Molly opened her mouth to say, You’re eating for two, but, thank God, thought better of it in time. “You’re active,” was all she said. “Didn’t you dance today?”
“Yeah. It does make me hungry.” Apparently she gave herself permission to eat, because she started in on the spaghetti with enthusiasm.
Molly finished a bite of broccoli. “So, did you have any thoughts about yesterday?” she asked, ultracasual.
Pasta dangling from her fork, Cait stared at her. “Yesterday?”
“You know. The two agencies.”
She shrugged and put the bite in her mouth.
“I think I liked the first one better. I don’t know how you’d feel about an open adoption, but they sound as if they embrace the concept instead of offering it grudgingly. It might be easier, if you choose adoption, not to close the door on your child.”
This stare smoldered. “Can’t you let it alone, Mom?”
“Sometimes talking things out is the best way to clarify your thinking,” she said very carefully.
“Is that what you’re doing? Clarifying your thinking, so you can make up your mind what I should do?”
Molly put down her fork. She was beginning to be fed up with Cait’s sullen, “me against you” attitude. “No,” she said. “You know that’s not what I’m doing.”
“Do I?”
“Have you told any of your friends?”
“Of course not!”
“Then who do you have to talk to?”
Silence.
“Trevor?”
“I don’t want to talk to him!” Cait was flat-out glaring now. “He’s the one stalking me now.”
“Because you won’t talk to him.”
“Why should I?”
“Because you have to talk to somebody,” Molly said, trying for patience when the well was dry. “Seems to me, your choices are him or me.”
“Both of you want to decide for me. You don’t listen. You tell me what to do. You always have,” she claimed, in that sweeping way teenagers had of making a parent feel guilty for every single decision ever made. She dropped her fork with a clatter. “I’m not hungry anymore,” she announced, pushing back her chair.
Molly might have felt really crummy if Cait’s hand hadn’t snaked out and nabbed a piece of garlic bread, which then disappeared behind her.
“All right,” Molly said, voice steely. “Here’s the deal. You’re now over seven weeks pregnant. You and I both know you shouldn’t take more than three more weeks to make up your mind about an abortion. After that, it’s off the table. Do you fully understand that?”
“Yes!” Cait yelled, face red and tears starting. She ran from the room.
Taking the garlic bread with her.
* * *
MOLLY WOULD HAVE GONE out to the garage to make her phone call, if only it wasn’t so cold. As it was, phone in her hand, she strolled to the foot of the stairs to be sure Cait really was safely closeted in her room before dialing.
“Molly,” Richard said, in that quiet, deep voice that for no good reason seemed to settle some of her turmoil. She’d been counting on it. “I was hoping you’d call tonight.”
“Hah!” She kept her voice low and walked to the living room, where she could hear any footsteps on the stairs—and wasn’t right beneath Cait’s room. “You were probably hoping for a few days of peace.”
“No. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
She could hear his smile, which made her grow one, too, however wry and painful it was. “Thank you for saying that. I hope you meant it. About listening. Talking.”
“I meant it.”
Sincere? Not? Given that she’d already made the phone call, what could she do but take him at his word?
“So what’s up?” he asked.
“Oh, the usual drama with my daughter. How dare I try to open a discussion about the adoption agencies, open versus closed adoptions, never mind the fact that she’s seven plus weeks along. Seven weeks!” She was breathing hard again. She wished suddenly that he was here. That—maybe—he was holding her hand. The first time he’d done that, she’d hardly noticed on a conscious level, but the feel of his big, warm hand wrapping hers was nonetheless imprinted on her sensory memory. When was the last time anyone had offered physical comfort to her? Anyone but Caitlyn, who used to be generous with hugs but now seemed to bitterly resent her mother?
“Yeah, that’s been on my mind, too,” Richard said.
Molly had to think what he was talking about. Seven weeks. That was it. “What is she thinking? No, don’t even try to answer that.”