No Matter What

Dizzy, she dropped to her knees. All she could think was, My fifteen-year-old daughter is pregnant. Oh, dear God.

CHAPTER FOUR

MOLLY KNEW THAT she would never, so long as she lived, forget the expression on Caitlyn’s face when she finally arrived home at nine-thirty, dashed straight to her bedroom and found her mother sitting in her chair, the two sticks from the pregnancy test kit lying on the desktop in front of her. Her gaze flew to her mother, then the damning evidence and back to Molly.

“You searched the garbage?” she whispered.

“I knocked it over by accident.” Molly had become very nearly numb by now. “You should have disposed of them in the can.”

“I was going to, but there wasn’t anything in it. I thought you’d notice…” Cait swallowed. She still stood a foot or two inside the room, frozen in place.

“You didn’t think I’d notice your belly swelling?” How polite I sound.

“I…I…” Tears spurted and Cait’s face contorted. With a sob she threw herself across the room and facedown onto her bed. Her whole body shook with the force of her tears.

Molly’s eyes stung. On a rush of pity, she moved to sit on the bed and gently rub her daughter’s back. “Oh, sweetie. I know you were scared. I do know.”

She kept murmuring; Cait kept crying. It was a storm of misery and grief and fear. 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?”