Firstborn Read online

  “Nice.” There was a wealth of insecurity voiced in that one, small word.

  “Oh, Mom. I love you so much.” Tears welled in Kirsten’s eyes. “No matter what happens here with Erika and her family, my feelings for you aren’t going to change. But you need to let me do this without guilt. Please.”

  “I’m sorry, Kirsten. I didn’t mean to make you feel guilty about anything. I guess I’m afraid I’ll lose you to her. I didn’t think I would be, but I am.”

  “You’re not going to lose me.”

  She heard her mother sniffling.

  “I miss you, Mom.”

  “I miss you, too.” Donna sighed deeply, then said, “It’s time for me to dash.”

  Kirsten understood. Her mother didn’t want her to know she was about to cry.

  “Call me again soon, Kirsten. Okay?”

  “Okay. I will. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “Bye, Mom.”

  The line went dead.

  Erika checked the table setting for the umpteenth time. She moved the silk flower centerpiece a smidgen to the left, then a fraction toward the windows. She wondered if she should get out her good dishes rather than the everyday ones. No, that would seem too formal. She wanted Kirsten to feel comfortable.

  The doorbell rang.

  “She’s here,” Erika whispered.

  “I’ll get it,” Ethan called from the hall.

  Moments later, she heard him open the door, speak a greeting, invite Kirsten inside. She waited, still breathless, for the two of them to appear.

  “Here she is,” Ethan announced as he led the way into the dining room.

  Erika stepped forward. “Hello, Kirsten.” Should she shake her hand or hug her? She did neither. “We’re so glad you came.”

  Kirsten nodded, the tiniest of smiles curving the corners of her mouth. “Thanks.”

  “I hope you’re hungry,” Ethan said. “Mom’s Swedish meatballs are the best.”

  Kirsten looked at Erika again. “Maybe you’ll share the recipe. I’m not much of a cook, though.”

  “I’d be happy to share.”

  Erika thought they sounded like bad actors reading a bad script.

  “Before we eat,” Ethan said, “is it okay if I take Kirsten out to see Motley?”

  “Oh, I’d like that,” Kirsten replied. “I’ve felt so bad about him. I’d love to see how he’s doing. If… if it’s all right, that is.”

  Erika nodded, then watched the two young people— her son and her daughter—walk from the room.

  My children. My children together.

  Ethan and Kirsten knelt on the lawn on either side of Motley. The dog rolled onto his back, relishing the double dose of attention.

  Ethan stroked Motley’s exposed belly and said, “What a ham. I think he’s doing this for your benefit.”

  “I’m glad he’s okay.” She brushed the hair away from the dog’s eyes, then leaned forward and kissed his nose. “I promise to be more careful in the future, fella.”

  They were both silent for a while before Ethan asked, “Are you nervous? About being here, I mean.”

  “A little,” she lied, meeting his gaze. A lot! she told him with her eyes.

  “So…” Ethan sat back on his heels and rested his palms on his thighs. “Now that you’ve had a chance to look me over a couple of times, how do you really feel about having a brother?”

  The truth was, Kirsten liked this boy more and more, especially now, when she knew he was trying to calm her nerves.

  She mimicked his position, then cocked her head to one side and pretended to study him. “You’re okay,” she said at last. “And better looking than your dog.”

  Ethan laughed. Motley hopped up, tail wagging hard, striking the humans on either side. Saliva dripped from the dog’s tongue as he shoved his muzzle close to his master’s nose.

  “You’ve been insulted, boy,” Ethan said as he ruffled the dog’s ears.

  Kirsten hoped this good-natured banter boded well for the rest of the day.

  Steven stood at the bedroom window, watching. He saw Ethan gently push Motley away, trying to get the dog to lie down. Ethan said something, and Kirsten smiled.

  Her smile…

  Steven would never get used to that smile. It was broad and bright, like a thousand-watt lightbulb. At first, her lips quivered. Then her mouth parted, revealing straight, white teeth. At the same time, her brown eyes widened and her brows lifted in a look of amused surprise.

