‘That makes two of us, Phil.’
‘How did it happen? Lily is a good girl, and I’d have heard from the police if there was a rape, so it must have been someone she knew. Was she forced?’
‘No,’ Susan said and, leaving the desk, sank into a chair.
He continued to stand. ‘Careless?’
Even that would have been easier to swallow, Susan knew. But what could she say without betraying her daughter’s confidence?
‘I’m a friend,’ Phil reminded her gently. Only it wasn’t as simple as that. He was also a colleague, a mentor and, as superintendent of schools, her boss. He was the one who had pushed her to apply for the principalship, the one who had championed her when the Board questioned her youth and lack of experience. He was the one who had shown up in person to offer her the job, his pride genuine.
‘That’s one of the reasons this is so hard,’ she tried to explain. ‘I’ve just learned about it myself. It’s still raw.’
‘I understand, but we don’t have much of a window here. You’re in a public position. To judge from the calls I’m getting, you won’t have the luxury of time.’ He scowled. ‘I wish we were talking about someone else’s child. We’ve dealt with pregnancies before. But you’re our principal, so the playing field is different. I was caught flat-footed this morning. It would have been better if I’d had a heads-up.’
Susan was sorry to have let him down. ‘In hindsight, you’re right. But I’ve been agonizing over this on a personal level, and I needed more time. I didn’t expect word to spread so fast.’ She explained how it had.
‘A friend, huh? That stinks. Did you know Lily was sexually active?’
Either way she answered, Susan was damned. So she said, ‘Lily and I have discussed sexual responsibility more times than I can count. Right now, we’re just trying to plan for the future. She claims she can study and have a baby and go to college.’ Feeling an old shame, Susan added quietly, ‘Who am I to contradict her?’
‘Yup,’ he murmured. He scratched the back of his head and asked a puzzled, ‘Is she having trouble in school?’
‘No.’
‘Scared about next year?’
‘No. Phil, it just happened.’
Leaning against the desk, he asked meekly, ‘Can I say she was forced?’
Susan caught his drift. He needed a story that would sit well with the town. It was about damage control.
He elaborated. ‘See, I need a reason why this could happen to the daughter of my principal. It’d be best if I could say Lily was forced or even that she’s in love.’ He paused. ‘Otherwise, they’ll blame you.’
Blame her? After all she’d done with her life in the last seventeen years? And the goodwill she’d built up in the last two – was it worth nothing?
‘I had no say in this, Phil,’ Susan argued. ‘I’ve been a hands-on mother. I’ve taught Lily all the right things. But she didn’t consult me. She –’ consulted her friends, Susan nearly said, but caught herself – ‘she didn’t consult me,’ she managed to repeat, shaken. She hadn’t thought about the others until now, but it was a staggering omission. The idea of a pact made things ten times worse. It might spread the blame around a little, but Susan was still the most promin ent of the players. The town would be obsessed with the story. Phil would not be happy.
‘But you’re her mother.’
‘She isn’t five,’ Susan cried in a voice heightened by panic. ‘Would you have me be one of those parents who wait at the curb to whisk their kids off the instant classes are done? Or who email their kids’ teachers five times a day? Or stand over their kids’ shoulders the whole time they’re doing homework to make sure they don’t get a texted answer from a friend? That’s micromanaging. We’ve discussed this, Phil. We both hate it. I’ve talked with parents about it. I’ve addressed the issue in bulletins. At some level, parents have to trust.’
‘And when they perceive that the trust is betrayed by someone in a position of authority?’ he asked, but quickly relented. ‘…Look. You’re a role model for our students. That’s one of the reasons I fought to give you this position. You’re an example of what a woman can do when life takes a wrong turn. Only it’s taking the same turn again, and that won’t sit well. Once, okay. Learn from the lesson and move on. Twice?’ Lips compressed, he shook his head.
‘The situations aren’t the same,’ Susan argued, though if he had asked how they differed, she would have been in trouble. But she was in trouble anyway. There was so much he didn’t know.
‘You were seventeen,’ he remarked. ‘She’s seventeen.’
What could Susan say to that? He was right.
She must have looked stricken, because his face gentled. Bracing his hands on the edge of the desk, he said, ‘See, if it had been anyone else getting pregnant, there would be no issue. Because it’s Lily, we need a plan. The best we can say is that there was an accident. That’ll give us an excuse to talk about the consequences of being irresponsible. We can involve the school clinic, maybe conduct a series of lectures about the downside of teenage pregnancy.’
‘We already have.’
‘Well, the circumstances call for more, because here’s another flash. With you principal and Lily a model student, there could be copycatting. We don’t want that. Get a doctor in to paint the dire consequences of teen pregnancy. It’ll be a good use of the clinic, maybe convince a few doubters on that score. We have to hit this hard.’
‘At my daughter’s expense.’
‘Who told her to get pregnant?’ he asked.
He didn’t have a clue how loaded the question was.
The minute he was gone, Susan opened her cell. Her hand shook. Even the sound of Kate’s ‘hey’ did nothing to soothe her.
‘We have a problem – I have a problem,’ she said, head bent over the phone. ‘Correlli just left. He knows about Lily, but not about the others. He’s worried about copycat behavior, when what he really needs to worry about is pact behavior. But it doesn’t stop there, Kate. This situation is reflecting on me, my character, my job.’ She hadn’t imagined this a week ago. Back then, the extent of the problem was Lily’s pregnancy. ‘You’d think there’d be some understanding – everyone knows teenagers act out. Don’t I get cut a little slack? School Board members who will be the most critical of me are the ones whose kids did God-knows-what behind their backs. But forget the Board,’ she hurried on, fingertips to her forehead. ‘I have to tell Phil about Mary Kate and Jess. He’ll find out anyway, and the more he goes ahead with damage control for one pregnancy, the more he’ll look like a fool when it turns out there are three. Phil is my boss, Kate. He hires and fires. I need him on my side.’ She swore softly. ‘What a mess.’
‘That’s a kind word for it,’ Kate mused. ‘All it would have taken was one of them saying, No, Don’t do this, Bad idea. But my daughter went right along. Whose idea was it anyway? Which one of them dreamed it up?’
‘I haven’t asked Lily that,’ Susan said. ‘But the immediate issue is Phil. What am I supposed to do, Kate? He’ll learn about Mary Kate and Jess soon enough, and it had better come from my mouth, or his faith in me will be even more shot than it already is. Have you talked with Mary Kate about when she’s planning to tell people?’
‘She wants to wait.’
‘And