Christina (Daughters #1) Page 22

  There is little mention of her pregnancy. Except, how she’s feeling, and how bad it is for her to be pregnant.

  I can’t do this. I realize that as finish the first letter. This is going too far for even me. This is the equivalent of typing her name into the internet; that kind of bad. I start to restack the letters when I hear a noise. I freeze, horrified at being caught, and see Melissa standing in the doorway. Swear to God, she must have sensed me crying.

  “Are you okay, Tiny?”

  “What? Yes. Yes. I was just reading something sad. I’ll be right out.”

  I repack everything. My head rushes with the mystery and what ifs, and what all of it means.

  I try to make dinner. I listen to Emily’s infatuation over a boy who keeps showing up at the local pool all summer. But all I can think about is what I found. It keeps tumbling around in my brain. Marriage. Letters. Pictures. A pregnancy. Another child. Did it live? Where is it? Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?

  I can’t find any kind of rational explanation for the second wedding picture.

  My parents both come home from work. They kiss each other and chat about the mail, their days at work and who’s taking Melissa to the dentist tomorrow. They act so ordinary, while I feel like I’m ready to combust.

  I guess I should never seek a job anywhere that I need to hold onto secrets, or have to wait. I can’t. I’m so impatient to know all the details, I decide to risk asking.

  I give them the respect of waiting for my sisters to go to bed. It’s past ten. I enter their bedroom. Mom is lying there, reading, and I see Dad standing at the sink, flossing his teeth. He wears sweats and no shirt. I sit on the bed, staring at the intricate, lacy design. Mom lowers her book. “Something up?”

  I nod. She glances off towards Dad. “About Max?” she asks quietly. I shake my head no. I don’t know if I should do this. I don’t know what to say. I have been trying out different intros to the subject for three hours, but nothing feels right. Now that I have my mom’s complete attention, I feel flummoxed. Her eyes are big and she encourages me to talk.

  “Did you… what happened to the first baby?” I blurt out. I bite my lip and the heat flushes my face. I didn’t mean to throw it at her like a dirty bomb. I also didn’t mean for it to come out of nowhere, nailing her when she isn’t prepared to dodge it. That’s me, always keeping everyone on the ready, eager for my next attack.

  My poor mom. She instantly drops her book and her mouth pops open. Her eyes go wide and something close to tears shines in them. “H—How do you know?”

  “I was looking through some things. I shouldn’t have, probably, but I was, and I saw something and…”

  Mom closes her eyes. Dad, by this time, notices her change in demeanor and realizes something is up. I swallow with apprehension. Dad is nothing if not scary protective of Mom, even from us kids… and me in particular. I question, or at least, I used to question her behavior more than the others. He steps into the bedroom and comes up behind me.

  “Christina?” His tone is low and almost like a growl when he says my name.

  I put my shoulders back. I’ve grown up a lot since our first conversation. But I guess I still want to know those things. I want answers. Do they owe me any answers? Maybe not. But if there is another sibling… I don’t even know what to begin to think of that.

  I pull out the other wedding picture. “Were you two married before? Like, years before?”

  Mom leans forward and stares at the picture. I instantly regret flashing it in front of her. Her face visibly pales and her eyes grow larger as she stares at it. She lifts her hand and takes the picture, coming out of the bedcovers. She gets onto her knees, almost reverently sliding her fingertips over the images.

  “My God, I was just over a year older than you are now. Look at us.”

  She’s not talking to me. She’s lost inside the memories of that picture. My dad sits down next to her and stares at it. She glances at him. “Do you remember…?”

  He nods. “I remember.” He takes the picture and folds it in half, then reopens it, and rips it along the fold line. I am shocked. So is Mom. “Will!”

  “It was a shitty day. Why do we need a picture of it?”

  I am so confused. “So you were married before? And… there was a baby? Back then? Before me?”

  “How do you know that?” Dad asks. He wants to know how much to tell me. I know he’s feeling me out.

  “I saw some things in a box.”

