Not My Daughter

establishing the clinic, blaming Phil for allowing me to do it.'

'He must have sent only the bad ones.'

'He says this is how people feel. So if I defend the clinic, and Phil points out that the school board had the final say in allowing the clinic, do you think the board will shoulder the blame? No way. They'll put it right back on me.'

'Not just you. Me, too. Mothers always get hit-like our kids are extensions of our bodies. They'll blame Sunny, too.'

But they wouldn't blame Pam, Susan realized. Taking a fresh plastic cup, she filled it halfway with Scarlet, added measured increments of Sun, then turquoise to get coral, but all the while, the issue of blame niggled at her. When she was satisfied with the shade, she set down the cup. 'Did you know that Abby was pregnant?'

Kate eyed her in surprise. 'I did not! Was?'

'She lost it. Pam doesn't know.'

'We should tell her.'

'Abby needs to do that,' Susan said, because betraying Abby would hurt friendships all around. 'But it raises an interesting point about who'd be blaming who if the world knew.' She had another niggling thought. 'If you were to guess-just a guess, since neither of our daughters has said-who do you think first suggested the pact?'

Kate didn't blink. 'I have a hunch.'

'Me, too.'

They were thinking the same thing, with neither of them wanting to say it because it felt disloyal, when the front door opened. Susan thought she heard Kate murmur something like Speak of the devil, before Pam reached the back room. She wasn't coming to work, likely not even to have coffee when she knew they were working with dyes. She wore wool slacks, a silk blouse, and a lambs-wool jacket, all top-of-the-line PC designs. Her freshly styled hair shimmered with some of the same blond shades Susan hoped to capture on her yarn.

'Hey,' Pam said, her eyes on Susan. 'Tomorrow at noon?'

The school board. 'Perfect,' Susan said. 'Thanks, Pam. I appreciate this.'

Pam was studying the wool they were dyeing. 'I like it. Where's Sunny?'

'Home, I think,' Susan said, but Pam was already turning to leave.

'Aren't you staying?' Kate asked.

'Nah. I'm not dressed for it. Besides, you don't need me for this.'

'Actually, I do,' Susan said. 'I want to copy the color of your hair.'

'Cute.'

'Stay for coffee, at least?' Kate said.

'Can't do,' Pam called back without stopping. 'We're driving down to Boston. Tanner promised me a shopping trip, and we have theater tickets, so we're making a night of it. We'll have to leave early if I want to get back for the meeting, but if I'm late, Susan, you'll understand?' She didn't wait for an answer.

They watched until she reached the door.

'Theater tickets? How lovely,' Kate remarked. 'You should have told her about Abby. That would give her something to discuss with Tanner over martinis at the Four Seasons.'

But Susan was skating on thin ice. With the prospect of facing the school board extraordinarily daunting and Pam a questionable ally, she couldn't risk it.

The board met in a conference room at the town hall. There was no harbor view here, only a glimpse of the church. It was an unassuming room, functionally appointed with a long table and fourteen spindle-back chairs. Narrower ladder-backs lined the walls to accommodate guests, and above them, compensating for the limited view, hung a collection of local seascapes.

Pam had not arrived when Hillary Dunn closed the door. Nor had Phil, though he hurried in seconds later. Taking one of the chairs that ringed the room, he stayed a comfortable distance from Susan. His message was clear; she was on her own.

Susan took a seat at the end of the table and thanked the six there for meeting on such short notice. She added a note of condolence to one of the men, who had just returned to town after his sister's funeral, and it wasn't mere gesture. Bald-headed Harold LaPierre was the library director. He was bookish and fair-minded, and while their paths never crossed socially, they had a good working relationship. Susan liked him. Aside from Hillary and Pam, he was her closest ally.

She began by distributing copies of the e-mail she had sent parents on Friday, trying not to be discouraged when several of the men quickly pushed the sheets aside. She explained her rationale for the mailing-that she wanted parents hearing directly from her about what had happened and what she was doing about it. She paused to invite reaction from board members. Getting none, she described the brainstorming she'd done with the nurse and the counselor, and the meetings they planned to hold on Monday with students. When she had finished, she paused again. No reaction this time, either.

'I'd like your feedback,' she finally said. 'My goal is to be direct. I don't want the grapevine turning this into something it isn't. Besides, tackling it head-on gives us an opportunity to discuss issues that are timely. National studies show that teenage pregnancy is on the rise.'

'Is that s'posed to excuse these girls?' asked Duncan Haith, his Maine accent thick, his bushy white eyebrows pulled down. She knew him to be the curmudgeon of the group, but to start off this way was unnerving.

Refusing to show fear, she said, 'Absolutely not. I'm just citing a trend and suggesting that the timing of this can be turned to good use. My biggest worry is copycat behavior. I'm meeting with the faculty early tomorrow. We'll coordinate student discussions throughout the day.' She looked around, waited. 'Are you… comfortable with this? I'm open to other ideas.'

'But it's too late,' Duncan complained, slapping the paper with the back of his hand. 'You already told the world. That was not a good move.' He shot Phil a look. 'Did you approve this?'

Phil shrugged. 'We couldn't sweep the problem under the rug.'

'Why not?'

Phil gestured for Susan to go on.

'Rumors were already spreading,' she said.

Duncan scowled. 'So now, instead of a few people talking about it, everyone is? What's the point a' that?'

Not wanting to argue, Susan appealed to the others. Thankfully, Hillary Dunn came to her aid. Wife of the town meeting moderator and mother of three, she was originally from the Midwest, an outsider like Susan. 'I see her point, Mr. Haith,' she said now. 'If people are going to talk, you want them to know the facts.'

'But they didn't even get all the information,' Duncan blustered. 'This e-mail does not mention the names of the girls.'

Susan suspected he knew the names, but she gave them anyway. If he wanted her to squirm, she would squirm. That was the easy part. The hard part was projecting command enough to make the board see her as the principal of the school, not the mother of one of the girls involved. She was wearing brown today-- fuchsia heart, be still!-good solid earth tones, right down to her scarf.

'I didn't include names in the e-mail,' she said respectfully, 'because my priority is that the school community know what's happened, and that they know we're taking steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. The identity of the girls is secondary.'

'Well, I'm sure you'd like that to be true,' Carl Morgan remarked in a gravelly voice. He had headed the Perry & Cass accounting department before retiring and still prepared taxes for many Zaganackians. While he was known to be more reasonable than Duncan Haith, had it been April, he'd have been a bear. 'We're talking about your daughter and her two closest friends, right?'

'Yes.'

'No boys involved?'

Susan smiled politely. 'Of course there were, but it's not my place to give out their names. We're focusing on the girls-in this case, on pact behavior.'

'Bad word,' muttered Thomas Zimmerman, a Realtor.

'Group behavior, then,' Susan said.

'But explain it, please,' Carl asked gruffly. 'Why did they do this? You don't discuss that in your e-mail.'

She hadn't felt it necessary there. Here she said, 'They did it because they love children, and because, acting