Friday, February 17, 2012. 9:45 P.M.

Shock wasn't the right word. Stunned? Aghast? Devastated? John Kennish didn't know how to describe the way he felt. Anger was usually his default. When he found out his daughters had been switched at birth, he had been angry. When he found out Regina had known about the switch for over a decade, he had been angry. But this? Finding out his daughter - lost to him for fifteen years, disabled by a treatable disease - was pregnant? He didn't have the words to describe this feeling. It wasn't anger. He had left because he didn't know what to do, or how to fix this. He could always, always, fix things. When Toby or Bay had a problem, here was dad, ready to fix the problem, ready to save the day. This was not fixable, he knew. Daphne, his Daphne, was smart, and he knew she would have exhausted all her options before revealing this. And god, Wilke. He had always had a soft spot for the boy, to be quite honest. He knew how tightly wound his father was; for Wilke to step up to this, to be so resolute in his choices, that took a lot of courage.

When he flew out the back door, he hadn't known where he was going, or what he was doing. Now, he found himself only a mile away from his home, sitting in his parked car on the side of the road. His cellphone was turned off in the cupholder. Likely with a slew of messages and voicemails from his wife. He needed to get a grip, get his emotions under control and go home. He needed to apologize to his daughter.

It was late, far too late, when Kathryn jolted awake to the sound of the back door opening and closing. She had fallen asleep at the dining table, her daughter's ultrasound photo clutched in her hand. When she rubbed her tired eyes, she found her husband standing before her, head bowed in shame.

"Do you feel better?"

He sighed. The kind of sigh that came from deep within.

"I didn't know what to do. I don't know how to fix this."

"I know. This isn't something we can fix. She tried to have an abortion, but it was too late. Daphne isn't dumb. You and I both know she wouldn't have told us if she had a choice."

"She isn't going to keep it, is she?"

"No," Kathryn shook her head. "She wants to give the baby up for adoption. Wilke agrees with her," at her husband's forlorn look, she continued. "There's nothing we can do, John. What's done is done. The best we can offer her is our support, our love. She has to be devastated, going through this alone. And with Regina in her condition... We're all she has."

"Where's Adrianna in all this? After the Angelo incident, she really hightailed it out of here."

"I don't know. I've run into her at the hospital a few times, I can't imagine that she isn't keeping touch with Daphne, even if her and Regina had a falling out."

John hummed his agreement and moved to take a seat. Gently, his wife bumped his arm and offered him the four by six print in her hand.

"This is hers?" He scanned the paper, noting the date at the top. "July 24th... God, how long has she known? She's going to give birth in five months!"

"A while," Kathryn propped her chin atop her hand. "Her and Wilke, can you believe that?"

John scoffed.

"Wilke... That's something I didn't see coming. James Sr. is going to blow a gasket on him. You think Shannon's gonna get involved in this?"

"I don't know, John. Don't you remember how messy their divorce was? All anyone talked about for months was how she took off to Arizona without her son."

"Yeah, well, seems like he didn't inherit that trait from her."

"You should've heard them. The way they talked about this, about the decision to put the baby up for adoption. They're smart, surprisingly level-headed, given the situation. I mean, I was ten years older than her when Toby was born, and I had a hard time; she's just a child!"

"I wish we had known earlier. I hate to say it, but we could've taken her out of the state, maybe she wouldn't have to go through with this."

"Wishful thinking," Kathryn smiled wryly, placing her hand over her husbands. "We just have to do whatever we can to get her on the other side of this. I don't want to see her life derailed, when she already has it harder than most people."

Tuesday, March 6, 2012.

Apparently, Daphne was twenty weeks pregnant, on the dot, the day of her first official obstetrician appointment. When she'd hiked her sweater up on the exam table, she'd thought Kathryn would pass out from shock, face going stark white as her mother stared at the sizeable bump she sported.

"Oh, god. Sorry, honey... Just seeing it makes it so real, all of a sudden," Kathryn's sign language had improved remarkably in the past few weeks, but Daphne still had to read her lips.

"Yeah," Daphne agreed, eyeing her stomach warily.

Truthfully, she had made an effort to not look at her body recently. It was still the tail end of winter, so she'd been able to hide herself under hoodies and parkas, and fully avoided the bathroom mirror when she took a shower. Spring was coming, however, and she knew that it would become harder and harder to hide this from anyone else.

