Not My Daughter

it held an appeal. When the last of the Gunn family died and the property went up for sale, the women lobbied for the barn. Envisioning it as a tourist attraction, Tanner Perry, grandson of Herman Perry and husband of Pam, had bought it and moved it closer to the rest of Perry & Cass. The tourist part had never quiet materialized, but the success of PC Wool more than compensated.

Parking beside Kate's van, Susan ran inside, past stalls of raw fiber, shipping cartons, and computers, all the way to the back. There, tubs for soaking fiber and shelves of dye lined the walls. A separate section held newly painted wool, now hung to dry, while ceiling fans whirred softly above. A skeining machine stood nearby.

Had she not been preoccupied, Susan might have admired a mound of finished skeins. A blend of alpaca and mohair, these were the last of the holiday colors she had conceived the summer before. Rich with dozens of shades of cranberry, balsam, and snow, they were the culmination of a year in which sales had doubled. Not only had PC Wool earned its very own section in the Perry & Cass catalogue, but after becoming the darling of the knitting blogs, it had experienced an explosion in online sales.

A large oak table stood at the heart of the work space. Old and scarred, it was the same one on which they had put together their first season of colors ten years before. Back then, the table was in Susan's garage and PC Wool had only been a dream, conjured up during child-free evenings with a bottle of wine and good friends who loved to knit. Even now, a large basket in the center of the table held small knitting projects, while the bulk of its surface was covered with skeins waiting to be twisted.

Dropping her coat on a chair, Susan went to Kate. 'Are you okay?'

'Been better,' Kate replied. Her eyes were heavy, her hair a riot of ends sticking up around the bamboo double-pointeds at her crown. She opened her arms.

This was why Susan had come. She needed comfort. Petite Kate, with her big heart and can-do approach, had always offered that. 'If it had to be anyone,' Susan whispered, 'I'm glad it's you. What are we going to do?'

Kate held her for another minute. 'I do not know.'

'That's not the right answer. You're supposed to say that everything will work out, that this is just another one of life's little challenges, and that what happens was meant to be.'

'Aha,' Kate barked dryly, 'at least I've raised you well. You can keep telling me that. Right now, I'm not a happy camper.'

'What does Will say?'

'Pretty much what you just did. But boy, this came from nowhere. How can smart girls do something so stupid?' Reaching for a hank of yarn, she deftly twisted it until it was tight enough to double back on itself. 'My daughter's neck,' she murmured as she tucked one end into the other.

'I'll ditto that,' Susan said, and the angst of the past thirty-six hours poured out. 'I can't get past the anger. I can't ask Lily how she's feeling. I can't hold her. She's been my little girl for so long, but now there's this other… other… thing between us.'

'A baby.'

'It's not a baby to me yet. It's something unwanted.' She waved a hand. 'Bad choice of words. What I meant to say was that this is not what we needed at this stage in our lives. Lily was supposed to have all the choices that I did not. What was she thinking?'

'She wasn't alone.'

'Which blows my mind. I've always loved that our girls did things together. They're all good students, good athletes, good knitters. I thought they'd keep each other from doing dumb things.' She had a new thought. 'Where's Abby in all this?'

Kate leveled a gaze at her. 'Mary Kate refused to say.'

'She's pregnant, too?' Four would be even worse than three-though three was surely bad enough.

'Mary Kate just stared at me when I asked.'

'Meaning that Abby is either pregnant or still trying.'

'All I know,' Kate said, 'is that Mary Kate begged me not to tell Pam.'

'But if Pam can keep this from happening to Abby-'

'That's what I said, but Mary Kate said Abby would do it anyway, and she's probably right. Of the four girls, she's the least anchored.'

Like her mom, Susan thought. She didn't have to say it. Kate knew. They had discussed it more than once.

'Besides,' Kate said, 'it's not like Pam can lock her in a chastity belt.'

Susan snorted. 'Not many of those around these days, and what do we have instead? The Web. Information enough there to make naive seventeen-year-olds feel they know everything. What was Mary Kate's excuse for wanting a baby?'

Kate twisted another hank. 'She's been a hand-me-down child. She wants something of her own.'

'Isn't Jacob that?' Susan was generally skeptical of high school pairings, but she liked Jacob Senter a lot. He was a kind boy, dedicated to school and devoted to Mary Kate. Lily had no one like that.

'But between school and loans,' Kate explained, 'it'll be years before they can get married. She wants something now. Something her sisters don't have.' She screwed up her face. 'Did I miss this?'

'She had love,' Susan argued in Kate's defense.

'When I wasn't busy with the others. She has a point, Susie. Her solution may be misguided, but I see where she's coming from. Lily, now, Lily had you all to herself.'

'But only me. She wants family.'

'She has Rick.'

Rick. Susan felt a little tug at her heart. 'Rick is like the wind. Try to catch him.'

'Have you called him?' Kate asked cautiously.

Susan pressed her lips together and shook her head.

'Do you know where he is?'

'I can find out.' Not that it mattered. His cell number was linked to network headquarters in New York. He could be anywhere in the world and her call would go through.

Reaching him was the easy part. Telling him what had happened would be harder.

She practiced on Kate. 'When Lily was little, she wanted a brother or sister. That was before she realized her daddy wasn't around. Once she understood that Rick and I weren't together, she turned matchmaker. 'You'd really like Kelsey's daddy, and Kelsey has a sister and two brothers, and they need a mom like you.'' Susan smiled briefly. 'It was sweet. Sad. She always wanted a big family, but there's a right way and a wrong way to get it.' Grabbing a hank of yarn, she twisted it as she, too, had done hundreds of times. 'She keeps reminding me that I was seventeen when I had her, but it's because I was that I know how bad this is. They're not ready physically. They're not ready emotionally.'

'Neither am I,' Kate said tiredly. 'For years my life was a blur of diapers, runny noses, and interrupted sleep. I hyperventilate when I think of it. I can't go back.'

Susan wasn't as worried about going back as moving ahead. 'At least you know it's Jacob. Lily won't tell me who the father is. She says he doesn't know. How crazy is that?'

'You have no idea?'

'None.' And it bothered Susan a lot. 'She told me when she had a crush on Bobby Grant in second grade. She told me when she got her first kiss. That was Jonah McEllis. She gave me a blow-by-blow of her relationship with Joey Anderson last year. And in each case, I wasn't surprised. A good mother would know if her daughter liked someone, wouldn't she?'

Kate snickered. 'Like she would know if her daughter planned to get pregnant?'

'How did I not see something?' Susan asked, baffled. 'I look now, and, yes, there's a difference. Her breasts are fuller. Why didn't I notice before?'

'They weren't fuller before,' Kate reasoned. 'Or her clothes hid it. Or you thought she was just filling out. Susie, I'm asking myself the same thing. My daughter is two months pregnant, has been drinking milk by the gallon, has thrown up lots of mornings, and I thought it was the flu.'

Susan actually smiled. Pathetic as the situation was, she felt better. Venting always helped, especially when the person on the other end was in the same boat. Kate would love her regardless of what kind of mother she was.

'Have you and Lily talked about options?' Kate asked.