Page 35

chapter twenty-five

Graham

O livia stood in the Gardners’ foyer with soaked hair, hugging her arms tight against her body.

My heart was already racing. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” she said. “I just need to talk to you.”

I motioned for her to step out onto the porch.

She turned around and I followed her out, but she didn’t stop there.

She took off through the yard, heading straight to our house.

The rain had died down, thankfully, but the yard was soggy and spongy beneath our shoes.

I could hardly keep up with Olivia, who offered no explanation as she led me all the way up our porch steps and through the front door.

She eyed Caleb in the den, who was still playing Mario Party on his Switch. “Let’s talk upstairs so he doesn’t eavesdrop,” she said, jogging up the stairs.

I hesitated at the bottom of the staircase. What the hell was this about?

When we finally reached her room, I was ready to demand answers. Olivia was pale, drenched, and out of breath, and she lowered herself to her bed, where she leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands.

“Liv. What’s the matter?” I asked, gently closing her door behind me.

For some reason, I feared she was about to tell me she was quitting the internship program to go on a summer road trip with Richie.

Or maybe Richie was in trouble, sitting in the local jail for weed possession or stealing traffic cones. Maybe both.

I sat beside Olivia, pushing aside the giant, squishy owl she’d kept on her bed since four Easters ago. I placed my hand on her lower back, about to ask her once again to tell me what was wrong, but she straightened her body and turned toward me, pulling her hair away from her eyes.

“I’m just going to… say it. Okay?”

I swallowed. “Yeah, okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

Olivia still hesitated, her eyes studying my face. Whatever this was, she was scared of my reaction. I did my best to adjust my expression, trying to appear as calm as possible.

She took a deep breath. “I’m pregnant.”

Oh.

Oh, no.

No, no, no.

My brain scrambled to make sense of the words, like they couldn’t possibly mean what I thought they meant. Or perhaps I’d heard her wrong. But judging from the tears welling in her eyes and the way her eyebrows were almost touching at the center, I knew I hadn’t misheard a thing.

But she was a kid.

I opened my mouth to respond, but not a single word came to mind. Only a tiny, strangled squeak escaped. My response—or total lack thereof—made her roll her eyes and twist her body away from mine. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed into her hands.

And that broke me. “Olivia,” I said, swallowing back the shock and panic. She still wouldn’t look at me, so I wrapped my arm around her back in a gentle hug. I said the only thing I could think of. “It’s okay.”

“But it’s not,” she said, pausing to sniffle. “I know what you’re thinking right now.”

She couldn’t possibly know how scared I was. That there wasn’t a bone in my body that was angry or upset with her. I was terrified of what this meant for her, and how her entire world was about to change—but I wasn’t mad.

All the appointments and decisions. The overwhelming weight of responsibility.

And childbirth. I remembered how traumatic it was when Andrea had to be rushed into an emergency C-section when Olivia’s umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, and how Caleb’s delivery was just as scary.

I was flooded with all of these worries as I held onto Olivia, but I didn’t voice any of them out loud. “Hey,” I said, squeezing her shoulder. “I’m a little shocked, but we’ll figure this out. Okay? First of all, are you sure?”

She nodded. “We went to Planned Parenthood.”

“Who, you and your mom?” If that were the case, why hadn’t Andrea told me about this?

“No,” Olivia said, wiping tears away from her eyes. “Richie and I went last week, to the one in Bloomington. I just wanted to confirm it before I told you and Mom tonight. I’m almost eight weeks.”

I inhaled. “Eight weeks. Okay.” I wondered if she’d already explored all of her options.

But this was Indiana, after all, which meant her choices were limited.

I made a mental note to ask Andrea if Olivia understood a drive to Illinois was a possibility if that was what she wanted to consider, but I didn’t want to bring that up now. “When is your due date?”

“February twelfth,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ears. February . She’d be well into her second semester of her sophomore year. As if she could read my mind, she said, “I looked into it, and I think there’s a way I can do my entire second semester online. I won’t get behind, Dad.”

She sounded so confident, but all I could think about were all the long, sleepless nights with a crying newborn in her future.

Right here, in this house. I rubbed her arm with a shaky inhale, forcing all the negativity and worries down so they wouldn’t rise to the surface and come out of my mouth. She didn’t need that right now.

“How have you been feeling?”

Olivia looked into my eyes. “The morning sickness really sucks. A lot of smells make me want to vomit. Like seafood.”

For the first time in that conversation, I smiled. “That explains a little. Are you taking prenatal vitamins?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have,” I started, but I could hardly get the question out. I swallowed and tried again. “Do you have an OB doctor lined up?”

“Mom said she’s going to help me with that.”

I nodded. “Okay, good. I’m going to give her a call. Um… why don’t you go downstairs and tell your brother he’s going to be an uncle?”

“Oh, God.”

We both laughed, and Olivia stood up. Before she could go, I pulled her in for a tight hug, touching the back of her head with one hand. I could feel her relax against me, like finally telling me this lifted a weight off her shoulders.

“I’m really scared about this, Dad,” she said, the shakiness in her voice catching me off guard.

My grip around her small body tightened. I’d really been trying to keep it together, but I couldn’t hold the tears back anymore. I rested my chin on top of her head. “I know,” I said, wiping one of my eyes. “But you’ve got me, your mom, and Pete to support you through this, kid.”

“And Richie,” she said, pulling back to look into my eyes. “He’s been so good about all of this, Dad. You have no idea.”

I pressed my lips together, unable to picture that kid as the father of my first grandchild. I couldn’t even think about that right now. “Yeah, good,” I said, trying not to sound too dismissive.

“And do you know who else has been really supportive?” Olivia asked with a hopeful voice, her shoulders finally relaxing. She didn’t wait for me to guess. “Jill.”

My lips parted. “You told… Jill?”

“Yeah, and she gave me advice about telling you and Mom. And then today, she gave me a pregnancy journal so I could keep track of everything. It was so sweet.”

I was too stunned to speak. Jill never spoke a word about this. But I couldn't be upset, because my daughter had confided in her, and that meant something, didn’t it?

“You know how some people talk about having a ‘work wife’ or a ‘work husband’?” Olivia continued, inching toward the door. “Jill’s kind of like my ‘work mom.’” She laughed on her way out of her bedroom.

Work mom.

I glanced down at the teal rug on Olivia’s floor, smiling to myself as I rubbed the back of my neck. “Work mom” was a hell of a lot better than “cool older sister.” I could live with that.

If I survived being the father of a teen mom.