A positive pregnancy test shaking in her hands, Lacy Grubbs showed her Mom the irrefutable proof of her own carelessness and stupidity.
For the first time since the family's ideal life started to swirl around the bowl a couple of years earlier, Nancy sat and watched her Daughter breakdown. The disintegration of her parent's marriage never elicited a single tear, nor had the upheaval of moving halfway across the country. Lacy had never once showed any interest or concern in the day in, day out struggle her Mom faced to keep food in the house and the lights turned on.
Now the 18-year-old girl sat there in the chair across from Nancy, bawling her eyes out because she was suddenly with child.
"It's just pure vanity and selfishness," Nancy mumbled under her breath as she assessed the withering pool of tear soaked flesh her Daughter had been reduced to.
"It's just hitting her that she might have had her last good night's sleep for the next 20 years..its hitting her that she wont be the sole focus of her existence anymore..it's hitting her that she's gonna get fat," Nancy thought to herself, leaning back on the sofa and folding her arms as Lacy snorted and sniffled three feet in front of her.
"You do know who the Father is, I assume?" Mom asked dryly.
The silence of Lacy's initial response caused Nancy to ruefully shake her head. Before she could prick another verbal needle into her already debilitated Daughter, Lacy finally stifled her sobs long enough to say she thought she did, but she wasn't 100% sure.
The baby was most likely her boyfriend Shawn's, but given his penchant for sharing Lacy with a handful of his friends, only a paternity test would be able to tell for sure. Thankfully for both their sakes, Lacy didn't divulge that tidbit of information to her Mother.
___________________________________
As the rest of the evening wore on, Nancy's anger and frustration with her Daughter gradually gave way to sympathy, and a willingness to help her. Lacy was her only child after all, and considering the nuclear wasteland the rest of her life had become, Nancy found herself strangely motivated by the thought of becoming a Grandma.
It wasn't like she was going back to church anytime soon. Having already been heartbroken over her secret discovery of Pastor Grady's moral indiscretions, not to mention her own sins of the flesh with the very woman he was having the affair with, there was no way Nancy could fathom setting foot back there. Even if Calvin was none the wiser, Nancy knew she'd combust in an instant if Simone ever laid eyes back on her.
While she knew plenty of obstacles would present themselves, Nancy prided herself on being a survivor. Little did she know how quickly those obstacles would arise, and what roads they would take her down.
_____________________________________
Within a week of finding out her Daughter was pregnant, Nancy was just getting home one evening from work when she saw Lacy's boyfriend's car parked in the driveway.
"What to do..what to do?" she pondered, her stomach rolling as she contemplated her options.
"This is your home," Nancy defiantly told herself. "Just march in there and if anything happens.....just deal with it."
Nancy's newfound courage remained strong as she switched off the ignition and stepped out the car. It continued to shine as she made her way up the walk, but the fizz of confidence quickly flattened when she heard the pair of arguing voices echoing through walls. Actually, it was more like the muffled sobs of her Daughter and the clearly agitated voice of her boyfriend, Shawn.
"Bet she just broke the news about the baby," Nancy correctly surmised as dusk gave way to darkness around her.
Tightening the strap of her purse around her shoulder, Nancy vacillated for several seconds, unable to quite extend her right hand towards the front door.
"Here you go again eavesdropping and being a voyeur," a voice chided inside her head. "You remember what happened the last few times you tried that?"
Stealing a few glances to her left and right to make sure no one was witnessing her display of indecisiveness, Nancy stood there a little longer trying to make some sense of the commotion inside. Naturally, Shawn's voice was much deeper and seemed to resonate.
"How do you know I'm the Father..the way you've been opening your legs to every guy you come across..and you're gonna pin this on me?" Nancy heard Shawn clearly demand through the wall.
If she could have heard her Daughter's sobbing response, Nancy would have known a lot of those guys Shawn was speaking of were friends of his he'd brought into their relationship just to satisfy his, and to some extent Lacy's, increasingly deviant urges. Standing on the other side of the door however, the only audible input Nancy was able to garner painted her Daughter in a very negative light. If she were to have walked into the house at that moment, Nancy might have been torn as to which side to take.
Instead, she remained on the front step, frozen in place as the tension rose inside. Needless to say, Nancy was lost in a dumbstruck haze a minute or so later when the front door suddenly swung open and Shawn rushed like a bull from the house. Obviously not seeing the motionless woman standing on the stoop through the blood flaring in his eyes, Shawn literally steamrolled through Nancy as he bolted through the door, desperate not to do anything he'd later regret to his impregnated girlfriend inside.
The adrenaline of the moment had shielded Nancy from any immediate pain after her collision with Shawn. Easily a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than the petite older woman, the fact that Shawn had lunged from the door with a full head of steam could have been much worse for Nancy. Luckily, she'd escaped with nothing more than a loss of breath and a minor scrap on her right elbow from the fall. Another two inches further back and her head may have struck the edge of the concrete walkway.