You stare at your firstborn and see a baby. A downy blonde baby crying herself purple, hiccupping toward calm when you scoop her up. Tiny fingers tangling in your hair.

You see a beauty in her twenties, or thirties, thinner around the cheekbones, the first traces of laugh lines framing her eyes.

And: you see your daughter, almost-but-not-quite eighteen, your hair and her father's eyes and skin that just lets out light. Sitting on her feet, right hand squeezing the left until her fingertips are bone-white. She's waiting for you to say something.

"Oh," you breathe, "oh." Your clinical training kicks in, like a plane's backup engine. "How many weeks?"

"Nine," and she actually holds up nine fingers to show you.

"Have you seen a doctor?"

She shakes her head. "I just did the, you know. At Janice's house, when--Mom?"

"Yeah?"

"Could you--could you please not be staring at me?"

You *are* staring. Because this isn't a patient, it's your Elizabeth beside you on the sofa, blue water welling in her eyes. Almost grown, but not quite, so how can this be happening, how can she--

Something in you that isn't a doctor, something inherited from your own mother, stirs. You don't mean to move your hand, don't know it's moving, until you hear it connect and see the red rising in her cheek.

Her chin drops. The tears spill down her nose. Your hand is stinging; your stomach turns. "I guess I deserved that," she says.

"No." You swallow hard. Too late: you're crying, too. "No, sweetie, you didn't. I'm sorry. You must--" You press your fingers gently to the hot place where you hit her. "You must be so scared."

"He's going to marry me." Her voice rattles, but she sets her jaw, looks up. Her father's eyes. "We were talking about maybe getting engaged after graduation, already. We're going to get married."

You've met the boy; you believe this. But in college she might have met other boys--she wanted to teach--all these choices that have suddenly moved light-years away. She's already terrified, and she has no idea what it is to bear and raise a child. No idea what she's put you through.

You say none of this. Just pull your baby close, hold her until the shaking crying stops. Eventually, you murmur, "I made it tough to tell me, huh?"

She manages a wet laugh. "Not as tough as it'll be to tell Dad."

Oh, God. Oh, God, she's right.

You pull back to look at your firstborn, remember her trembling before her First Confession. The puffy red face of a baby, but she *is* a woman now, a smart woman facing the hardest thing in this world. It doesn't need to be any harder.

You take one of her hands in one of yours, squeeze it. You're a smart woman, too.

"We're not going to tell him," you say. Your fingers tangle in her hair. "We can keep a secret."