"Fine weather," was the only thing Claire could think to say to get things started.
Displaying his usual command of the obvious, Tab Russell replied, "No picnic without it."
"I was thinking ... ," Claire spoke slowly trying to find words. " ... and walking ..."
Tab searched the picnic cooler for his favorite foods.
"I had planned to jog for exercise. Then after a few blocks I thought of something and started walking instead," Claire paused to check whether Tab was listening. "Have you ever done that?," she asked him. "Doesn't it seem easier to think at a walk than a jog?"
Tab's attention was divided so he took a moment to say, "Yeah, one time I started walking during a jog." He looked up and sideways as if loading the memory from there. "It wasn't because I was out of breath. I was going to realize something. Then I realized there's nothing to realize except that there's nothing to realize. Then I continued jogging."
Claire didn't have an immediate reply even though she didn't really need that many words of explanation to get his thought.
"My dad might still be alive today if he hadn't thought about it a few seconds too long and got shot," Tab continued. "There's some school of philosophy for just about everything, so there's probably one for realizing there's nothing to realize as well. I'm not really a student of philosophy though."
Claire had already guessed as much, but paused out of respect for Tab's father. Then she returned to her previous train of thought, "So I was walking, not jogging. I was thinking ... about the population. Is the world getting overpopulated, Tab? What do you think?"
The conversation went the way conversations at picnics often go, meandering around business rather than addressing it with much purpose. It appeared another day Claire wasn't getting done what she set out to do. She had wanted to find out what Tab would think about her being pregnant before she told him directly she was.
At least her favorite song played on the radio. She sang along, but so softly you couldn't tell without reading lips. She acted out the story in the song with subdued gestures and expressions.
It was the same park and much the same picnic as three years previously. Tab knew nothing of the abortion. His relationship with Claire was still coasting perhaps to a stop. They were both ready to move on, but not sure yet where. Claire's favorite song played on the radio and just as before she sang along in her own way.
"Check it out," Tab dared to interrupt. "That guy must be almost thirty feet tall."
"You should get him on your fantasy football team."
"Oh no, he'd start kicking hundred yard field goals and change the game of football as we know it."
"His suit looks like it was made out of a circus tent."
"Maybe the specialty clothing store for big and tall men didn't have his size. Did you notice though? I think he was staring at you during that song."
Neither Claire nor Tab realized anything special that day, but Sergeant O'Leary was beginning to figure it out as he watched from his grill with a good view of it all. Superfetus was putting clues together. He happened to be tuned to the same radio station. That song he remembered hearing in the womb added to the evidence he had that Claire was his mother.
Sgt. O'leary was getting better at reading what was going on with Superfetus despite the disguises.
Little is known by science how much the unborn might be able to hear from the world outside the womb, when, or what good it might do them. There are only anecdotes and musings such as found here.