Tracie Peterson Read Free Page B

away. She gave birth to fivedaughters; they survive her.”
    Survive her. What a perfect expression, Brook thought. That is exactly what we did. We survived her desertion. We survived her absence. We survived her.
    The pastor looked up and met their faces. Brook thought he looked very sympathetic and compassionate. And why not? He’d been the pastor of this church for the last twenty-some years. He’d watched them grow up and leave home and more than once he’d counseled them in times of need.
    He smiled benevolently. “Mattie asked me to be less formal, to not dwell on the obvious. We all know the details of Rachelle’s life. We could spend the entire day listing her accomplishments, but that would serve you poorly and it would hardly help Rachelle. This family has endured much pain and I know the way hasn’t always been easy. But there is a strength you have in each other—a strength that makes you more than merely survivors of Rachelle Barrister—it makes you family.”
    Connie heard the words but found it difficult to focus on the meaning. She glanced at her watch as covertly as she could manage and noted that less than ten minutes had passed. It seemed like an eternity. She shifted uncomfortably, feeling her straight navy skirt bind as she moved. This was the last place in the world she wanted to be.
    Connie didn’t know if she could buy into the pastor’s words on family. She knew that he hoped to bring them together—probably for Mattie more than anyone. After all, Mattie was the one still living here in Council Grove, Kansas. No doubt Mattie had to face the questions of her neighbors and friends. “Where did your girls get themselves off to?” “When are they coming home?” Connie supposed it was hard for some folks to understand the need to break away from the farm—to live a life where the memories couldn’t hurt you.
    Connie almost laughed out loud at that thought. Is there such a place? If there was, Connie had never found it. Memories still haunted—still wounded—even when you lived a hundred miles away.
    The eulogy continued, but Connie hardly even heard the words. She hadn’t come here to listen to her mother’s praises being sung, neither had she come here to get some psychological or theological lecture on how she should find strength in her family. She knew all of that already. The only trouble was, she never felt very much a part of the family. Being the middle child of five had its grave disadvantages, and Connie had endured every one of them. And while she couldn’t change her birth order, she could manage her feelings toward the mother she had never known.
    It seemed odd to feel so unfamiliar with her own mother, but Connie knew that if given a chance to speak their minds, her sisters would no doubt agree with her. Mattie said they could know Rachelle, at least in part, because they had each other and even Mattie to find comparisons in. But no matter how hard Connie tried to find her mother in others, it never made up for the fact that she had never been there in the first place.
    Against her will, Connie remembered feeling outcast by her friends. They were both in awe of her mother and in contempt of Connie’s position. “Why isn’t your mother ever home? Where is she?” They would ask her these and other taunting questions. “If your mother loved you, she would take you to live with her.”
    Even now the wound felt raw. Then another, even more painful memory came to mind. Connie had once tried to telephone Rachelle, only to be intercepted by her mother’s personal secretary. The woman had assured Connie that Rachelle would probably have loved to talk to Connie, but that now wasn’t a good time. There was never a good time, Connie quickly came to understand.
    “Rachelle may be gone from this earth,” Pastor Paul was saying, “but she has left a legacy that will remain for generations to come. A legacy comprised of flesh and blood. This legacy is you.” He said the words