Molly would have given a lot to have joined her. But maybe strangely, she felt steadier now than she had at any time in the past six weeks.
“I love you,” she said, bending down to kiss Cait’s head. “I love you so much. We’ll figure out what we have to do. We will.”
“How can you love me?” her child wailed.
Through her own tears, Molly laughed. “I will always love you. Haven’t I told you that a million times? That no matter what happens, no matter what you do, I will love you because I’m your mother?”
Cait managed to roll over and look up through swollen eyes. Her skin was blotchy; tears dripped from her chin and snot from her upper lip. Molly reached for a dirty T-shirt on the top of the hamper and handed it over. “Wipe and blow.”
She did, and almost looked worse afterward. Molly sat back down and embraced Cait, who laid her head on Molly’s shoulder and clutched her, too. They sat like that for a long time—a couple of minutes, at least. Silent, breathing in and out. Molly soaked in the closeness and tried to shut her mind for this brief, peaceful interval to all the decisions to be made. To the fact that everything had changed for Cait, irrevocably.
At last a long breath shuddered out of her and she straightened. “Would you like a cup of tea? Or cocoa?”
“Cocoa, please.”
They went downstairs. Molly put water on to boil and Cait sat in the dining nook waiting. They had instant, thank goodness; Molly hadn’t been sure, since they didn’t drink it often. She set a spoon in each mug, poured in the boiling water and carried them to the table, where she sat across from Cait.
“Have you told Trevor yet?”
Head bowed, concentrating on stirring, Cait shook her head. “That’s where I went tonight. I tried.”
Molly had guessed as much. “Did you find him?”
“Finally. At a party. But he was with some girl.” She clenched her jaw. “He wouldn’t go off where I could talk to him. And I didn’t want to yell out to the whole room, ‘Hey, guess what, I’m pregnant.’”
“No, I don’t blame you.”
“What can he do anyway?” she asked fiercely.
It was hard, so hard, to hide how angry Molly was. “Depending on what you decide to do, there are ways he can take responsibility, too. He is responsible. At least as much as you are. He’s two years older, Cait.”
“We didn’t use a condom the first time,” Cait said dully. “He did after that, but I could tell he didn’t like how it felt.”
That son of a bitch, was all Molly could think. “At seventeen, he surely understood the consequences,” she said after a moment, trying to hide her rage.
“I’ve been so scared.” The swollen eyes were pathetic. Her nose was starting to run again and Molly handed her a napkin. “I kept thinking my period would start any day, that this couldn’t be happening.”
“How pregnant are you?”
That made Cait drop her eyes. A new tide of red rose from her neck to swallow the blotches on her face. “The first time was, um, six weeks ago,” she mumbled. “So I guess…”
That meant if they were going to seriously consider abortion—and how could they not, given Cait’s age?—it had to be soon. “Oh, sweetie,” Molly murmured. She waited, but Cait didn’t say anything. “Didn’t you know you could talk to me?”
The wet eyes met hers again. “I was so scared,” she repeated. She buried her face in the napkin, finally wiped and blew again. “And I’ve been such a butt.”
“Yes, you have. But remember—”
“No matter what I do, you will always love me because you’re my mother,” she recited, sounding watery.
“Right.”
“Mommy. What do I do?”
“That’s something we’ll have to talk about and think about carefully. But I suspect you know the options. Really, there are only three.”
“I could get an abortion,” Cait said tentatively.
Molly nodded. “That’s one. Two, you can have this baby and give it up for adoption.” It was hard to go on, seeing the stricken look on her daughter’s face. “Or three, you have it and keep it.”
“But…how can I?”
“With great difficulty. There was a time both Trevor’s parents and I would have said the two of you had to get married. He could finish the school year and then get a job.”
“But…he broke up with me.”
“There were consequences to his choosing not to use a condom,” Molly reminded her. “Seniors in high school are planning for the future. They’re thinking about grades, how to pay for college, how to get training for a trade that interests them. A few are even planning to get married once they graduate. Trevor made a choice about the future when he was either in too big a hurry to bother with a condom, or decided he didn’t like how sex feels without one.” She paused, feeling cruel, but knowing this had to be said. “So did you, agreeing to have sex without setting limits.”
A sob hitched in Cait’s throat, but she didn’t leap up and race from the room as Molly had half expected.
“So you think we should get married?” she asked after a minute.
“No. I said there was a time that would have been expected. Nowadays… Well, I suspect most girls in your situation have an abortion. No matter what, you’re too young to marry anyone, and whether you want to admit it or not, Trevor is not a good candidate. He’s an angry young man who has been lashing out at everyone around him. I don’t believe he’s capable right now of being any kind of husband or father.”
“He was…he was really sweet to me.”
“Until he ditched you?”
“It wasn’t like that.” Cait looked wretched. “I think…I think it was my fault.” Molly snorted, and Cait shook her head. “He said I was acting like a little girl, and he’d made a mistake hooking up with someone my age. And…I guess I was, I don’t know, kind of not sure how to act and…” She stumbled to a stop, seeming to run out of words.
“Over your head.”
Another sniffle. “I guess. He’s older and he knew what he was doing and I didn’t and… But I liked him so much, and when he liked me, too…” The last came out as a wail.
Molly felt a burn beneath her breastbone. She understood. How could she not? She’d been a teenager, hopelessly aware of a boy who would never in a million years notice her. And then a freshman in college when a boy like that did notice her—and she, too, had ended up pregnant long before she’d planned for any such eventuality. Yes, she’d been older than Cait, but any wiser? Not so much.
“Right now,” she said, “I think we both need to go to bed.”
