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knowing why, she added
I’M
above it. As soon as she wrote the second word, she realized she meant to give the note to Danny on his way out. She wasn’t going to tell him out loud—not here. There would be no way to avoid a tense discussion, or maybe something far less controlled.
    The note would work. He could dispose of it on the way home, the same way she had disposed of the scrawled missives hurriedly passed to her at her classroom door. Like the e.p.t box she would ditch later today. All the detritus of an extramarital affair.
Like that baby you’re carrying,
said a vicious voice in her head.
    The thing was, she couldn’t be sure the baby was Danny’s. She certainly wanted it to be, as absurd as that was, given their situation. But she didn’t
know.
And regardless of what Kelly Rowland had done in college, Laurel needed to find out who the father was. Only a DNA test could determine that. She was pretty sure you could analyze the DNA of an unborn child, but it would require an amniocentesis, another thing she’d have to go out of town to have done, if she was going to keep it from Warren. She would have to get some of Warren’s DNA without him knowing about it. Probably a strand of hair from his hairbrush would be enough—
    “So, what do you think?” Danny concluded. “You’re the expert.”
    For the first time in her life, Laurel had not been listening to what Danny was saying about his son. For more than a year, Michael McDavitt had been her highest priority in this classroom. It wasn’t fair, but it was true. She loved Danny, and because Michael meant everything to him, she had let the boy far inside her professional boundaries. Not that he was more important than the other kids; but until last month, she had believed she would one day become his stepmother, and that made him different.
    “Danny, you’ve got to go,” she said with sudden firmness.
    His face fell. “But we haven’t talked. Not really.”
    “I can’t help it. I can’t deal with us right now.
I can’t.
”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “That doesn’t help.”
    He stood, and it was clear that only force of will was keeping him from crossing the classroom and pulling her close. “I can’t live without you,” he said. “I thought I could, but it’s killing me.”
    “Have you told your wife that?”
    “Pretty much.”
    A wave of anxiety mingled with hope swept through Laurel. “You told her my name?”
    Danny licked his lips, then shook his head sheepishly.
    “I see. Has she changed her mind about keeping Michael if you divorce her?”
    “No.”
    “Then we don’t have—”
    “You don’t have to say it.”
    She could see that he hated his own weakness, which had brought him here despite having no good news. Nothing had changed, and therefore nothing could change for her. He put his hands in his jeans pockets and walked toward the door. Laurel quietly tore the I’M PREGNANT Post-it off the pad and folded it into quarters. When Danny was almost to the door, she stood.
    “Are you sleeping with Starlette?” she asked in a voice like cracking ice.
    Danny stopped, then turned to face Laurel.
“No,”
he said, obviously surprised. “Did you think I would?”
    She shrugged, her shoulders so tight with fear and anger that she could hardly move them. The thought of Danny having sex with Starlette could nauseate her instantly. Though he’d sworn he wouldn’t do it, her mind had spun out endless reels of pornographic footage in the lonely darkness before sleep: Danny so desperate from going without Laurel that he screwed his ex-beauty-queen wife just for relief—and found that it wasn’t so bad after all. Laurel was sure that Starlette would be trying extra hard to make Danny remember why he’d married her in the first place. Midnight blow jobs were her specialty. Laurel had dragged this out of Danny one night when he’d drunk more whiskey than he should have. Apparently, Starlette would wait until he was sound asleep, then