The Years That Followed by Catherine Dunne

I’m not hurt; this is not my blood.”
    Maggie grips her wrist. “Go upstairs,” she says. “Change your clothes, have a bath, and wash your hair. I’ll cover for you when they get here.”
    * * *
    Calista is discovered when María-Luisa runs into Sylvie at the tennis club. Sylvie is French; her daughter, Mireille, is in Calista’s class. The humiliation, María-Luisa almost spits at her daughter, of finding out that you were not at the beach, or the library, or shopping with Mireille. You barely know Mireille; you have never once called to her house.
    â€œWhere have you going?” María-Luisa screams, her rage making her ungrammatical again.
    Calista says nothing. She watches as Maggie begins to walk backwards towards the kitchen, her face white and anxious, suddenly smaller. Calista understands that Maggie is frightened that Madam’s fury will soon be directed against her.
    María-Luisa is shouting now. She turns to glare at Maggie. “Did you know about this—about the lies, the deceptions of my daughter?”
    Calista’s eyes caution Maggie over her mother’s shoulder. She shakes her head in warning. “Maggie knows nothing,” Calista says. “Leave her alone. If you stop shouting, Mamá, I will tell you.”
    Slowly, María-Luisa turns back to face her. The energy seems to have left her body. Her daughter’s tone tells her all she needs to know. “Who is it?” she asks. “Wait.” She waves one hand in the air, stiffly, in dismissal. “You may go, Maggie.” Her eyes do not leave her daughter’s face. “Calista and I will continue our conversation in the drawing room.”
    And so Calista tells her. During the telling, the air shimmers between mother and daughter. The room doesn’t feel big enough to contain all that Calista now has to confess. And María-Luisa is relentless: she will know it all, unpick it all, down to the last detail.
    â€œHow long?” she asks. Both of her hands are tight fists at her sides, the knuckles showing white.
    Calista can see her mother calculate something when she answers: “Just over six weeks. Since the day he was here at lunch.” She hears her own voice grow defiant. Calista likes the feeling. It is time she stood up to her mother; she is, after all, an adult, entitled to her own life. And Alexandros is wealthy, well connected, from a good family: all the things her mother has always told her are important.
    â€œAre you pregnant?” María-Luisa asks this so softly that Calista has to strain to hear her.
    â€œWhat? No!” she shouts.
    â€œYou have been sleeping with a man for six weeks. And for six weeks you have lied.” Each of María-Luisa’s words resounds; they slap the air. “How can you be so sure you are not pregnant?”
    Calista is silent. Last month, she was safe. This month, she cannot know for sure, not yet.
    â€œYou know that you will have ruined your life if you are, don’t you?”
    Calista digs deep and finds another reserve of defiance. “We love each other,” she says. “We can marry.”
    Her mother shakes her head. Her face is sorrowful. “You have no idea what you are talking about,” she says.
    â€œYou married when you were nineteen,” Calista shoots at her. “That’s not so different from me, is it?”
    â€œExactly,” her mother spits back. Her eyes search her daughter’s face. “You have no idea what is ahead of you. No idea at all.”
    * * *
    Two, maybe three weeks later, just as Calista’s exams are finishing, comes the certainty. Her and Alexandros’s baby is on the way. Calista cannot feel sad about that; this baby is her way out. To a bright new life with her handsome and romantic new husband who loves her to pieces.
    But Calista can still hear María-Luisa’s howl, all these years later; she can still hear her