Hold Me Close. Megan Hart

before. “You don’t.”

      “I’d like to,” her father says.

      This is never the sort of conversation a girl should ever have with her father. It involves trauma and awful things. Also sex, which wasn’t awful nor a trauma, despite the fact she ended up in this delicate condition when she ought to have known better.

      Her father sighs again, looking so much older than he had even when Effie came back home, and she’d been shocked then at how much he’d aged in the three years she’d been gone. His smile reminds her of when she was younger and he’d take her on a Saturday to the hardware store to look at the tools. He’s the sort of father any girl would dream of, the kind who will get choked up when he dances with her at her wedding. Not that she’s planning a wedding anytime soon.

      “The father. He’s not in the picture?”

      Effie has not told the baby’s father that he’s the one who knocked her up. She hasn’t seen him since she found out. If he has by some reason heard about it, and he might’ve, because it’s a small town, he probably assumes, as her mother had, that the baby is Heath’s. And it should be, she thinks with a sudden, fierce twist of her mouth. This baby, the one she’s going to get to keep and not the one she lost, should be his.

      She shakes her head. “No. He doesn’t know.”

      “You could come home, Effie. We’ll take care of you.” Her father sounds sincere.

      Effie believes him. But... “I’m almost nineteen. I’m in school, I’m working, and I’m having a baby. Living with Heath is helping me. We’re going to be all right. I don’t have to come home. I can’t.”

      “Why not? Because of your mother? She’s just having a hard time with all of this. Honey, I know your mom likes to talk. But that’s all it is. She’ll come around. You know she will.”

      “No, not because of her. Because I’m not a kid anymore.”

      “You’re still our daughter. You’ll always be our little girl. Effie, your mom and I want to help you. That’s all.” Her father lifts the coffee mug as though he means to drink from it but puts it down without so much as a sip. He shakes his head. Sighs again.

      Effie wants to make this easier for him, but she doesn’t know how. “This is the best thing for me.”

      “To live in a crap-hole apartment, working and going to school, with a baby on the way? Living with a guy who can barely hold down a job of his own? I give him credit, don’t get me wrong, if the baby really isn’t his—”

      “It’s not,” she says sharply. “And he knows that. So he does deserve the credit, and for more than just that. Heath works hard.”

      “He’s been in and out of mental hospitals, Effie.”

      “Once. That’s it.”

      “Once is one too many.”

      “Better than just going in and never coming out,” she snaps, not caring if she hurts her father’s feelings now. “Has he fucked up? Yes. We both have.”

      “I understand. You went through something terrible together.”

      “Yes,” Effie says quietly. “Together. And we’re going through this together, too.”

      “Is he good to you?”

      It’s not the question she expected, and she’s taken enough by surprise to nod. “Yes.”

      Her father stands. “Well. I can’t promise you anything about your mother, but...I’ll try to give him a chance. I just want you to know you have choices. But if you need something, anything, you come to me, okay? I’m still your father, Effie, and I love you.”

      “Love you, too, D-dad.” She stumbles on the word but gives her father a huge, long hug.

      When he finally lets go to hold her at arm’s length, he looks her up and down. Her mother would have lectured, but her father smiles. He puts a hand on her belly.

      “I bet it’s a girl,” he says. “And she’ll be beautiful, just like you.”