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To my readers, for their big hearts and their undying loyalty.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Readers’ Guide
About the Author
By the same author
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
Susan Tate never saw it coming. She only knew that her daughter was different. The girl who had always been spontaneous and open had suddenly grown opaque.
Lily was seventeen. Maybe that said it. A senior in high school, she had a loaded course schedule, played field hockey and volleyball, sang in an a cappella group. And, yes, Susan was spoiled by the close relationship she and Lily had always had. They were a family of two, fully comfortable with that and each other.
Inevitably, Lily had to test her wings. Susan knew that. But she also had a right to worry. Lily was the love of her life, the very best thing that had happened in all of her thirty-five years. As achievements in life went, being a good mother was the one she most prized.
That meant communicating, and with dinner too often interrupted by email or texts, eating out was warranted. At a restaurant Susan would have Lily captive while they waited to order, waited for food, waited to pay – all quality time.
She suggested the Steak Place, definitely a splurge, but lined with quiet oak booths. Lily vetoed it in favor of Carlino’s.
Carlino’s wasn’t even Susan’s second choice. Oh, she liked the owners, the menu, and the art, all of which were authentically Tuscan. But the prices were so reasonable for large plates of food that the whole town went there. Susan wanted privacy and quiet; Carlino’s was public and loud.
But she wanted to please Lily, so she gave in and, determined to be a good sport, smilingly hustled her daughter out of the November chill into a hive of warmth and sound. When they finally finished greeting friends and were seated, they shared hummus on toasted crostini, and though Lily only nibbled, she insisted it was good. More friends stopped by, and, in fairness, it wasn’t only Lily’s fault. As principal of the high school, Susan was well known in town. Another time, she would have enjoyed seeing everyone.
But she was on a mission this night. As soon as she was alone with Lily again, she leaned forward and quietly talked about her day at school. With next year’s budget due by Thanksgiving and town resources stagnant, there were hard decisions to be made. Most staff issues were too sensitive to be shared with her seventeen-year-old daughter, but when it came to new course offerings and technology, the girl was a worthy sounding board.
Susan’s motive actually went deeper, to the very heart of mothering. She believed that sharing adult issues encouraged Lily to think. She also believed that her daughter was insightful, and this night was no exception. Momentarily focused, Lily asked good questions.
No sooner had their entrées come, though – chicken with cannellini beans for Lily, salmon with artichokes for Susan – when a pair of Susan’s teachers interrupted to say hello. As soon as they left, Susan asked Lily about the AP Chem test she’d had that morning. Though Lily replied volubly, her answers were heavy on irrelevant facts, and her brightness seemed forced. She picked at her food, eating little.
More worried than ever, Susan searched her daughter’s face. It was heart-shaped, as sweet as always, and was framed by long, shiny, sable hair. The hair was a gift from her father, while her eyes – Susan’s eyes – were hazel and clear, her skin creamy and smooth.
She didn’t look sick, Susan decided. Vulnerable, perhaps. Maybe haunted. But not sick.
Even when Lily crinkled her nose and complained about the restaurant’s heavy garlic smell, Susan didn’t guess. She was too busy assuring herself that those clear eyes ruled out drug use and, as for alcohol, she had never seen bottles, empty or otherwise, in Lily’s room. She didn’t actively search, as in checking behind clutter on the highest shelves. But when she returned clean laundry to drawers or hung jeans in the closet, she saw nothing amiss.
Alcohol wouldn’t be a lure. Susan drank wine with friends, but rarely stocked up, so it wasn’t like Lily had a bar to draw from. Same with prescription drugs, though Susan knew how easy it was for kids to get them online. Rarely did a month go by without a student apprehended for this.
‘Mom?’
Susan blinked. ‘Yes, sweetheart?’
‘Look who’s distracted. What are you thinking about?’
‘You. Are you feeling all right?’
There was a flash of annoyance. ‘You keep asking me that.’
‘Because I worry,’ Susan said and, reaching across, laced her fingers through Lily’s. ‘You haven’t been the same since summer. So here I am, loving you to bits, and because you won’t say anything, I’m left to wonder whether it’s just being seventeen and needing your own space. Do I crowd you?’
Lily sputtered. ‘No. You’re the best mom that way.’
‘Is it school? You’re stressed.’
‘Yes,’ the girl said, but her tone implied there was more, and her fingers held Susan’s tightly.
‘College apps?’
‘I’m okay with those.’
‘Then Calculus.’ The Calc teacher was the toughest in the math department, and Susan had worried Lily would be intimidated. But what choice was there? Raymond Dunbar was thirty years Susan’s senior and had vocally opposed her ascension to the principalship. If she asked him to ease up, he would accuse her of favoritism.