  It was identical to the way Dallas Hurst smiled.

  Steven’s gut twisted.

  She has no right to be here. She doesn’t belong. She isn’t part of this family. I don’t want her to be a part of it.

  Steven heard the patio door slide open, then Erika calling, “Come and get it, you two.”

  You two…

  Steven tapped his fist against the wall, wanting to hit it—the same way he’d hit Dallas.

  Twenty-two

  Steven’s animosity toward Kirsten was like an uninvited guest at their table. Erika felt his resentment and was certain Kirsten could feel it, too.

  Seated across the table from Kirsten, Steven remained stubbornly mute as he ate, his gaze locked on his plate.

  Why can’t you forgive me, Steven? Don’t you understand that I wish she were your daughter instead of Dallas’s? I wish she had blue eyes instead of brown and brown hair instead of black. I wish we could have raised her with Ethan and watched them play together as a brother and sister should. I wish I had an album full of her baby pictures, right beside our son’s. I wish I could have seen her take her first steps and heard her speak her first word and worried about her when she went off to school for the first time. Oh, how I wish all of those things. But I can’t change the past. I can’t. Not even for you.

  He glanced up, as if knowing she wanted to say something to him.

  You can help me decide the future, if only you will. Please, Steven. Please.

  He looked down again, his face like stone.

  “Did you go to college?” Ethan asked Kirsten. Almost single-handedly he had kept the conversation going, never allowing the small gathering to fall into awkward silences. Mostly they’d talked about Kirsten’s drive across the country, her impressions of Boise, her new job.

  “Business school,” Kirsten answered him. “My mom couldn’t afford college tuition, and I was only an average student, so scholarships weren’t available.”

  Erika wondered if things would have been different—better—for Kirsten if Erika had kept her, raised her. Would Kirsten have been an above-average student? Might she have gone to college?

  Oh, the guilt, the unending, unanswerable questions.

  Ethan leaned his forearms on the table. “Tell us about your family.”

  Her son was fearless, Erika thought, knowing she wouldn’t have asked. Not yet, at any rate, even though she’d longed to know.

  “My adoptive father’s name was Felix. He died when I was two.”

  “That’s rough,” Ethan said. “Must’ve been hard growing up without a dad.”

  Kirsten’s gaze moved from him to Erika, then to the centerpiece on the table. “Yes, in lots of ways it was very hard.”

  Erika suspected there was more beneath those words than what appeared on the surface. More guilt came on the heels of that suspicion. Guilt and a renewed wish to have known Kirsten as she was growing up, regret for all she would never know about her daughter.

  “Both sets of my grandparents died before I came along, so I never knew—”

  “Hey,” Ethan interrupted. “That’s not true anymore. You’ve got grandparents. Wait until you meet Grams. Louisa Scott’s her real name. Anyway, she’s our great-grandmother. You’re gonna love her. And Grandpa James, too. Mom’s dad. He’s a little harder to get to know. He’s kind of testy, but his bark’s worse than his bite. Huh, Mom?”

  Erika managed a weak smile and a nod even as she felt the blood draining from her head.


  Ethan said something else, but Erika no longer listened. Instead she imagined her son taking his half sister to meet their grandfather. She pictured the look on her dad’s face when he discovered he had an illegitimate granddaughter. She saw the condemnation in his eyes and felt the scorching shame his words would hail down upon her.

  I can’t put it off any longer. I’m going to have to tell him.

  At the end of the meal, Steven said, “Ethan and I’ll take care of the dishes.”

  Kirsten saw the flicker of something in her birth mother’s eyes but wasn’t sure what it was. Gratitude, perhaps. Maybe a bit of surprise. For that matter, Kirsten was surprised herself. Steven Welby hadn’t said that much throughout dinner and had seemed pretty sullen.

  Erika turned toward Kirsten. “Let’s go to the living room.”

  Kirsten nodded, then followed Erika.

