When you sleep with a woman outside of marriage, people think you’re a bad person. When she gets pregnant without a ring on her finger, people think you’re both bad people.

Mary’s folks already didn’t like me. I wasn’t exactly wealthy and I hadn’t proposed to Mary in the four months we’d been seeing each other.

“It was an Angel!” I blurted out when her father saw her glowing, obviously pregnant with a bulge the size of Gibraltar. I looked down sheepishly. If I was going to pull this off, I had to be careful not to lay it on too thick. “An immaculate conception, while I was on a business trip to Bethlehem–I didn’t touch her, I swear. It was God!”

Her father looked at me like a jackal to a snake. I thought for a second that he might chase me around the room, jaws snapping in an effort to bite me. Instead, he looked at his wife, Mary’s mother, gullible as ever.

“Oh Mary,” she said with tears of joy and worry. “What will you name it?”

Mary’s father cared for his daughter. No matter how much he despised me, I had to give him credit for being a good guy. “Right.” He said sternly and he glared at me again, this time followed by a sigh of defeat. “You,” he pointed at me, “keep your mouth shut. I’ll tell people what happened.”