“You’re riding today?” Kayla’s expression was gratifyingly stunned.
“Sebastian wants to ride. I’m going with him.”
Kayla’s expression was eloquent on the topic of men who insisted on riding in the rain. “Okay. I talked to Morgan about the plan, and she’s in.” Abby saw how Kayla’s forehead was furrowed, her characteristic sunny smile replaced by something close to a grimace. “At breakfast, I’ll tell everyone that I’m going to take Andy on a tour of Syracuse University, and that we’ve invited Morgan along.”
“Sounds perfect. And making an announcement in front of the whole group is smart,” she said.
“Right?” Kayla tried to smile but only managed a grimace. “Nobody wants to fight with their kid in public. And maybe there’s something else Lily can do in Seneca Falls?”
Abby considered. A plan was beginning to form. Unfortunately, it involved the last person to whom Abby wanted to appeal. But she couldn’t think of anything else to do. If home was the place where they had to take you in, then surely parents were the people who had to help you when you needed help.
She sighed, rubbed her eyes, and uttered words she rarely had occasion to say. “Let me go talk to my mother.”
Ten minutes later, she knocked on Eileen’s door.
“Mom?”
“Just a minute,” Abby heard Eileen say. The bedroom door swung open, and Eileen was standing on the threshold.
Abby hadn’t seen her mother in bedclothes in the past several decades. Her imagination had filled in the blank with silk peignoirs, or crisp cotton pants-and-top pajama combinations, styled like menswear, just oversized enough to make Eileen’s petite frame look even more dainty. But instead her mother was wrapped in a ratty bathrobe that was the opposite of chic. There was a stain on the collar, and one of the sleeves was coming unraveled. Abby was pretty sure the garment dated back to her mother’s first marriage, and, while it might have once been a pretty pale pink, at this point in its life it was a washed-out absence of color, a dingy grayish-white. Abby saw her mother’s bare feet underneath it, small and pale and fragile. She saw her mother’s hands, clutching the lapels, the nails perfectly manicured, without so much as a ragged cuticle or a chip in the gel polish, even though she’d been riding her bike outdoors for eight hours a day… but the hands were age-spotted and thin-skinned, with bulging veins. It occurred to Abby that not all the dieting in the world could stave off death. No amount of exercise could keep Eileen young forever. Someday, her mother would die. And leave a beautiful, skinny corpse, Abby thought.
“What is it?” asked Eileen. Without the usual three coats of mascara, her eyelashes were wispy, and her lips, without liner and lipstick, were the same color as her skin.
“Can I come in?”
Eileen looked puzzled, but she opened the door, then stood aside, sweeping her arm to indicate the neatly made bed. Abby perched on its edge and said, “Morgan has an appointment at Planned Parenthood this morning. We’re trying to find a way to get her there without her mother finding out.”
“Oh.” Abby watched Eileen absorb this news. She walked across the room slowly to the wooden desk, settling herself into its spindly chair, a piece of furniture Abby wouldn’t have attempted herself. Eileen crossed her legs, pulled the lapels of her robe to overlap more tightly, and looked at her daughter, head tilted, eyes narrowed.
“Is she going to Planned Parenthood to get birth control, or is she going because she should have gotten birth control a few months ago?”
“The second thing,” Abby said.
Eileen nodded, looking thoughtful, not judgmental. “Who else knows?” she asked.
“Morgan told Andy. Andy told his mother. Kayla told me. Morgan and Andy were going to hang toward the back when we started riding, then go to the clinic, and catch up at the end of the day. Except…” Abby gestured toward the window just as an especially vigorous gust of wind sent a sheet of rain slapping at the windowpane. “We aren’t riding today. So now the plan is for everyone to get in the sag wagon, or catch a ride in the RV, and head to Seneca Falls.” She rolled her eyes. “Except that dipshit Sebastian is insisting that he wants to ride, so I’ve got to ride with him.”
“You’re riding in this?” Abby heard the pulse of alarm in her mother’s voice. She found herself unexpectedly touched. “Is that safe?”
“I didn’t know you cared,” she said dryly.