Shelly had not expected Fergus to be so accepting. She was surprised, but she was not going to immediately decide to be with him because of this.
Although they were from the same hometown, this was only their second time meeting so rushing to date seemed like too hasty a move.
"Fergus, thank you for saying that. We've only just met, and we still don't know each other very well," Shelly said. "Besides, you don't look that old to me!"
"I'm twenty-seven this year, can't you tell?" Fergus could sense that Shelly was a cautious woman. He did not know what had happened with her previous child, but he felt she could be a lifelong partner.
"I really can't tell. I thought you were, at most, twenty-five!" Shelly exclaimed. "And twenty-seven is still quite young in a big city."
"Yeah! Actually, I'm not in a hurry to get married. It's mainly my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents who are. You know how it is in our hometown; many people get married in their twenties, and people my age already have children. My mom and grandma are in a hurry, and they urge me to find a girlfriend every time we speak." Fergus felt pressured by his family.
"Yeah, I know. But if you marry someone you don't love, it's also easy to get divorced. The divorce rate is so high these days," Shelly said as the waiter brought over their dishes.
"Yeah, I've told my family the same thing. They honestly just want me to find a woman to have a child with as soon as possible. They don't care so much about divorce. They just want to hold their grandchild," Fergus said, expressing his difficulties. "I want to find a woman I love and want to spend my life with, rather than just someone to have a child with."
"Fergus, your thinking is right. If you marry someone you don't love, have a child, and end up getting divorced, what will happen to the child? I'm not saying that single-parent families are bad, but children from single-parent families definitely don't have the same sense of security as children from intact families," Shelly said, her voice weakening.
She herself had twins who were born into a single-parent family. She was not too worried about Aiden, as everyone in the Foster family doted on him, but Audrey would not be as fortunate.
Sometimes she wondered if she was being selfish by keeping Audrey at her side and subjecting her to a life that was not so prosperous.
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