Chapter Ten
Growing Up Too Fast
In 1994, Mom was still grieving deeply.
One day while I was at my sister's house, I met Richard. His dad drove a truck with my brother-in-law. I was fifteen, and Richard was eighteen.
Richard asked me to go on a date. I told him I wasn't allowed to car date. He asked Mom's permission, and to my surprise, she agreed. If Dad had been alive, I knew the answer would have been no.
That Saturday, Richard pulled into the driveway in a friend's car. I still have a picture of myself sitting on the couch waiting for him.
We drove to Paintsville, ate dinner at Ponderosa, then went to the Plaza parking lot where teenagers gathered to sit on cars, listen to music, laugh, and talk. Richard had me home by my ten o'clock curfew.
Around this time, Mom could no longer bear living in the big farmhouse. Her grief had changed everything.
One night while I was staying with my sister, Mom and Calvin arrived and told us the house had burned.
Later, I learned Mom had set the fire herself.
Calvin told me she had sent him to wait in the car.
When he went back inside for something he'd forgotten, he saw her at the stove with the burners on and papers piled high.
He didn't know what to do. He went back to the car, and Mom eventually came out and drove away.
There was no insurance.
Eventually, Mom replaced the house with a smaller mobile home on the Johnson Fork property.
Richard and I continued dating. Something never felt quite right to me. He often felt more like a friend than the person I was meant to spend my life with.
At seventeen, I found out I was pregnant.
Richard was with me when I first took a test at a friend's house. We stared at the result, and he asked, “How are we going to tell our parents?”
“I don't know,” I said. “My mom is going to kill me.”
Not long afterward, Richard ended our relationship.
Most people would expect me to say I was devastated.
The truth is, I felt relieved.
I was scared about becoming a mother, but I also knew that forcing a relationship wasn't the answer.
Soon, though, my mother would learn the truth—and my life would begin changing faster than I could have imagined.