She said, “I guess they can’t, can they? But anyway, some of the doctors advised me to adjust my diet and lose up to thirty pounds. They said I would gain about fifty during pregnancy.

“So, over the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking about adopting again as an option. Not to say that I wouldn’t want to change my diet and lose some pounds, because I’m still deciding on that. But you know, picking up another fifty pounds in pregnancy would be…Whew!”

I chuckled. “That’s all a part of getting pregnant, Kim. You had to have known that. You’re carrying a developing body inside of you.”

I said, “But let’s say you got pregnant, right, in a regular relationship with a guy that you stopped seeing; would you go ahead and have the baby anyway and not tell him?”

Kim cut straight through the bullshit and asked me, “Somebody filed a paternity suit against you?”

“Nah,” I told her, “I’m just bringing the issue up.”

“Terrance, if you need to talk to me about this, then we need to talk straight. Now you know this is not going to go anywhere. So what’s going on?”

Looked like I had let the cat out the bag. I said, “I don’t have a paternity suit, but I do have a woman who says that the child is mine. So I’m going out there to investigate it this weekend.”

“What do you mean, investigate it?”

“Well, she wants me to meet the child and all of that to see.”

“Are you gonna take a blood test?”

“Of course.”

Kim paused and said, “Mmmph.”

“Ain’t that ironic?” I asked her. “And this went down four years ago.”

“And she’s just getting in touch with you now?”

“Yup.”

“Mmmph,” Kim grunted again. “And the plot thickens. So, how do you feel about it? I know you’re pissed off.”

“Yeah, but what can I do about it now? If it’s mine, it’s here.”

“Well, what do you feel about the woman? And stop saying ‘it.’ Is the baby a boy or a girl?”

“A girl,” I told her.

“What’s her name?”

Kim was really getting into it.

I said, “Kim, the main issue here is whether this is right or wrong.”

“Who’s to say?” she asked me. “I bet if you asked that child if it was right, she’d rather be alive than aborted.”

“Kim, the girl can’t even think that complicated.”

“Yes, she can, too. And she can also respond to not being wanted.”

It sounded as if I was losing the battle. How quickly I had forgotten that Kim would rather side with life than death on the abortion issue.

I said, “Well, I can see where this is going. And just to let you know, I’m not flying out there to cuss the woman out or anything. I’m already at peace with it. We just have to go through the figuring-out process.”

“So, do you think she’s yours?”

“There’s a possibility.”

“Is the mother a loose woman?”