Then I became pregnant.
My parents were deeply embarrassed, and although I had hoped that disappointment would eventually soften into concern, my father made it clear that I would no longer be welcome in their home after the babies arrived.
“You made a grown-up choice, Caroline,” he told me one evening while my mother sat silently beside him. “Now you have to learn what grown-up consequences look like.”
I remember staring at the pattern on the kitchen tablecloth because looking at either of them hurt too much.
The girls’ father had already moved several states away and sent promises much more often than he sent money, so by the time Lily and June were six months old, I had become a student, a mother, and an evening employee at a neighborhood copy and print shop, where I spent several hours after school binding reports, cleaning machines, and preparing orders for local businesses.