  Two things Kirsten had noticed during her two visits to this house: The Welby home had a warm, lived-in feel about it, and unlike Donna Lundquist, Erika apparently had no taste for kitsch.

  Kirsten felt an obligatory twinge of shame, as if by her thoughts she’d betrayed her mother. Still, it was true. Donna didn’t have a natural talent for decorating. Erika did.

  The living room was feminine, even delicate, in appearance. The overstuffed, skirted sofa was upholstered in a floral pattern of peach, lavender, and cream. The accompanying chair was covered in a solid peach fabric. End tables of light oak, on either side of the couch, held lamps with cream-colored shades. In the center of the coffee table were two candles and a large Bible. On both ends, in the nooks underneath the table, were what appeared to be artsy, coffee-table-type books: Norman Rockwell, A Sixty Year Retrospective; The Art of God; Mary, Did You Know? A large, gilt-framed mirror on the wall opposite the window made the room seem bigger than it was.

  As if reading Kirsten’s thoughts, Erika said, “This is really my room. The guys don’t feel comfortable with the flowers or the colors. Too feminine, they say.”

  “I like it.”

  Erika smiled and motioned to the sofa.

  Kirsten took a seat.

  Erika sat beside her, her smile fading as she met Kirsten’s gaze. “I know you must have a hundred questions.”

  An understatement.

  “No matter what they are, I’ll try to answer them the best I can.”

  Kirsten had both longed for and dreaded this moment. Now it was here, and she didn’t know where to start, what to ask first.

  “Would you like to see some photographs?” Erika offered.

  Kirsten released a relieved breath. “Please.”

  Erika opened the door on one of the end tables and withdrew a thick photo album, about the size of an unabridged dictionary. She placed it on the coffee table but didn’t open it. “Ethan told you the name of your… your birth father, didn’t he?”

  Kirsten’s pulse quickened again. “Yes.”

  “What else did he tell you?”

  “Only that I look like him.”

  “You do look like him. Your eyes especially.” Erika lifted a hand, as if to touch Kirsten, then lowered it again. “There were only two people who knew about you until we got your letter. My grandmother and me. Nobody else knew. Not Steven. Not Dallas. Nobody.”

  Kirsten noticed a sheen of tears glistening Erika’s eyes, and she had to swallow hard to rid herself of a lump in her throat.

  “I fell in love with Steven when I was fifteen, but when he left for college… Dallas and I—Dallas was Steven’s best friend. Both he and I missed Steven. We didn’t mean to—” She drew in a ragged breath. “It just happened.”

  It just happened.

  Funny, the way those three words seemed to say so much more than they should have. They hurt. Hurt worse than Kirsten wanted them to.

  It just happened.

  Erika continued with her story, not pausing again until she reached the time of Ethan’s birth, nearly five years after Kirsten. “I want you to know something,” Erika added at the end. “You were never forgotten. I kept you a secret because it seemed the best thing to do, for everyone concerned. But you were never forgotten. Not in my mind and not in my heart.”

  “I wasn’t?” Kirsten whispered, not meaning to speak the words aloud.

  “No, you weren’t.” Erika swiped at tears on her cheeks. “Sometimes when I sat rocking Ethan, when he was a baby, in the middle of the night, I’d pretend I knew what it was like to hold you, too. I’d see little girls on the street, with their hair all brushed and shiny and fastened with ribbons, and I’d wish I could have dressed you up that way.” She pulled the photo album onto her lap, staring at its cover. “And every August first, I’ve awakened at five in the morning, the hour you were born, to wish you happy birthday and pray that you were loved and healthy.” Lifting her gaze toward Kirsten once again, she said, “I’m thankful to God that you had the courage to look for me.

  Something gave way inside Kirsten as she listened. Maybe it was unforgiveness for the times in her childhood when she’d felt unloved, unwanted, discarded. Maybe it was her resistance to care for this woman more than she thought she should. Whatever it was, Kirsten felt lighter of heart than she had in a long, long while.

