Not My Daughter

house was chaotic even without my having an outside job. And by the time you all were in school, we didn't have the money for me to train to be a vet. Do you think I work just for kicks?'

Mary Kate was subdued. 'You love your work.'

'Yes, but I couldn't do it if it didn't pay. We need every extra cent.'

'My baby won't cost much,' the girl said meekly.

Kate took her daughter's shoulders again, holding on to a dream that was fading fast. 'It isn't the money,' she pleaded softly. 'I want things to be easier for you when you have kids. I want your children to have rooms of their own. I don't want you to have to choose between music lessons or ballet because you can't pay for both.'

The door opened and Kate looked up, fully expecting it to be Lissie. But it was Will. Will, who had worked his way from the PC shipping dock to foreman of the department, losing hair and gaining girth, but remaining Kate's rock.

She always felt a weight lift from her shoulders when Will came home, but her relief had never been greater than it was now. 'Here's your dad. Will, we have something to discuss.'

Five blocks away, Sunny Barros was nowhere near as relieved when her husband came home from work. 'She's what?' Dan asked her. Their daughter stood nearby, but he was looking at Sunny, who was absolutely beside herself.

'Pregnant,' Sunny mouthed. She couldn't say the word again.

'Jessica?' he asked and turned to the girl. 'Is this true?'

She nodded.

'Who's the boy?'

'You don't know him, Dad.'

Dan looked at his wife. 'Who is he?'

Sunny shook her head and pressed her mouth shut. It was either that or scream.

'Mom's angry,' Jessica said calmly. 'I've been telling her that it's fine. People have been having babies since Adam and Eve. She's convinced it's the end of the world.'

'Excuse me, Jessica,' Sunny cried, but stopped when her ten-year-old daughter skipped into the room. 'Darcy.' She pointed upstairs. 'Violin practice. Ten more minutes.'

The child looked wounded. 'I'm just saying hi to Daddy. Hi, Dad.'

Sunny pointed again, waiting only until the child left before eyeing Jessica. 'Tell him what else you told me.' She looked at Dan. 'Jessica planned this.'

'Planned to get pregnant?'

'Decided she wanted a baby,' Sunny specified. If the girl had gone looking for the one thing that would dismantle the tidy life Sunny had so carefully crafted, she had found it.

'Is this true, Jessica?' Dan asked.

Jessica eyed him levelly. A tall girl with long brown hair and Dan's verbal skill, she spoke with confidence. 'Bringing a child into the world is the most important thing a person can do. I want to leave my mark.'

'At seventeen?'

'Age doesn't matter. It's what's inside. I'll be the best mom ever.'

'At seventeen,' Dan repeated. Looking at Sunny, he scratched his head. 'Where did this come from?'

Sunny didn't answer. Folding her arms against the coming storm, she waited. Dan was smart, well beyond the contracts he negotiated for Perry & Cass. He saw cause and effect, and was eminently predictable. Sunny had always loved that about him, but it was about to work against her.

To his credit, he considered other options first. Looking at Jessica again, he said, 'Is it school pressure? Fear of college?'

Jessica smiled smugly. 'My grades are great. That's one of the reasons I knew I could do this.'

She had her father's brains-tenth in her class without much effort-but this had nothing to do with grades, or apparently with brains, Sunny decided. 'Do you have any idea-' she began, but stopped when Darcy whipped back in.

'My lamp just blew out. It needs a new bulb.'

'I'll replace it in a minute,' Sunny said and turned her around. 'Until then, use the overhead light.'

'I don't like the overhead light.'

'Use it,' Sunny ordered and turned back to the others. 'And there's another problem. What do we tell Darcy so that she doesn't do this herself in seven more years? This is the worst kind of example to set.'

Dan held up a hand and returned to Jessica. 'You talked about going to Georgetown.'

'Percy State will do.'

'Will do?' He lowered his voice. 'Is it Adam?'

'Maybe. Maybe not.'

'Jessica!' Sunny shouted.

Dan lifted his hand for quiet. 'You are dating Adam, are you not?'

'I have been, but he isn't the love of my life.'

'He has to marry you if he's the father of this baby,' Sunny argued.

'I haven't said he's the father,' the girl insisted. 'Anyway, the donation of sperm doesn't make a man a father. Involvement does, and the father of this baby won't be involved. I'm raising it myself.'

'Raising it yourself?' Dan asked. 'That doesn't make sense.'

'Maybe not to you and Mom. When everything in your world is as neat as this kitchen-'

'What's wrong with this kitchen?' Sunny asked in alarm. Their kitchen-their house-was larger than many in town, reflecting Dan's position as head of the PC legal department and Sunny's as manager of Home Goods. She had decorated every inch of the place herself and took pride in seasonal additions from the store, like the handblown glass bowl of pine cones on the table. Their kitchen reflected everything they had worked so hard to achieve. She hadn't expected an attack on this front.

'Nothing's wrong with the kitchen, Mom,' Jessica replied serenely. 'That's the problem. Nothing is out of place. Nothing clashes. Our lives are very, very organized.' She looked at Dan, who looked at Sunny.

'Where is she getting this?' he asked, sounding mystified.

'Not from me,' Sunny vowed, but she knew what was coming.

'From your mother?'

It was the only possible explanation. Sunny didn't have to study Jessica's cell tab to know that she talked with her grandmother often. The girl made no secret of it. She and Delilah had always gotten along, and no warning from Sunny could change that.

Delilah Maranthe was the embodiment of all Sunny had tried to escape. Her parents had been the eccentrics of the neighborhood, bent on doing their own thing. Born Stan and Donna, they went to court to become Samson and Delilah. They bought a house in suburbia and, under the guise of returning the property to its natural state, refused to mow the lawn. Ever. They spent weeks before Halloween baking cookies and rigging up elaborate electronics, though the local children were forbidden to visit. To Sunny's utter mortification, they appeared at her high school graduation dressed as graduates from the century before.

To this day they remained odd, and though some people found a benign charm in their behavior, Sunny did not. Had her parents ever been benign-had they had an ounce of caring or foresight-they wouldn't have saddled their children with silly names. What kind of mother named her child Sunshine? Sunny would have gone to court to change it herself if she hadn't been adamant against following in a single one of her parents' footsteps. And Buttercup? That was her older sister, who had simply shrugged it off and gone through life as Jane.

Sunny had been more vulnerable, suffering the taunts of schoolmates, and though no one in Zaganack knew her as Sunshine, the fear of discovery haunted her. She had raised Jessica and her sister to be Normal with a capital N.

Now Jessica was pregnant, saying that sperm didn't make a man a father and that their lives were too ordinary-and Dan was looking at Sunny like it was her fault. But how could she control Delilah Maranthe? 'It's not enough that I had to escape my mother when I was a child, but now she's corrupted my daughter!'

'This has nothing to do with Delilah,' Jessica insisted, which irritated Sunny all the more.

'See, Dan? Not Grandma. Delilah.' She turned on her daughter. 'A grandmother shouldn't be called by her first name. Why can't you call her Grandma?'