Sister's Choice (3 page)

“Hannah, you’ll be okay?” Jamie asked, remembering their bathroom conversation. But Hannah nodded enthusiastically.

They didn’t have to walk for long. The road wound to the right, and a clearing opened up in front of them. Perched in the center was the cabin.

“And here’s your mommy’s masterpiece,” Kendra said.

Jamie stopped to take in the details. She had not envisioned her plan in this setting, yet it was picture-perfect. The cabin was simple, meant for an occasional weekend getaway until Kendra and Isaac’s new home was ready. Then it would function as a guesthouse or even an office. She had designed it with nearly as much square footage on the wraparound porch as inside. A loft rose over what was essentially one large room with a fireplace. A kitchen, bathroom and bedroom lined up along one side.

“For sentiment’s sake, we used a few of the logs we were able to save from Isaac’s grandmother’s cabin for the beams. And the stone from her foundation went into the fireplace. The new with the old.” Kendra faced her sister. “But it was never meant for a family, Jamie. You know that best of all. Are you sure you want to stay here? You have so many other options.”

Jamie had considered all of them. She’d thought about moving somewhere new to begin a job in an architectural firm. Staying in Michigan and finishing the last of her course work. Moving here. Moving to Arlington to be near Kendra and Isaac while she was pregnant with their baby. She knew if she did the latter Kendra could help with the girls and be active in every part of Jamie’s prenatal care.

In the end, she had discounted most of them. The first two options had seemed cruel. Jamie wanted her sister and brother-in-law to witness and participate as their child grew. And trips to and from Michigan, or anywhere else, would tire all of them unnecessarily, particularly if the first in vitro procedure didn’t work.

The last option, moving to Arlington, had presented a different set of problems. Jamie’s relationship with Kendra held promise, but so many things could still go wrong. The phrase “nipped in the bud” had been coined for situations like this one. She wasn’t sure their relationship would blossom if it was fussed over and cultivated with too much vigor. So in the end, she had chosen to be near, but not too near. She hoped she’d done the right thing.

Jamie shooed the girls in the direction of their new home, and they took off to explore, Alison’s short legs working double-time to keep up with her sister’s.

“We’ll give it a try, Ken, but I think we’ll be comfortable. You forget, at this age the girls don’t take up much space. I’ll take the loft, they can take the bedroom.”

“That’s what I thought you’d do. But you’re not afraid that climbing stairs will be a problem if…” Kendra fell silent, as if she was afraid that by speaking her greatest desire out loud, it would never come true.

“You’ve got to trust me. I have the most amazing pregnancies. A few steps up to a loft will mean nothing. And I wouldn’t let Alison sleep upstairs with Hannah. She’d swing from the rafters.”

“At least they’re sturdy rafters.”

Although Kendra was trying hard to make light of things, Jamie heard her sister’s fears. Everything in her life was changing, and so much of it was out of her control. As children, Kendra had been Jamie’s only reliable caretaker. Kendra, who was thirty-seven to Jamie’s twenty-nine, had been forced to grow up too soon and assume responsibility for her little sister because nobody else in their unstable family had any interest in doing so. So after a lifetime of being in charge, letting go, when so much was at stake, was alien and frightening.

“I know you’d like to watch over me, and wait on my girls hand and foot,” Jamie said. “I understand that. But we have to have our own life separate from yours and everything else that’s happening. Just don’t worry. I promise that you and Isaac will see lots of us over the next year. By the time this is finished and you’re changing diapers, you may wish we’d stayed in Michigan.”

“That’s not remotely possible.”

“When the baby comes, Ken, the girls and I need to have other things going for us. I want them to see this as a gift we gave you while we were going about our ordinary lives. I don’t want the next months to be all about the pregnancy. If they are, it’s going to be too hard for them—” she paused “—and me to move on the way we’ll need to.”

“I can see that.” Kendra released a deep breath. “It’s just that things could go wrong out here.”

