Her eyelids narrowed. “Don’t keep this a secret from your parents and then do something foolish to yourself, Corrine. Women can bleed to death. I’ve seen enough of that, too. If too much time goes by and it’s clear to me that you haven’t told your parents . . .”

“I will. I promise,” I said.

“Good.”

I took a deep breath, nodded, thanked her, and walked to my bike. She remained sitting on the porch until I was on my way. Just before I made the turn, I looked back. She was still sitting there, looking like she was in deep thought, her hair still wet, the towel dangling from her hand as if she no longer knew what to do with it.

How much of what was happening to me had happened to her? She was yet unmarried and now living alone since both her parents had passed away. Again, I wondered why she didn’t marry. Could she have had a baby secretly, a baby someone quickly adopted? Suddenly, every woman’s story was important to me, but especially those who did get pregnant too soon while still having wonderful romances. This was one time when I didn’t want to be the center of attention. I wanted to listen to others describe how they avoided becoming me.

I pedaled on, my heart pounding all the way home. My mother was busy in the kitchen and didn’t hear me return. I went quietly upstairs to my room, feeling like someone drowning in a dream. It hadn’t surprised me to hear Nurse Rose ask if I had told my parents and not specifically ask if I had told my mother. Most girls probably would run to their mothers first; it was a woman’s crisis. Their fathers would be the ones raging, and their mothers would be embracing them and crying for them. Nurse Rose realized what my mother was like from the very fact that my mother had hired her to do a mother’s first important mother-daughter talk.

No, I thought, this was something I had to tell my father first. I dreaded it, dreaded how his face would shatter. All he had planned for me, all that had made him so proud of me, would drop out of his eyes and to his feet like tears formed out of stone. He would never look at me the same way again. I knew how he would take it. I had betrayed him, betrayed his dreams for me and therefore his dreams for himself.