Maribeth Robertson’s unexpected pregnancy at sixteen turns a brief relationship with Paul Browne into a crisis shaped by family separation, limited choices, and the question of who can care for her child. The consequences carry her from her home in Onawa to Chicago and, eventually, to a decision that gives her baby a home within the Whittaker family while opening a different future for Maribeth herself.

Discovery and Separation

Maribeth had been flattered that Paul wanted to take her out, but she later described the relationship as brief and said she had not loved him. When she asked whether their encounter could result in pregnancy, she was frightened and uncertain about the risk. Once she knew she was pregnant, Paul told her to disappear and not tell Debbie; he also suggested an abortion, though Maribeth did not understand what it involved and had heard that it was dangerous and expensive. She came to regard the pregnancy as the consequence of one encounter and bad luck, rather than a relationship she wished to continue.

Her father arranged for her to stay at the Sisters of Charity until after the birth, with an adoption plan already in view. He gave her money and ordered her not to tell her younger sister, Noelle Robertson, the truth, instructing her instead to say she was going away to school. Maribeth was to leave the following morning. The separation cut her off from her parents and sister at the moment she most needed support, and left her to face the pregnancy without her family.

At the convent, Maribeth saw how the institution’s procedures could make the young women’s circumstances feel like secrets to be contained. Two other pregnant girls were there. One gave birth shortly after Maribeth arrived, and the baby was taken to adoptive parents without the girl seeing her. The other, a fifteen-year-old whose pregnancy resulted from abuse by her uncle, endured a difficult birth and was taken to hospital. After both girls were gone, Maribeth was left alone with the nuns. Their routines and restrictions deepened her sense of confinement rather than making the coming months bearable.

Leaving the Convent and Building a Life

Maribeth decided she could not spend the rest of her pregnancy waiting in the convent for the baby to be taken from her. She had paid one hundred dollars and had seven hundred dollars left; what she wanted was work, friends, and a chance to live as a person rather than remain shut away. She told the Mother Superior she was going to visit an aunt, then left at dawn with her money and a small bag. At the bus station she bought an open-ended ticket to Chicago, travelling through Omaha, and sent postcards to her mother and Noelle promising an address once she had one. Leaving home did not erase her attachment to them, but it did restore a measure of control over where she would go and how she would spend the months ahead.

In Chicago, Maribeth found work at Jimmy D's and made a life apart from her family. To avoid losing her job, she told the women at the restaurant that she was a widow whose husband had been killed in Korea. The account protected her privacy but also hid the truth about Paul and the adoption she was considering. When the restaurant staff eventually realized she was pregnant, they assumed the baby was a final gift from her dead husband. Their kindness was sincere, but the misunderstanding made it difficult for Maribeth to explain that she did not intend to raise the child herself.

She met Tommy Whittaker, who was also sixteen, but their circumstances sharply differed. He had a home, a family, and a return to school ahead of him; Maribeth was living away from her family and expecting a baby in less than five months. She did not tell him at first that she did not want to keep the baby. As their friendship grew, however, she told him about Paul and the pregnancy. Tommy listened without judging her and said he was glad she had not sought an abortion. He wondered whether, like Annie’s death, the pregnancy might have happened for a reason, while Maribeth admitted she could not make sense of it. Their conversation made Tommy part of the secret she had been carrying alone.

Education, Friendship, and the Adoption Decision

Tommy’s support took a practical form as well as an emotional one. After he returned to school in September, he brought his books and assignments to Maribeth, and they studied together in the evenings, sometimes at her home and sometimes at the restaurant. He copied the curriculum for her so she could keep up with school and sit an exam when she returned. Maribeth completed the same assignments and proved to be an even stronger student than Tommy. The work offered continuity at a time when pregnancy and separation had disrupted her education, and helped make schooling a realistic part of her future.

The two teenagers became close, but Maribeth was careful about the limits of their relationship. She did not want to become pregnant again, and did not want intimacy with Tommy to happen before she was ready. She imagined finishing school, going to college, and making those choices later in life. Tommy wanted her to stay with him, but neither knew what would happen after the baby’s birth. Their closeness therefore existed alongside uncertainty: friendship offered companionship and help, but could not settle where Maribeth would live or what she would decide about the child.

By early October, the restaurant staff had recognized that Maribeth was pregnant. They brought her small gifts for the baby, which she put away in a drawer because she could not tell them she planned to give the child up. The gifts made an abstract decision concrete: there would be a baby with clothes and things of its own, but Maribeth did not plan to be its mother. On her last day at the restaurant, Julie organized a shower. The gifts included knitted booties and a sweater set, a blanket with ducks, a teddy bear, toys, diapers, and a high chair bought by Jimmy. Facing these objects, Maribeth understood more fully what relinquishment would mean and called Avery MacLean to ask about adoptive parents. He had considered three couples, but none was a clear choice: one prospective father had a drinking problem, another couple had just learned they were expecting a child of their own, and he had not yet spoken to the third. With only two weeks remaining, the uncertainty added urgency to a decision already weighing on her.

Maribeth’s own family history also made returning home difficult. She expected her father to judge her and feared that the pregnancy would define how her family saw her even after the baby was gone. At the same time, she could not care for a child and knew, in part, that she did not want to. The decision was not a simple rejection of the baby: as the birth approached, she became more conscious of the attachment involved and of the grief she would face.

Adoption and What Follows

After the baby was born, Maribeth told Liz that she wanted John and Liz to adopt the child. The request was a change from the earlier plan for the convent to arrange an adoption. It placed the decision in a personal relationship that had grown through Maribeth’s work and friendship with Liz, and gave the child a home with people Maribeth knew. Liz understood that Maribeth would need someone with her after the baby was gone, drawing on her own experience of losing a child. The adoption therefore joined Maribeth’s difficult choice to the Whittakers’ care, without removing the pain of separation.

John’s attorney prepared the papers and explained them to Maribeth. Three days after the birth, she signed with a shaking hand and waived the waiting period. She hugged Liz and asked that the nurse not bring the baby to her that day; she needed time to mourn. Later, when the baby came home with the family, Liz responded to the cries, while Maribeth tried not to go to the child. She knew she would always carry the baby in her heart, but understood that she would not raise her or be there for her through illness and childhood. If their lives remained connected, she thought, they might be friends; Liz was already becoming the child’s mother. The family agreed that the child would know Maribeth as their friend, not as her birth mother, leaving open the possibility of telling her the truth when she was older.

The Whittakers also offered Maribeth a future beyond the adoption. John and Liz planned to use the education fund originally set aside for Annie to pay for Maribeth’s college education. They proposed that she return home to finish school in the spring and then choose where to study, with the option of coming back to live with them. John had spoken with Maribeth’s father and believed that, although forgiveness would not be immediate, her father wanted her to come home. The arrangement did not promise an easy reconciliation, but it connected her return to school with a chance to make peace with her family before moving on.

The pregnancy thus produces consequences that remain distinct: Maribeth loses the family life she knew, leaves the convent to claim independence, and gives up a child she has come to understand as real and beloved. At the same time, her friendship with Tommy and the Whittakers’ support restore possibilities her pregnancy had seemed to close off, including education and a return home. Adoption gives the baby a place in the Whittaker family, while Maribeth’s future depends on a separation she chose under pressure but continued to regard as right for the child.