When she returned, she’d been thinner and quieter.
I thought she’d been homesick.
“You were pregnant,” I whispered.
Susan nodded.
“Who was the father?”
“A boy
named Daniel. He was nineteen. We dated secretly for a few months.”
I searched my memory.
“I don’t remember him.”
“He lived two towns away. You never met him.”
“What happened?”
Susan looked down.
“When I told him about the baby, he said he wasn’t ready to be a father. Then he disappeared.”
Her hands tightened around one another.
“My
parents were furious. They were terrified of what people would say.”
I felt my anger give way to something else.
“They sent you away?”
“Yes.”
“To have the baby?”
She nodded.
“I gave birth to Emily in a small hospital. I held her for twenty minutes.”
Her voice trembled.
“Twenty minutes, Claire. That’s all the time I had.”
I sat opposite her.
