“You sure he’s doing all right?” I say.

“He’s fine,” says Jane. “Don’t worry about anything. I know what I’m doing at this point.”

I laugh a little nervously. After all, it is the welfare of my son we’re talking about. But I’ve gotten a little better. I no longer call every half hour to see how he’s doing.

“Talk to you later,” I say. “I’ve got to go.”

Jane says goodbye and I hang up the phone.

I’m working my shift at a local restaurant, which is honestly sort of a dump. It’s called Old Jim’s, and it’s a small, antiquated looking restaurant whose patrons are mostly grumpy old locals who probably drink too much. There’s a bar in the restaurant, where most of the client hang out.

There are all sorts of old knickknacks on the walls, which in many establishments might give a place character. But here, the knickknacks seem to have been chosen with absolutely no thoughts of style, and they just make the whole restaurant feel cluttered and cheap, even dirty. There are old license plates that hang on the walls, but it’s not one of those collections of interesting license plates. Instead, these are just essentially pieces of battered metal that happen to be stamped with the state colors and some random numbers and letters. They’re all local Pennsylvania plates, and likely they fell off unfortunate cars and were collected on the side of the road, in gutters, and in fields, all over Pennsylvania. How they got here, I have no idea, although I suspect that Old Jim himself has some kind of strange obsession with them.

Old Jim works every night, unfortunately for me. He has some kind of sleeping condition, or perhaps he’s just stubborn, because he never gets up earlier than three in the afternoon and goes to bed around dawn. Many nights he’ll stay up late at the restaurant with a bunch of the local regulars, drinking beer with them behind the locked front door.

Of course, that’s completely illegal, but the local police know him and for some reason like him, so they let it slide. It’s not a big deal in their eyes. They’ve got other things to worry about, like a rash of students taking tainted ecstasy pills. A bunch of them came into the restaurant last night, laughing and giggling, and trying to touch everything in sight. The only way I could get them to leave was by giving them an old license plate each. They cradled those license plates like they were the lost Ark of the Covenant.

One of the girls seemed to recognize me, because she kept smiling at me like she knew me. Maybe it was just because she was on ecstasy, but I kept my head down and wiped the bar for an hour straight instead of looking at her. I think she was in one of my classes back in college. But I refused to be embarrassed about my situation—finishing college with top grades, making Dean’s list every semester, and then winding up working in a junky bar like this that masquerades as an even worse restaurant.

Things aren’t exactly going the way that I’d hoped back when I was in college, back before I had Will.

But that’s the way things are, and I can’t change them. Will is everything to me. He’s my baby, my precious little baby, and I wouldn’t give him up for a real career as a physical therapist. I wouldn’t give him up to be getting my PhD with my peers, to be going out and socializing at the bars with everyone. There isn’t a thing in the world that I’d trade him for.

Thankfully, Jane and I are still really close. Neither one of us moved away after college. Jane works as a graphic designer, which is a field about as far removed from what she studied as you could get. But it turned out that her hobby of toying around with images on the computer, creating silly memes, turned into a real career that’s blossoming. She gets to work from home, communicating with her globally-based clients from the comfort of her armchair. Mostly, she makes book covers, and does a hell of a job of it. She loves Will, so she ends up looking after him quite a bit when I have my evening shifts at the restaurant.

On the other nights, I get a babysitter, the most responsible high school senior I could find. She’s 19, a year older than her peers, and she’s not into partying or anything like that. She hopes to be some kind of professional in child care development when she grows up, so she sees this all as a great opportunity to learn and mature in her understanding of children. My only problem with her is that I can’t seem to talk to her without her staring at her phone and nodding her head without really listening to me, but I figure that’s just how kids are these days.

Listen to me, saying “that’s how kids are these days.” Just a year ago, I was a kid myself. But having Will changed me, made me more mature. I can still have fun with Jane here and there, but there’s something separating us, some kind of veil between us. We’re still best friends, but sometimes I feel like she just doesn’t understand how hard I truly have it. After all, I’m a single mother working at a bar… no chance of returning to college.

