That made sense. If Olivia found out that Brandon had cheated on her with my sister and had knocked her up, she would probably break off the engagement. Once a cheater, always a cheater. All that Servais money would be gone.
“I hate to change the subject, but are you on birth control now?”
“Yeah. I got an IUD when I moved here. I don’t want another kid for like ten years. I learned that lesson.”
She continued on with her story. “I didn’t want Brandon to stiff me on child support like Dad did Mom. I wanted it all up front. Once I turned eighteen, I drove Mom to work, drove to Milwaukee, got one of those short-term phones and started calling lawyers. Most of them were assholes who wanted half of my settlement for doing squat. I finally reached a black woman named LaTanya White. She was great. She was supportive from the beginning and gave me advice on how to act to up the stakes. She suggested I get one of those T-shirts that had ‘Baby’ and an arrow down on it so everyone would know that I was pregnant. She suggested I attend Pastor Lemke’s church. She suggested the line about half the boys in my class could be the father to make me sound like a total slut. Pastor Lemke preached a sermon at least once a month that all but called me out by name.” Nicole dropped the pitch of her voice to mimic Pastor Lemke. “Young people are leading this country down the wrong path with their sexual immorality. Rather than striving hard in school, they are striving to have as much sex as they can. Rather than be shamed by their moral failures, they proudly march around pregnant. We need to go back to the Christian principals that made this country great. Parents need to teach their kids to wait until marriage for sex.”
“Did Brandon ever talk to you?”
“No. He was at the church regularly, but I always sat far from where he sat and he never tried to find me. When I was seven months pregnant, I went to see Pastor Lemke for a counseling session. I guessed he thought I wanted to talk to him about giving the baby up for adoption. Once the door was closed, I told him Brandon was the father and that my lawyer wanted to talk to him. I handed him my cell phone and he talked with LaTanya. LaTanya handled everything from there. I don’t know what she told him, but he was white as a sheet.”
If word got out that Brandon had gotten the town slut drunk, fucked her and knocked her up, would his Dad be able to keep his job? By his own standards, Pastor Lemke had failed terribly as a parent. Why would anyone listen to him anymore?
“When the call was over, I took my phone and said ‘bye. I never spoke to him or Brandon again. They hired a Milwaukee lawyer and they agreed to pay me a nice settlement in return for keeping my mouth shut, leaving town and never coming back.”
“How much did you get?”
“When I signed the agreement, ten thousand. Most of that went for having Owen. Once I left town, I got 75 thousand. As long as I honor the confidentially part of the agreement, I get another 75 thousand every three years until Owen is eighteen, when I get a final payment of a quarter of a million. It’s all in a escrow account, earning interest. That may sound like a lot of money, but it isn’t. I have struggled to stay on budget while constantly penny pinching. If Brandon had taken custody of Owen, childcare and raising him on the Lemke standard of living would cost a lot more that 25 thousand a year.”