All through our conversation, Danitza Miller’s facial expressions had been entirely serious. Now, for the first time, she gave me something that resembled a smile. “Yup,” she said thoughtfully. “I said yes and gave him my phone number on the spot. After that he reeled me in, hook, line, and sinker.”
Talk about the same old story—the local “it” girl becomes involved with the poor loser kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Not exactly Romeo and Juliet, but close enough.
“I take it your parents didn’t approve?” I ventured.
“Are you kidding? Not at all,” she agreed. “Homer’s not a very big a place. Unfortunately, there was a good deal of history between my father and Chris’s dad, Richard Danielson. While they were in high school, they were head-to-head rivals when it came to their varsity sports teams. To make things worse, they ended up chasing after the same girl—my mother, as it turns out.”
“And once your dad was declared the winner, the two of them became mortal enemies?” I asked.
“Something like that,” Nitz admitted. “I didn’t know anything about it until one night when Chris came to the house to pick me up for a date. My dad wasn’t home at the time, so I introduced him to my mother. When my mom told Dad about it later, he hit the roof. He was waiting up for me that night when I came home, and he was absolutely livid. He ordered me, ‘Stay away from that no-good Danielson kid. He’s a piece of crap, just like his father.’”
“Which you chose not to do?” I suggested.
Danitza smiled again. “Why would I?” she returned. “What’s better than the taste of forbidden fruit? From that moment on, Chris and I took our dating underground. My friends were all in on it and helped make it happen. I think they thought there was something romantic about our sneaking around behind my parents’ backs. When I wanted to go and be with Chris, my friends always claimed I was with them.”
“When’s the last time you saw Chris?”
“The morning of the final Sunday in March 2006,” she answered at once.
It was telling that she remembered the exact day and time.
“My folks were out of town that weekend. After Chris got off work on Saturday night, I spent the night at his place. The next morning I woke up sick as a dog. Chris borrowed a roommate’s car and took me home. I never saw him again after that. I didn’t even talk to him on the phone.”
Given her son’s birth date, it wasn’t difficult to put two and two together.
“Morning sickness?” I asked.
Nitz nodded. “I thought it was some kind of flu bug. I’d been having symptoms for a week or more. I was na?ve and had no idea what was happening, but when I was sick again that Monday, my mother figured it out. She went to the drugstore and bought one of those home pregnancy tests. It came back positive, of course.
“When my father found out, he went berserk. I was a minor. He demanded the name of the father so he could call the cops and put the SOB behind bars for statutory rape. I wasn’t going to let that happen, so I told Dad he’d have to take his pick, because the father could have been any one of three boys, and I wasn’t going to tell him any of their names.”
I had to give the girl credit for gumption. Hearing her claim she’d had more than one lover must have been a stunner for her father. It’s a wonder he hadn’t suffered a coronary on the spot.
“That must have sent your father around the bend,” I suggested.
Nitz nodded. “Absolutely,” she said. “Dad had always been a bully. I’d spent years watching him boss my mother around. I hated it that she always gave in to him no matter what. I decided my best bet was to fight fire with fire.”
“What happened next?” I asked. “I suppose he demanded paternity tests all around?”
Nitz shook her head. “Nope, I didn’t give him a chance. I had seen him angry before, but never that angry. I decided to get the hell out of there, so I went to my room, loaded some clothes into a backpack, and let myself out through my bedroom window. I’d gotten pretty adept at that by then,” she added with a grin.
“Did Chris know about any of this—the pregnancy test, I mean?”
Again Nitz shook her head. “He was at work that night. I knew he couldn’t talk on the phone, so I left a message saying I needed to talk to him. He never called me back.”
“He had no idea you were pregnant?”
“I don’t think so.”