It just wasn’t practical to think that I could have gone to get my PhD while pregnant with Will, and now I don’t have the money to pay for the courses.

My parents are still in Mexico, and they seem so content there that I don’t think they’ll ever return. For a while, I was under the strange delusion that my mother might return for Will’s birth, since she seemed to take the news of my pregnancy as having reached some kind of personal milestone. She’s a grandmother now, and she tells me that she tells everyone about her cute little grandson. But the truth is that he’s not important enough for her to fly back to Pennsylvania to see him. She’s only ever met him on Skype, where she cooed and awed at him and waved endlessly at him.

I can’t blame my parents totally, though, even though I do feel a lot of resentment towards them for not having visited Will, for not coming up to at least see how I’m doing as a single mother…

They don’t have much money, which is the main reason that they retired to Mexico. Down there, things cost about a fifth of what they do in the US. The rent for a beautiful little casita in the rich part of town costs $200. They’re living the high life on a shoestring budget. They have a beautiful garden, and gardeners to take care of it. They have a maid who comes three times a week. My parents’ financial worries are long gone. Most of their worries are long gone. My mother’s biggest current worry is that my father thinks the maid is cute and occasionally will watch her as she bends over to clean something on the ground.

I still think about Shane almost constantly. I can’t get him off my mind. But he didn’t want to have anything to do with me after I left him in his room that day. I assume he’s still the cocky bastard that he was back in school. After all, why would he change? He doesn’t need to, and simply seems unlikely that he would have had some kind of huge personality transformation when there’s simply no reason for him to have one.

I tried to call him to let him know I was pregnant, and he couldn’t even be bothered to pick up. I left him a voicemail, explaining the situation to him, and he couldn’t even be bothered to return my call. Not even a text message or an email. Who treats a woman like that?

I simply don’t want him in my life at all. That’s how I feel about him. It sounds harsh, but what’s harsher than simply shutting out the woman that you got pregnant? Apparently he has no interest in seeing his son.

I see him on TV occasionally, when the guys want to watch the sports channel, or the football game, and I can’t help but watching him. He’s even hotter now than before, and he looks insanely good in that football gear, his muscular, taut ass in those tight pants that they make them wear. I think they must design football gear with the wives of the fans in mind. I mean, sure, a lot of women like football for the game itself. But a lot of women also can’t be bothered with it—they only watch it because on game days, the only way to be near their husbands is to feign some interest in the sport. And what keeps them occupied in those long hours of the game? The tight clothes, the pads that exaggerate the muscular frames of the players. That’s what. Of course, that’s just a theory of mine.

“Another round, Jimmy?” I say, eyeing a regular named Frank, but for some reason everyone calls him Jimmy. He doesn’t even respond to the name “Frank” anymore.

“Yup,” he grunts.

I pour him another double whiskey, which he always takes on the rocks.

But he won’t tolerate just any ice cubes. No, he likes the smallest ice cubes available. That means I have to hunt around in the ice bucket for cubes small enough to satisfy him.

“Here you go,” I say, plunking the drink down on the cheap wooden bar.

He grunts something that might be a “thanks,” but there’s really no way to tell.

“Did you mop the bathroom yet?” says Jim, my boss, looking up from his barstool. He’s chowing down on some disgusting mess that passes for a hamburger under the restaurant’s incredibly low standards.

“I’ll get right to it,” I say.

It’s better to keep my responses light and easy. There’s no point in replying sarcastically. That just gets me into trouble. But I miss being able to speak freely, to say what I want to whom I want. But here, at the restaurant, if a customer speaks to me crudely, I have to apologize. Or else I’ll lose my job and there won’t be any way to provide for Will.

I swallow my frustration, and walk through the kitchen in order to get to the disgusting mop that must be 20 years old.

I take the mop from where it stands in the corner and examine it. It’s so dirty that it probably just makes the floors dirtier.

“Hey, Jamie,” I say to the cook, who’s coming out of the walk-in carrying a couple pounds of hamburger that she’s supposed to fry up for Jim.

