It's Never too Late

“Ask her for custody.”

She turned toward him. “Do you think Ella would give it to you?” Visions of a single Mark living next door with Nonnie and a newborn flashed through her mind. A play pool, right there, just a couple of yards from her fountain. Little fingers reaching up over the edges of the rock bowl...

“If I paid her she might.”

“You’re kidding.”

“It wouldn’t be easy for her, but I think there’s a chance, if she decides that she doesn’t want to marry me, that she’ll agree to give me custody of the baby. I know she’s always been afraid of being a single mom.”

“Afraid? Why?”

“Ella barely graduated from high school. There’s not a lot around Bierly for her to do. Her job at the factory, there’s no room for her to advance there. She could take sideway moves, but let’s just say she’s never going to get rich. Or even make enough, on her own, to buy a home.”

“You’d pay child support.”

“That would help with the child’s expenses, but I’d also expect joint custody, which means she’d be equally responsible for half of the expenses.”

He’d clearly given this a lot of thought. And was a lot more in control than he’d been four days before, when he’d first come to her with the news.

He had that sense about him. That he could handle anything. Including her deception?

“It’s hard, being a single mom in Bierly, for another reason. There aren’t a lot of options there, relationship wise. Even fe

wer when you’re asking a guy to take on someone else’s kid.”

“You’d think, if someone loved her he would...and at our age, chances are he’d have kids, too.”

“Having a baby will greatly limit her social life, which means that she’ll have fewer opportunities to be out meeting people.”

“Partying.” She said it again, needing to not like the other woman.

“Yeah, maybe, but not like you might think. Ella doesn’t do drugs. And she won’t drink enough to get drunk.”

“Still, she’d sell her kid so that she’d doesn’t have to stay home at night?”

“Maybe not. She really wants a family and I think she’ll make a good mom. As long as the situation is right for her. I’m just saying I don’t know.”

“Are you planning to find out?”

“I don’t know that yet, either....”

The statement hung there. As if he wanted something from her.

“I wouldn’t do it,” she blurted into the night. “Not for money or opportunity, not even if I thought my child would have a better financial future without me. I think a mother’s love is more important than any of that.”

“What about a father’s love?”

“Of course.” She was talking to a father-to-be. “The point is, a child needs love more than he or she needs financial security. And knowing that, I would keep my child with me at all costs.”

She saw that little play pool again. And thought about giving her child away so that she’d have an easier life...

“Would you raise a child by yourself if it came to that?”

“I don’t think I’d deliberately get pregnant, if that’s what you’re asking, but if I ended up alone and pregnant, yes, I’d raise the child.”

At the moment, being a single mom was the only way she could see it ever happening. The only man she’d ever met who’d even tempted her to think about such things in a practical sense, opening her heart to the idea of having a family of her own again, was Mark.

And he was not an option.