For the Girls' Sake Read Free

him to come in because he had O.
    Instead of going to bed, Lynn felt her way back along the narrow hall to the kitchen, with its tiny refrigerator so old she had to regularly defrost the freezer part, the linoleum with the pattern worn to a blur, the brand-new shiny white stove, bought when the old one gave up the ghost at the worst possible moment, the way it always went. In the brightness when she switched on the light, the cheery yellow she’d painted the cabinets looked garish, a disguise as obvious as a clown’s red nose.
    The living quarters of the house were crummy; she’d put all her money into the downstairs, the bookstore. She’d had to. She and Shelly could make do, Lynn had told herself. Until the store became more profitable. If it ever did.
    But now she couldn’t help looking around and imagining what other people would think. If, for example, Shelly’s real, biological parents were trying to take her back.
    I wouldn’t look very good, would I? Lynn thought. Her knees crumpled, and she sank onto one of the two mismatched chairs that went with the tiny, scarred Formica and metal kitchen table. I don’t have much to offer Shelly materially, and I’m divorced, and my ex-husband thinks I must have cheated on him.
    Those other parents, they could take Shelly away from her. She remembered a photo from some horrible child custody case, when the little boy was screaming and reaching for the only parents he’d ever known while the biological father carried him away. How painfully easy it was to transpose faces: she was the one trying to be brave, make this seem like the right thing, while Shelly was ripped away from her like one of the beautiful sea stars from a slick wet rock.
    Oh no, oh no, oh no.
    She drew up her knees and hugged herself and shook, panting for breaths. She could hear herself gasping. She must be in shock, she felt so strange. Cold, and frightened, as if an intruder had crept in and attacked her, as if she would never feel safe again.
    Nobody must ever know. That was her only hope. Nobody. Ever.
    Eventually the shaking passed, and she saw again her kitchen, tidy and spotlessly clean, however shabby, and on the refrigerator Shelly’s bright crayon drawings that were supposed to be sea stars or seals or horses, those inner imaginings that her short fingers were not yet capable of rendering. It was home: loving, safe, clean and ordered. What else mattered? Certainly not money.
    Nor blood. She didn’t care whose ran through Shelly’s veins. She would never let it matter.
    But first, she had to be sure.
    The blue plastic clock on the wall said eight-thirty. Not too late to call Brian’s mother.
    Ruth Schoening’s voice held caution, once she knew who was on the phone.
    "Lynn. My, it’s late in the evening to be calling."
    Not: Oh, gracious, Shelly is all right, isn’t she?
    Lynn noticed the lack, and decided on honesty. "Brian’s told you he doesn’t think Shelly is his daughter, hasn’t he?"
    The pause resonated with awkwardness. "He did say something."
    "I would never..." The automatic denial caught in Lynn’s throat. She might someday have to claim she had. She took a breath. "You don’t believe that, do you?"
    Really, she was begging, You know me. Please say that you have faith in me, that you love Shelly no matter what.
    "It’s not really my business," her ex-husband’s mother said, the constraint in her voice obvious.
    "She’s your granddaughter."
    "Is she?"
    She had begun to shake again, Lynn noticed with peculiar detachment. "This is so ridiculous," she exclaimed, trying to laugh and failing.
    "I hope so," Ruth said. "But, you know, he’s right—Shelly doesn’t look like anybody in the family."
    "When my grandmother was a little girl..."
    "Brian said he’d looked through your family album, and Shelly doesn’t look like anybody on your side, either. She’s so...so dark, and with that pointy chin she makes me think of, oh, a pixie from a fairy tale. My children were round