She nods at me.

She’s an older woman who’s a little overweight. She’s nice as hell, but she’s so busy cooking up hamburgers and deep-frying potatoes that we hardly ever get a chance to talk.

The bathroom is right off of the kitchen, which must be some kind of health hazard. I dip the mop into an old bucket and set to work. With the door open, Jamie and I have a brief chance to chat.

“So how’s Will doing?” she says.

“Good,” I say. “He’s really into exploring right now. I’ve had everything in the apartment childproofed for months, but now that he’s more active, I’m really starting to get worried.”

Jamie chuckles, her laugh almost drowned out by the sound of sizzling oil from the grill.

“They get like that. He’s about a year old?”

“Yeah,” I say. I have to concentrate too much on mopping up a particularly disgusting brown spot on the floor to tell her Will’s exact age in months.

“Don’t worry, though, honey,” says Jamie, speaking loudly so I can hear her. “I know you’re cautious about everything. He’s going to be fine.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess so. I just get worried, you know.”

“That’s normal for new moms,” says Jamie. “By the time you have your third one, though, you realize that there’s only so much you can worry about them.”

“How are your kids doing?”

“Good, at least I think so. They hardly ever call me. The youngest is still in college, but my oldest are busy carving out lives for themselves.”

Jamie has all boys, who are now grown men. I know she wanted at least a girl, which is one of the reason they kept having kids, but things don’t always work out the way you want them to, as I know very well.

“That sucks,” I say.

“Well, that’s just the way it is sometimes. You’ll understand once your son gets older.”

I don’t really know what to say that and to be honest, it upsets me a little bit. I don’t like to think of Will eventually growing up and not wanting to have anything to do with me. But that won’t happen. Once he’s older, he’ll understand everything I went through for him.

Either way, it’s going to be a long, long time before he’s an adult. 17 more years. And in my opinion, parenthood doesn’t end when the kid reaches 18. That’s what my parents think, though.

I finish mopping up, and set about doing the other chores necessary to close up the restaurant. I count out the till and make the marks in the book, depositing the money where it belongs in the safe.

My boss just grunts at me as I leave. He’s staying behind to drink with his buddies. I see them watching me through the glass on the front door. They’re eyeing me and it makes me feel uncomfortable. One of them says something and they all chuckle. Eww. Gross. Better not to think about what they could have said. No point in getting myself all worked up about something that I can’t change.

There’s my car in the mostly deserted parking lot, a ‘98 Camry that’s seen better days. The paint on one side of the car is completely worn away, and whoever owned the car before me (I bought it cheap at a police auction) tried to repaint it orange with common spray paint. The car was originally beige, so it beats me why they chose orange as a means of covering up the existing damage. But that’s the way it is, I guess. The car has orange streaks all over the side of it. Whatever, I can live with that. I don’t need a nice car to be happy, or even a normal looking car. That’s my whole thing—I’m doing what I need to do and eventually I’ll get to a stable enough place financially that I can start taking classes again and somehow… somehow I’ll eventually be a physical therapist with that coveted PhD and certification.

I still study physical therapy in my spare time. I guess I’m just a huge nerd. That’s what people would say about me if they knew about it. That’s what Jane says, obviously, but she’s just poking some light fun my way, just teasing me. In reality, I think she’s impressed with it and my dedication. But in my mind it’s nothing like dedication. It’s just interest. Just a true fascination with how the human body works and the problems that can arise with it.

In my car, I pull out my phone to see if for some reason Jane called. I still check my phone often, in case there was some kind of emergency and somehow I missed the ringer, even though I have it set to vibrate. When I bought the phone, I wanted the phone with the absolute loudest ringer possible, knowing that I’d have to leave Will in the care of others. I guess I’m just cut out to be an anxious mother. Or an attentive and conscientious mother—depending on how you look at it.

There haven’t been any phone calls, but there’s an email.

I gasp in shock when I see the name.

It’s from Shane.

Will’s father? The Shane I think about all the time?

That’s completely crazy. He hasn’t contacted me at all… not once…