Not My Daughter Read Free Page B

to surprise Lily by showing up for a field hockey tournament. He kept in close touch with her by phone, a good, if physically absent, father.
    Rick had always trusted Susan. Rather than micromanage from afar, he left the day-to-day parenting to her. Now, under her watchful gaze, Lily was pregnant.
    Stunned, Susan listened quietly while Lily answered the doctor's questions. Yes, she wanted the baby, and yes, she understood what that meant. No, she hadn't discussed it with her mother, because she would do this on her own if she had to. No, she did not want the father involved. No, she did not drink. Yes, she knew not to eat swordfish.
    She had questions of her own--like whether she would be able to finish out the field hockey season (yes), whether winter volleyball was possible (maybe), and whether she could take Tylenol for a headache (only as directed)--and she sounded so like the mature, responsible, intelligent child Susan had raised that, if Susan hadn't been numb, she might have laughed.
    Silent still when they left the doctor's office, she handed Lily the keys to the car. "I need to walk home." Lily protested, but she insisted, "You go on. I need the air."
    It was true, though she did little productive thinking as she walked through the November chill. No longer numb, she was boiling mad. She knew it was wrong--definitely not the way a mother should feel and everything she had resented in her own mother--but how to get a grip?
    The cold air helped. She was a little calmer as she neared the house. Then she saw Lily. The girl was sitting on the front steps, a knitted scarf wound around her neck, her quilted jacket--very Perry & Cass--pulled tight round her. When Susan approached, she sat straighter and said in a timid voice, "Don't be angry."
    But Susan was. Furious, she stuck her hands in her pockets.
    "Please, Mom?"
    Susan took a deep breath. She looked off, past neighborhood houses, all the way on down the street until the cordon of old maples seemed to merge. "This isn't what I wanted for you," she finally managed to say.
    "But I love children. I was born to have children."
    Looking back, Susan pressed her aching heart. "I couldn't agree with you more. My problem's with the timing. You're seventeen. You're a senior in high school--and expecting a baby at the end of May, right before exams? Do you have any idea what being nine months pregnant is like? How are you going to study?"
    "I'll already have been accepted into college."
    "Well, that's another thing. How can you go to college? Dorm rooms don't have room for cribs."
    "I'm going to Percy State."
    "Oh, honey, you can do better."
    "You went there, and look where you are."
    "I had to go there. But times have changed. Getting a job is hard enough now, even with a degree from a top school."
    "Exactly. So it won't matter. Anything is doable, Mom. Haven't you taught me that?"
    "Sure. I just never thought it would apply to a baby."
    Lily's eyes lit up. "But there is a baby," she cried, sounding so like a buoyant child that Susan could have wept. Lily didn't have a clue what being a mother entailed. Spending the summer as a mother's helper was a picnic compared to the day-in, day-out demands of motherhood.
    "Oh, sweetheart," she said and, suddenly exhausted, sank down on the steps. "Forget doable. What about sensible? What about responsible ? We've talked about birth control. You could have used it."
    "You're missing the point, Mom," Lily said, moving close to hug Susan's arm. "I want this baby. I know I can be a good mother--even better than the moms we worked for this summer, and I have the best role model in you. You always said being a mother was wonderful. You said you loved me from the start. You said I was the best thing that ever happened to you."
    Susan wasn't mollified. "I also said that being a single mom was hard and that I never wanted you to have to struggle the way I did. So--So think beyond college. You say you want to be a biologist, but that means grad