Jamie thought about all the things that had gone wrong when Kendra had lived on this property. “You should know.”

“Touché.”

“I promise we won’t burn the place down. We’ll scare away varmints, and if we have a problem with trespassers, I’ll make sure to report them. I’ll have a telephone. We have neighbors. I have a car. There’s a hospital nearby, and a rescue squad. And being pregnant’s not an illness. Maybe we’ll move in with you for that last month or so. We’ll see. But for the time being, you have to relax.”

Hannah was up on the porch now, peering into the windows. “There’s furniture! Can we go in?”

“Leave the door open for Alison.”

Hannah disappeared. Jamie figured she would find the bathroom on her own, since the house was only about thirty-six by twenty-four feet without the porch.

“I hope you like what Isaac and I bought to put inside,” Kendra said.

“Having you furnish it made it so easy to just put all our stuff in storage. I’m grateful.”

“You know, anything you need, anything at all, you only have to pick up the telephone.”

Jamie stopped just before the porch. From inside she heard squeals of delight. “I know you. This place may be small, but it’ll have everything I could ever want.”

Impulsively, she reached out and touched her sister’s arm to stop her from going inside. “We haven’t really had a chance to be alone and talk. But we’ll need to along the way. I have no qualms about this. I know I’m going to carry a healthy baby to term for you and Isaac. And I know you’re going to be wonderful parents. But there aren’t any manuals for our situation. I’m pretty sure it’s not in any of the guides I consulted when I was pregnant with the girls. So we have to feel our way, and we have to give each other space. Then, when the big payoff comes, we’ll be ready. All of us.”

Kendra didn’t look at her. “It’s
such
a big thing, Jamie. You know how big it is, right? And if
I’m
scared, how must you feel?”

“Well, if you come around to visit often enough, I’ll tell you. That’ll help us both.”

“I wake up in the middle of the night now and wonder what we’ve forgotten to worry about. You’re right, there aren’t any manuals. What if we’ve forgotten something important, something so important we can’t get around it or over it?”

“Then we’ll ask somebody for a road map.”

“What if this comes between us?”

Jamie put her arm around her sister’s waist. “And what if it binds us together in a brand-new way? Let me do this. Let me give you this. Just have some faith, okay?”

“Maybe this is hormones?” Kendra and Jamie had both been subjected to months of strong hormones to regulate their menstrual cycles and prepare for the implantation. Kendra had provided the eggs and Jamie the perfect host environment and both of them had been poked and prodded almost beyond endurance. Neither had enjoyed the chemical part of the experience, and Jamie was still taking progesterone to improve the odds of implantation.

“Maybe you’re just preparing for motherhood,” Jamie said. “I can guarantee you’ll worry all the time.”

Alison threw the door open wide and stepped back out onto the porch. “Mommy, bunk beds!”

“Oh, good, something new for
me
to worry about,” Jamie said. “Will Alison try to crawl up to the top bunk with Hannah and fall on her head?”

“It’s the safest system money can buy. I did the research.”

“See what a good mom you’ll be? So you concentrate on that, and let me take care of the little stuff.”

“Like having the baby?”

Jamie felt a rush of love for her sister and hoped they would stay this connected in the months to come. She squeezed. “Nothing to it, Ken. A piece of cake. I promise.”

Silently, she prayed she was right.

L
ittle lives were not always shaped by big decisions, by moves across country or physical upheavals. More often, the lives of children were shaped by the small decisions, the mundane interactions, the patience required just to avoid leaving footprints on a little girl’s soul. That was when the true mettle of motherhood was tested. Jamie had told herself that from the moment she had become a parent. And from that very moment, she’d learned that following her own good advice wasn’t always going to be easy.

Two adult-free days later, two days of hormones that made her skin crawl and her breasts ache, Jamie summoned a new shot of serenity as she listened to yet another in the barrage of Hannah’s questions.

“Our stuff comes today? You’re sure? Manny and Warren can find us?”

