The Goodbye Quilt by Susan Wiggs Read Free Book Online Page A

school, and all the lost teeth, soccer trophies, piano recitals and Brownie badges in between, I’ve been there for her, cheering her on.
    “I’ll still be your number-one fan,” I assure her.
    “Sure, but it won’t be the same.” Then she smiles and bounces up off the bed.
    I sit up and link my arms around my drawn-up knees. “You seem pretty okay with that.”
    “It’s hard work, being your daughter.”
    “You’re kidding, right?”
    Now it’s her turn to hesitate. “Right. Let’s go check out the game room. I think I saw a ping-pong table.”
     
    Late at night, long after our dinner of iceberg lettuce salads and oyster crackers, Molly steals away to sit on the stoop in front of the motel room and call Travis on her cell phone. Although college beckons like a mysterious garden of rare delights, she has formed a deep bond with this boy, with his funny grin and Adam’s apple, his appealing combination of cluelessness and charm.
    A hometown boy at heart, he is causing her to have second thoughts about going to school so far away. For that, I could throttle him. At the same time, I feel an unexpected beat of empathy. I, too, would love to keep her close.
    On their final night at home, Molly and Travis went out with a group of their friends, some college-bound, others already immersed in jobs and responsibilities. They stayed out late, visiting all the places they knew they’d miss after dispersing like seeds to the wind. There were stops at the rusty-screened drive-in movie theater, the empty stadium,the all-night diner, the parking lot at the spillway below the lake. I don’t doubt there were other stops as well, which were not revealed to me.
    I can’t be certain, but I suspect that Molly surrendered her virginity at the spillway at some point during the summer, in the secret place known to revved-up teenagers everywhere, tucked into the shadows of the sloping man-made bank. She didn’t tell me so, but there have been subtle signs. I’ve watched her and Travis grow closer, their bond tightened by a private and impenetrable intimacy that is both invisible and obvious.
    Sexually active. It’s a clinical-sounding term. It’s nothing a mother wants to think about with regard to her own child, but at some point, you have to take the blinders off. Or not, I suppose, thinking of Dan. Whenever I try to bring the subject up with him, he says, “They’re good kids. They won’t do anything stupid.”
    Pointing out that good kids who are not stupid get in trouble all the time doesn’t seem to advance the conversation. I have given up on discussing it with Dan. Now and then, I try to broach the topic with Molly.
    “I’m fine. Don’t worry,” she said when I got up the nerve to ask her.
    It doesn’t matter what century we’re in. Parents and children were not meant to talk together in detail about sex. Nor should we pretend to be all-knowing experts on love, even if we are. I understand exactly what love feels like in a young girl’s heart because I was that girl once, long ago. That’s why the Travis situation worries me, because I understand. It has a power like the pull of the moon on the tides, overwhelming and inevitable. There is no antidote for the passion and certainty a girl feels for the boy she loves, and no end to the fantasies she spins about their future together.
    I can explain convincingly that the emotions engulfing her and Travis are not likely to last. I can tell her they’ll both grow and change, heading off in different directions. But then I would have to talk about my own choices, my own regrets, the many times I spent wondering about the life I would have had if I’d taken a different path.
    For a brief moment, I consider telling Molly about Preston Warner, my first and, as far as I was concerned at the time, my only, forever and ever. Senior prom was the kind of magic-filled nightevery girl dreams about and, in my case, the dream came true. I wore something blue and silky;