  Dad’s eyes narrow on my face. “Did you read the letters?” His tone sounds clipped and annoyed.

  “No. I swear. I started to, but I realized they were—”

  “Extremely private? You’re our daughter, but there are some things you don’t have a right to pry into. Or know about.”

  Dad is pissed. I mean, clenched jaw, and grinding his teeth. He’s full on, cougar ready to pounce on me pissed off.

  “Maybe. But I did. I was looking through old pictures of us. You know of our family. I didn’t mean to stumble on an entirely hidden life!” Okay, I’m feeling guilty and trying to deflect what I did by hurling my anger at them.

  “There was. There was another baby.” My mom’s very calm and her quiet tone stops me dead. I turn towards her. She’s digging her fingernails into her palms until they start turning white. I lean forward and touch them. “Mom. Please. Don’t do that.”

  Dad takes her hand in his. He glares at me. “If we wanted you to know, we’d have told you.”

  “But I know now. I found out. What was I supposed to do? Not ask if I might have another sibling out there? How could you not tell me? How am I supposed to feel? Now that I know I’m not really your oldest child?”

  “You are my oldest child,” Dad says, his voice too loud and sarcastic. “Think about it, Tina, think why right then she would be pregnant.”

  “The… the rapes? You got pregnant from them?”

  Mom shakes her head and her gaze drops to the covers. “I did. Your dad married me back then in name only. That picture you saw was of two strangers who shared only a terrible memory and the ensuing terrible consequences. They are not reflective of us. Your dad married me to protect me from gossip, and from people finding out I was raped. At that time, no one knew. He protected me from myself most of all.”

  “What happened to the baby?”

  “I gave her up for adoption. I have no idea what happened after that.”

  Mom’s head is hanging down. “What more is there? What more don’t I know? Why can’t you just be honest?”

  Dad starts to open his mouth, no doubt, to blast into me, but Mom’s head jerks up and she slips her hair back. “Because you are my daughter, and you don’t need to know most of it. Most of it will do nothing except hurt and confuse you.”

  “Is there more?”

  “Yes. Do you want to know, Christina? Do you think it will help you to know?” Mom’s eyes are practically sparking at me. Her mouth has become a tight, thin line. She is rarely mad at me; but she is furious with me right now.

  “I think it would be nice just to be told the truth.” My words sound all badass, but I kind of whimper them. I’m totally folding under both of them being so upset with me. But still, I persist. There is another child, which I can’t fathom.

  “Jess, don’t. There is no need—”

  “No, no, maybe there is a need. Christina thinks she’s ready for the truth about me. About my history. Fine. I’ll give it to you. But be forewarned, you asked for it.”

  I hold her stare. Her eyes are wide and hard. I lick my lips and drop my gaze to my own lap.

  When she starts talking, Mom’s voice is soft and hollow, almost monotone in her narration. “I made a sex tape when I was nineteen. Your age. It’s on the internet. You can go look at it, if you’d like. When I was sixteen, my father ordered me into a room and made me sleep with his colleagues in exchange for favors. When I was twenty, the same father, who I learned years later really wasn’t my father, arranged to have me kidnapp
ed and taken down to Mexico. I was tied up and gang raped, for three days. That was where I first met your father. I got pregnant in the process. When I came home, I couldn’t abort it. My dad was a general in the Army and I still cared, at that point, about what he’d say to me, so I let your dad marry me. I just wanted to protect myself from what I knew my father could do to me. But it couldn’t end there, no. It never really ends, Christina. Your dad got deployed, which was my own father’s doing, or so we think. Lindsey with help from Gretchen took care of me and insisted that I get treatment for all my severe problems. I gave birth to the child with only Lindsey by my side. I gave the baby up. I didn’t see your dad for two years. Then he came back to me. That was when we got together for real. As in: we finally had sex, and finally fell in love. He left soon afterwards, because he thought I couldn’t handle the Army life. He divorced me. But—”

  “Stop.” I lift my hands up and cover my ears as I start shaking my head. I get what she is doing. I virtually pushed her into this kind of chilling monologue. It’s horrifying and weird and I can’t get my head around any of it. She stops talking and I lower my hands. Tears streak my cheeks. I whisper to my lap, “I’m sorry. I just, I didn’t expect another baby.”

