pulled herself together enough to say, “Happy Halloween.”
Then she shut the door, all her pleasure in the evening gone. Boy, did Cait have a real talent for puncturing every happy moment these days, as if she sensed and resented her mother’s mood. Depressed? Has a headache? Good enough, I’ll give her a break. Cheerful, optimistic? Hell, no. I’ll flatten her.
She’s being a teenager, that’s all. You’re taking it ridiculously hard, Molly told herself. Cait had spoiled her up until now, that’s all. Good heavens, she wasn’t using drugs—at least that Molly could tell—she hadn’t reeled home drunk yet, she wasn’t being dropped off at all hours by boys who screeched up to the curb outside the house. Also, as far as Molly knew, Cait was even keeping her grades up. So she’d become snotty, sulky, secretive and all too frequently angry. Not that unusual.
Deal with it, Molly thought with near humor.
The doorbell rang again, and she found a smile for the next round of children.
By eight-thirty, she was tempted to blow out the candles and turn off the porch light. Any trick-or-treaters now would be teenagers, and she didn’t feel all that obligated to offer them candy. On the other hand—her gaze strayed to the bowl—she was bound to be tempted by the leftovers, and she struggled with her weight enough without ripping open Butterfinger or Snickers bars uncontrollably only because they were there.
She cleared the table in the long lull and began loading the dishwasher. Most of their dinner had to be scraped in the garbage. Molly had scraped quite a lot of food in the garbage lately. Cait seemed to enjoy throwing her scenes at mealtimes. Hey, Molly thought, maybe she should weigh herself. Could there be a silver lining to all this? It had seemed as if the waistband of her navy blue skirt was rather loose this morning.
Unlike her heels, which she still wore in her hurry to get dinner on the table. On the thought, she kicked them off. One flew halfway across the kitchen, the other only a few feet. She wiggled her toes, decided she’d ditch the panty hose as soon as she’d finished cleaning up the kitchen and reached for a dirty pan.
The doorbell rang. She jumped, remembered why it was ringing and turned, stepping automatically around the open dishwasher door. At which point, she planted a foot on the pump lying on its side and stumbled back into the kitchen trash container, which she’d pulled out from the cupboard to make cleanup easier. Even as she swore, it toppled over, spewing the uneaten food, crumpled wrappings, cans that should have gone in recycling, and…what was that?
She stared, disbelieving, at a little white stick with a bright blue dot at one end. Buried at the bottom of the garbage amidst carrot peels.
Suddenly frantic, she crouched and dumped out the rest on the kitchen floor. The doorbell rang again, more insistent. She ignored it, scrabbling through the trash. A brown paper bag held something, half-squashed. With shaking hands, she pulled it out. A home pregnancy test kit. Open. A second stick slid out and plopped onto a glob of leftover casserole. Molly turned it over and saw that it, too, had a blue dot. It only took her a minute to find the instructions. If no color appears, you are not pregnant, she was informed. If color appears, you are. Simple.
Dizzy, she dropped to her knees. All she could think was, My fifteen-year-old daughter is pregnant. Oh, dear God.
CHAPTER FOUR
MOLLY KNEW THAT she would never, so long as she lived, forget the expression on Caitlyn’s face when she finally arrived home at nine-thirty, dashed straight to her bedroom and found her mother sitting in her chair, the two sticks from the pregnancy test kit lying on the desktop in front of her. Her gaze flew to her mother, then the damning evidence and back to Molly.
“You searched the garbage?” she whispered.
“I knocked it over by accident.” Molly had become very nearly numb by now. “You should have disposed of them in the can.”
“I was going to, but there wasn’t anything in it. I thought you’d notice…” Cait swallowed. She still stood a foot or two inside the room, frozen in place.
“You didn’t think I’d notice your belly swelling?” How polite I sound.
“I…I…” Tears spurted and Cait’s face contorted. With a sob she threw herself across the room and facedown onto her bed. Her whole body shook with the force of her tears.
Molly’s eyes