The obstetrician's office was in the hospital, only a few floors above the intensive care unit, so Daphne and Kathryn agreed to visit Regina. Now two months past the accident, Regina look mostly normal: her face was no longer bruised or swollen, though she did have a pink scar stretching out from under her hair to her temple.

"What happens if she doesn't wake up?"

"The doctors say her progress is good, Daphne. We have every reason to believe she will wake up, in time. They'll probably try to take her off the ventilator soon, to see if she can breathe on her own."

"If she can't? What am I supposed to do then? Without her!"

Kathryn could hear the wavering in her child's voice, and watched as a single tear splashed down her cheek.

"Hey," she turned, setting her hands firmly on Daphne's shoulders. "You are not alone. Me, John, Bay and Toby, we are all here. Your mother will wake up. Maybe not today, and maybe not soon, but she will, Daphne."

That night, Kathryn and John Kennish sat hunched over the computer, researching adoption agencies. Neither on them had any clue where to start. There had been a few pamphlets in the waiting room today, which Kathryn had tucked away in her purse.

"Honey, there's a ton of agencies here, how do we go about this? Are we supposed to interview them?"

"I don't know, John. I can call some tomorrow, see what the next steps are. We'll need to check everything over with Daphne first, though."

John scoffed, "We're her parents, and we're the adults."

"It's her baby. She has to make these decisions, not us. Her and Wilke."

At the same time, in a different house, James Wilkerson II was lecturing his son over the boy's lackluster grades.

"You can forget about Duke, James. Even with deferred admission, you have less than three months before you graduate, and I don't see you with a 4.0 by then."

"Dad, come on. Me going to a state school isn't the worst thing in the world."

"Well, there's always military school. At least that's respectable."

Wilke shuddered at that. There's no way he would make it into the military, especially if there was a baby on the way that he would have to take care of. He cast a sidelong glance at his father, who was still frowning over the stack of report cards on the dining table. This really wasn't an ideal time to tell him that he had gotten a girl pregnant. Then again, was there ever? Even if Daphne was going to put the baby up for adoption, he couldn't exactly keep it a secret. Eventually people were going see it, when she was walking around like she had a basketball under her shirt, and then they would gossip. People were still talking about Daphne and Bay and the switch, and teen pregnancy would only be fuel on the fire. They'd speculate about what degenerate had gotten her that way, and it would be fairly obvious it was him. Then the gossiping and the talking would work it's way to his dad, and he'd be royally screwed.

"I can't go to military school."

His father looked over at him and raised his eyebrows incredulously.

"Oh, you can't? Please, enlighten me."

Wednesday, March 7, 2012. 7:37 A.M.

It was still freezing outside, and Wilke was trying desperately to shield his face from the wind barreling through the tunnel of the Kennishes driveway. He was huddled under the portico, trying to make himself smaller behind the imposing figure of this father's back, broad and clad in a pitch black coat, facing the front door. After a night full of stewing, James Sr. had driven Wilke over here first thing, figuring he needed to talk to John, and Kathryn, and meet the poor girl his son had "defiled." Wilke hadn't even been able to text Daphne to warn her, as his cell phone was currently being held hostage in his father's pocket. John answered the door, and after a brief moment of surprise, schooled his face into a neutral expression.

"James... and Wilke. Uh, good morning?"

"John, I'm sorry to bother you all at this early hour, but I think we all need to talk."

Over John's broad shoulder, Wilke caught a flash of red hair, and then a startled pale face. Daphne crept closer, still in her pajamas, and poked her head past her father.

"Wilke..." she looked like a deer in headlights, staring at James Sr.'s deathly serious face. "What's going on?"

"I'm so sorry," he murmured.

John turned his body to the side, calling for Kathryn, and only then could Wilke she Daphne's full frame.

She was barefoot, wearing pink plaid pajama pants and a tank top that was ever so slightly too small, on account of the bulge of her stomach. Wilke swallowed thickly. He had known, in an abstract sort of way, that she was pregnant. But he hadn't been able to tell, when she had been wrapped up in that giant purple parka all winter. Now, he was confronted with it, and worse, so was his father.

"So," James clipped in his unnervingly stoic voice, "I see my son was telling the truth. You must be Daphne Vasquez, the long lost daughter."

He thrust his hand out, waiting for a proper handshake. Daphne, too stunned to speak, and probably not knowing what he had said, only stared at his hand.

"W-what?" she stuttered.

"Daphne, go get dressed please," John steered her toward the stairs, once again calling for his wife. "Please, come in, sit down. I'll make some more coffee. I think we're going to need it."