But Lily said, ‘Mr Dunbar isn’t so bad.’
Susan jiggled Lily’s fingers. ‘If I were to pinpoint it, I’d say the change came this summer. I’ve been racking my brain, but from everything you told me, you loved your job. I know, I know, you were at the beach, but watching ten kids under the age of eight is hard, and summer families can be the worst.’
Lily scooped back her hair. ‘I love kids. Besides, I was with Mary Kate, Abby, and Jess,’ her three best friends. Daughters of Susan’s best friends, all three girls were responsible. Abby occasionally lacked direction, like her mom Pam, and Jessica had a touch of the rebel, as Sunny did not. But Mary Kate was as steady as her mom Kate, who was like a sister to Susan. With Mary Kate along, Lily couldn’t go wrong.
Not that Lily wasn’t steady herself, but Susan knew about peer pressure. If she had learned one thing as a teacher it was that the key to a child’s success lay in no small part with the friends she kept.
‘And nothing’s up with them?’ she asked.
Lily grew guarded. ‘Has Kate said anything?’
Susan gentled. ‘Nothing negative. She always asks about you, though. You’re her sixth child.’
‘But has she said anything about Mary Kate? Is she worried about her like you’re worried about me?’
Susan thought for a minute, then answered honestly. ‘She’s more sad than worried. Mary Kate is her youngest. Kate feels like she’s growing away from her, too. But Mary Kate isn’t my concern. You are.’ A burst of laughter came from several tables down. Annoyed by the intrusion, Susan shot the group a glance. When she turned back, Lily’s eyes held a frightened look.
Susan had seen that look a lot lately. It terrified her.
Desperate now, she held Lily’s hand even tighter and, in a low, frantic voice, said, ‘What is wrong? I’m supposed to know what girls your age are feeling and thinking, but lately with you, I just don’t. There are so many times when your mind is somewhere else – somewhere you won’t allow me to be. Maybe that’s the way it should be at your age,’ she acknowledged, ‘and it wouldn’t bother me if you were happy, but you don’t seem happy. You seem preoccupied. You seem afraid.’
‘I’m pregnant.’
Susan gasped. Freeing her hand, she sat straighter. She waited for a teasing smile, but there was none. And of course not. Lily woudn’t joke about something like this.
Her thoughts raced. ‘But – but that’s impossible. I mean, it’s not physically impossible, but it wouldn’t happen.’ When Lily said nothing, Susan pressed a hand to her chest and whispered, ‘Would it?’
‘I am,’ Lily whispered back.
‘What makes you think it?’
‘Six home tests, all positive.’
‘You’re late?’
‘Not late. Missed. Three times.’
‘Three? Omigod, why didn’t you tell me?’ Susan cried, thinking of all the other things a missed period could mean. Being pregnant didn’t make sense, not with Lily. But the child didn’t lie. If she said she was pregnant, she believed it herself – not that it was true. ‘Home tests can be totally misleading.’
‘Nausea, tiredness, bloating?’
‘I don’t see bloating,’ Susan said defensively, because if her daughter was three months pregnant, she would have seen it.
‘When was the last time you saw me naked?’
‘In the hot tub at the spa,’ she replied without missing a beat.
‘That was in June, Mom.’
Susan did miss a beat then, but only one. ‘It must be something else. You don’t even have a boyfriend.’ She caught her breath. ‘Do you?’ Had she really missed something? ‘Who is he?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Doesn’t matter? Lily, if you are—’ She couldn’t say the word aloud. The idea that her daughter was sexually active was totally new. Sure, she knew the statistics. How could she not, given her job? But this was her daughter, her daughter. They had agreed – Lily had promised – she would tell Susan if she wanted birth control. It was a conversation they’d had too many times to count. ‘Who is he?’ she asked again.
Lily remained silent.
‘But if he’s involved—’
‘I’m not telling him.’
‘Did he force you?’
‘No,’ Lily replied. Her eyes were steady not with fear now, but something Susan couldn’t quite name. ‘It was the other way around,’ she said. ‘I seduced him.’
Susan sat back. If she didn’t know better, she might have said Lily looked excited. And suddenly nothing about the discussion was right – not the subject, not that look, certainly not the place. Setting her napkin beside the plate, she gestured for the server. The son of a local family, and once a student of Susan’s, he hurried over.
‘You haven’t finished, Ms Tate. Is something wrong?’
Something wrong? ‘No, uh, just time.’
‘Should I box this up?’
‘No, Aidan. If you could just bring the bill.’