Busy trying to tame her youngest daughter’s mop of curls, Jamie glanced up and forced herself to wink at her oldest. “I dropped a trail of bread crumbs. Don’t you remember? And they promised they’d follow it here.”

“If you dropped bread crumbs, the birds ate them. We have lived here almost forever.”

“Two days, Hannah, and the guys just left Michigan yesterday. I promise they’ll find us.”

Jamie gently nudged Alison back into a sitting position, grabbed one last lock of hair and teased out the tangles with a wide-toothed comb. Alison, with her pink cheeks, green eyes and copper-colored hair, looked as if she’d just arrived as an exchange child from the Emerald Isle. Her father, Seamus Callahan, had bequeathed her everything except the curls. Those had come from Jamie’s father, Jimmy, an inheritance that Alison shared with her aunt Kendra. Jamie wondered if Kendra’s baby—if there was a baby—would emerge, as Alison had, with curls already plastered to its tiny head.

“I wish we had a big truck.”

Jamie tried to envision a real moving van creeping up their gravel driveway instead of the Ford Econoline with the two college students she’d hired to bring their personal belongings. “We’ll have a big van when we settle somewhere and they bring all our furniture.”

“But you promise they will have our clothes and toys?”

“I promise. I promise!” Jamie released her hold on Alison, who sprang to her feet and tackled her sister. Hannah, who was habitually braced for this event, caught her and pushed her back toward her mother.

Alison had been as patient as she could manage. “I want to go outside!”

Jamie nabbed her youngest daughter for a big hug. “We can do that. But it’s sunny today. You have to wear a hat.” She looked up. “Both of you.”

Hannah rolled her eyes, but retreated to the pegs beside the back door, where hats and raincoats were hung. Alison followed at a gallop.

Jamie waited where she was. The pegs were child-height. In fact, everything in the cabin had been planned with children in mind. The bedroom closet was sectioned so the girls could hang their clothes on the bottom rack and store more in cubbyholes on the side. The room had shelves along two walls, wide enough for toys and low and strong enough to perch on for play. The state-of-the-art bunk beds had a dresser and two cubbyholes for night treasures. On the porch, two rocking chairs scaled to a child’s shorter legs held special places.

Jamie wasn’t surprised at Kendra’s attention to detail. The cabin was tiny, but Kendra had treated that as an asset. She had scaled down, carefully choosing just the right pieces to make the cabin feel like home. From the Egyptian cotton sheets to the All-Clad cookware, no effort had been spared to make staying there comfortable and easy. In the days since their arrival, Jamie hadn’t needed one thing that Kendra hadn’t provided.

The cabin itself was extraordinary. Jamie had designed it as a class project oriented toward using readily available materials and fixtures that were commonly stocked at lumberyards and big-box stores. In theory, the design was geared toward do-it-yourselfers planning to put up their own vacation nest.

Rosslyn and Rosslyn, Kendra’s builders, had taken her basic plans to an entirely different level. Quality materials and workmanship had been the rule here. The natural cherry cabinets had custom detailing; the counters were desert-sand granite. The lone bathroom, though small, had an etched glass shower surround and slate tile. She was particularly fond of the copper sink mounted on a handcrafted iron pedestal.

She was sorry that she hadn’t been able to participate in the construction of the cabin, but there wasn’t much she would have done differently. Kendra and the Rosslyns had made the cabin their own with subtle modifications and creativity. In the big picture, that meant Jamie’s plans were adaptable and therefore a success. Photos of the cabin, along with the blueprints, would take priority in her portfolio.

Someday—which seemed like a long stretch into the future at that moment—she really
would
need a bigger and better portfolio. She would hang on to that thought in the months to come.

The girls screeched to a halt in front of her. All morning, she had promised a walk to the old orchard at the edge of the property, and she knew if they waited much longer, they would end up dragging themselves home, moping and sweaty. Since she was counting on the walk to tire them out, not transform them into heat zombies, the time had come.

“Okay, let’s scoot,” she told them. “Let’s see who can spot the first bluebird.”

