Not My Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

seem to hear. "So now this is the next generation. I like being the first one of us to have kids. I'm always last in everything else."
    "The decision to have a child should involve both parents," Kate said. "You need to ask Jacob before you do anything rash."
    "Oh, Jacob is just so serious sometimes. He would have said no, and he'd have given lots of reasons that made sense, but sometimes you have to just go with your gut. Remember Disney World five years ago? You piled Dad and us in the car and drove us to Florida in the middle of winter, and we didn't have hotel reservations or anything, but your gut told you the trip would be good."
    "That was a trip , Mary Kate. This is a baby. A baby is for life."
    "But I'll be a good mother," Mary Kate insisted. "Last summer was such an eye-opener--seeing what those moms did? Like, no patience with their kids, wanting to pawn them off on us while they sat way off at the other end of the beach. I'll never do that with my baby. If it's a boy, it'll be a little Jacob. That would be awesome."
    Kate was speechless. The quietest of her five, the most passive and deferential, Mary Kate was rarely this effusive. And what had she just said? "A little Jacob?"
    Mary Kate nodded. "I won't know the sex for a little while, and I know it could be a girl ..." Her voice trailed off.
    Bewildered, Kate looked around. The kitchen was small. The whole house was small. "Where would we keep a baby?"
    "In my room. Co-sleeping is big right now. By the time my baby outgrows that, Alex will probably be out of the house and maybe Mike, too, so there'll be more room. And then once Jacob graduates from medical school--"
    "Jacob hasn't graduated from high school," Kate yelped, struck again by the absurdity of the discussion. "Mary Kate, are you telling me the truth?"
    "About being pregnant?" The girl quieted. "I wouldn't lie about something like that."
    No, she wouldn't. She was an honest girl, a bright girl, perhaps the most gifted of Kate's five kids, and she had a future. She was planning to marry a doctor and be a college professor herself.
    "I mean," Mary Kate went on, speaking faster now, clearly sensing her mother's horror, "you always said 'the more the merrier,' that a noisy home makes you happy, that you'd have had more children if we'd been richer."
    "Right, but we're not," Kate stated bluntly. "Your father and I barely finished paying off our own college loans in time for your brothers to start college, and now with the twins there and you next year--but you won't be going to college if you have a baby, will you? How can you be an English professor without a college degree--without a graduate degree?"
    "I'll get one. It just may take a little longer."
    Kate couldn't believe what her smart daughter was saying. "May just take a little longer?"
    "And in the meantime I'll have Jacob's baby."
    "Where? How? Jacob's dad drives a PC truck, and his mom teaches first grade. They're as strapped as we are. If Jacob loves you like he says, he's going to want to be with you and the baby, but his parents can't support the three of you."
    "I'd never ask them to," Mary Kate said. "Besides, I don't want to marry Jacob yet. I want to stay here."
    "So we can support you and the baby?"
    "Fine," the girl said. "Then I'll move out."
    Kate grabbed her daughter's shoulders. "You will not move out, Mary Kate. That isn't an option."
    "Neither is abortion."
    "I agree, but there are other choices."
    "Like adoption? I'm not giving my baby to someone else." She plucked at her sweater. "See this? It was Sara's, and these jeans were Lissie's, but this baby is mine." The hand on her middle was pale but protective.
    Yes, Kate acknowledged. Mary Kate often got clothes from the twins--okay, usually got clothes from the twins--but didn't large families do that? She was a hand-me-down child in everything but love. Kate had always thought that would make it okay. "Your sisters outgrew those things," she argued. "They were good clothes."
    "That's