“Call me when it happens and I’ll come right away,” she told me as she gave me one last hug. “And remember, we love you.”
We who? Her and Kyle? I am well aware that Kyle thinks I’m a juvenile delinquent, a stupid little slut, and I’m sure he’s glad I opted to enter this free adoption program. I had to come here now so mom and dad would think I was off at the camp. Kyle doesn’t mind pretending that he and Frankie are helping me foot the bill for that.
It’s not bad here. Really. The backyard is pretty and secluded, with places for me to sit in the shade and write in my diary. Somebody put a little bowl of fruit on my dresser before I arrived. I’m supposed to keep up my studies here, but I don’t know if I’ll have the heart. I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to be here at all.
But here I am. Waiting to give my baby to strangers.
ROBBIE, THE ONLY REDHEAD in the family and the most emotional of the McBride sisters by half, even when she was not pregnant, pressed a palm over the open pages of the diary as her face flushed and the tip of her nose gorged red from suppressing tears.
“Oh, Sissy, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. She shook her head and gripped the diary. “I had no idea. I thought this was just going to be a bunch of kid’s stuff.”
“Of course you did.” Markie was determined to let her sister off the hook gently for this trespass. “That’s what a teenager’s diary should be, shouldn’t it? Innocent kid’s stuff. Like yours, I suppose.”
Robbie stared past Markie’s shoulder, at the sky beyond the window. “My diaries were mostly about Danny. From the eighth grade on I expect my whole life was about Danny. But you’re right.” Her eyes snapped back to Markie’s. “It was all innocent. School and proms and stuff. I just assumed yours would be the same.”
“How far did you read?” Markie took two strides and lifted the diary from Robbie’s hands. She angled her wrist so she could scan the page where her sister had been reading. The words Edith Phillips Center jumped off the page. “Oh, you got to the part where I moved to the Home.”
Robbie nodded. “So I assume you…you gave up the baby for adoption?”
“Yes.” Markie frowned at the loopy teenage handwriting that described the most painful months of her life. “I’m really sorry you had to find out this way.”
Robbie swallowed. “Don’t apologize. Do you know what…what happened to it? To him—her?”
“Him.” To keep from going into total meltdown, Markie frowned at her reflection in the window. “He was a little boy. He’s with a good family in Dallas.” Again, to keep herself composed, Markie stated the facts simply, though living through it had been far from simple. It would never, ever be simple. The fact that she hadn’t shared that experience with the sister she claimed to love so much seemed to only compound her loss.
“How in the world could I have missed this?” Robbie had the same look on her face that Markie recognized on her own. Self-condemnation.
The pattern of the McBride sisters from childhood on had been to shoulder the blame in any situation. A by-product of growing up under their mother’s unrelenting domination, Markie knew. All of them had chosen different ways of coping with Marynell. Frankie fled. Markie rebelled. But poor Robbie had stayed on in Five Points, trying to appease a woman who could never be pleased. She had ended up feeling responsible for everybody else’s happiness. And now even the buffer of happy-go-lucky Danny was lost to her. The last thing Robbie needed was more guilt.
“It’s not your fault. I intentionally kept it from you.” Markie took two more steps and sat down on the twin bed next to her sister, grasping her hands.
“And it wasn’t the end of the world. I survived. I know I did the right thing. I know he’s happy and well.” And brilliant and handsome and brimming with charisma and a natural-born leader like his father. But Markie couldn’t add those things. Be cause how would she explain how she had come to know all of that? There was too much risk…for Brandon.
“Don’t try to make me feel better. You were only seventeen. I could have helped you and your baby.” Robbie withdrew one hand, draping it protectively over her abdomen as if shielding the child growing there from the sad knowledge that he or she had an unknown cousin somewhere, far away from them all, far away from Five Points.
“You had just married Danny that Christmas. And then you guys got the opportunity to buy the farm and you and Mother and Daddy ended up working so hard to get it in shape by the following spring.”
“So, you were pregnant when I got married in December and then you had the baby that spring?”
“That summer.”
“But how—”
“Remember when I had that bad case of mono and dropped out of school and Frankie told mother she would tutor me and take care of me in Austin?”
Robbie nodded.
“Then that summer when I was supposed to be at that Christian leadership camp for a month? Well, I didn’t ever have mono and it wasn’t a leadership camp.”
Troubled emotions flitted across Robbie’s face as she struggled to add it all up. “I remember when Frankie moved you down to her apartment. That was right before she married Kyle.”
“Yes. She finished nursing school that May,” Markie supplied.
“Right.” Robbie nodded.
“She and Kyle got married—”
“At the courthouse. You know, I think she always resented the fact that Mother and Daddy threw a huge hometown wedding for me and Danny.”
“It was Kyle’s idea to skip the wedding. They were in a big hurry to settle in and set up their first apartment in time for him to start his residency. Then I popped into the picture. It was no picnic, living with young marrieds as a pregnant teenager. Kyle wasn’t all that great about it. Poor Frankie. She was trying to help her baby sister and at the same time trying to please a very demanding young husband.”
“And now he’s a demanding old husband,” Robbie pronounced. Kyle, barely past forty, wasn’t exactly old. But Markie knew that Robbie and Danny had never cared for their uppity, sneering brother-in-law.
“Yeah. I was glad he was off on his residency rotations most of the time.”
“I can’t believe she married the guy, even if he is handsome as all get out. Was that it, Markie?” Robbie turned on her younger sister, eyes radiating sympathy. “Your big sisters were falling in love and getting married so you got in a big hurry to do the same? You always were trying to keep up with us like that.”
“No, that wasn’t it!” Markie couldn’t keep the annoyance out of her voice. “Look,” she continued more gently, “I was genuinely in love with the father of the baby. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever stopped loving him.”
“Who was it?” Robbie asked softly. “If you don’t mind my asking. I mean, I don’t remem—” Robbie stopped as if a truck had slammed into her. “Oh, my gosh. It was that congressman’s son! What was his name?”
“Justin Kilgore. It’s all in there.” Which was foolish, she supposed, having the whole thing written down like that. But even with all the pain recorded in its pages, some compulsion had kept Markie from being able to part with the diary.
“Justin Kilgore.” Robbie’s soft voice was full of awe. “I don’t believe it. Justin and his father used to come into the Hungry Aggie back when I was waiting tables. I always kind of liked him. I remember how he’d always ask about you, how he always found a way to work your name into even the briefest conversation. And then when you guys started seeing each other…oh, my.” Robbie’s shoulders sank and her soft voice grew hushed. “It was partly my fault, wasn’t it? I mean, I helped you go sneaking around