Patton's Daughters by Janice Kay Johnson

Author:Janice Kay Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Silhouette
Published: 2006-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

AFTER DINNER Will went off to the barn with his newly discovered uncle Daniel, and the three sisters finally had time to talk.

Meg couldn’t stop looking at them. Renee drinking coffee, Abby tea, they sat on opposite ends of the gorgeous, deep-cushioned leather sofa in the Barnard living room. Their postures mimicked each other; both had tucked their feet under them, lounging with the boneless comfort of two slender cats who were nonetheless aware of every sound, every movement.

It seemed fitting, Meg thought, that she was in the easy chair facing them, the coffee table a barrier symbolizing the years since she had seen them, the silence nobody wanted to talk about even now that they could.

How old had they been? Abby eleven and Renee fourteen when she left that terrible day. Girls. Skinny and blond and unfinished. Renee burying her anger, Abby so sweet even their father had been soft on her. They would be all right, she’d told herself, unable to let herself believe anything else. She couldn’t stay, not pregnant, not once Johnny had betrayed her. Even if he hadn’t, she recognized now, she wouldn’t dare have stayed. For the baby she’d already carried, she had to go.

Would her sisters understand?

They gazed at her, Renee’s eyes green-gold, Abby’s sky-blue like Meg’s, both curious but wary, as well. Their pleasure in seeing her was genuine, Meg thought, but they felt other emotions, too, that they couldn’t yet articulate. Renee had asked just the once why Meg had never called or written; she had been careful since not to let the conversation wander close to the subject.

“I was only a girl,” Meg said, startling them. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“What did you do?” asked Abby over the rim of her teacup.

“I packed.” Meg looked at Renee. “You remember. You helped.”

Her middle sister nodded.

“I stole money from Dad.”

“Really?” Renee’s eyes widened, as though the idea of doing so was unimaginable.

As it had once been for Meg. Only desperation so deep, she’d known there was no alternative, had sent her creeping into her father’s bedroom. Hands shaking, she’d opened first the drawers in his nightstand, then his bureau. One had jammed, she remembered. She had battered it with her hands, her tears falling hot and wet on his undershirts. She could still see those splotches on the pristine white knit, and even though she was there to do something much worse, she’d been terrified at how angry he’d be that his shirts would have to be washed again.

In the bottom drawer, she’d found a gun, and the money.

“A thousand dollars,” she said now. “Ten hundred-dollar bills in an envelope. I don’t know why he kept so much in cash. It was between the folds of a shirt he never wore, not like he’d just been to the bank. This was hidden.”

They exchanged unreadable glances, her sisters, then gazed back at her, still watchful, still expectant.

“And then you…hitchhiked? Took a bus?” Abby prodded.

“No.” She looked back at them, feeling oddly detached.

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