Mr. Iero

Chapter 11

*Rob's POV*

After Claire, Lili and I went to church that night, everyone was overtired and well-ready to go to bed.

I carried Lili into her room and helped her get out of her church clothes and into a nightgown.  When I laid her in bed, I noticed how sad she looked.  "What's wrong, sweetie?" I asked, kneeling next to her bed.

Lili pouted her lip.  "Why is Mommy mad at Ashley?"

I ran my hand through her curly hair.  "Mommy isn't mad at Ashley.  She's just upset.  But it's all okay now."

"What was she upset about?" she asked.

I wasn't about to tell her that her older sister, her role model, was pregnant with some random boy's child.  "Big kid stuff."

Lili sighed.  "Okay."  With that, she just lied back against her pillow.  It was so interesting to me how when someone just said 'big kid stuff' to her, she just accepted that it was none of her business and would just move on.

I leaned down and gave her a kiss on the side of her forehead.  "Merry Christmas, sweetie."

"Merry Christmas, Daddy," she mumbled, already half asleep.

I left Lili's room and walked into Ashley's room.  Ashley was asleep, just as she was when I left her.  At least she was done crying.  I hated to see her so upset over this.  And it was just a baby.  Why was it causing such a big deal for her and Claire.

Then I remembered Claire.  I closed Ashley's door and went into my bedroom to find my wife, Claire, sitting cross-legged on our bed with her heels lying on the ground and her hands raking through her hair.  I closed our door and sat down next to her, putting my arm around her.  "Claire, you have to stop worrying so much."

"But what isn't there to worry about?!" she snapped.  "What if we had had a kid that early? Do you think you would have been ready? Do you think I would have been ready? Do you think we would have be fit enough to be parents?"

"Claire," I said with a sigh.  "We were fine parents, and we were facing the same problem when we were only three years older than she is now."

"You know that I don't like to talk about that," she said in a tone that sounded like it was warning me.

"Well I'm going to talk about it.  We were fine and I think she's ready."

"I don't care!" she shouted.  "I don't care if we were twenty or thirty or any age.  We were smarter than her.  She's only seventeen, Rob.  She has no idea what she's getting into."

"She's in just about the same situation as we were," I argued.  "We were two young college students, still living with our parents, who ended up working everything out fine because we had help from our families, and we stuck together.  And - later - when we were twenty-eight and Ashley came along, we were even more ready, because we were prepared the first time.

"That's the problem," Claire said through gritted teeth.  "She doesn't have someone else to help her.  Sure she has us, but she's going to have to learn how to get along as just the one parent and the baby, but that'll be pretty hard to do as a single mom.  And she's only a Junior in high school.  What college is going to accept her? How is she even going to have time for college?"

Claire had completely dropped the topic about what had happened when we were twenty.  She never wanted to talk about it, anyways.

"Hey, hey, hey," I grabbed Claire's shoulders and looked her in the eye.  "That's a problem for another time."

"How are you not freaking out about this?" she asked me.  "Some piece of trash from God-knows-where fucked your oldest daughter and then seemed to drop off the face of the earth, and you don't even seem to care."

"Oh trust me, I do care.  And if I ever see that son-of-a-bitch he's going to regret it.  But there's nothing that we can do about it now."

"Oh, there's plenty we can do right now," she said in a determined way.

I looked at her confused and raised an eyebrow, "What?"

"She can- she can get rid of it.  No one would notice.  As long as she only told us, no one else would notice.  Then it would be like nothing happened."  She looked at me hopefully.  "It's perfect."

"No.  It's not," I said.  "What's wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me? What's wrong with you? Do you actually want her to have this baby?"

"I'd rather she have the baby than what you're talking about.  That's insane!"

Claire looked at me with a furious face and then turned around.  "Fine."  She turned back around and threw a blanket at me.  "If I'm so insane then I'm sure you won't have a problem with sleeping alone tonight in the living room."

I rolled my eyes, this again.  "By the way," I said as I started to walk out of our room, "I called the doctor and I'm taking Ashley to get checked tomorrow."

She didn't even respond, she just shut off the lights and shut the door behind me.  And I wasn't even that upset by it.

A/N: Sorry it's a shorter chapter, it couldn't think of too much that I wanted to include.  But yay, update.  I'll try to update soon, which probably won't be hard because of Thanksgiving weekend, but work does make it hard to get time in so eh I'll find time.  Thanks for tolerating my odd posting schedule-less-ness.

By the way oooooooh Rob and Claire have a past with young pregnancies but hmmm I didn't explain it.  Dramaaaaaaa sorta.  Not really.

K bye.

-Basketcase_