thought it could melt in her hand. She used to think she could handle anything, but this? This was too much.

“I know what Michael did is hurtful, but you don’t see him clearly. You don’t know the kinds of people I’ve known. He’s had to look out for himself, do whatever it takes to survive. I think he thinks he’s doing you a favor. You’ll keep this a secret.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“Here’s what you do. When you tell your parents, you say Michael’s the dad just like he worked out. He gets something in exchange for lying. Fair’s fair I guess, as unpleasant as it is. He has a price, and I paid it. This sucks for me too, you know.”

“My whole future just blew up. Don’t tell me what sucks for you.”

“I’m basically giving up any opportunity to get to know my child, and I don’t even have proof that it really is mine. You think that’s easy for me?” His cold voice softened for a moment. “Having a kid is hard, but it’s not the end of the world. My boys, they mean the world to me. You saw that. I’d never go back in time and wish they hadn’t been born. I didn’t believe in God until I looked in their eyes. But look, Michael is long gone, and I can be long gone, too, if that’s what’s best. You just play along. You’re independent, I can see that. That’s why I liked you. You raise the kid the way you want. Your parents will help, you know that. Or you put it up for adoption for some nice family. The money in that account will still be yours, and you’ll get it a month at a time so we don’t raise any eyebrows.”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s not to know? The way I look at it, and probably the way Michael does, too, is that he’s doing us both a favor.”

All the rest was a blur. His insistence that this was simple appealed to her, it did. She needed a check to appear every month, just like Anthony had said it would. It sounded like there was so much money that it would never run out.

Ann still had so many questions about what Michael had done. It didn’t feel right to her. But she needed a narrative, a story. So, when her father burst into her bedroom demanding to know what Michael had “done” to her, that was the story she told. “Oh, Ann,” he said, racked with disappointment. “How could you let this happen?”

If he’d responded differently and said something less inadvertently hurtful, she might not have stuck to it with as much tenacity.