When I got to the park she was sitting at a bench near the carousel. I bent over and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. She eschewed any small talk.
“There’s something that I need to tell you, Scott; I’m pregnant.”
“What!” I exclaimed. “Bu…bu…but you told me you couldn’t have kids.”
“That’s what I thought because Jack had fathered two children and since that proved that he was potent I assumed that I couldn’t when we tried and failed.”
“Is it Jack’s” I asked.
“No; once I found out that I was pregnant I looked through all his medical papers and found out that the asshole had a vasectomy before we married and never told me about it. I hate him for that. There is no doubt that the kid is yours; however my doctor says that we can confirm parentage after nine weeks with a simple blood test. She also told me that I’m six weeks pregnant which conforms exactly to the night you deposited a liter of seminal fluid into me.”
We sat looking at each other without saying anything for a few minutes. Then I smiled broadly, got down on one knee, removed her wedding and engagement rings, and held her engagement ring near her finger and asked “Michelle Jenkins nee Randle, will you make me the happiest man in the world and marry me?”
After a delay with words choking in her voice she replied “You don’t have to do this.”
I responded “No, I don’t; but I want to more than anything else in the world.”
“I’ll need help with my divorce,” she retorted.
“I’ll give you whatever you need.”
She started lightly sobbing and then said “Yes,” and I slipped the engagement ring back on her finger, but not the wedding ring.
We both called into work and told them we wouldn’t be back that afternoon and then in the most loving experience of our lives for the next three hours we consummated our engagement in a Four Seasons Hotel next to Grant Park.
**************
Michelle and I made very careful plans, knowing the shit that was going to fly from the Jenkins family. I bought a small house a week after my proposal to her and bought her an engagement ring from me. She started wearing it instead of the engagement ring from Jack and her wedding ring – Jack never even noticed. Of course the blood test at nine weeks of her pregnancy confirmed that the little boy she was carrying was mine.
As soon as my divorce from Brie was final – Michelle had just started to show – she moved out of the Jenkins house into the house that I had purchased. Once she was settled in I called Jack, Brie, and Brenda and gave them the “good news.” They were all furious and called me every bad name they could think of. I simply let them vent – and that probably pissed them off even more since they eventually hung up on me, not vice-versa.
Faced with his failure to advise Michelle of his vasectomy, the fact that Michelle was pregnant with my kid, and the fact that Michelle and I weren’t seeking anything except her personal possessions and $10,000, Jack actually cooperated in expediting his divorce from Michelle. Michelle was divorced, and we had married, before little Kevin was born.