And I’m the father, aren’t I?
Nobody else could be.
That’s why, he said. That’s what I’m talking about.
She looked at him in the front seat of the car. The motor was still running. She felt cold standing out in the open air in the parking lot. Six months had passed since he’d left and things had happened to her, but what had changed for him? He looked no different. He was thin and dark and his hair was curly and she still thought he was very good looking. But she didn’t want to feel anything at all for him anymore. She had thought she was over those feelings. She believed she was. He had left without telling her he was leaving and she was already pregnant then, and afterward her mother wouldn’t let her in the house and then she couldn’t stay any longer with Mrs. Jones because of her old father, so she had gone out into the country with the two McPheron brothers and as unlikely as that had seemed that was turning out all right, and lately it was better than all right. Now, unexpectedly, here he was again. She didn’t know what to feel.
Why don’t you get in? he said. At least you could do that. You’re going to freeze like a hunk of ice standing out there. I didn’t come back to make you get cold, Vicky.
She looked away from him. The sun was bright. But it didn’t feel warm. It was a bright cold winter day and nothing was moving, no one else was even outside, the other high school kids were in their afternoon classes. She looked at their cars in the parking lot. Some had frost forming inside the windows. The cars had been there since eight in the morning. They looked cold and desolate.
Aren’t you even going to talk to me? he said.
She looked at him. I shouldn’t even be here, she said.
Yes you should. I come back for you. I should of called during these months, I know. I’ll apologize for that. I’ll say I was wrong. Come on, though. You’re getting cold.
She continued to look at him. She couldn’t think. He was waiting. From across the pavement came a gust of wind; she felt it on her face. She looked out toward the patches of snow on the football field and toward the empty stands rising up on either side. She looked back at him once more. He was still watching her. Then, without knowing she was going to, she walked around the rear of the car and got in on the other side and closed the door. It was warm inside. They sat facing each other. He didn’t try to touch her yet. He knew that much. But after a while he turned forward and put the car in gear.
I missed you, he said. He was speaking straight ahead, talking over the steering wheel of the black Plymouth.
I don’t believe you, she said. Why don’t you tell me the truth.
That is the truth, he said.
. . .
They left Holt driving west on 34, driving out into the winter landscape. When they got out past Norka after half an hour they began to see the mountains, a faint jagged blue line low on the horizon a hundred miles farther away. They didn’t talk very much. He was smoking and the radio was playing from Denver and she was looking out the side window at the brown pastures and the dark corn stubble, the shaggy cattle and the regular intervals of telephone poles, like crosses strung beside the railroad tracks, standing up above the dry ditch weeds. Then they arrived in Brush and turned up onto the interstate and went on west, going faster now on the good road, and passed Fort Morgan where in the freezing air the fog from the sewage plant drifted across the highway, and about then she decided to say what she had been thinking for the last five minutes. I wish you wouldn’t smoke in the car.
He turned toward her. You never cared before, he said.
I wasn’t pregnant before.
That’s a fact.
He rolled the window down and flicked the burning cigarette outside into the rushing air and turned the window up again.
How will that be? he said.
Better.
How come you have to sit so far away? he said. I never bit you before, did I?