  “Well, neither did I,” Mom answers hotly. Her gaze is fierce on me.

  “Maybe that’s enough for now.”

  “I don’t need you protecting me from talking to my daughter, Will Hendricks. She needs to know. She thinks she needs to know this, so fine. Let’s lay it all out there.”

  “Is there more?”

  “There’s always more. Remember my cutting? That’s still a problem sometimes. The reason I freak out at any of you kids getting bloody is all it takes to send me back into why I like to do that. Do you want me to tell you about it?”

  I shake my head. My mind is spinning. I don’t know where to start. “Do you know what happened to the baby?”

  “I don’t. I only hope she had a better life than she would have knowing me, or where she came from. I was in bad shape then. Judge me, Christina, go ahead.” Mom’s voice drops as her passion seems to flee from her. She bows her head and stares at her interlaced fingers. “I could not raise her. Not then.”

  “I’m not judging you,” I finally say, my tears thickening my voice. “I swear, Mom, I’m not judging you.” I surprise her when I launch myself at her and hang off her with my arms around her neck, burying my face against her collarbone. Tears roll down my cheeks and onto her bare skin. She starts shushing me and patting my back. She’s always been good at flipping into Mom Mode. Her pain always magically disappears when we need anything from her. “Hey, Tiny, it’s okay. I’m okay.”

  “I shouldn’t have come in here…”

  “You should have come in here. Agonizing over what you think is way harder than dealing with what you know. Trust me. I know. We wonder how much to tell you girls. You can’t imagine how hard it is to admit what brought your dad and me together.”

  “Don’t tell them. Don’t tell them until they are really old. They aren’t as curious as me; you don’t have to tell them like you told me. I’m sorry I’m such a pain in the ass.”

  My mom’s body shakes in a little laugh. I raise my eyes to meet hers. She pushes my hair from my forehead. “Ah, hell, Tina, that’s why I had kids. For the pains in my ass. The best kinds. I’m just sorry my story is so bad. And my answers are equally dissatisfying and upsetting. I’m sorry—”

  “No. Please. Don’t ever apologize to me, or anyone else ever again, not for what you suffered.”

  “She’s right, Jess. You don’t need to apologize. You tell them with pride what you’ve had to overcome.” Dad’s weight dips on the mattress too. His arms encircle my mom and me. I curl into them like I was eight years old and in need of a family hug.

  I cry along with Mom until Dad kind of shushes us. The pain of her story sits in my chest. It’s dark and terrible and leaves me feeling depressed and sad. So freaking sad. I know it’s not my experience, or my pain, but it hurts to think of what my own mother had to endure.

  I lean into my mom’s chest and whisper, “I love you.”

  She kisses the top of my head. “I love you too.”

  “Did you really find happiness after all that?”

  I feel her head shift and think she’s meeting my dad’s gaze over my head. “Yes, Tiny, I really did. And you contribute a huge part to that.”

  I realize I have no right, but I can’t shake the thought in my brain that my mother has another daughter. Somewhere out there, in the world, I have a sister.

  Max. All I can think about is telling Max. He’d understand. He’d know what to do. He would know exactly what I was feeling and thinking. He wouldn’t need a whole lot of explanation. He’d get what this is for me.

  Knowing I have a sister out there haunts me. I think about it all the time. Where is she? Is she okay? Is the life she got from her adoption a pleasant one? What if she got stuck with a family like Max’s? What if… well, with so many ways this could have gone for her, I want to know what happened.

  I have no idea where to even start. So I start asking mom some innocuous questions. Mom gave birth in San Francisco, I later learn. She stayed for several months in a psychiatric ward of a hospital. She was getting treatment for cutting and pretty much the equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder. She went into labor on May 23, 2005. She tells me those details. I have a birthdate and the city. There are only three hospitals and one has the psychiatric ward she was using. I figure that has to be where she gave birth. It’s a start. I know of only one person who can help me. Seth Gifford.

