Lily was responsible when it came to school. She studied hard and got good grades. She was responsible when it came to her friends, loyal to a fault. Hadn’t she gone out on a limb to campaign for Abby, who had set her heart on being senior class president? When the girl lost the election, Lily had slept at her house for three straight nights.
Lily was responsible when it came to the car, rarely missing a curfew, leaving the gas tank empty, or being late when she had to pick up Susan.
Hard-working. Loyal. Dependable. Responsible. And…pregnant? Susan might have bought into it if Lily had a steady boyfriend. Accidents happened.
But there was no boyfriend, and no reason at all to believe that Lily would sleep with someone she barely knew. Was sweet Lily Tate – who wore little makeup, slept in flannel pajamas, and layered camis over camis to keep her tiny cleavage from view – even capable of seduction?
Susan thought not. It had to be something else, but the possibilities were frightening. By two in the morning, her imagination was so out of control that she gave up trying to sleep and, crossing the hall, quietly opened the door. In the faint glow of a butterfly nightlight, Lily was a blip under the quilt, only the top of her head showing, dark hair splayed on the pillow. Her jeans and sweaters were on the cushioned chair, her Sherpa boots – one standing, one not – on the floor nearby. Her dresser was strewn with hairbrushes and clips, beaded bracelets, a sock she was knitting. Her cell phone lay on the nightstand, along with several books and a half-full bottle of water.
In the faintest whisper, Susan called her name, but there was no response, no movement in this still life. Girl with Butterfly Nightlight, she might have named it. Girl. So young. So vulnerable.
Heart catching, she carefully backed out, crept down the hall to the attic door and quietly climbed the stairs. There, at an oak table in the small arc of a craft lamp, she turned to a fresh page of her notebook, opened a tin of pastels, and made her first bold stroke. A fuchsia heart? Definitely. If anything could distract her, it was this. She made another stroke, smudged the ends, added yellow to soften a green, then navy to deepen a red.
Typically, she produced her best work when she was stressed – pure sublimation – and this night was no exception. By the time she was done, she had five pages, each with a unique swath of anywhere from two to five hues, undulating from shade to shade. These would be the spring colorways for PC Yarns. She even named them – March Madness, Vernal Tide, Spring Eclipse, Robin At Dawn, and, naturally, Creation.
The last was particularly vibrant. Violent? No, she decided. Well, maybe. But wasn’t creation an explosive thing? Didn’t creation have profound consequences? And what if Lily wasn’t growing a child but something darker?
Susan returned to bed, but each time she dozed, she woke up to new fears. By five in the morning, when she finally despaired of sleep and got up, she was convinced that her daughter had a uterine cyst that had been overlooked long enough to jeopardize her chances of ever having a baby. Either that, or it was a tumor. Uterine cancer, warranting a hysterectomy, perhaps chemotherapy. Terrifying. No child, ever? Tragic.
Keeping her fears to herself, she got Lily up as usual, dropped her at Mary Kate’s and went on to school. The girls would follow later, but this morning, Susan had two early parent meetings, both difficult, before she appeared on the front steps to greet students. It wasn’t until eight-thirty that she finally reached the doctor’s office.
The only appointment Lily could get was for late afternoon, which gave Susan the rest of the day to worry. That meant she answered email with half a heart, was distracted during a teacher observation, and what little work she put into her budget for the following year, which was due to the superintendent by Thanksgiving, was a waste.
She could only think of one thing, and any way she looked at it, it wasn’t good.
The doctor confirmed it. Lily was definitely pregnant. Learning that her daughter didn’t have a fatal disease, Susan was actually relieved – but only briefly. The reality of being pregnant at seventeen was something she knew all too well.
Susan had become pregnant in high school herself. Richard McKay was the son of her parents’ best friends. That summer, when he was fresh out of college with a journalism degree and a job offer for fall that he couldn’t refuse, something sparked between them. Pure lust, her father decided. And the chemistry was certainly right. But Susan and Rick had spent too many hours that summer only talking for it to be just sex. They saw eye to eye on so many things, not the least being their desire to leave Oklahoma, that when Rick dutifully offered to marry Susan, she flat-out refused.
She never regretted her decision. To this day, she recalled the look of palpable relief on his face when she had firmly shaken her head. He had dreams; she admired them. Had there been times when she missed having him there? Sure. But she couldn’t compete with the excitement of his career, and refused to tie him down.
His success reinforced her conviction. Starting out, he had been the assistant to the assistant producer of a national news show. Currently, he was the star, following stories to the ends of the earth as one of the show’s leading commentators. He had never married, had never had other children. Only after he became the face in front of the camera rather than the one behind was he able to send money for Lily’s support, but his check arrived every month now without fail. He never missed a birthday, and had been known to surprise Lily by showing up for a field hockey tournament. He kept in close touch with her by phone – a good, if physically absent, father.
Rick had always trusted Susan. Rather than micromanage from afar, he left the day-to-day parenting to her. Now, under her watchful gaze, Lily was pregnant.
Stunned, Susan listened quietly while Lily answered the doctor’s questions. Yes, she wanted the baby, and yes, she understood what that meant. No, she hadn’t discussed it with her mother, because she would do this on her own if she had to. No, she did not want the father involved. No, she did not drink. Yes, she knew not to eat swordfish.
She had questions of her own – like whether she would be able to finish out the field hockey season (yes), whether winter volleyball was possible (maybe), and whether she could take Tylenol for a headache (only as directed) – and she sounded so like the mature, responsible, intelligent child Susan had raised that, if Susan hadn’t been numb, she might have laughed.
Silent still when they left the doctor’s office, she handed Lily the keys to the car. ‘I need to walk home.’ Lily protested, but she insisted, ‘You go on. I need the air.’
It was true, though she did little productive thinking as she walked through the November chill. No longer numb, she was boiling mad. She knew it was wrong – definitely not the way a mother should feel; everything she had resented in her own mother – but how to get a grip?
The cold air helped. She was a little calmer as she neared the house. Then she saw Lily. The girl was sitting on the front steps, a knitted scarf wound around her neck, her quilted jacket – very Perry & Cass – pulled tight round her. When Susan approached, she sat straighter and said in a timid voice, ‘Don’t be angry.’
But Susan was. Furious, she stuck her hands in her pockets.
‘Please, Mom?’
Susan took a deep breath. She looked off, past neighborhood houses, all the way on down the street until the cordon of old maples seemed to merge. ‘This isn’t what I wanted for you,’ she finally managed to say.
‘But I love children. I was born to have children.’
Looking back, Susan pressed her aching heart. ‘I couldn’t agree with you more. My problem’s with the timing. You’re seventeen. You’re a senior in high school – and expecting a