Secrets in the Sand by Carolyn Brown

            “Yes, we do,” she said as she scooted over closer to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’ll go first. I’m pregnant.”

            Her heart broke when he pushed her away. It shattered into a million pieces when he said, “I can’t marry you or even live with you. Billy Joe has been in love with you since first grade. He won’t care if the baby isn’t really his.”

            “Go to hell, Clancy,” she’d found enough courage to say. “I don’t need you anyway. I can take care of myself. They don’t stone women for being single mamas, so just go.”

            There had been a lot more to the fight, but she couldn’t bear to remember any more of the details. She wiped away a tear as that last visual of Clancy popped into her mind.

            With a shrug and a relieved expression, he had turned and jogged up the bank to his car. She watched the trail of dust follow him all the way to where he turned left to cross the bridge, and when the Camaro was out of sight, Angela had buried her face in her hands and sobbed, heartbroken and alone.

            Angel pulled her thoughts back to the present and wiped away the tears. She returned to the newsletter page and flipped through until she found Billy Joe’s bio. He was living in San Francisco, where he was working as a computer technician. Under Comments he had written: I want to tell Angela Conrad hello wherever she is. I’m married to Stephen and we have an adopted son, Adam. We are both very active in the gay rights movement and have had articles published in several papers and magazines.

            Her amused response started as a weak giggle, grew into a chuckle, and then a full-fledged roar. So Billy Joe had finally come out with the news. She hoped Clancy Morgan had read Billy Joe’s contribution to the alumni newsletter. Perhaps it would help him remember his asinine remark to her that long-ago night beside Pennington Creek.

            ***

            Clancy let himself into the house where he had grown up. His father had died while he was in Virginia with the air force, and now his mother, Meredith, lived there alone. She was already sleeping, so he tiptoed to the dining room where he turned on the light above the table and set his newsletter down.

            He put on a pot of coffee, and when it finished dripping, he poured himself a mug, sat down at the table, and turned to Angela Conrad’s brief bio. His heart fluttered softly, then dropped to a dull ache when he read what she’d written. He still didn’t know anything, except that she probably lived in Denison, since she gave a box number there. She’d given no personal information and Clancy wondered if she was married, single, or divorced. She didn’t mention if she had a child or children, and she was still using her maiden name.

            Clancy burned his lip on the hot coffee and swore softly. “Damn it all,” he muttered, but he was angry with more than the coffee. He was mad at himself all over again as he remembered that hot August night when he’d gone to see her to break it off. Angela had been waiting for him in her usual place, with her feet in the water, wearing the same bikini that she’d worn all summer. Her jean shorts and that orange T-shirt that was too big for her were tossed up on the creek bank. Her brown curls were pulled back into a ponytail, and she looked like a little girl. But then she was only five foot three and barely weighed 110 pounds.

            He remembered telling her to marry Billy Joe Summers and her telling him to go to hell. And he’d never seen her again, from that night until now.

            That night he’d gone to the Dairy Queen. Melissa was there and had flirted with him. They both wound up at Oklahoma University and started dating during the first semester. At the end of the first semester, he had casually asked a former classmate about Billy Joe and Angela and learned that both had left Tishomingo at about the same time, and that was all anyone knew.

            He and Melissa had married right after their college graduation, and she’d taught school while he was in the air force. He’d thought they were doing fine until the year she’d come home and told Clancy she wanted out. She’d fallen in love with the principal of her school, and they were planning to marry as soon as the divorce was final. That had ended what he’d thought would be a military career. Clancy had come back to Oklahoma, gotten his master’s degree, and landed his present job teaching chemistry at an Oklahoma City high school.

            He turned the pages until he found Billy Joe Summers’s name. Maybe Billy Joe lived in Denison too…and maybe he’d married Angela after all, and they had had that pack of kids and she and her band played border-town dives just to pay the bills.

            But when Clancy read Billy Joe’s page, he felt just plain foolish. Billy Joe was gay, and Angela sure hadn’t looked poor. Two-bit bands that played for border-town dives didn’t have customized buses, and none of them had smoke machines and their own knockdown stages, and none of them played at alumni reunions either. Angela and her band had done well. Evidently, they hadn’t hit the big time, but she and Billy Joe had both done well. And now her name was Angel.