Not My Daughter by Barbara Delinsky Read Free Book Online Page B

telling Jessica that she needs to tell us who the father is, so that they can get married, which would lend at least a semblance of decency to this, but Dan keeps grilling me . 'How did this happen, where were you , didn't you see anything?' Bottom line? It's my fault."
    "It isn't your fault," said Kate, though she was looking at Susan. "Is it?"
    Hadn't Susan asked herself the same question? She picked up a PC Wool tag from a pile that lay beside the skeins. A striking little thing, the tag carried the PC Wool logo, along with the fiber content of the skein, its length and gauge, and washing instructions. "We gave our daughters the know-how to prevent this," she said as she absently fingered the tag. "But they didn't consult us."
    "They consulted each other," Sunny charged. "They gave each other strength."
    "Bravado," Kate added.
    "That, too," Susan said. After touching the tag a moment longer, she looked up at her friends. "I'm forever telling parents that they have to be involved. They have to know what their kids are doing. Kids aren't bad, just young. Their brains are still developing. That's why sixteen-year-olds are lousy drivers. They don't have the judgment--actually, physically, don't have the gray matter to make the right decision in a crisis. They don't fully get it until they're in their early twenties."
    "And in the meantime, it is our fault?" Sunny asked.
    Susan didn't answer. She was suddenly wondering what all those parents to whom she had lectured would say when they learned her daughter was pregnant. Given her age and what some saw as a meteoric rise in her field, she had always been on shaky ground. Now she feared for her credibility.
    She must have looked stricken, because Kate took her hand. "What our daughters may have lacked in gray matter, they made up for in parental influence. We taught them right from wrong, Susie. They've never before given us reason to doubt them."
    "That's what makes this so absurd," Susan wailed. "I could give you a list of girls at school who are at risk of doing something like this. Our daughters' names would not be on it."
    "Now there's a thought," Sunny said, sounding hopeful. "No one expects it from our girls, so no one will know for a while. That gives us time to figure out what to do." She looked from Susan to Kate and back. "Right?"
    Susan was thinking that time might not help, when Pam came striding back from the front of the barn. "Hey, guys," she called when she was barely halfway past the stalls. "Were we supposed to meet?" She was unwinding a large scarf as she reached them. "I bumped into Leah and Regina at PC Beans. They said you kicked them out, Kate." Leah and Regina were Kate's assistants that day, two of eight part-timers who helped get PC Wool out in the quantity dictated by recent demand.
    "I gave them money for coffee," Kate said after only a second's delay.
    But Pam caught it and looked around. "What's up? You all look like someone died."
    "No one died," Sunny said brightly. "We were just taking a last look at the holiday yarn. It was a great colorway. People are raving about the freshness of the colors--very holiday, but not totally traditional. I told you that we're giving the spring line a major Mother's Day push in Home Goods, didn't I? Do we have colors, Susan?"
    "We do," Susan said, trying to hide the horror that the mere mention of Mother's Day brought. Lily would be in her ninth month then and would be huge. Picturing it, Susan could only think of pink and blue, not PC Wool colors at all.
    She couldn't say that, of course. Going along seemed the safest thing. But Pam was a good friend, and her daughter was very possibly pregnant or trying to get pregnant. Tell her , cried a little voice in Susan's head.
    But no one else spoke up. If Susan did, she would betray the others--and Lily.
    So she said, "I'll work out the dye recipes Saturday. Do we have a deadline for the catalogue?"
    Pam was their mail-order link. At least, that was what she called