“I’m guessing Mamá told you about my situation.”
“Si, si.” Daisy marked his emotional state by his reflexive reversion to Spanish. Her grandfather rarely spoke anything other than English. His eyes stayed hard. “She did not share the details, only the circumstance. She said if I needed more information that you would explain yourself.”
“I see.”
He tightened his mouth and prompted her with, “This is your opportunity to explain yourself.”
She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I am pregnant and due in February.”
He gave one sharp nod of his head. “And? The father?”
Maintaining eye contact, she said, “Has nothing to do with this.”
“One might think the father has everything to do with this.”
“Yes, one might think.” Daisy lifted her chin. “Nevertheless.”
He raised his eyebrows and gestured in her direction. “You dare to speak so flippantly to me?” She wondered if he realized he had switched from English back to Spanish again. “So disrespectful?”
She gently shook her head. In Spanish, she said, “Abuelo, I have absolutely no disrespect for you at all. I love you, and I’m sorry that you’re upset with me.”
“No.” He tapped the top of the table with his finger. “We are not going to discuss your emotional state right now. We’re going to discuss actions and reactions. So, explain to me why you would become pregnant by a man who now will have nothing to do with the child.”
She licked her lips and tried to formulate words that would properly explain the situation. “Unfortunately, I didn’t know he was married. He wooed me with promises and plans that he didn’t mean, but I believed. Maybe I just wanted to believe. Maybe I ignored the clues. When I first discovered I was pregnant, I went to talk to him, and that’s when I found out for certain.”
She’d had two solid weeks since her emergency room visit and had time to think about exactly how she felt about this baby. She knew she spoke the complete truth with the next words out of her mouth. “I spent weeks scared and sad and angry. I even, to my shame, contemplated how easy everything would be if I just wasn’t pregnant anymore. But I have been on my knees for the last two weeks giving everything over to God, and I can tell you that I love this baby, and I am thankful that the father wants nothing to do with the child or with me. He is not a good man.”
Unexpectedly, tears filled her grandfather’s eyes. “I wish you had made a different decision.”
She pulled a verse from Romans eight out of her mind. “All things work together for good, though, don’t they? God can use this. I’m not proud of myself, but I’m very much looking forward to meeting my baby.”
“Granddaughter, when I gave you the mission that I had spent my whole life building, I trusted you to maintain a certain character and hold yourself to a certain moral standard. This tells me I was wrong in trusting you.”
Her breath hitched. “Abuelo, do you think I have a loose moral code? I made a single mistake one time and was seduced by a very skilled liar. I love God, and I serve Him. Everything I do day after day is to serve Him. The Bible says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. I’m sorry my sin is something that’s manifesting physically. But the fact is, no man is good. No, not even one.”
She just quoted three different Bible verses in one conversation. If he didn’t accept her words, then he had thrown a veil over his own eyes that prevented him from grasping it. And if it meant that he revoked her position as Executive Director of his ministry and handed her a bill for law school, then so be it.
He held his hand out, palm up. She looked at the wrinkled skin the color of soft leather for several moments before she put her hand in his. He squeezed tightly as tears fell from his eyes. “I am proud of your courage today.”
When he let her go, her grandmother came into the room with a meat platter next to a pile of corn tortillas. “Time to eat, yes?” she said with a grin. “I made you lingua.”
“Thank you, Abuela, it smells amazing.” Her grandmother knew how much she loved beef tongue. As she set out her roasted pepper sauce and a pitcher of water, Daisy noticed that her grandmother never mentioned her grandfather’s obvious emotional state or the tense air around them. It made her wonder how much she knew and how much she’d heard.
By the end of the meal, they didn’t treat her any differently than they always had. When she left, they both hugged her goodbye.
Ignoringthe other women in the waiting room, Daisy turned the page in her book and continued reading the details about what to expect during the sixteenth week of pregnancy. From the picture in the book, she should already show a little more. She ran her hand over the slight swell of her stomach and wondered if it was normal to still be so small. She’d have to ask Dr. Reynolds.
“Daisy?” She glanced up and spotted Valerie.
Her heart immediately started racing, and her mouth went dry. “Uh, hi, Valerie.” She glanced around but did not see Brad. “What are you doing here?”
Valerie gestured at her much larger stomach swell. “I’m here for my monthly appointment.” She raised an eyebrow and looked at the book, then pointedly at Daisy’s stomach. “What are you doing here?”
Her face flooded with heat and sweat beaded her upper lip. Even her scalp heated up. She hadn’t seen Valerie since having coffee with her two weeks ago.
“Same.” She cleared her throat. She had not prepared herself for this conversation. “I, uh, see Dr. Reynolds.”
Valerie carefully sat in the empty chair next to her and turned her body toward her. “Because?”
