Barbara Delinsky: Not My Daughter

Susan lived in one of the latter. It was a small frame house with six rooms equally spaced over two floors and an open attic on the third. By night, with its tiny front yard and ribbon of driveway, it looked like the rest. By day, painted a cerulean blue, with sea green shutters and an attic gable trimmed in teal, it stood out.

Color was Susan's thing. Growing up, she had loved reds, though her mother said they clashed with her freckles. Dark green would be better, Ellen Tate advised. Or brown. But Susan's hair was the color of dark sand, so she still adored the pepper of red, orange, and pink.

Then came Lily, and Susan's mother latched onto those colors. You have a fuchsia heart , she charged despairingly when she learned of the pregnancy, and though Susan discarded most else of what her mother had said, those words survived. Loath to attract attention, she had worn black through much of those nine months, then a lighter but still-bland beige after Lily was born. Even when she started to teach, neutrals served her well, offsetting the freckles that made her look too young.

But a fuchsia heart doesn't die. It simply bides its time, taking a backseat to pragmatism while leaking helpless drops of color here and there. Hence teal gables, turquoise earrings, and chartreuse or saffron scarves. In the yarns she dyed as a hobby, the colors were even wilder.

Turning into her driveway, Susan parked and climbed from the car. Once up the side steps, she let herself into the kitchen. In the soft light coming from under the cherry cabinets for which she had painstaking saved for three years and had largely installed herself, she looked back at Lily.

The girl was Susan's height, if slimmer and more fragile, but she stood her ground, hands tucked in her jacket pockets. Pregnant?

Susan still didn't believe it was true. Yes, there was picky eating, moodiness, and the morning muzzies, all out of character and new in the last few months, but other ailments had similar symptoms. Like mono.

"It may be just a matter of taking antibiotics," she said sensibly.

Lily looked baffled. "Antibiotics?"

"If you have mono-"

"Mom, I'm pregnant . Six tests, all positive."

"Maybe you read them wrong."

"Mary Kate saw two of them and agreed."

"Mary Kate is no expert, either." Susan felt a stab. "How many times have I seen Mary Kate since then? Thirty? Sixty?"

"Don't be mad at Mary Kate. It wasn't her place to tell you."

"I am mad at Mary Kate. I'm closer to her than I am to the others, and this is your health , Lily. What if something else is going on with your body? Shouldn't Mary Kate be concerned about that?"

Lily pushed her fingers through her hair. "This is beyond bizarre. All this time I've been afraid to tell you because I didn't know how you'd react, but I never thought you wouldn't believe me."

Susan didn't want to argue. There was one way to find out for sure. "Whatever it is, we'll deal. I'll call Dr. Brant first thing tomorrow. She'll squeeze you in."

Never a good sleeper, Susan spent the night running through all of the reasons why her daughter couldn't be pregnant. Most had to do with being responsible, because if Susan had taught Lily one thing, it was that.

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.

Hardworking. 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 Lily's door. In the faint glow of a butterfly night-light, 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 she could get for Lily was in the late afternoon, which gave Susan the rest of the day to worry. That meant she answered e-mail with half a heart, was distracted during a teacher observation, and what little work she put into next year's budget, 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.