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Show All the Variables & Other Love Storiesl04 She had considered having an abortion but in the end could not go through with it. Cory had taken her to Planned Parenthood, watched the videos reviewing their options with her, explaining the procedures of adoption and abortion. She read the literature, the testimonials, the lectures on the responsibilities and hardships of being a young mother. The staff at the clinic had been particularly compassionate, she remembered, and their kindness had made her cry. She'd wanted them to treat her with disgust, but they had not. In the end she'd known abortion would be the smartest option, but she couldn't do it. She'd kept thinking about how the baby-which wasn't yet a person even to her, just the idea of a baby-was part of her and her mother and her father, and she couldn't bear to obliterate that. It was especially the idea of her father that kept her from doing it. She could never harm anything connected to him, not his granddaughter, not anything. Cory had shaken his head, scoffed, and called her a whore. That was the last time she saw him, when she told him she was going to bear his child. "Did you tell him to go to hell?" Angie asked. Her dad grinned. "I told him to come see what a good looking kid he's got here." Angie took the baby from him and walked away. "What makes you think Cleo wants to see him? I don't think she does. I don't think she'd like him." "Well, whichever one you want, it don't matter to me. I just want you to know that, sweetheart. I think both of them are decent kids." Angie sighed and shook her head. She felt like crying, but instead put Cleo in her high chair and smashed up a banana on the plastic tray. Angie was happy to see her dad, but now she just wished he'd go. |
