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Show All the Variables & Other Love Stories 103 He smoothed his mustache and reflected upon what he'd said. "Whatever you decide for yourself, your ma will be okay with it. Don't worry." Angie shrugged, "I don't care." Her dad dandled Cleo and made goo-goo noises into her little face. Cleo fought him off by pulling his mustache every time his face came close enough. Angie's dad said, "Do you want to marry Patrick, or is your ma barking up the wrong tree again?" Angie couldn't say, not even to herself, what her feelings for Patrick were. Only that she felt warm inside whenever she thought of him, and disappointed whenever she was with him. "Well, guess who I saw yesterday," her dad whispered, and leaned conspiratorially toward her, as if they weren't the only souls in the apartment. "Cory. The devil himself. Asked me how you were." Angie winced. She'd known she was pregnant as soon as Cory broke up with her, and she'd hated knowing Cleo was the child of her rejection. For months now she had tried to reeducate herself, for Cleo's sake. She knew it wasn't good for the baby to be considered a bad omen. Angie understood that babies received unspoken information from their mothers, that even if Angie never spoke an ill word to Cleo the baby would still somehow know that she symbolized her father's rejection of her mother. Angie tried to convince herself it was a coincidence, what she experienced after the breakup had been the fear of being pregnant, not the knowledge. Nevertheless, the prophecy which came over her grim as a thunderhead had come to pass, and there was no denying she had predicted it. |