Once in Burlington we entered the cool Ice Cream Parlor. All the other patrons were looking at Skinner in his Army uniform. "Aw, heck, Josh," he laugh...d, "let's celebrate and have us a malted."While it was great having a Malted Milk, what was even better was the way everyone in the Ice Cream Parlor seem to like Skinner. Being proud is a special feeling when you're at that young age."Josh," Skinner finally said, "I have one more thing I want to do before we walk home from Burlington."On our way. But I can’t stop thinking about it.”“Go ahead,” she said.“Why didn’t you just go on the pill?”She thought about that. He hadn’t asked her why she was foolish enough to get involved with a man and then let him between her legs. He wasn’t asking who the father was, or why she had left him. There was nothing judgmental in his question.“My friends...” She paused. “The women I thought were my friends had sources of information in the medical profession,” she said. “They didn’t know what I was doing.. This time I just hung, morosely around the perimeters, not prepared to make inane conversation with strangers. I saw my family arrive and go straight into the church. When the coffin arrived I watched from a discrete distance as four burly young men lifted it onto their shoulders. I recognised two of them as her cousins and could see their parents milling around too. I felt a cold anger when I saw the man who had started the saga as he led a weeping woman, whom I presumed was Stephanie's. He loved his k**s, and they loved him…it seemed they must be too young to know or, they—he and his wife—were very good at keeping their bedroom affairs quite discrete. He’d hoped it was the latter, but felt sure that sooner or later the c***dren would inherently come to recognize the truth.“Baby,” she’d charmingly assuage his fears. “The c***dren will never learn of our arrangement…we are too careful. Do you think it would be something I’d wish to be? The neighborhood gossip that you and I are.