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stay. Leave it to Samantha, that resourceful young schemer, to wind up with a pro bono handmaiden. Yes, I was bitter about the broken promises and forged medical documents. But I also knew she was making the best out of the limited resources she had. After all, she was taking care of a three-year-old. I just couldn’t figure out how she was doing it. Where on earth did Loryn sleep? The room was small. One double bed on one wall and a kitchenette on the other. How were both girls and three-year-old Tye all staying there together? I asked.
    “I know, right? And Billy sometimes too.” Samantha laughed. Great. Her boyfriend and the alleged father of her baby stayed there as well! Super! My mind was racing. Shouldn’t I try and get a medical history from the boyfriend too? What was his blood type? Did he have chicken pox as a kid? Flat feet? Was there mental illness, disease, or obesity in his family? Wouldn’t hurt to know all that. If he was going to be around a lot, she could ask him! Wait a minute. Were they having sex here too? Of course I knew straight couples have sex throughout pregnancies. But the thought of her drugdealerboyfriend taking her to Pound Town in front of our potential child was, let’s just say, out of my comfort zone.
    “Where is Billy now?” I asked, trying not to sound nervous.
    “At work,” Samantha answered a little too quickly. Work? I had a flash of her boyfriend in a busy office somewhere with a receptionist answering wildly flashing phones. “You’ve reached Tweak Time, please hold. Tweak Time, hold please. Tweak Time? . . . No, Billy’s doing another line at the moment, can I take a message?” I knew not to ask any more questions.
    Don quickly moved into cleaning mode. “Do you have everything you need, sweetie? Maybe we should make a Target run.” There is nothing Don loves more than going to Target, filling a shopping cart with mops and towels and sprays and polishes, and taking on a huge cleaning project. And that’s exactly what we did. Eventually. But first things first:
    “We should get to Quest before they close,” I said. There was no way we would miss this appointment. Even if it killed me. And it probably would. Or Billy would. Or Loryn. Or more likely I’d die of a heart attack from the stress.
    We all piled into the rental car and drove along this strange, industrial part of Las Vegas I never knew existed. We finally pulled into a large brown cement building with an enormous QUEST sign on top. From the look of the sign, you’d think there were dancing girls and video poker inside the building. The parking lot was huge. Clearly, blood tests were in hot demand in this part of the world.
    I walked with Samantha up to the first available window (there were eight) and helped her with the paperwork. Finallyshe was called and I watched as she was taken into one of the lab rooms. Confident that she couldn’t weasel out of the test again, I joined Don and Loryn outside for about fifteen minutes, waiting for Samantha to emerge from the building.
    Samantha came out and lit a cigarette. It was done. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. No matter what happened now, that blood was safely in a tube awaiting analysis. It felt like the entire future of my family was inside that tube.
    Don and I knew we wouldn’t hear the results of the blood test for a few days, so there was nothing for us to do now but wait. It was awkward with Samantha. On the one hand, we wanted to go home right then and there. On the other hand, this young woman and her gal Friday/friend/accomplice had so little, we didn’t want to leave them without giving them a hot meal, some supplies, and a quick dry-mop. We both wanted to make our visit about more than testing Samantha’s blood. So there was only one logical thing to do: we went to Olive Garden.
    We were being seated at a booth just a few yards from the pasta buffet. A basket of breadsticks and rolls immediately arrived on the table. Loryn emptied the