Mark rang the door bell and waited on the porch with a bouquet of flowers in his hands. This would be the first time in seven months that he had seen Rita. He stood on the porch starring at the cement steps as he remembered the night she called him and said she wasn't going to be involved in swinging any longer.
Mark heard the sound of the door being unlocked as he stood waiting for the door to open. He saw Rita's face on the other side of the screen door immediately and smiled as he held the flowers in his hands.
"Come on in Mark. It's been so long since I saw you last."
Mark smiled as he opened the screen door and walked inside. Rita was standing behind the heavy wood door as he let the screen door shut behind him.
Mark held out the flowers. "These are for you."
Rita shit the door as she smiled and took the flowers out of his hands and leaned over to kiss Mark when he noticed her large pregnant belly.
"What's this? You're pregnant?"
Rita smiled and nervously laughed. "My baby is due in seven weeks."
"Why didn't you tell me? I was wondering why you broke off our relationship so abruptly."
Rita took a deep breath and sighed as she walked toward the kitchen with Mark trailing close behind her and started to put the flowers in a vase of water.
"I thought it would be for the best if I just worked on patching up my marriage here. I had a lot of decisions to make that lead me to keeping this baby."
Mark stood thinking for a moment then replied. "You said your baby is due in seven weeks. That puts the start of your pregnancy about the time I last saw you. Surely you don't think I'm the father do you?"
Rita laughed as she dropped the flowers into the vase and put them on the table and turned to look at Mark.
"Mark, I know you had a vasectomy so I knew you weren't responsible for this and my husband hadn't touched me in weeks so that eliminated him as well."
Mark was getting anxious as he said. "Are you going to tell me who the father is or not?"
Rita sighed as she starred past Mark's face then looked him in the eyes and said. "It's Hank's baby!"
"No wonder you didn't call me all this time. What did your husband say when you told him who the father was?"
Rita took another deep breath as she sat down at the table and started to reply.
"We had a long difficult time at first but my husband finally accepted the fact that I was carrying another man's child so we ruled out any plans for having an abortion."
Mark just looked with a blank stare on his face as he let that sink in for a moment then replied. "Do you mean that he's fine with this?"
Rita laughed shortly before explaining. "It's a long story but to sum it up in a nut shell would be that he still loved me enough to care about me and this child so we worked it all out and here I'm getting ready to be a mother for the very first time."
"What does Hank think about you having his baby?"
"Hank doesn't know about it and I want to leave it that way. Do you understand?"