He had barely left when Lily leaned forward. ‘I knew you’d be upset. That’s why I haven’t told you.’
‘How long were you planning to wait?’
‘Just a little longer – maybe till the end of my first trimester.’
‘Lily, I’m your mother.’
‘But this is my baby,’ the girl said softly, ‘so I get to make the decisions, and I wasn’t ready to tell you, not even tonight, which is why I chose this place. But even here, it’s like you can see inside me.’
Susan was beyond hurt. Getting pregnant was everything she had taught Lily not to do. She sat back, let out a breath. ‘I can’t grasp this. Are you sure?’ Lily’s body didn’t look different, but what could be seen when she wore the same layered tops that her friends did, and the days when Susan bathed her each night were long gone. ‘Three missed periods?’ she whispered. ‘Then this happened…?’
‘Eleven weeks ago.’
Susan was beside herself. ‘When did you do the tests?’
‘As soon as I missed my first period.’
And not a word spoken? It was definitely a statement, but of what? Defiance? Independence? Stupidity? Lily might be gentle, often vulnerable – but she also had a stubborn streak. When she started something, she rarely backed down. Properly channeled, that was a positive thing, like when she set out to win top prize at the science fair, which she did, but only after three false starts. Or when she set out to sing in the girls’ a cappella group, didn’t make the cut as a freshman and worked her tail off that year and the next as the group’s manager, until she finally landed a spot.
But this was different. Stubbornness was not a reason for silence when it came to pregnancy, certainly not when the prospective mother was seventeen.
Unable to order her thoughts, Susan grasped at loose threads. ‘Do the others know?’ It went without saying that she meant Mary Kate, Abby and Jess.
‘Yes, but no moms.’
‘And none of the girls told me?’ More hurt there. ‘But I see them all the time!’
‘I swore them to silence.’
‘Does your dad know?’
Lily looked appalled. ‘I would never tell him before I told you.’
‘Well, that’s something.’
‘I love babies, Mom,’ the girl said, excited again.
‘And that makes this okay?’ Susan asked hysterically, but stopped when the server returned. Glancing at the bill, she put down what might have been an appropriate amount, then pushed her chair back. The air in the room was suddenly too warm, the smells too pungent even for someone who wasn’t pregnant. As she walked to the door with Lily behind, she imagined that every eye in the room watched. It was a flash from her own past, followed by the echo of her mother’s words. You’ve shamed us, Susan. What were you thinking?
Times had changed. Single mothers were commonplace now. The issue for Susan wasn’t shame, but the dreams she had for her daughter. Dreams couldn’t hold up against a baby. A baby changed everything.
The car offered privacy but little comfort, shutting Susan and Lily in too small a space with a huge chasm between them. Fighting panic as the minutes passed without a retraction, Susan fumbled for her keys and started the engine.
Carlino’s was in the center of town. Heading out, she passed the book store, the drug store, two realtors and a bank. Passing Perry & Cass took longer. Even in the fifteen years Susan had lived in Zaganack, the store had expanded. It occupied three blocks now, two-story buildings with signature crimson-and-cream awnings, and that didn’t count the mail-order department and online call center two streets back, the manufacturing complex a mile down the road, or the shipping department farther out in the country.
Zaganack was Perry & Cass. Fully three-fourths of the townsfolk worked for the retail icon. The rest provided ser vices for those who did, as well as for the tens of thousands of visitors who came each year to shop.
But Perry & Cass wasn’t what had drawn Susan here when she’d been looking for a place to raise her child. Having come from the Great Plains, she had wanted something coastal and green. Zaganack overlooked Maine’s Casco Bay, and, with its hemlocks and pines, was green year-round. Its shore was a breathtaking tumble of sea-bound granite; its harbor, home port to a handful of local fishermen, was quaint. With a population that ebbed and flowed, swelling from 18,000 to 28,000 in summer, the town was small enough to be a community, yet large enough to allow for heterogeneity.
Besides, Susan loved the name Zaganack. A derivative of the Penobscot tongue, it was loosely interpreted to mean ‘people from the place of eternal spring’, and though local lore cited Native Americans’ reference to the relatively mild weather of coastal towns, Susan took a broader view. Spring meant new beginnings. She had found one in Zaganack.
And now this? History repeating itself?
Unable to think, she drove in silence. Leaving the main road, she passed the grand brick homes of Perrys and Casses, followed by the elegant, if smaller, ones of the families’ younger generation. The homes of locals fanned out from there, Colonials yielding to Victorians and, in turn, to homes that were simpler in design and built closer together.
