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    “Julie, let’s stop arguing. I’m sorry my son hurt you. I’m sorry if he did the things you have accused him of doing. But it’s not my fault. I don’t want to hear anymore, because if it’s true, there’s nothing I can do about it anyway.”
    Julie hung up on her. The phone rang again as soon as Pam put it down. It was Dan.
    “What on earth does on the down-low mean,” she asked without saying hello.
    Dan gasped. “Who is this?” he asked, not knowing he was echoing Pam’s greeting to Julie just minutes before, laughing so loud he snorted. But Pam didn’t think it was funny at all, still seething about Julie’s comments.
    “Just answer my question.”
    “What was the context?” Dan asked gently.
    “Julie said Brent was on the down-low. What does it mean?” Oh great , Dan thought. I either tell her or say I don’t know and she’ll ask someone else, inappropriately.
    “It’s a slang term for having a homosexual relationship on the sly,” Dan answered.
    Pam gasped. Not Brent! Nonononono!
    “I don’t believe it!” she said passionately. “If my son was gay, he’d live openly. I can’t believe it’s sport for him. Not like Jack.” She hung the phone up without saying good-bye, sliding down the wall with hands over her face, sobbing. “Not Brent, I don’t believe it,” she repeated again. She stayed on the floor for a long while, thinking about Brent. She remembered the day she found out she was pregnant with him, her firstborn. When Jack finished his master’s thesis, he made it his duty to impregnate her. He’d come home at lunch and they’d have wild sex in daylight, and he always made sure she had an orgasm. “We want my boys to get pushed up as far as possible into that sexy body of yours,” he said, laughing. He’d take her by the ankles and pull her legs up in the air while she screamed, laughing.
    “Jack! I don’t think this is necessary,” she said, coaxing him to put her down. She’d never been with anyone else but Jack, so what they did together in bed was special. It was never boring, never routine. At least not as far as Pam was concerned. She thought their romance was wonderful. And she thought he must feel the same way. Why else would he be after her for another shot at it all the time? How was it possible that he would leave her and drive across town to have sex with Ashton? When she found out the truth, that he was like a wild man going from her bed to the next one, it almost killed her. The week after Ashton’s confrontation in Costco she spent in seclusion, with Jeff Babcock making sure she was eating and drinking, making excuses for her to Dan. Their relationship was too new to tell him the horrible secrets. But now she didn’t want to think about Jack. She wanted to remember Brent.
    Being pregnant was so wonderful; she couldn’t believe she had life, life Jack placed within her, growing inside of her body. Everyone said she glowed. Even Nelda, Pam’s most severe critic couldn’t get over it. “If it’s possible, our Pammy looks better than she ever has. There must be something special about the child she’s carrying.” Pam’s grandmother, Frank Fabian’s mother, Genoa, was concerned, old country superstitions clouding her usual common sense.
    “Don’t speak like that in the open air daughter-in-law. It’s bad luck.” Maybe it was. Who would’ve thought that sweet little boy who grew into a loving and well-behaved teen would become what Pam thought could be a clone of his father, if everything Julie said was true. Is it too late for Brent? Could he have some kind of intervention?
    She pulled herself up off the floor. He was going to come home for the picnic. She would have a plan in place to confront him. Going into the hall bathroom, she looked in the mirror. Examining her face, she had a moment of regret regarding the face-lift. Who was she trying to kid? She looked like a fifty-plus woman with a recent face-lift. She took a length of