“If I’m facing something I’m uncomfortable about, what I do to handle it is, I think about the worst-case scenario,” Peter said. “What is the worst thing that could happen? Then I figure out what I would do if the worst thing happened. Once I’ve decided that, I feel a lot better. What’s the worst thing that could happen in this case?”

“For my parents to find out what I’ve done.”

“Let’s think about what that would mean,” he said. “What would they say to you?”

“They would be shocked, especially my father.”

“Of course, but how would they react after that?”

“Once the initial shock was over they would be sympathetic,” she said. “And they’d want to know who the father was.”

“Would you tell them?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Do you think they would punish you in some way?”

“Peter, I’m eighteen; they can’t spank me.”

“Would they ground you? Place some sort of limitations on you?”

“They can’t do that, either. If they treated me like a child, I’d move out.”

“How would you support yourself?”

“I have a trust fund. I could get by very nicely on the income from that.”

“You couldn’t take money out of your trust without the permission of your trustee, right?”

“Right.”

“Who is the trustee, your father?”

“No, it’s a bank. They would let me take money out of the trust for living expenses and my education.”

“I can help, too.”

“I wouldn’t want you to do that.”

“You have to let me decide what I want to do,” Peter said. “I have a bank account in Virginia that receives automatic deposits for my prep school fees, but I left prep school early, so there’s something like fifty or sixty thousand dollars in that account. I can write checks on it.”

“I wouldn’t want to touch that money.”

“It’s my money now; my mother is dead. Just think of it as a safety net.”

“All right, I’ll think of it that way.” She smiled. “I feel better now.”

Peter took her in his arms and held her for a moment. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” he said. “We’ll make this work.”

Chapter 56

56

The group met at Elaine’s, and Stone’s first thought after they sat down was that both Peter and Hattie were unusually subdued. Normally, they would be talking a mile a minute, and instead, they were staring at their food or just into the middle distance. But, in the circumstances, what did he expect? He was pretty subdued himself.

“Have you kids thought about where you’re going to live at Yale?” he asked, just to get a conversation going.

Peter spoke up. “I thought we might look for a three-bedroom apartment,” he said.

“Hattie,” Stone said, “you’re going to have to speak to your parents about that.”