Susan lived in one of the latter. It was a small frame house, with six rooms equally spaced over two floors, and an open attic on the third. By night, with its tiny front yard and ribbon of driveway, it looked like the rest. By day, painted a cerulean blue, with sea green shutters and an attic gable trimmed in teal, it stood out.
Color was Susan’s thing. Growing up, she had loved reds, though her mother said they clashed with her freckles. Dark green would be better, Ellen Tate advised. Or brown. But Susan’s hair was the color of dark sand, so she still adored the pepper of red, orange and pink.
Then came Lily, and Susan’s mother latched onto those colors. You have a fuchsia heart, she charged despairingly when she learned of the pregnancy, and though Susan discarded most else of what her mother had said, those words survived. Loath to attract attention, she had worn black through much of those nine months, then a lighter but stillbland beige after Lily was born. Even when she started to teach, neutrals served her well, offsetting the freckles that made her look too young.
But a fuchsia heart doesn’t die. It simply bides its time, taking a back seat to pragmatism while leaking helpless drops of color here and there. Hence teal gables, turquoise earrings and chartreuse or saffron scarves. In the yarns she dyed as a hobby, the colors were even wilder.
Turning into her driveway, Susan parked and climbed from the car. Once up the side steps, she let herself into the kitchen. In the soft light coming from under the cherry cabinets for which she had painstakingly saved for three years and had largely installed herself, she looked back at Lily.
The girl was Susan’s height, if slimmer and more fragile, but she stood her ground, hands tucked in her jacket pockets. Pregnant? Susan still didn’t believe it was true. Yes, there was picky eating, moodiness, and the morning muzzies, all out of character and new in the last few months, but other ailments had similar symptoms. Like mono.
‘It may be just a matter of taking antibiotics,’ she said sensibly.
Lily looked baffled. ‘Antibiotics?’
‘If you have mono—’
‘Mom, I’m pregnant. Six tests, all positive.’
‘Maybe you read them wrong.’
‘Mary Kate saw two of them and agreed.’
‘Mary Kate is no expert, either.’ Susan felt a stab. ‘How many times have I seen Mary Kate since then? Thirty? Sixty?’
‘Don’t be mad at Mary Kate. It wasn’t her place to tell you.’
‘I am mad at Mary Kate. I’m closer to her than I am to the others, and this is your health, Lily. What if something else is going on with your body? Shouldn’t Mary Kate be concerned about that?’
Lily pushed her fingers through her hair. ‘This is beyond bizarre. All this time I’ve been afraid to tell you because I didn’t know how you’d react, but I never thought you wouldn’t believe me.’
Susan didn’t want to argue. There was one way to find out for sure. ‘Whatever it is, we’ll deal. I’ll call Dr Brant first thing tomorrow. She’ll squeeze you in.’
Never a good sleeper, Susan spent the night running through all of the reasons why her daughter couldn’t be pregnant. Most had to do with being responsible, because if Susan had taught Lily one thing, it was that.
Lily was responsible when it came to school. She studied hard and got good grades. She was responsible when it came to her friends, loyal to a fault. Hadn’t she gone out on a limb to campaign for Abby, who had set her heart on being senior class president? When the girl lost the election, Lily had slept at her house for three straight nights.
Lily was responsible when it came to the car, rarely missing a curfew, leaving the gas tank empty, or being late when she had to pick up Susan.
Hard-working. Loyal. Dependable. Responsible. And…pregnant? Susan might have bought into it if Lily had a steady boyfriend. Accidents happened.
But there was no boyfriend, and no reason at all to believe that Lily would sleep with someone she barely knew. Was sweet Lily Tate – who wore little makeup, slept in flannel pajamas, and layered camis over camis to keep her tiny cleavage from view – even capable of seduction?
Susan thought not. It had to be something else, but the possibilities were frightening. By two in the morning, her imagination was so out of control that she gave up trying to sleep and, crossing the hall, quietly opened the door. In the faint glow of a butterfly nightlight, Lily was a blip under the quilt, only the top of her head showing, dark hair splayed on the pillow. Her jeans and sweaters were on the cushioned chair, her Sherpa boots – one standing, one not – on the floor nearby. Her dresser was strewn with hairbrushes and clips, beaded bracelets, a sock she was knitting. Her cell phone lay on the nightstand, along with several books and a half-full bottle of water.
In the faintest whisper, Susan called her name, but there was no response, no movement in this still life. Girl with Butterfly 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 Lily could get was for late afternoon, which gave Susan the rest of the day to worry. That meant she answered email with half a heart, was distracted during a teacher observation, and what little work she put into her budget for the following year, which was due to the superintendent by Thanksgiving, was a waste.