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waiting for? The three wise men?” There went the Virgin Mary excuse.
    Now that she had told them the worst, she could be honest with them. Looking up at her parents, her eyes glistening with tears, Grace blinked twice and said simply, “I was afraid.”
    “Afraid? You should have been afraid eight weeks ago, before you let some boy ….” Brad couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. “What the fuck were you thinking?” Grace gulped. She had never heard her father say
fuck
before.
    “I know. I was afraid then, too, but I just, and he ….” There were no words to explain to her parents the feeling that washed over her body when Nick had touched her and whispered in her ear how he’d never met anyone like her, how perfect they were for each other. Every time she closed her eyes, she could see his face hovering above hers. And even if she could somehow describe the situation, it wouldn’t matter now.
    “So who is this
he
? How the fuck could you let some reprobate anywhere near you when you know how we feel about such things?” Now that her father had discovered his new word, he seemed to enjoy it, how the hard
k
sound made Betsy wince.
    “Brad, I don’t think we need to wade in the gutter just because our daughter has chosen to go for a swim there. That language is completely unnecessary … and beneath you.” Betsy’s lips were pursed, and she looked down her nose at Grace if she were a cockroach. “But it
would
be nice to know what kind of garbage you’ve been consorting with, Grace.”
    “His name is Nick Salter. We only went out a few times. We just did it once. I thought we were being careful. I don’t know what happened. He used a condom, but ….”
    The words tumbled out of Grace’s mouth, her face turning red in the dark as she said the word
condom
in front of her parents. She realized as the words petered out that no explanation on earth would suffice. Her parents were likely aware that condoms were only about ninety percent effective, a statistic that had been far from her consciousness when Nick slipped his hand inside her jeans in the back of his Cherokee.
    Sounding like one of the famous abstinence lectures, her father said, “The only way to be careful is not to let some teenage Lothario climb all over you.
Where
did this happen? Not in this house, I hope.” Brad raised his hand and Grace flinched, afraid he was going to hit her, but instead he swatted at a bug only he could see. If he had slapped her, she would not have been at all surprised — he was that angry. “Like two animals.”
    “We did it in the back of his car, down by the lake.”
    Doing it in the back of a car was both skanky
and
clichéd. But as horrible as it was to regurgitate all of these details for her parents, Grace thought that by confessing she could somehow repair a tiny bit of the trust she had shredded. If she came clean, she could prove she was worthy of being their daughter again. Just because they weren’t Catholic didn’t mean she couldn’t tap into the power of the confessional.
    “For such a smart girl, you certainly are proving to be pretty stupid when it comes to life. This is not how I raised you. I expected a lot more from
my
daughter.”
    Her father’s voice was suddenly detached, as if he were talking to one of his clients at his law firm, explaining why the case was a loser and he wouldn’t take it to court. As her father, Brad knew he had no responsibility here. Educating a daughter about the hazards of dating and premarital sex fell squarely under the purview of maternal responsibility. Fathers brought home a regular paycheck, killed spiders, and took out the garbage. The other stuff was for women to handle.
    His rage cut through her, splitting her heart in two. “I know, Daddy, and I don’t know what I was thinking.” That wasn’t true. She remembered exactly what she’d been thinking as Nick slipped his hand inside her panties.
I don’t know him well enough to be doing this,