Free The Christmas Light by Donna VanLiere Page B

the booth, getting up. “I’ll see you later,” she says, looking at Lily.
    “I hope you can bring your parents to the Nativity. We’ll be doing it twice on Christmas Eve. I’d love to see you again before the baby comes.” She stands and hugs her tight, whispering, “Remember, everything will be okay.” She holds Kaylee’s shoulders and looks at her. “Everything.”
    Somehow, when Lily says things will be okay it’s not some pie-in-the-sky hope but rather the audacious hope of Christmas that Kaylee feels. She nods. “I’ll tell my parents about it. Nice to meet you,” she says to Stephen. Then leans to whisper, “I’d let my husband get a pastry.”
    Stephen punches his fist into the air. “And she swings back around to my side!”
    As if she’s been sold out, Lily moans, “Oh, come on!”
    Kaylee walks to the other side of the restaurant and sits at a table where Lily and Stephen can’t see her but, when she cranes her neck around a post, she can see them and the woman who has taken her place at the booth. Kaylee watches Lily and Stephen, and while moments earlier they were laughing with her, their faces are now serious as they pore over the papers in the folder. She has never been to see a Nativity program at a church before and can’t imagine wanting to go, but for whatever reason, she feels the nudge that Lily talked about to see one now.
    *   *   *
    They are asked to wait in the reception area and Kaylee’s mom, Joni, picks up a magazine as she stares up at the TV. The volume is down but it is a cooking show, complete with tiny bowls filled with spices and a mound of beef that is being manhandled and roped into submission.
    “I’ve never used strings when I’ve cooked a roast,” her mother says. Kaylee isn’t paying attention. “I wonder if tying it up like that somehow makes it more tender?” She looks at Kaylee. “I always just throw it in the crockpot but maybe I’m missing out on that string method. What do you think?” Kaylee lifts her shoulders, studying her phone. “Maybe on the way home I should buy a roast and some string, huh?”
    “I don’t care, Mom.”
    Her mother turns her attention back to the TV. “Well, we have to eat. It won’t hurt to try this.”
    “Then try it.”
    Her mom sighs, twisting her wedding band. “I’m just nervous, Kaylee.”
    “Why should you be nervous?”
    “Why should I be nervous?” Her worn expression and slumped posture gives away her exhaustion. “This decision, this child changes all of our lives for the rest of our lives. It’s not just you. It has never been just you. From the moment you got pregnant it’s been about all of us. So yes, I’m nervous.”
    Kaylee is quiet. She hears the sadness in her mom’s voice and knows she’s right but she doesn’t want to say that. She doesn’t want to say anything or even be here. They watch the cooking show in silence. “I never meant to get pregnant, Mom.” It is the closest thing to an apology Kaylee can offer today.
    Her mother takes hold of her hand. “I know that. I can’t imagine any sixteen-year-old setting out to get pregnant.” She squeezes Kaylee’s fingers. Her mouth turns up in a sad, small smile. “I’m so sorry, Kaylee.”
    Kaylee is ashen-faced. For months, she has been angry at her parents, at Jared, her friends, at the school and the idiot kids inside it, but mostly at herself. In her times of deepest anger, she has hated her parents more than Jared but never knew why. They have been the ones to stay by her side, to rearrange their schedules, to take her to appointments, and now to apologize for something that isn’t their fault.
    Kaylee looks up at the television. “Things always look easier on TV.”
    “That’s because writers resolve things in thirty minutes or an hour.”
    Kaylee studies her phone. “How would they resolve this?”
    Her mom is quiet. “It doesn’t matter. What’s on TV isn’t real. Even the real stuff is rarely real. It’s