something Susan dwelt on. ‘My parents couldn’t deal,’ she said, ‘so I went to live with an aunt in Missouri while I had Lily and finished high school. Aunt Evie was great, but she had no kids. She didn’t know what I was going through, and I didn’t dare complain. It was scary. My doctor was one step removed from my father. He delighted in telling me all the risks of having a baby at seventeen.’
‘Like?’
‘Like a seventeen-year-old’s body isn’t ready to carry a baby to term. Like I was at risk for anemia, high blood pressure, preterm labor, and my baby could be underweight and have underdeveloped organs.’
Kate looked frightened. ‘Is all that true?’
‘I believed it. Now I know that most of these problems arise because teenage moms typically don’t take care of themselves. But my doctor didn’t say that. I was terrified. There were no classes at the local hospital. I had some books, but they weren’t reassuring. I was only seventeen. I dreaded childbirth, and then, if I survived that, I was going to have to take care of a baby who would be totally helpless and who might have developmental issues because I was seventeen.’
Sunny scowled. ‘There must have been someone who could help.’
‘My pediatrician’s nurse. She was an angel. I talked with her every morning during call hours. It was like she had two patients, an infant and a seventeen-year-old – well, eighteenyear-old by then. We still keep in touch.’
‘Are you in touch with your aunt?’
‘Occasionally. But it’s awkward. She never wanted to buck my father, either. The deal was that I’d stay with her until I graduated high school, then leave. My dad put enough money in a bank account for me to buy a used car and pay for necessities until I got Lily and me to a place where I could work.’
‘They disowned you,’ Sunny concluded, ‘which is what I may do to my daughter.’
‘You will not,’ Kate scolded.
‘I may. I don’t believe she’s done this. Do you know how embarrassing it is?’
‘Not as embarrassing as when I got pregnant,’ Susan said. ‘We lived in a small town of which my dad was the mayor – just like his dad before him – so the embarrassment was thoroughly public. My older brother, in contrast to me, was a town hero. Great student, football star, heir apparent – you name the stereotype, and Jackson was it. I was the bad egg. Erasing me from the family picture was easy.’
Sunny seemed more deliberative than disturbed. ‘What about Lily? Weren’t they curious?’
‘My mother, maybe.’ A fantasy, perhaps, but Susan clung to the belief. ‘But she was married to my father, and he was tough. Still is. I send cards on every occasion – birthday, anniversary, Thanksgiving, Christmas. I send newspaper art icles about Lily or me. I send gifts from Perry & Cass, and yarn to my mom. She sends a formal thank-you every time.’ Susan held up an untwisted skein. ‘She thought these colors were very pretty. Very pretty,’ she repeated in a monotone, startled by how much the blandness of the note still stung.
‘I’m trying to decide if Jessica can survive,’ Sunny said. ‘How did you make it with an infant and no help?’
‘I didn’t sleep.’
‘Seriously.’
‘Seriously,’ Susan insisted. She learned to multitask early on. ‘I was studying, working and taking care of a baby. After I graduated from high school, I babysat my way East. Babysitting was the one thing I could do and still have Lily with me, because I sure couldn’t afford a sitter. When I got here, I did clerical work at the community college because that got me day-care dirt-cheap and classes for free. I was halfway through my degree when I met you two.’ Their girls were in preschool together. ‘That was a turning point. Friends make the difference.’
‘Exactly,’ Sunny cried. ‘If our girls hadn’t been friends, this wouldn’t have happened.’
Susan was startled. Of the three girls, she saw Jessica as the one most ready to rebel. ‘If not with our two, then with another two friends,’ she said quietly.
Sunny calmed a little. ‘Tell that to my husband.’
‘Uh-oh.’ This from Kate, and with cause. Dan Barros was mild-mannered, but there was no doubt who ruled the roost. ‘He’s blaming our girls?’
There was a pause, then a half-hearted, ‘Not exactly.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Oh, he doesn’t say things. He implies. He infers. I’m telling Jessica that she needs to tell us who the father is, so that they can get married, which would lend at least a semblance of decency to this, but Dan keeps grilling me. How did this happen – where were you – didn’t you see anything? Bottom line? It’s my fault.’
‘It isn’t your fault,’ said Kate, though she was looking at Susan. ‘Is it?’
Hadn’t Susan asked herself the same question? She picked up a PC Wool tag from a pile that lay beside the skeins. A striking little thing, the tag carried the PC Wool logo, along with the fiber content of the skein, its length and gauge, and washing instructions. ‘We gave our daughters the know-how to prevent this,’ she said as she absently fingered the tag. ‘But they didn’t consult us.’
‘They consulted each other,’ Sunny charged. ‘They gave each other strength.’
‘Bravado,’ Kate added.
‘That, too,’ Susan said. After touching the tag a moment longer, she looked up at her friends. ‘I’m forever telling parents that they have to be involved. They have to know what their kids are doing. Kids aren’t bad, just young. Their brains are still developing. That’s why sixteen-year-olds are lousy drivers. They don’t have the judgment – actually, physi c ally, don’t have the gray matter to make the right decision in a crisis. They don’t fully get it until they’re in their early twenties.’
‘And in the meantime, it is our fault?’ Sunny asked.
Susan didn’t answer. She was suddenly wondering what all those parents she had lectured would say when they learned her daughter was pregnant. Given her age and what some saw as a meteoric rise in her field, she had always been on shaky ground. Now, she feared for her credibility.
She must have looked stricken, because Kate took her hand. ‘What our daughters may have lacked in gray matter, they made up for in parental influence. We taught them right from wrong, Susie. They’ve never before given us reason to doubt them.’
‘That’s what makes this so absurd,’ Susan wailed. ‘I could give you a list of girls at school who are at risk of doing something like this. Our daughters’ names would not be on it.’
‘Now there’s a thought,’ Sunny said, sounding hopeful. ‘No one expects it from our girls, so no one will know for a while. That gives us time to figure out what to do.’ She looked from Susan to Kate and back. ‘Right?’
Susan was thinking that time might not help, when Pam came striding back from the front of the barn. ‘Hey, guys,’ she called when she was barely halfway past the stalls. ‘Were we supposed to
