Read Online The Baby Agenda by Janice Kay Johnson - Free Book Online Page A

around when I was growing up, I know it might have hurt worse if he’d been there because he felt he had to be. I really will be fine, you know. We won’t starve without you.
    If you want to look me up when you get home, that’s fine, though. I live in West Fork, and work here, too. I’m an architect, in partnership with a friend. Van Dusen & Cullen. I’m Cullen. I guess you can tell that from my email address, huh? It’s not a real physical job, which is good right now. And I’m hoping I can bring the baby to work some of the time. I know Gray, my partner, won’t mind.
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    She went on to say that she’d looked at the foundation website and was impressed with what they were trying to accomplish. She’d taken the time to read some about Zimbabwe, too, and knew how high the rate of AIDS and HIV was and how desperately more accessible medical care was needed.
    Will brooded some before he hit Reply, trying to get over being mad before he said something that would stiffen her resolve to keep him at a distance. And yeah, that made no sense when he didn’t want to be a family guy, but, man, had she turned him into a mass of warring emotions. She could enrage him quicker than the most venal local bureaucrat, and he’d done his share ofteeth grinding these past months dealing with them. She also had a way of zinging him with powerful protective impulses.
    Did she really think so little of him, she believed he’d let any kid of his feel resented?
    Damn it, damn it, damn it, he wished he couldn’t so easily picture her as a freckle-faced kid herself who couldn’t understand why she didn’t have a daddy like everyone else did. He wished he hadn’t seen that fleeting, wistful look in her eyes as she remembered.
    Finally he sighed and started typing.
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    Moira, I can promise you I won’t feel resentment. Someday I’ll tell you why I said that, about my worst nightmare. It doesn’t really matter now. You reminded me, as I recall, that life’s made up of obligations. Not all kids are planned. They should all be loved. I never doubted that my parents loved me, and I was lucky enough to have a stepmother who did, too. Another promise: I’ll love any child of mine.
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    Will hoped that was true. He wanted to believe it was. The idea of holding that baby was pretty abstract right now.
    But he thought of himself as a decent man, and even though there’d been times he had felt resentment for getting stuck raising his siblings, he thought what they’d most been aware of was security and love. Yeah, they’d probably known on some level how he felt. No twenty-year-old kid was capable of completely hiding his shock and desperation. But he’d tried, they’d understood, and he was damn proud of how they had all turned out.
    He went back to his email.
    You don’t say whether you’re feeling okay. Aren’t pregnant women supposed to be sick to their stomachs and tired? Or is that the exception?
    You’re right about the toll AIDS is costing here. It’s painful to see. Unlike in South Africa, the majority of AIDS orphans are being raised by relatives, which is a testament to the power of family here. This is a country of astonishing contrasts. The literacy rate is quite high and schools good. Meantime, out in the countryside, medical care is close to nonexistent, and what itinerant medical clinics are held are often outside, with patients lined up waiting to see a nurse who sits at a folding table beneath a shade tree. Not much that nurse can do for the desperately ill. I’m often struck by the patience people here seem to have. I imagine Americans throwing a temper tantrum because the line for the drive-through window at McDonald’s is four cars long.
    My part in this project is less important than the care that will be provided—the nurses and doctors, the AIDS cocktails, the surgical supplies. I provide only