  My mom’s best friends, Bella and Finn Gifford, live in North Carolina. Their son is a total nerd and spends all his time doing whatever computer nerds do. I don’t know. I believe, however, if anyone could hack old hospital records, it would have to be Seth.

  I call him. He’s only a sophomore in high school but sounds brilliant. I don’t get all the computer stuff, but I know he makes me more than a little uncomfortable with just what he can do if he chooses. I’m sure he could rule the financial world if he wanted to. He always had a little bit of a crush on me. His family comes out to stay with us for a week every summer, and always did. My mom used to take me back with her every few years to visit them. So Seth is more than eager to help me when I explain what I want. The fact that it is illegal doesn’t seem to daunt him in the least. He scoffs and reassures me no one will ever know he’s even been there, so what does it matter? I thank him profusely, feeling a little guilty for using his crush on me, but all the same, doing it.

  Ten hours. He calls me ten hours later with the name and address of the only baby girl born on that day in the facility I specify. The baby girl was not taken home by the mother.

  I stare in awe at the name and address I scrawl down on the pad of paper. I am speechless with Seth. I can’t even find the right words. I offer to pay him again, or whatever he wants, but he ignores me with a casual, “What are friends for?” Sad part is, he’s that nice, so I think he means it. And I’ve always been just enough older, and just enough not into him that I found it easy to ignore him. He is quiet too, but in a far different way than Max is. Max’s silence reflects his utterly hot, alpha, macho darkness. By not talking, Max just begs a girl to want to know what he is thinking. Seth? Not so dark, or alpha, or hot. Seth is kind of awkward and gentle and eager to please. He will make some girl a wonderful husband someday. But it won’t be me.

  Natalie Renee Ford. That’s her name. Her married name. She’s married to a man named Samuel Allan Ford. Her maiden name was Natalie Ralston. She lives in San Francisco. Her parents were Keaton and Sara Ralston. The former died about three years ago. She’s twenty-six years old, works as a patrol officer and she is my sister.

  She’s the living evidence of the vicious attack and gang-rape my mother suffered through. I stare at the paper more intensely. Do I have any right to contact her? Who would want to know their father gang-raped their mother? No o
ne. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to know that. But, she’s my sister. I have a pulsing throb in my temples. I want to meet her. I want to know what her life is like. I also want to know what she looks like.

  I stare at my computer and tap the keys. I don’t press enter. I want to. I wait, just staring at the blinking cursor. Then I erase it and type in Jessie Bains. I press enter.

  My dad is right. I immediately know it as the images and articles for Jessie Bains pop up. I click them off. Sex tape. What does one do with the knowledge that her mother is having sex somewhere on the internet? It would be as bad as learning her dad is a porn star. It’s pretty horrifying to imagine. I can’t. I just can’t do it. I close the window. I thought I could sift through the information now that I know so much more, but I don’t think I ever will.

  I type in my sister’s name. There isn’t much, just a few random links to what might be her social media. I could click on them. I could see her. I don’t. I shut it all down and spin away from my desk. I stare out my bedroom window, looking at the view I’ve spent my life looking at. Flat, slightly rolling hills, far off mountains, a few distant buildings, a house, a barn, some shops. Rural farm land.

  I have a sister. I know I should just accept that and let it go. But I can’t stop thinking about it. How does Mom not need to know if she’s okay? After everything she went through, how can my mom just refuse to know if her own daughter is okay? I don’t like it. I might not have the right, but I don’t like how my mom handled this part of what happened to her.

  I spin circles in my chair, staring up at my ceiling. Max. I need to tell him. I need his help with this. My heart is chanting, but instead, I stay quiet and keep spinning.

  I leave for college in four days. I have no more time. I have to move forward. Once I leave, I can put Max behind me. All of Max. His friendship. His issues. And having sex and then being tossed aside like every other girl he had it with.