by Dara Girard
On the stairs she gripped the railing, releasing a low groan.
“Is it the baby?” Marie asked, worried.
“I’m just tired,” she said, her legs feeling like lead. The bedroom felt so far and she hoped she could make it without scaring her daughter. Marie was such a sensitive girl and easily frightened. She didn’t want to do or say anything to cause her distress. She was just overly tired. She hadn’t rested as much as she should have. Perhaps Emery was right and she had neglected herself too much. She had to remember she had another life that depended on her.
“Oh Mom,” Marie said with a note of anguish. “If I’d known...”
“Known what?” she asked when Marie trailed off.
She shook her head. “I wish I’d looked harder for her. I wish this hadn’t happened. I know all this has been terrible for you.”
Maureen patted her daughter’s cheek. She looked so guilty, as if it had been her fault. “It’s been terrible for all of us. I’m sorry I’d forgotten that, but we will all make it through this and bring Catherine home.”
But by the time Maureen reached her room and sank to sit on the side of the bed, finding Catherine was the least of her worries; the contractions were too strong and too close together. She didn’t feel right, something was wrong. But she didn’t want Marie to know so she plastered on a smile. “Go my dear. I’ll be fine.”
Marie hesitated. “Are you sure?”
Maureen kept her smile in place, gripping the bed sheets in her fist behind her as another contraction hit. She couldn’t speak, holding her smile in place so tight that she feared she’d crack her teeth, so she managed a nod.
Once Marie had gone, Maureen let her smile disappear and fear and worry battled within her. She rested her hand on either side of her belly and prayed. Don’t do this to me little one. Your time has not come yet. She closed her eyes, breathed deep and tried to think of calming things like water crashing on a beach, a blue sky, the sweet taste of cotton candy. She imagined her heartbeat slowing and the tension in her fading away. And for a moment she felt she’d succeeded before another contraction seized her. She grabbed a pillow and screamed into it. More out of terror than pain. She’d lost Catherine. She couldn’t bear to lose this baby too. She didn’t think she’d be able to survive if that happened.
Emery knocked on the door then entered. “Here’s your water bottle.”
She grabbed the pillow and threw it at him. “You fool! Can’t you see that I’m in labor? A hot water bottle can’t help me!”
“You need to calm down and breathe deep.”
“It’s not working,” she said with a note of panic, tears gathering in her eyes. She knew she was being unfair to him, he was a good man and was doing his best to help the family at this time of sorrow, but she needed a target for her anger. She needed someone to blame for how unfair things all seemed.
“It will,” he said in a soothing voice. “Lie back. You can be angry at me later.” He helped to lift her legs up on the bed.
“Give me the phone.” She could take the pain, but she feared the moment her body urged her to push. It was too soon. Way too soon. She had another three months to go. Now wasn’t the time. Please don’t come yet. She dialed the phone with shaking fingers, relieved when her doctor picked up. She was a woman her husband had forced her to see when they’d arrived in England because he was concerned about how the shock of Catherine’s disappearance had affected her and the baby’s health. When Maureen told her the symptoms she said, “Have you called an ambulance?”
“No.”
“Get one right away. I’ll meet you at the hospital.”
Maureen hoped that she’d tell her that under the circumstances with all the stress and strain this was natural. That all she had to do was relax and things would be okay.
She told herself that as she lay on the cot in the ambulance, the sound of the sirens seeming to block out the questions from the EMTs. She told herself it would be all right, even as her doctor examined her and the contractions grew stronger, even past the moment when there was nothing more they could do to stop the baby from coming, she believed everything would be all right.
She closed her eyes and left the pain of her body and mind, imagining it all as a nightmare.
Instead she saw herself sitting in the garden of their Maryland home, surrounded by well-tended pink and red roses, wisteria wrapped around their gazebo and daffodils trimming the stone foot path while the spring sun warmed her face. She felt Catherine’s hand on her belly, lightly rubbing it for good luck. “Like Buddha” she’d teased.
“But I’m prettier.”
“Yes,” Catherine said, sitting down on the wooden bench beside her. “You’re the most beautiful woman I know.” She sighed and let her shoulders droop. “No wonder no one believes we’re related.”
“But we are.”
“I’m not pretty like Joscelyn, Lorna or Marie.”
Maureen cupped her chin. Catherine was a gangly child, but strong, with kind eyes and soft rather than striking features. She had honey brown skin and a humble, pretty look that could be easily disregarded. “No, you have your own special beauty.” She kissed her on the cheek. “Don’t you forget that.” Maureen remembered how she’d initially been wary of dating Catherine’s father. She wasn’t sure of the rough-edged little girl she’d introduced to her more refined daughters. She’d expected her to pull some pranks to show her dislike over her father’s interest in someone else. She seemed incredibly close to her father and probably didn’t want anyone to come between them. But to her surprise, the young girl took to her immediately. Shyly offering her a bouquet of flowers when she and her father came over to Maureen’s house to have dinner for the first time. But she knew that she wanted to be this girl’s mother one day when she found her that same evening sitting alone on the front step of her townhouse crying. She’d gotten into an argument with her eldest daughter.
