Disclaimer: Still Sorkin's. Still Wells'. Still not mine.

Note: Continues from Unbroken Road. Props to Rowing Goddess.


A Curve in the Road

By Lizka

They were complaining again. Words spilled out of the two men at a rapid pace, insults and sly remarks flowing out of them in such a way that it was clear that they had done this before. She was starting to lose her patience. Donna clenched her left hand on her steering wheel, and turned up her car's volume with her right. "Any requests?" she asked, interrupting the two politicos as they debated who the better Jew was. It sounded like an old argument. They needed to stop, for the sake of her sanity and for the sake of the United States government – she was three words away from strangling both men with their own ties, and she didn't want to give birth to her first child while in prison.

Frankly, she was starting to regret offering to give these guys a ride. They were supposed to be brilliant, capable men who practically ran the government. It was their own fault that they missed their motorcade. What was more, it sounded like it was something that had happened before, in Indianapolis, maybe. She was surprised that democracy hadn't yet crumbled, and there was still running water.

She didn't know when she opened her mouth. Afterward, it took a little while for her to realize that they had fallen silent. She may have yelled. She may have been cutting. There might have been a fair amount of snarling on her part as well, not to mention a one-handed-strangling gesture. She was still driving the car, after all.

Now they were staring at her with wide-eyed looks of fear, not unlike the one her youngest niece gets when confronted with a spider.

She could see it now: Donnatella Feldman – Black Widow.

She sighed, and tried to put the men at ease before they sicced the Secret Service on her rapidly inflating ass. "Hormones," she said by way of apology. "I'm pregnant." Even before the word fully left her mouth, her mouth stretched into such a wide grin that she thought the corner of her lips would touch her ears. She still wasn't used to saying it aloud, let alone to two strangers that she literally (well, sort of) picked up off the side of the road.

"Congratulations," said the man beside her. He had obviously learned not to annoy her further, which was wise of him. His face broke into a huge grin. It was a great grin. If she wasn't already married, she'd be bugging her friends to see if he liked her.

"How far along are you?" asked the man in the backseat, still cautious but genuinely interested.

"One month." This was much better. No bickering, no heated debates about the intelligence of Rob Ritchie, no I-can-out-Jew-you contests; just simple, honest talk that would in no way cause her overtaxed hormones to flare up. Their conversation had moved from pregnancy (Toby had a surprising amount of knowledge about human gestation), to music (Josh loved the Doobie Brothers, and had memorized way too many Van Morrison songs), to books. Toby was, unsurprisingly, quite vehement about his opinions on the state of modern literature, as well as the lack of spelling and punctuation skills that plagued most of the populace.

"It's not ridiculous to demand precision in language. One word can alter the nuance of an entire statement, and in some cases, change the meaning all together. Yet today, very few teachers bother to properly correct spelling and grammar, or to teach proper punctuation!"

"It's a crisis," Donna agreed as they engaged into a friendly debate about the educational crisis in America. They pulled up to an intersection as the light turned red. From the amount of fidgeting going on in the passenger side seat, she could tell that Josh was getting antsy. "Relax. We'll get there on time," she said as she watched the pedestrians go by.

Woman with a baby stroller. Teenagers with backpacks. Man with groceries. A couple, both in baseball caps and sunglasses. A blind man with his dog. The couple stopped in front of the car, kissed, and walked passed arm in arm, and Donna caught a glimpse of the man's face. She knew that man in the blue baseball cap; she knew that the wedding ring on his finger was a match to her own.

The light turned green, and Donna hit the gas.

"You're both lawyers, right?"

The two men nodded as they looked at her anxiously as she began to speed past the other cars.

"Do you know anyone who does divorce?"