  Erika felt both exhilarated and exhausted by the time her daughter left the house. She could scarcely believe the time when she entered the kitchen and looked at the clock on the wall. It was after six o’clock. Where had the hours gone?

  Ethan had poked his head into the living room sometime during her visit with Kirsten and announced he was going to Cammi’s and would be back before nine. The house was so quiet now, Erika wondered if Steven had left, too.

  But he hadn’t.

  When Erika walked into the bedroom a short while later, she found him lying on his back on the bed, one arm draped over his eyes. The curtains had been drawn, casting the room in shadows. Thinking he was asleep, she started to leave the room.

  “Is she gone?”

  Erika stopped and turned back. “Yes.”

  He sat up, then raked his hair with his fingers.

  “Thanks for doing the dishes,” she said.

  He grunted.

  “We had a good talk.” She stepped deeper into the room. “It would have been all right if you’d joined us.”

  He looked toward her. “I’m not interested. Okay?”

  Anger overtook her. “Grow up, Steven.”

  “What?”

  “I said, grow up. I thought we were a team. I thought we were supposed to help each other in times of trial and testing.”

  “I’m not the one who—”

  “Oh yes. That’s right. I forgot. You led a perfect life while you were away at college. You wrote to me faithfully, and you never dated any other girls, and you were as pure as the driven snow when we got married.” The words tumbled out of her. “Well, excuse me for thinking the last eighteen years of marriage counted for something.” She stormed out of the bedroom.

  Steven followed her. “You could have told me. You could have said something years ago.”

  “Exactly when should I have done it?” She whirled about in the hallway. “When you called me for that first date after you got back from college? When you asked me to marry you? When I got pregnant with Ethan?” She waved at him. “You couldn’t have handled it. You can’t even handle it now when you’re supposed to be more mature.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “Yes, I lied. And I said I’m sorry. I’ve asked you to forgive me. But you can’t, can you? You can’t bring yourself to forgive me.”

  “I’m doing the best I can.”

  Erika turned and headed for the kitchen again. “Then you need to try harder.”

  “What did you say?” Steven demanded, hard on her heels.

  She turned again, shouting, “I said I need a husband who’ll support me. I said I need you to act like you believe what you say you believe. That you’re part of this marriage. Do you think you’re the only one struggling here? You’re not. Why
don’t you try thinking of someone other than yourself for a change? What about me and Ethan? Stop being such a self-righteous jerk.”

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wished them back. But they hung there in the silence between them, like a cat about to pounce on a mouse.

  Steven was the first to walk away, retreating to his workshop in the garage, leaving Erika alone again.

  So alone.

  Twenty-three

  Erika chose a table in the corner at the back of Moxie Java. The coffee shop was mostly empty in this awkward time between the rush of early-morning commuters and late-morning shoppers.

  Her friend Barb held Erika’s hand as she poured out her story, holding nothing back now, confessing it all, from the very beginning right up through her horrid fight with Steven the night before.

  “I’m going over to tell my dad when I leave here,” Erika said when her tale was done. “I can’t put it off any longer.”

  Barb nodded, then said, “I take it Steven hasn’t sought counsel.”

  “No. Not that he’s told me.” She sighed. “But then, he doesn’t talk to me these days.”

  “I think you should see one of the pastors. Tell them what’s going on, and see if they won’t approach Steven.” She shook her head. “No marriage works well as an armed camp.”

  “I shouldn’t have said what I did to him.” Erika dropped her gaze. “But I was so angry and tired of feeling to blame for everything. I’m tired of being judged and found wanting.”

  “Of course you’re tired. You’ve been on an emotional roller coaster. It’s understandable that something like this is full of both pain and joy.”

  “Yes.” How good it was to have someone understand.

  ‘You aren’t to blame for everything, Erika. You need to remember that. Each of us is responsible for our own actions, not the actions of others. Don’t take that burden on.”

  Erika swallowed the lump in her throat. “Easier said than done.”