“What’s wrong?” Maureen asked sitting down beside her.
“I want you to like my dad.”
“I do like your dad.”
“And I want you to like me too.”
Maureen rubbed her back. “I do like you.”
“Dad wants to marry you.”
“I know.”
Catherine took a deep breath then said in a rush, “I’m sorry I got angry. I’m sorry I shouted at Joscelyn. I’ll be better next time. I’ll try really hard to be good.” She turned her tear stained face towards her. “Don’t leave because of me like Mom did. Please.”
“I don’t plan to leave. But you must know that your mother didn’t leave because of you.”
Catherine sighed. “Yes, she did. She didn’t want to be a mom. She wanted to be free.”
“Well, I like being a mother and I would be so happy and proud to have four daughters.” And since that day their affection for each other only seemed to grow. Maureen remembered that moment and looked at the young girl she’d adopted, her heart full of love.
As if sensing her affection, Catherine threw her arms around her new mother’s neck. “You’re my lucky charm. I love you so much.” She sat back and smiled, swinging her legs. “Ever since you married Dad, my life has been so wonderful and now I think my life will be even luckier when he comes along,” she said, mentioning the little brother she expected to have.
“You don’t mind not being the youngest anymore?”
“No, I’ll be a great big sister and now…now I’ll really belong.”
“But you do belong.”
“Sometimes…” She bit her lip. “I try, but I don’t think Joscelyn and Lorna like me that much.”
“That’s what having sisters is all about,” Maureen said with a slight laugh, remembering the contentious relationship she had with her own sisters. “Don’t take it personally. You were an only child and it takes getting used to. But never think you don’t belong to me.” She touched her chest, indicating her heart. “You were born to me, right here. In a place very special. You are my
daughter and I am your mother.”
“And you love me?” Catherine asked with childlike eagerness.
“Very much,” she said knowing that Catherine still felt the sting of her birth mother’s abandonment.
Catherine clasped her hands together. “I’m so happy sometimes it frightens me. It’s so perfect. We’ll all be one family.”
“Yes.”
The sight of Catherine’s smiling face faded away as the sound of the doctor’s instructions penetrated her mind, she heard the sound of the hospital monitors, felt Emery’s hand holding hers.
“One family,” Maureen whispered, tears seeping from her eyes as the baby she’d hope to carry to term left her too soon.
5
“We made a mistake. We shouldn’t have done it. Not now,” Marie said as the three sisters sat in Joscelyn’s bedroom. Joscelyn sat at her desk with a large anatomy book highlighted with different colors and pages of notes. She’d taken a semester off of school to deal with the after-effects of what had happened but didn’t want to fall behind. Lorna toyed with a perfume kit, delicately mixing scents. Marie sat on the bed, unable to do anything else. She should be in school studying, but she hadn’t been able to focus. All that she used to like to do no longer seemed to mean anything. Before she would have delighted at the sight of the red phone boxes and the double decker buses, Covent Garden and the taste of trifle, but she felt too scared to even leave her room.
“How were we supposed to know this was going to happen?” Joscelyn said.
“We could have waited.”
“Waited for what? We didn’t have a choice. It had to be done. Don’t pretend to feel sorry now, you wanted this as much as we did.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You hated when Mom married Emery and you were no longer the youngest one. You were no longer the cute one.”
Marie turned away from her sister’s accusation, feeling the guilt like acid in her heart. She hadn’t liked Catherine taking her place and she couldn’t deny the jealousy that seized her with growing intensity every passing month as she saw her mother’s belly swell with new life. A new life that was getting all the attention that should have been hers. She’d hated the sight of the nursery and Catherine talking about how they’d take the baby to the park and teach it how to swim. Catherine didn’t even like to play with dolls and all of a sudden this new baby was the greatest thing. And she’d watched her mother and Catherine giggling over the color of the pillows and blankets that would be in the baby’s bedroom. And there was one moment when she’d caught them in the kitchen, Catherine’s eyes wide after feeling the baby kick that Marie saw what she feared. Her mother’s look of love. Her mother loved Catherine as if she were her own flesh. She saw a bond between them. Something strong and special. Catherine had come into their lives and stolen her mother’s love away.
No, she couldn’t deny her jealousy. She had wanted her stepsister gone. She’d wanted her mother all to herself again. She didn’t mind sharing her with her sisters and stepfather, but Catherine was too much. She’d been relieved that the plan had worked. But she hadn’t realized the cost. She hadn’t thought of how much her mother would suffer. And for the first time in a long while, she thought of someone besides herself. She thought of her new brother, who was so small he could fit inside her stepfather’s hand. He looked alien and all the tubes connected to him in NICU made him seem even more otherworldly. But she didn’t want him to die. For her mother’s sake. She wanted him to live.
“This may kill her,” Marie said with dejection. “We have to do something.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” Lorna said.
“Maybe if we said—”
Joscelyn sent her a cutting look. “You will say nothing.”
Marie pushed up her glasses and rubbed her nose, agitated. “I’m just saying that giving her hope may have been a mistake.”
Lorna frowned. “Hope? When did we give her hope?”
