Susan snorted. "Not many of those around these days, and what do we have instead? The Web. Information enough there to make naive seventeen-year-olds feel they know everything. What was Mary Kate's excuse for wanting a baby?"

Kate twisted another hank. "She's been a hand-me-down child. She wants something of her own."

"Isn't Jacob that?" Susan was generally skeptical of high school pairings, but she liked Jacob Senter a lot. He was a kind boy, dedicated to school and devoted to Mary Kate. Lily had no one like that.

"But between school and loans," Kate explained, "it'll be years before they can get married. She wants something now. Something her sisters don't have." She screwed up her face. "Did I miss this?"

"She had love," Susan argued in Kate's defense.

"When I wasn't busy with the others. She has a point, Susie. Her solution may be misguided, but I see where she's coming from. Lily, now, Lily had you all to herself."

"But only me. She wants family."

"She has Rick."

Rick. Susan felt a little tug at her heart. "Rick is like the wind. Try to catch him."

"Have you called him?" Kate asked cautiously.

Susan pressed her lips together and shook her head.

"Do you know where he is?"

"I can find out." Not that it mattered. His cell number was linked to network headquarters in New York. He could be anywhere in the world and her call would go through.

Reaching him was the easy part. Telling him what had happened would be harder.

She practiced on Kate. "When Lily was little, she wanted a brother or sister. That was before she realized her daddy wasn't around. Once she understood that Rick and I weren't together, she turned matchmaker. 'You'd really like Kelsey's daddy, and Kelsey has a sister and two brothers, and they need a mom like you.'" Susan smiled briefly. "It was sweet. Sad. She always wanted a big family, but there's a right way and a wrong way to get it." Grabbing a hank of yarn, she twisted it as she, too, had done hundreds of times. "She keeps reminding me that I was seventeen when I had her, but it's because I was that I know how bad this is. They're not ready physically. They're not ready emotionally."

"Neither am I," Kate said tiredly. "For years my life was a blur of diapers, runny noses, and interrupted sleep. I hyperventilate when I think of it. I can't go back."

Susan wasn't as worried about going back as moving ahead. "At least you know it's Jacob. Lily won't tell me who the father is. She says he doesn't know. How crazy is that?"

"You have no idea?"

"None." And it bothered Susan a lot. "She told me when she had a crush on Bobby Grant in second grade. She told me when she got her first kiss. That was Jonah McEllis. She gave me a blow-by-blow of her relationship with Joey Anderson last year. And in each case, I wasn't surprised. A good mother would know if her daughter liked someone, wouldn't she?"

Kate snickered. "Like she would know if her daughter planned to get pregnant?"

"How did I not see something?" Susan asked, baffled. "I look now, and, yes, there's a difference. Her breasts are fuller. Why didn't I notice before?"

"They weren't fuller before," Kate reasoned. "Or her clothes hid it. Or you thought she was just filling out. Susie, I'm asking myself the same thing. My daughter is two months pregnant, has been drinking milk by the gallon, has thrown up lots of mornings, and I thought it was the flu."

Susan actually smiled. Pathetic as the situation was, she felt better. Venting always helped, especially when the person on the other end was in the same boat. Kate would love her regardless of what kind of mother she was.

"Have you and Lily talked about options?" Kate asked.

Susan could only think of three, and abortion was out. She reached for more yarn. "I mentioned adoption this morning." She twisted the hank and looked up. "Lily threw the question back at me. Could I have done that? We both know the answer."

"What was it like?" came a third voice. Sunny unbuttoned her coat as she approached. "Having a baby at seventeen."

Susan didn't have to pull at memories. She had been reliving the experience in vivid flashes since dinner at Carlino's Tuesday night. "It totally changed my life. My childhood ended-was over, just like that."

Sunny joined them at the table. Clearly on a break from work, she had her hair in a plum bow that matched her sweater and slacks. "I know you're estranged from your parents," she said to Susan. "I don't know the details."

That wasn't something Susan dwelt on. "My parents couldn't deal," she said, "so I went to live with an aunt in Missouri while I had Lily and finished high school. Aunt Evie was great, but she had no kids. She didn't know what I was going through, and I didn't dare complain. It was scary. My doctor was one step removed from my father. He delighted in telling me all the risks of having a baby at seventeen."

"Like?"

"Like a seventeen-year-old's body isn't ready to carry a baby to term. Like I was at risk for anemia, high blood pressure, preterm labor, and my baby could be underweight and have underdeveloped organs."

Kate looked frightened. "Is all that true?"

"I believed it. Now I know that most of these problems arise because teenage moms typically don't take care of themselves. But my doctor didn't say that. I was terrified. There were no classes at the local hospital. I had some books, but they weren't reassuring. I was only seventeen. I dreaded childbirth, and then, if I survived that, I was going to have to take care of a baby who would be totally helpless and who might have developmental issues because I was seventeen."

Sunny scowled. "There must have been someone who could help."

"My pediatrician's nurse. She was an angel. I talked with her every morning during call hours. It was like she had two patients, an infant and a seventeen-year-old-well, eighteen-year-old by then. We still keep in touch."

"Are you in touch with your aunt?"

"Occasionally. But it's awkward. She never wanted to buck my father, either. The deal was that I'd stay with her until I graduated high school, then leave. My dad put enough money in a bank account for me to buy a used car and pay for necessities until I got Lily and me to a place where I could work."

"They disowned you," Sunny concluded, "which is what I may do to my daughter."

"You will not," Kate scolded.

"I may. I don't believe she's done this. Do you know how embarrassing it is?"

"Not as embarrassing as when I got pregnant," Susan said. "We lived in a small town of which my dad was the mayor-just like his dad before him-so the embarrassment was thoroughly public. My older brother, on the other hand, was a town hero. Great student, football star, heir apparent-you name the stereotype, and Jackson was it. I was the bad egg. Erasing me from the family picture was easy."

Sunny seemed more deliberative than disturbed. "What about Lily? Weren't they curious?"

"My mother, maybe." A fantasy, perhaps, but Susan clung to the belief. "But she was married to my father, and he was tough. Still is. I send cards on every occasion-birthday, anniversary, Thanksgiving, Christmas. I send newspaper articles about Lily or me. I send gifts from Perry and Cass, and yarn to my mom. She sends a formal thank-you every time." Susan held up an untwisted skein. "She thought these colors were very pretty. Very pretty," she repeated in a monotone, startled by how much the blandness of the note still stung.

"I'm trying to decide if Jessica can survive," Sunny said. "How did you make it with an infant and no help?"

"I didn't sleep."

"Seriously."

"Seriously," Susan insisted. She had learned to multitask early on. "I was studying, working, and taking care of a baby. After I graduated from high school, I babysat my way east. Babysitting was the one thing I could do and still have Lily with me, because I sure couldn't afford a sitter. When I got here, I did clerical work at the community college because that got me day care dirt cheap and classes for free. I was halfway through my degree when I met you two." Their girls were in preschool together. "That was a turning point. Friends make the difference."

"Exactly," Sunny cried. "If our girls hadn't been friends, this wouldn't have happened."

Susan was startled. Of the three girls, she saw Jessica as the one most ready to rebel. "If not with our two, then with another two friends," she said quietly.

Sunny calmed a little. "Tell that to my husband."

"Uh-oh." This from Kate, and with cause. Dan Barros was mild-mannered, but there was no doubt who ruled the roost. "He's blaming our girls?"

There was a pause, then a halfhearted "Not exactly."

"What did he say?"

"Oh, he doesn't say things. He implies. He infers. I'm 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."