The Truth Unspoken

What You Don't Know

Twenty year old Hope looked at the calendar in her purse, counted the days again in her mind. Her period was definitely late. Not just a few days late. Late-late. That could only mean one thing: she was going to have a baby next semester.

She did the test anyway, one she'd had to drive into neighboring YellowHammer to buy in secret. The five minute wait in the ladies' washroom seemed like an eternity, her future hanging in the balance. Of course the test was positive. Pregnant. She knew it would be; she had all the classic symptoms. She was now a mother.

A wave of mixed emotions crashed over her like an ocean wave. She was so happy. She would finally have someone to love without reservation, someone who would love her unconditionally. She was also apprehensive of what the future would hold. Everything would change. There would definitely be consequences no matter what she did, no matter what choices she made, and from this moment on, those consequences would affect two people.

What would her parents say? Would they try to make her quit school? Kick her out of the house? How would she study with a baby?

Would she be a good mother? Better than Lydia, who loved her career more than she would ever love her children? Better than her birth mother who had given her up? She pushed that thought from her mind. She was her own person; they didn't define her. They were barely even mothers as far as she was concerned. She would love her baby as a person, not as window dressing for her public image, and she would never abandon her child to strangers.

What about Finn? What would he say? Was he ready to be a father? Would this change his plans for university or the Flight Corps? It didn't matter, she told herself. They would figure it out together.

Checking her watch, Hope freshened her lipstick and powdered her nose in the mirror, something Lydia had drilled into her with many lectures on personal presentation. She had to be on time so as not to raise questions as to her whereabouts. She drove home, more careful now that she had more than just herself to think about. She loved her car. Her father had bought her the blue convertible as a Sweet Sixteen present. She felt like she'd earned it since he'd made her drive across the Black Warrior bridge at 100 miles per hour before she was allowed to get her license. She wouldn't be doing that again anytime soon. She would take no risks with her unborn passenger.

She pulled into her parking space beside the patio, her mind a tumult of thoughts, twisting this way and that with different ideas about how to announce her pregnancy to Finn, her parents, and the rest of Camellia society. She pondered her dilemma as she made her way to her bedroom. Should her mother or the baby's father be the first to know? Her mother would want to do damage control, spin the story before word somehow got around. But Finn's life would change forever with this news. It had to be him.

She picked up the phone receiver, painstakingly picking out each digit of his number on the rotary phone, praying he would answer and not his parents. Dr and Mrs D'Angelo were very nice people, but old fashioned. A girl calling a boy, even at twenty years old, wouldn't set right with them, they would definitely report her transgression to her mother, and she certainly did not need a too-little, too-late lecture from Lydia on the subject of forward behavior since she had already gotten pregnant.

"Hello," Finn said.
Hope's relief surged through her entire body. "Finn, I need to see you. We have to talk."
"Um. Ok? It's funny you should say that because I have news for you."