Oh Crap!

Andrew sat staring at the picture on his Droid of Bridget pointing to a pooched out stomach with the caption "YOURS!"

He found that he had lost interest in the snooker tournament as his mind kept wheeling around and around. She could be lying. She could be pregnant but it's someone else's. After Siobhan, anything awful was all too possible.

The lie of her being pregnant when she wasn't would become ... obvious ... soon. But who was the father? Malcolm? Solomon? Agent Machado? It could have been Kenny the doorman for all he knew.

He turned off the TV and then noticed that his phone was beeping again, no doubt another message from Bridget telling him to hurry over. He pulled it up. It was from Juliet. "Am safe. Aweso u 2 overdue w/ that banging! MorF? WBS. ILU." He read it a couple of times. If he guessed the meaning of the message correctly then he didn't need to tell her the news.

His mind ran into a thousand paths of confusion. What did he do now? Sunday of last week he would have been overjoyed if his wife of seven years had told him that she was pregnant. Now he had an ex-girlfriend he wasn't married to that was pregnant and a murderer with a gun and reason to kill him for a wife.

Foremost on his mind was Juliet. Bridget and Juliet were back to being fast friends. Women always stuck together to control men. But he knew he could not do or say anything that would permanently damage his relationship with Juliet and that meant that if it were his child then he was definitely going to have to be financially responsible and to not be an absentee father.

That is what he had been, an absentee father. He had been the financial father but little more. He had devoted his time and energy to climbing his way to the top and not to his family. Could he have made a marriage with Catherine? He wondered and as he wondered the uncertainty in his mind about whose fault it was greatly bothered him. Would she have slid into her addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs if he had been there each night as a loving husband and father? He shook his head, unable to ever know for sure.

Could he ever make up to this baby for that sinking feeling he had when he thought of those years he had left Juliet with Catherine after the divorce? He felt so relieved that she was growing up into a normal young woman and not like the drugged out residents of one rehab center after another that other fathers had talked about, mainly while working late at night and with a drink in their hands as they drank their sorrows about their children away. Juliet would get away with what she could. She could be a brat, be greedy, be ungrateful, self centered, uncaring, moody and utterly foolish yet she had occasional sensible moments. In other words, she was a normal teen-aged girl. He was very fortunate.

No, he wasn't. Six months ago Juliet had been on the path of teen-age self destruction. He wasn't the one who had been there to turn her around and he had to admit it.

He washed up, shaved, and put on a casual set of clothes. He should look comfortable and in control. He had the new doorman hail him a cab.

As the cab went down Second Avenue towards Steinberg's Deli he looked out the window and tried to compose himself by watching the people and listening to the familiar sound of the honking traffic and the sirens. It was hopeless. His mind kept going around in circles as he tried to decided what he wanted. By now, he honestly had no idea. The route was so familiar. He knew the stores, office buildings and restaurants before they appeared yet nothing quite seemed real. Everything felt unreal, almost like a repeating dream.

He paid the cab and went inside, looking around. Sophie spotted him. "She's not here," she said.

"Where is she?"

"She went to Mass." She looked at the clock. "She'll be back in maybe half an hour. She did leave something for you."

He took it from her. It was a sonogram image. He looked at it and stared and stared.

Moe walked up to him. "You should take a seat. Can I get you anything."

Andrew nodded dimly. "A cup of tea, with lemon and sugar." He took his raincoat and hat off and sat, taking in the reality of everything. He looked again at the picture. That was a baby. Was he imagining it or was that his father's nose?

He pulled out his phone and did some google research on paternity tests and the law in New York. It gave him some options and a minimum and a maximum amount on how much this would cost him.

Moe brought a pot of hot water and tea bags for him. Andrew made himself a cup and sipped some. The hot, familiar liquid was soothing to him.

Andrew was still researching when Bridget came back. "Andrew," she said, sounding pleased and more than a little surprised to see him. He looked up and did his best smile.

Bridget took off her wellies and coat and put them and her umbrella away. Sophie smiled. "They were K-mart's best." Bridget looked at her counter and looked at Andrew and then looked back to her counter. "Go, sit. Moe can make sandwiches a little longer."

She sat. "Hi," she said nervously. "I guess you got the message."

He nodded awkwardly. "I did."

"I'm keeping it."

That answered that question. His understanding of Juliet settled the matter of trying to get her to do anything different. It would not be worth it. "How far along are you?"

"The sonogram woman said about ten weeks."

"And you've known ..."

"I found out for sure yesterday. I've kind of suspected since ..." She wrinkled her nose, thinking. "I think about two weeks ago I suspected it."

"And you didn't tell me?"

"I thought it was from being poisoned by Catherine at first. But then I felt worse. I figured it was just stress. Having three people try to murder me in less than a month is enough to make anyone feel like they are going to throw up. It wasn't until I came here and I was relaxed and calm and I still felt sick that I was sure."

He had to admit she had tried twice on Friday. "Now what?"

She shrugged. "Now I go and make sandwiches."

"You make sandwiches?"

"For as many months as I can." She looked deep in his eyes. "I am OK with staying here and working as long as I can. I am grateful for the people who help me and having as much as I do and I am doing my best to remember that and stay in the now but the third trimester has me really worried. Sooner or later I just won't be able to work. I'm not even sure how I'll pay for the hospital. This is just an hourly minimum wage."

He nodded. "How do I know it's mine?"

"It is. I can't prove it for seven more months but it is. I love you, Andrew. You and only you. Like nobody I have ever loved before. I want to be with you and only you until I die. I want to care for you and I want to help you and I want you and ONLY you in my bed at night. Since I became Siobhan and fell in love with you, the thought of sex with any other man ... makes me kind of disgusted."

He wanted to answer that he loved her too but it wasn't within him. Did he love her and was he just too afraid to admit it? "What if we could prove it, now?"

She waved her hand and backed away. "I've heard of these tests where they stick needles into the baby. No thanks. I'll work here first."

"Nothing like that. It's a new test. It's just a small blood sample from you. It takes about a week to get the results. I'm not sure if you're still too early. Some web sites say nine weeks, some say twelve weeks, some say it's fourteen weeks. They advertise it's 99.9% accurate."

She lit up like a Christmas tree and rubbed his hand. "That's wonderful! Just promise me one thing?"

"What?"

"If it says no, don't be a butt face about getting tested after the baby is born. I know it's yours. I don't want to be the one in a thousand that gets stuck because a fancy new test is wrong." Bridget watched him carefully. It wasn't going as bad as she feared or as well as she had hoped.

He looked at her. "I promise." What she said, it wasn't Siobhan talking. He could never see Siobhan being grateful for the chance to work making sandwiches for minimum wage. Quiet, honest work had always been her enemy. He tried to remember Siobhan ever saying she really and truly loved him. Not the "Love you" that was always used by a married couple to end a phone call, but really acting like she felt and meant it. Siobhan had always been a trophy wife. She hit on him at a vulnerable spot as Catherine was systematically destroying his ego and the whole world around him.

He looked at Bridget's sweet, innocent face and blinked and he saw Siobhan shooting John DeLario. Her sister was a killer. She was a killer. She killed someone less than a week ago and now he was talking with her about love and paternity tests. What had he gotten himself into?