Outside, she drew in a deep breath and almost tasted the humidity. Maybe June had just established a foothold, but no matter what the calendar said, summer had arrived. Despite the heat, the excess of hormones and her unusually short supply of patience, the morning seemed almost idyllic, a long breath expelled after years of combining school, work and parenting.

Jamie was not by nature a worrier. She was sure she had done the right thing by volunteering to carry a child for her sister and by bringing the girls to Virginia. She had her whole life ahead of her, years in which she could do exactly what she wanted to. Nine months was not a long time in the scheme of things. The time at the cabin would be a transition, a chance to take stock, to look over possibilities and make the best choices for their future.

But the reality of what was in store was already beginning to set in. She adored her daughters, would walk barefoot up an erupting volcano for them, would swim the length of the Shenandoah. But the uninterrupted stretch of time alone with them, the confines of the cabin, a community where she and the girls were complete strangers? She just hoped that in addition to her daughters’ eccentric, charming companionship, she could find an accepting adult or two to converse with from time to time. Over the next year, she and the girls were going to need all the friends they could muster.

The girls took off for the orchard willingly enough, watching for flashes of blue along the route.

“I’m going to run!” Alison ran ahead, and Hannah allowed her a head start, then took off after her. Jamie followed behind, hauling a mesh bag with a Frisbee, bottled water, a picnic blanket, granola bars and
The Marvelous Land of Oz,
which she was reading out loud.

The trip to the apple orchard was short. The small orchard might once have been productive enough to help feed Leah Spurlock Jackson, Isaac’s grandmother, and his mother, Rachel. Now, however, the trees were in the final stages of decline. Some had died with their roots still planted in the earth; others had fallen. Here and there, a carpet of dried blossoms indicated that some had struggled to bloom in May, but Jamie saw no indication of fruit. Her knowledge of gardening was limited to a philodendron that the girls had watered to death, but she wondered if any of the old trees could be saved.

She spread a blanket on the grass, then took out the Frisbee, but the girls wanted to explore.

“I will collect flowers,” Hannah announced. “There are enough to share with the animals who live here.”

“I’m sure the squirrels and chipmunks will approve.” Knowing where the flowers would go for the return trip, Jamie opened her water bottle and drank a couple of slugs to prepare.

“Do you think Black Beauty left when the cabin burned down?” Hannah asked.

Jamie remembered Black Beauty well, but she was impressed her daughter did, too. He—or possibly she—was a gargantuan black rat snake who had lived under the old cabin and nearly scared Jamie to death the first time he’d showed himself. The girls, on the other hand, had been fascinated.

“Aunt Kendra said she saw him slither off into the woods right before the fire,” Jamie assured her. “So he’s safe somewhere, and probably two feet longer by now.”

“Do you think he will come to live under our cabin?”

Jamie wondered how fast she could pack if he did.

They meandered, stopping every two feet to look at something, discussing snakes and squirrels and the kinds of birds that lived nearby. Alison and Hannah spotted the same bluebird at the same moment, a perfect end to the contest, then followed it deeper into the woods. As they went, the girls collected rocks and oddly shaped twigs, trading them back and forth like legitimate currency.

“I bet the woodpeckers love the old apple trees,” Jamie said. “Bugs like to live under the bark, and woodpeckers like to eat bugs.”

“If I invented the world, I would not let one animal eat another,” Hannah said.

“How about flies and mosquitoes?”

“I would not invent flies and mosquitoes.”

“I don’t like mosquitoes,” Alison said, siding with her sister. “I like spiders.”

“I would not invent spiders, either,” Hannah told her.

“I’d be sad.”

They were just about to turn around and head back for the blanket when Alison stopped. She pointed just beyond them, where the woods parted and eventually opened up to Fitch Crossing Road.

“I see something!”

They hadn’t walked far, but even in the woods, the air was warm and humid. Already tired, Jamie was ready to finish her water and collapse for a while. She had been warned not to interpret unusual symptoms as in vitro success, but she remembered feeling exactly this way when she was pregnant with both girls.

