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When I met Peter Frey, I was sixteen years old. He wasn’t much older—seventeen and change. His father was our new pastor and Beth was always good at courting power. In our little corner of the world, Peter’s dad was as good as a king. So we were over there often enough, and Beth did her best to cultivate a friendship with Peter’s mom, though she never got beyond arm’s length. Her big mistake was asking for a family biscuit recipe too early. That kind of intimacy needs to be earned. I will never forget the subtle and stinging rebuke of the recipe card slotted back in its little wooden box, the lid snapping shut.

They had five children, a respectable number. Peter was the third child, the oldest boy. I wasn’t permitted to socialize with boys outside of Sunday school, and he held a fascination for me, with his curly brown hair and freckles, the softness of his cheeks.

I was in his room when he found me.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Just looking around,” I said.

“You were stealing.”

I couldn’t deny it. There was a pin in my hand, given to him for some church boys’ group accomplishment. I opened my hand, holding it out. “I just wanted to see it.” It had been forgotten in the back of the drawer. It wouldn’t have been missed; I would have treasured it. These were the rules I went by.

He stepped toward me, but he didn’t take the pin. I dressed in loose peasant blouses and dowdy skirts, but there was no hiding that I was a young woman, and his eyes found every bit of proof of that as they wandered down my body and then up it again.

“I could get you in trouble,” he said.

“Please don’t,” I whispered. It had been months since I got caught. Since I lost my temper or got distracted and asked a question out of turn. They were starting to relax around me.

“I’ve heard about you,” he said. He seemed to consider. “I won’t tell,” he said at last. “If you lift up your shirt for me.”

I considered, in turn. It was against the rules, of course, and I was well versed on the need for modesty in all things, but like most rules, it seemed to matter only if someone noticed you breaking it. Besides, wouldn’t he be in just as much trouble for asking?

So we made a deal. I made him shake on it, and then I pulled my shirt out of my skirt and lifted it, a motion without an ounce of sensuality but which satisfied him, despite the very matronly bra I wore underneath. When I lowered it, he was looking at me like I was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen.

After that day in Peter’s room, things escalated quickly. Deals were struck. Favors exchanged, secrets kept. My shirt came off entirely, and my bra. He was granted permission to touch and then to be touched. I could pretend that I was an innocent, manipulated by the more worldly older boy—barely older though he was—but while my education was sorely lacking, there was no point at which I didn’t understand the lines I was crossing or the significance of what we were doing. I wanted him as much as he wanted me. Maybe more.

And so when Beth and Joseph were gone for the weekend, I let him in the back door and brought him to my bedroom, and for the next twelve hours while his parents thought he was with his friends, we checked off as many forbidden things as we could think of. Our imaginations weren’t very expansive, but our enthusiasm made up for it. And every time he would hold me and look at me with wonder and say, Oh god, Theodora, oh god , and I knew that he was praying just to me.

We figured most things out. Where babies came from and how to keep them away wasn’t one of them.

Bad luck for us.

I might not have known exactly the mechanics of how I got pregnant, but I’d heard enough about Beth’s attempts, which hadn’t stopped after I arrived, and I remember her hushed and excited whispers that she’d missed her period. Mine was regular as clockwork. So when it didn’t come, I went to the library and asked for books on babies. Like pictures of babies? the librarian asked, and I said no, how a person gets pregnant.

I told Peter the next day. I was calm; he panicked. “We can’t have a baby. I can’t have a baby. My dad is going to kill us,” he kept saying, and I informed him there was another way out of it, but I was going to need money, which neither I nor the Scotts had.

Peter had been saving up all his money for a new bike; he had a few hundred dollars set aside. I convinced him he could give it to me or he could use it to pay for the crib and stroller he was going to need.

I worked out everything on my own. The timing. The bus ticket. The “flu” that I’d surely caught from the Russell kids down the street, a perfectly acceptable reason to spend the week curled up in bed.

It might have even worked. But I never got the chance to find out.

Turned out Peter’s father had noticed how diligently he was saving up his dollars and cents, and wanted to reward him for this sudden impulse toward delayed gratification and long-term thinking with the last fifty dollars to meet his goal. He was set to take him into town for that bike.

Peter couldn’t very well say that he’d given the money to me. That would have invited too many questions about why. So he said that I’d stolen it. His father knew there was more to it. He pressed. And Peter told him what we’d done.

What I’d done. And what I meant to do.

He told them that it was my idea. My fault, every part of it, and they believed him, because Peter was a good boy and I—

I had always been a wicked child.

Peter’s parents spoke to mine. And together they decided enough was enough.

Something had to be done.