Brother. Brother?
Abby braced herself against the rough wooden stall, wondering if some hideous alternate universe had descended onto Bikers’ Rest. A wave of dizziness and nausea rolled through her.
“Cherie, you’re going to pass out.” Jack’s words reverberated in Abby’s skull.
“Sit down, honey.” Lisa’s voice echoed from a distance away, through a wind tunnel on the other side of the world.
Abby shook her head and collapsed abruptly on the barn floor, raising a puff of dry chaff. She pulled up her knees and lowered her head between them, taking deep breaths. A shock of cold on the back of her neck brought reality tumbling back. Jack stood behind her, ice pack in hand. Abby pushed him away and stood, putting distance between them. She noticed her hands shaking and shoved them in her pockets.
She focused on Lisa, willing her to make sense of the senseless. “I thought you said Jack is my brother. You mean, like we’re all brothers and sisters in the human race?”
“No.” Lisa held Abby’s gaze. “As in, I’m your mother and his.” She held the envelope aloft. “This is his birth certificate.”
Abby swayed again. “I’m going to sit down on the porch.”
The single-file march back to the house could have been a funeral procession. No one spoke. Lisa snuffled and wiped her eyes. The crunch of gravel underfoot, the subtle echo of a car horn, and the drone of a bee were amplified in the strained silence. After climbing the steps Abby sat in the wicker rocker, Lisa pulled a chair to face her, and Jack perched on the railing. He avoided eye contact and appeared ready to run.
Lisa slapped both hands on her knees. “I’m usually a direct person—like you Abby. So I’ll just put it all out there. Then ask me anything, and I’ll try to answer.”
Abby nodded, mute for once.
“I got pregnant in high school. Never thought it could happen to me, same as every other kid. But it did. My boyfriend moved away with his family; he wanted nothing to do with the baby or me. The October after graduation I gave birth to a healthy baby boy, which didn’t fit in with my college plans. I gave him up for adoption; it seemed like the best thing to do, not just for me, but for him, too. Then I tried to forget and move on.”
“You tried to forget your own child?” Abby knew she sounded judgmental and held up both hands. “Sorry.”
Lisa nodded. “I got a waitress job, started drinking, barely remember much else. Then I ran my car off the road into a construction site one boozy afternoon. One of the workmen helped me out and ended up asking me for a date—your dad.”
“Was it love at first sight?”
“Hardly. But he treated me very well. I knew he loved me, and when he asked me to marry him it seemed like the perfect solution. I’d be respectable, he never had to know about the baby, he’d help me to forget.” Lisa sighed.
“So you never loved my dad?”
“I did in my own way. I’m not sure I even knew what love meant back then.” Lisa raked her shaking hands through her hair. “But you have to understand what an emotional wreck I’d become. It never works to bury problems. They only surface in some other, more destructive way. But that’s hindsight. Anyway, we got married, and when you were born I thought my past would never bother me again.”
“But it did.” Abby’s flat voice belied her agitation.
“I’m afraid so. Blame me, not your dad.” Lisa’s words came out as a halting whisper. “You were the sweetest baby, but any baby reminded me of the little person I gave away. By this time he would have been ready for kindergarten, but in my mind he remained a tiny, helpless infant, being carried out the door of my hospital room, handed over to a stranger. So I got reacquainted with my old friend bourbon, made very bad choices, and tried to blame everyone else. By the time you turned three I gave up. On myself and everyone else.”
“That’s when you got the divorce and left us.” Abby remembered a photo taken with her dad. They were wearing pointy paper hats and blowing out three candles on a cake. He held a remote camera timer in his hand. No mother in the picture.
“You don’t need the boring details, but eventually I got sober and enrolled at Gannon College in Erie. I earned a degree, found a job, focused on making it one day at a time, and tried to forget yesterday. It even worked, for a while.”
“You tried to forget another child. Me.”
Lisa’s face, devoid of color, drooped like a wilted carnation. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“I’ll pick it up from there.” Jack nodded to Lisa and looked at Abby. “I told you my mom died. I didn’t know until years later that she and my father had adopted me. I’ll never forget the day Dad showed me the paperwork. I missed having a mother, couldn’t stop thinking that somewhere my birth mother existed and might want to know me. So I found her.”
Abby snorted. “That’s a crock. You were just a kid.”
Jack shrugged. “My father provided the information he already had and Etienne—my half-brother, helped me to do the rest. He took care of everything. That’s the kind of guy he is—was.”
Minutes of silence went by. “How did you find Lisa?”
Jack glanced at Lisa. “Once I had her name, I tracked her to Gannon and found out her current address, only about thirty miles from us. I called, she agreed to meet us, and Dad took us over to her place one Sunday afternoon.”
“Surprise …” Abby said.
Lisa patted Jack’s knee. “Truly. At the time I thought the shock would kill me. But when I looked at this sweet child, with his blond hair and blue eyes—so like you, Abby—my heart melted. Jack’s adoptive father let me get involved in Jack’s life, and I found I could be a decent mother after all.”
“And you didn’t want to include me in your new life because …” Abby said.
“My life with your father had been a mess because I messed it up. He preferred I stay away, and my guilt tricked me into thinking it would be best for you.” Lisa frowned. “Yet another in a long line of my mistakes.”
“Dad kept you from seeing me?” Abby had to concentrate on Lisa’s words, even as anger blossomed at her father. And at yet another betrayal.
“Call it a mutual decision. I know you think he could do no wrong, but no one’s perfect.”
“You have to give Lisa some credit,” Jack said. “When she heard about your dad’s death, she couldn’t wait to get back to you.”
“You were part of Jack’s life for ten years,” Abby said to Lisa. “Steve’s, too.”
“They both became the best part of my life,” Lisa said. She grabbed at Jack’s hand. “We missed Steve when he left for the service, and now, well, I can’t believe he’s dead.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this when you got here?” Abby said. “Or at least once Jack arrived. Why the secrecy and lies?”
“Not lies, exactly,” Lisa said. “I didn’t think you were ready for the whole truth. I hoped we could have a relationship before I told you my past sins and produced a brother you never knew about.”
“Did Dad find out you had a baby and gave it up?”
“I told him before we separated,” Lisa said. “By then I had nothing left to lose.”
“And he didn’t tell me I had a half-brother.” Abby wrapped both arms around her stomach. “You both deceived me.”
“He didn’t know about Jack as anything more than a nameless baby,” Lisa said. “I had no idea where he lived or anything else about him. I never imagined I would.”
Abby turned to Jack. “You came here on purpose because of Lisa. Is the rest of it true, the bike rally, meeting President Keller, all that?”
“It’s all true,” Jack said. “Except for one thing. I didn’t just come to see Lisa; I came to meet my sister.”
Abby looked from Jack to Lisa. Now she noticed that they had the same smile, quick temper, and athletic build. And that Jack’s hair and eyes matched her own. It must be true.
Without a word Abby stood and went in the house. Lisa and Jack let her go. She had a brother. She was a sister. Nothing was what it seemed to be. Again.