“There’s always something to see,” she said, resting her hand on her daughter’s back. “But let’s head to the blanket, okay?”

Alison resisted. “It moved!”

“Maybe it was a squirrel. There are lots of them around here.”

“Bigger.” Alison spread her hands. Then, before Jamie could stop her, she plunged deeper into the woods, not in the direction Jamie wanted to go.

“Come back, Alison.” Jamie knew better than to depend on instant obedience. With thoughts of Black Beauty or worse, she took after her daughter to corral her.

Alison stopped abruptly. “See?”

Jamie nearly tripped over Alison’s compact body. Without thinking, she put an arm out to hold Hannah back and snatched Alison with the other to keep her from going any closer.

But the sight that greeted all of them was nothing to be afraid of. Not far from their feet was a fawn, curled up in a ball. Its coloring was perfect camouflage, and if it had been moving before, now it was as still as a log. Jamie wondered how her youngest daughter had spotted it.

“Oh, Mommy.” Hannah tried to move forward, but Jamie held her back. “But it’s all alone.”

“I’m sure its mommy is nearby,” Jamie said.

“How do you know?”

“See how perfectly it blends into the ground and the leaves? I bet its mommy left it here while she went off to find food. We have to go.”

“But how do you know for sure?”

“Mommy animals know how to raise their young. If we move the baby, or maybe even if we touch it, the mommy will be afraid to come and take care of it. And it could die.”

“But what if the mommy is gone? Then it
will
die.”

Jamie pressed her lips together before she said something she regretted. She knew this was an argument she couldn’t win. Her oldest daughter would not forget about the fawn. Hannah would worry and fret until she was sure the little deer was safe.

“Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll hang my hat on this tree.” She took off the Detroit Tigers baseball cap she’d worn to shield her face from the sun and hung it on the branch of a nearby sapling. “Then we’ll come back in the morning and check. How’s that?”

“I want to check sooner.”

“That won’t give the mommy enough time to know it’s safe to move the baby. She’ll be afraid we’ll come back.”

“It might be sad all night, and crying.”

“I think it will be sadder if we interfere and scare off its mommy.”

Hannah squatted. “Are you sad?” she asked the fawn. “Do you need help?”

“Hannah! The poor little thing is hoping you don’t see it. Let’s get out of here and let the mommy come back.” Jamie urged Hannah up with a hand on her back.

“I saw it,” Alison said. “Me!”

“Yes, you did. What wonderfully sharp eyes you have. I’m very proud of you.”

Alison beamed.

Jamie managed to drag them away, but not until they had stopped for half a dozen peeks until they were too far from the fawn to see it anymore. Once they were out of sight, she knew their imaginations would set to work. The fawn would never be out of their minds.

Thirty minutes later, after snacks and wildflower selection, they were finally resting on the blanket when the rumble of an engine sounded from the direction of the cabin. Jamie hoped the movers had arrived although, knowing how much college students liked to sleep in, she had expected them much later in the afternoon.

She pushed herself to a sitting position. Hannah had been telling a story based on cloud shapes, but she had run out of steam and was recycling the plot. No surprise, the clouds had yielded a herd of deer and a mean wolf who wanted to eat them, until a little girl saved them.

“Somebody’s here,” Jamie said, hoping whoever it was might help the girls forget the fawn, at least temporarily. “Are you girls ready to go back?”

Alison bolted upright. “Lunch!”

Jamie got to her feet and offered her oldest daughter a hand. “Let’s see who’s here, then we can eat.”

As they packed up and started down the hill toward the cabin, the girls argued about what kind of sandwich they preferred. Jamie had found a natural-foods market in Woodstock and a farm stand on the outskirts. She was looking forward to buying fresh produce, and cooking for Kendra and Isaac when they came to visit. Since it was a passion and something she could do at the cabin, she suspected she would be cooking a lot in the next months.