Barbara Delinsky: Not My Daughter

"I'm pregnant."

Susan gasped. Freeing her hand, she sat straighter. She waited for a teasing smile, but there was none. And of course not. Lily wouldn't joke about something like this.

Her thoughts raced. "But-but that's impossible. I mean, it's not physically impossible, but it wouldn't happen." When Lily said nothing, Susan pressed a hand to her chest and whispered, "Would it?"

"I am," Lily whispered back.

"What makes you think it?"

"Six home tests, all positive."

"You're late?"

"Not late. Missed. Three times."

"Three? Omigod, why didn't you tell me?" Susan cried, thinking of all the other things a missed period could mean. Being pregnant didn't make sense, not with Lily. But the child didn't lie. If she said she was pregnant, she believed it herself-not that it was true. "Home tests can be totally misleading."

"Nausea, tiredness, bloating?"

"I don't see bloating," Susan said defensively, because if her daughter was three months pregnant, she would have seen it.

"When was the last time you saw me naked?"

"In the hot tub at the spa," she replied without missing a beat.

"That was in June, Mom."

Susan did miss a beat then, but only one. "It must be something else. You don't even have a boyfriend." She caught her breath. "Do you?" Had she really missed something? "Who is he?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Doesn't matter? Lily, if you are-" She couldn't say the word aloud. The idea that her daughter was sexually active was totally new. Sure, she knew the statistics. How could she not, given her job? But this was her daughter, her daughter. They had agreed-Lily had promised -she would tell Susan if she wanted birth control. It was a conversation they'd had too many times to count. "Who is he?" she asked again.

Lily remained silent.

"But if he's involved-"

"I'm not telling him."

"Did he force you?"

"No," Lily replied. Her eyes were steady not with fear, now, but something Susan couldn't quite name. "It was the other way around," she said. "I seduced him."

Susan sat back. If she didn't know better, she might have said Lily looked excited. And suddenly nothing about the discussion was right-not the subject, not that look, certainly not the place. Setting her napkin beside the plate, she gestured for the server. The son of a local family, and once a student of Susan's, he hurried over.

"You haven't finished, Ms. Tate. Is something wrong?"

Something wrong? "No, uh, just time."

"Should I box this up?"

"No, Aidan. If you could just bring the bill."

He had barely left when Lily leaned forward. "I knew you'd be upset. That's why I haven't told you."

"How long were you planning to wait?"

"Just a little longer-maybe 'til the end of my first trimester."

"Lily, I'm your mother."

"But this is my baby," the girl said softly, "so I get to make the decisions, and I wasn't ready to tell you, not even tonight, which is why I chose this place. But even here, it's like you can see inside me."

Susan was beyond hurt. Getting pregnant was everything she had taught Lily not to do. She sat back, let out a breath. "I can't grasp this. Are you sure?" Lily's body didn't look different, but what could be seen when she wore the same layered tops that her friends did, and the days when Susan bathed her each night were long gone. "Three missed periods?" she whispered. "Then this happened…?"

"Eleven weeks ago."

Susan was beside herself. "When did you do the tests?"

"As soon as I missed my first period."

And not a word spoken? It was definitely a statement, but of what? Defiance? Independence? Stupidity? Lily might be gentle, often vulnerable-but she also had a stubborn streak. When she started something, she rarely backed down. Properly channeled, that was a positive thing, like when she set out to win top prize at the science fair, which she did, but only after three false starts. Or when she set out to sing in the girls a cappella group, didn't make the cut as a freshman and worked her tail off that year and the next as the group's manager, until she finally landed a spot.

But this was different. Stubbornness was not a reason for silence when it came to pregnancy, certainly not when the prospective mother was seventeen.

Unable to order her thoughts, Susan grasped at loose threads. "Do the others know?" It went without saying that she meant Mary Kate, Abby, and Jess.

"Yes, but no moms."

"And none of the girls told me?" More hurt there. "But I see them all the time!"

"I swore them to silence."

"Does your dad know?"

Lily looked appalled. "I would never tell him before I told you."

"Well, that's something."

"I love babies, Mom," the girl said, excited again.

"And that makes this okay?" Susan asked hysterically, but stopped when the server returned. Glancing at the bill, she put down what might have been an appropriate amount, then pushed her chair back. The air in the room was suddenly too warm, the smells too pungent even for someone who wasn't pregnant. As she walked to the door with Lily behind, she imagined that every eye in the room watched. It was a flash from her own past, followed by the echo of her mother's words. You've shamed us, Susan. What were you thinking?

Times had changed. Single mothers were commonplace now. The issue for Susan wasn't shame, but the dreams she had for her daughter. Dreams couldn't hold up against a baby. A baby changed everything.

The car offered privacy but little comfort, shutting Susan and Lily in too small a space with a huge chasm between them. Fighting panic as the minutes passed without a retraction, Susan fumbled for her keys and started the engine.

Carlino's was in the center of town. Heading out, she passed the bookstore, the drugstore, two Realtors, and a bank. Passing Perry & Cass took longer. Even in the fifteen years Susan had lived in Zaganack, the store had expanded. It occupied three blocks now, two-story buildings with signature crimson-and-cream awnings, and that didn't count the mail-order department and online call center two streets back, the manufacturing complex a mile down the road, or the shipping department farther out in the country.

Zaganack was Perry & Cass. Fully three-fourths of the townsfolk worked for the retail icon. The rest provided services for those who did, as well as for the tens of thousands of visitors who came each year to shop.

But Perry & Cass wasn't what had drawn Susan here when she'd been looking for a place to raise her child. Having come from the Great Plains, she had wanted something coastal and green. Zaganack overlooked Maine's Casco Bay, and, with its hemlocks and pines, was green year-round. Its shore was a breathtaking tumble of sea-bound granite; its harbor, home port to a handful of local fishermen, was quaint. With a population that ebbed and flowed, swelling from 18,000 to 28,000 in summer, the town was small enough to be a community, yet large enough to allow for heterogeneity.

Besides, Susan loved the name Zaganack. A derivative of the Penobscot tongue, it was loosely interpreted to mean "people from the place of eternal spring," and though local lore cited Native Americans' reference to the relatively mild weather of coastal towns, Susan took a broader view. Spring meant new beginnings. She had found one in Zaganack.

And now this? History repeating itself?

Unable to think, she drove in silence. Leaving the main road, she passed the grand brick homes of Perrys and Casses, followed by the elegant, if smaller, ones of the families' younger generations. The homes of locals fanned out from there, Colonials yielding to Victorians and, in turn, to homes that were simpler in design and built closer together.