Not My Daughter Read Free Page A

Nightlight she might have named it. Girl. So young. So vulnerable.
    Heart catching, she carefully backed out, crept down the hall to the attic door, and quietly climbed the stairs. There, at an oak table in the small arc of a craft lamp, she turned to a fresh page of her notebook, opened a tin of pastels, and made her first bold stroke. A fuchsia heart? Definitely. If anything could distract her, it was this. She made another stroke, smudged the ends, added yellow to soften a green, then navy to deepen a red.
    Typically, she produced her best work when she was stressed--pure sublimation--and this night was no exception. By the time she was done, she had five pages, each with a unique swath of anywhere from two to five hues, undulating from shade to shade. These would be the spring colorways for PC yarns. She even named them: March Madness, Vernal Tide, Spring Eclipse, Robin At Dawn, and, naturally, Creation.
    The last was particularly vibrant. Violent? No, she decided. Well, maybe. But wasn't creation an explosive thing? Didn't creation have profound consequences? And what if Lily wasn't growing a child but something darker?
    Susan returned to bed, but each time she dozed, she woke up to new fears. By five in the morning, when she finally despaired of sleep and got up, she was convinced that her daughter had a uterine cyst that had been overlooked long enough to jeopardize her chances of ever having a baby. Either that or it was a tumor. Uterine cancer, warranting a hysterectomy, perhaps chemotherapy. Terrifying. No child, ever? Tragic .
    Keeping her fears to herself, she got Lily up as usual, dropped her at Mary Kate's, and went on to school. The girls would follow later, but this morning, Susan had two early parent meetings, both difficult, before she appeared on the front steps to greet students. It wasn't until eight-thirty that she finally reached the doctor's office.
    The only appointment she could get for Lily was in the late afternoon, which gave Susan the rest of the day to worry. That meant she answered e-mail with half a heart, was distracted during a teacher observation, and what little work she put into next year's budget, which was due to the superintendent by Thanksgiving, was a waste.
    She could only think of one thing, and any way she looked at it, it wasn't good.

Chapter 2

    The doctor confirmed it. Lily was definitely pregnant. Learning that her daughter didn't have a fatal disease, Susan was actually relieved--but only briefly. The reality of being pregnant at seventeen was something she knew all too well.
    Susan had become pregnant in high school herself. Richard McKay was the son of her parents' best friends. That summer, when he was fresh out of college with a journalism degree and a job offer for fall that he couldn't refuse, something sparked between them. Pure lust , her father decided. And the chemistry was certainly right. But Susan and Rick had spent too many hours that summer only talking for it to be just sex. They saw eye to eye on so many things, not the least being their desire to leave Oklahoma, that when Rick dutifully offered to marry Susan, she flat-out refused.
    She never regretted her decision. To this day, she recalled the look of palpable relief on his face when she had firmly shaken her head. He had dreams; she admired them. Had there been times when she missed having him there? Sure. But she couldn't compete with the excitement of his career, and refused to tie him down.
    His success reinforced her conviction. Starting out, he had been the assistant to the assistant producer of a national news show. Currently, he was the star, following stories to the ends of the earth as one of the show's leading commentators. He had never married, had never had other children. Only after he became the face in front of the camera rather than the one behind was he able to send money for Lily's support, but his check arrived every month now without fail. He never missed a birthday, and had been known