Three's Company

Part 5

David really didn't listen to the message, and since they were on the front row, he couldn't visit like he was hoping to.

When the service ended he was hoping for more than a 'thanks for coming,  hope to see you Sunday ' that he got from Andi.  The boys shook his hand and asked him to come again.

He knew Andi wanted to go slow with the boys, and he understood why,  but it was killing him not to tell them who he was.

Saturday, the clinic was silent and he knew that at least his mom would be home when he called.

"Davy!" He heard on the other end of the phone.

"Hey, mom.  Is dad home."

"No, sweety, he out golfing.  You know your dad," she said with an exhausted sigh. "How did you settle in?  Has the office changed?"

"Nothing's changed here.  It was like everything was frozen in time," he told her.

"Ugh, I don't know how you could stand that.  It drove me crazy while we lived there."

"I saw Andi," he told her.

A long pause met him at the other end of the phone before she said, "And how is she?"

David noted the nervous quiver in his mom's voice.

"Please tell me you didn't have a clue.  Please tell me this was all his idea."

Silence met him again and he knew the answer.

"Dave," his mom began to say but he quickly cut her off.

"How could you do that to her?!  How could you do that to me!?"

"We were trying to protect your future."

"Those two boys were...are my future," he exclaimed.

"Two boys?"

It was then he realized that not only had they jerked him away in the middle of the night,  but they didn't bother keeping track of Andi to find out how she and her baby was.  They didn't even have a clue they were twins.

"I've got two identical twin boys," he told her, "their names are-"

"I don't want to know their names," she quickly cut him off. "You don't even know if they are yours so why are you so upset?"

"I don't need a paternity test to know they are mine.  It's like staring in a sixteen-year-old reversal mirror."

"I don't regret moving, David. If we would have stayed, you probably would have insisted on marrying her, got stuck in a dead end minimum wage job, and divorced before you were twenty.   You would have wasted your life away."

His mom's words engaged him.   He might not have gone to medical school, but he knew he would have been happy.   Andi was the love of his life, and he would have been his boys' father.

"It wasn't your or dad's decision!"

"You were a minor and our child.  It was our decision and we made the right one."

David knew they were trying to have his best interest at heart, but he didn't believe that his mom really thought she and his dad made the right decision, "What about Andi?  You were luck everything turn out fine for her."

"Andi had her Aunt Aggie, and besides, everyone knew she'd turn out just like her mom.  If it wasn't you that knocked her up she would have found some other boy to get the job done."

Listening to his mom talk about Andi like that infuriated him, "IT WAS MY RESPONSIBLY!  I WILL never forgive either of you for this."

David hung up the phone before his mom could utter another syllable.  He needed to get his mind off what his parents did.  He applauded Andi's ability to let things go and forgive everyone for what happened.  She didn't seem bitter about how her life turned out.  Maybe because she had time to forgive, but David wasn't sure he could ever forgive his parents for what they did.  

He grabbed his keys and locked up the office.  He just needed to get some fresh air.  As he walked the heaved sidewalks he kept his eyes down on the sidewalks.  He thought about what his mom said.  She did this for his best interest.  He wondered how his life would have turned out if they would have stayed.  How would have his sixteen-year-old self reacted when he found out Andi was pregnant.

He was certain he would have been shocked.  They were careful.  They did exactly what teens were told when it came to "safe" sex.   Things he had instructed other teens to do during his internship.  He knew that even though condom companies claim to be ninety-eight percent effective, in real life it was more like eighty-five percent.  That meant fifteen out of every one hundred people who use them get pregnant.  He never thought he and Andi would be one of the fifteen.

Sixteen-year-old David would have wanted to stay with Andi.  He knew he would have wanted to be responsible for getting her pregnant.  David, even at sixteen, David wanted to marry Andi.  He was wanting to ask her at their high school graduation.  He would have married her, he knew it.  His parents were probably right.  He probably wouldn't have been able to go to medical school.  He wouldn't have been able to live his dream, as far as his career went, but he thought he still would have been happy.

When David stopped walking he found himself in front of Andi's floral shop.  He wasn't paying attention to where he was walking but instinctively found himself in front of the very person he was thinking about's store.

Inside the store window, he could see her on a ladder it looked like she was rearranging some of the store decor.  Andi was wearing blue jeans and a tee that she had gotten in high school.  It seemed ironic that she looked exactly how she did in high school.  David felt like he had stepped back in time watching her through the window.  He wouldn't have been a bit surprised if he saw Aunt Aggie hobble out of the back, to tell Andi how to arrange the decorations perfectly.  The thought made him smile, but it wasn't without a hint of pain.  He had missed so much in the last sixteen years and he only had his parents to blame.