“My girlfriend is pregnant. Um…she used to be my girlfriend.”
There was a long, shocked silence. “Used to be? You’ve only been there for, like, three months?”
“Yeah, uh, we didn’t last long.” He sat up on the edge of the bed.
“Long enough.”
Trevor blinked at his sister’s tart tone. Suddenly she didn’t sound so much like a kid. He grimaced. A kid? She was…not even a year younger than Cait. He knew when both their birthdays were. Eight months and…six days.
In sudden alarm, he asked, “Have you, um…?”
“Had sex? No way!”
“I’ll bet some of your friends have,” he said.
“Well, sure. But I haven’t met anybody I liked that much. And even if I did…I’m going to try to wait until I’m in college,” she finished in a rush.
He was surprised by his tangle of emotions. He hated the idea of some guy screwing his little sister. Scoring. Even worse—wow—of her pregnant.
“That’s a good idea,” he said.
“One you’ve lived by.” Before he could counter that, she went on. “Is the girl a senior, too?”
“Uh, no.” He realized how much he’d been saying that: uh. To give himself time to think, maybe. “She’s a sophomore.”
“And you got her pregnant?”
“She was there, too.”
Bree made a sound he took as disgust, and Trevor let his head fall forward. I am such an asshole. And there’s no way I can make it better.
“What are you going to do?” his sister asked.
“I don’t know.” It was a really hard thing to admit. To accept.
Almost as hard as accepting that there probably wasn’t anything he could do.
* * *
“HOW WERE THINGS AT school today?” Molly asked brightly. She drained the spaghetti.
“I didn’t puke, if that’s what you mean,” her daughter said disagreeably.
“That’s not what I meant, but I’m glad. The medicine’s helping, then.”
“I guess.”
Cait did help carry food to the table and filled her plate although then she looked down at it in dismay. “I’m so hungry! When I’m not sick, all I want to do is eat. I’d be a whale if I…” She put on the brakes.
Molly opened her mouth to say, You’re eating for two, but, thank God, thought better of it in time. “You’re active,” was all she said. “Didn’t you dance today?”
“Yeah. It does make me hungry.” Apparently she gave herself permission to eat, because she started in on the spaghetti with enthusiasm.
Molly finished a bite of broccoli. “So, did you have any thoughts about yesterday?” she asked, ultracasual.
Pasta dangling from her fork, Cait stared at her. “Yesterday?”
“You know. The two agencies.”
She shrugged and put the bite in her mouth.
“I think I liked the first one better. I don’t know how you’d feel about an open adoption, but they sound as if they embrace the concept instead of offering it grudgingly. It might be easier, if you choose adoption, not to close the door on your child.”
This stare smoldered. “Can’t you let it alone, Mom?”
“Sometimes talking things out is the best way to clarify your thinking,” she said very carefully.
“Is that what you’re doing? Clarifying your thinking, so you can make up your mind what I should do?”
Molly put down her fork. She was beginning to be fed up with Cait’s sullen, “me against you” attitude. “No,” she said. “You know that’s not what I’m doing.”
“Do I?”
“Have you told any of your friends?”
“Of course not!”
“Then who do you have to talk to?”
Silence.
“Trevor?”
“I don’t want to talk to him!” Cait was flat-out glaring now. “He’s the one stalking me now.”
“Because you won’t talk to him.”
“Why should I?”
“Because you have to talk to somebody,” Molly said, trying for patience when the well was dry. “Seems to me, your choices are him or me.”
“Both of you want to decide for me. You don’t listen. You tell me what to do. You always have,” she claimed, in that sweeping way teenagers had of making a parent feel guilty for every single decision ever made. She dropped her fork with a clatter. “I’m not hungry anymore,” she announced, pushing back her chair.
Molly might have felt really crummy if Cait’s hand hadn’t snaked out and nabbed a piece of garlic bread, which then disappeared behind her.
“All right,” Molly said, voice steely. “Here’s the deal. You’re now over seven weeks pregnant. You and I both know you shouldn’t take more than three more weeks to make up your mind about an abortion. After that, it’s off the table. Do you fully understand that?”
“Yes!” Cait yelled, face red and tears starting. She ran from the