“By saying we found her shoe and coat. We should have hinted at something else.”
“Like what?”
Marie bit her lip then threw up her hands. “I don’t know. That’s she’s dead.”
“She might as well be dead,” Joscelyn said with a sniff. “We’ll never see her again.”
Marie shook her head. “I didn’t think...Mom...”
“You leave the thinking to me and remember what you promised.”
“I won’t forget.”
“Because if you do, you know what can happen.”
“Don’t threaten me, Joscelyn.”
“My my, have you developed a spine?”
“I mean it.”
“So do I, don’t forget—”
“I said I won’t forget,” Marie said, then stormed out of the room.
Lorna watched her go then shifted her gaze to Joscelyn. “Should we be worried about her?”
Joscelyn turned a page in her book and made a notation in the margin. “Do I look worried?”
“No, but if she were to say--”
Joscelyn lifted her head amused. “Do you think Mom would believe her over me? Who would really believe we did what we did?” she said with a slight smile of satisfaction. “And what proof is there?”
“You’re right.”
“We’ve gotten away with what we’ve done. Nothing can ruin that,” Joscelyn said, more to herself than to her sister. It was really Catherine’s fault that all of this had happened. If only she hadn’t been so cocky and arrogant. She always thought she was special...
“I had the most amazing dream! I’m going to be powerful and richer than Daddy one day and you will remember my name,” Catherine had told them one October evening as the three sisters sat in the living room. Joscelyn was watching TV, Marie doing her homework and Lorna writing a note to her boyfriend.
“So what?” Lorna said, spraying the paper with perfume.
“It means that I’m going to be great, someone remarkable that you’ll all admire.”
“Will you move and shut up?” Joscelyn said. “I’m trying to listen to the show.”
Catherine shifted to the side. “But my dream also—”
“And how can I concentrate on my homework with you talking?” Marie said. “I have an exam coming up.”
“But--”
“Mom!” Lorna said. “Catherine’s bothering us.”
Maureen’s voice came down the hall. “Catherine, have you done your piano lessons?”
“No, but—”
“I don’t want to hear the word no. Get them done.”
Catherine headed to the door then turned and looked at them. “It will happen, you’ll see,” she said then left.
Lorna looked at her sisters. “I can’t stand her.”
“She’s just a big mouth,” Marie said. “Ignore her. She just wants attention.”
“She’s a brat and should be taken down a peg,” Lorna said folding up her note. “Can you believe that? She thinks we’d think about her when she’s grown? Why does she think she’s so special?”
“Because she’s Emery’s favorite,” Joscelyn said in a bored tone, staring at the TV screen but not hearing a word.
“He says he doesn’t have favorites,” Marie said.
Joscelyn looked at her amused. “And you believe that?”
“No, but—”
“And she’s quickly becoming Mom’s little darling too,” Lorna said.
Marie sighed and returned to her homework.
“Personally, I wish she’d disappear,” Joscelyn said. “We’d all be better off without her.”
“I know. Wouldn’t that be great?” Lorna said, warming to the idea. “No more strange dreams, no more flirting.”
“She doesn’t flirt,” Marie said.
“You should see how she talks with Greg,” she said referring to her boyfriend. “He thinks she’s so adorable. She’s not even pretty.”
“But people like her,” Marie said.
“Too much and that’s not good for
us,” Jocelyn said.
“What do you mean?”
“What if something happened to Emery? Do you really think he’d divide the estate equally among us?”
“We’d always have Mom.”
“What if that’s not enough?”
“Emery is not going to die.”
“Dad died and I remember how hard it was for us. I’m not facing that again.” She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair as the faint sounds of the piano came towards them. The house was well designed so that the music wasn’t distracting with the door closed, but the thought of Catherine’s clever, efficient fingers sliding along the keys without error annoyed her.
No, it was more than annoyance. Her mere existence bothered her. She hated her stepsister’s face, the sound of her voice, how everything came so easily to her. She’d been her father’s little princess after her mother left. She’d never known struggle or hardship. And the admiration Joscelyn had fought to gain from her mother was now lavished on Catherine with abandonment. What did her mother see? What did anyone see? She was a pest. A nuisance. Every day she wished that she would disappear.
And Joscelyn’s anger grew as she sat and listened to Catherine tell their mother and father her dream as they finished dinner, the scent of coconut rice and jerk chicken still scenting the air. “And you will all remember my name,” she said, wiping her hand through the air as if her name was to be written in the stars.
“And why wouldn’t we remember it?” her father said with a smile. “How can we forget it when you’re one of us.”
Catherine shook her head. “No, it was bigger than that, Daddy. I was powerful and my name made my sisters shake with fear.” She frowned. “Or was it joy?”
“Your dream is our nightmare,” Joscelyn said under her breath.
“What?” Catherine asked, not catching the venom in her sister’s tone.
“Nothing,” Maureen said, having heard her daughter’s words and choosing to ignore them. “Finish your food.”
“I will. I just thought you should know.”
“Nobody cares about your stupid dream,” Lorna said. “I once had a dream that I was trying to ride a unicorn.”
