“Then I’ll sit out here in the car,” he said. “But I don’t feel like going in.”
I don’t know why I didn’t argue with him, but the truth was, I didn’t really want him going in with me. I wanted to do this with some kind of dignity, and I didn’t see any way he could contribute to that.
We started walking up to the clinic, and I heard those people behind the fence starting to yell things at me.
“Honey, don’t do it! Don’t kill your baby.”
“The Lord loves that child you’re carrying. There are other options.”
“You’re hurting yourself! You’ll never get over this!”
Lizzie walked like a barrier between me and them, and she hustled me into the building. She signed me in, and they gave me some papers to sign.
My hands were shaking so bad I could hardly write.
When we’d turned the paperwork in and paid the cash that I’d brought from my tip money, she sat down beside me again. “What are you thinking?” she asked.
“I was just thinking about all that money we’re gonna have when we turn eighteen and sue Amanda Holbrooke. And wondering if this will hurt our case any.”
“What do you mean?”
“If they find out I had an abortion. Maybe they’ll think I don’t deserve the money. Maybe they’ll think I’m a terrible person.”
Lizzie patted my hand. “This won’t even be brought up,” she said. “It has nothing to do with our inheritance.”
“But if it did come out, would it change things? Would the jury decide that I’m a lost cause? A sleep-around dropout from Barton, Mississippi? Would they decide I’m a lowlife who would waste all that money?”
“I don’t even know if they have juries,” she said. “Do you think they do?”
“I don’t know. But if it was just a judge who decided, would he think it? Would it be on my record somewhere?”
“No, it won’t. It’s all private. They can’t go around showing your records to people.”
I thought about that for a minute. “Maybe they’d be right. Maybe I don’t deserve that money. Maybe I’m just supposed to be dirt poor all my life. Maybe that’s what I am . . . just dirt.”
Lizzie’s eyes filled with tears. “That’s not true. We deserve what we’ve got coming to us. And no abortion is going to change that.”
“But it seems wrong, Lizzie. Like I’m gonna burn in everlasting hell if I go through with this.” She didn’t say anything, and I knew that, somewhere deep in herself, she understood why I thought that. “What am I talking about?” I asked myself on a whisper. “I’m probably going to burn in everlasting hell, anyway.”
Lizzie grunted. “Why would you say that?”
“Because I can’t picture somebody like me in any better place.”
The door opened, and the nurse called me back. I stood and drew in a deep breath, trying to make myself brave. When I got to the door, I looked back at Lizzie. She looked pale and a little sick, and I almost hated leaving her there by herself. But I didn’t want her coming with me, even if they would have let her. There are some things you just have to do alone.
A little while later, I came back out, but Lizzie wasn’t in the waiting room. “She’s in the bathroom,” the receptionist told me. “I think she was feeling a little sick.”
When Lizzie came out, her face looked gray, and I knew she had been throwing up. It was that twin thing between us.When one of us got hurt, the other one felt it.
Lizzie walked me back out to the car. I didn’t feel like crying anymore. Instead, I felt empty and numb, like they’d made a mistake in there and ripped out my heart instead of my baby.
The group by the fence started yelling at me again.
“Honey, please come over here and talk to us!”
“God loves you. He can forgive you for what you’ve done!”
I didn’t want to go over to them and let them tell me that I was pond scum, that I needed to get down on my knees and repent. I didn’t want to hear about God or forgiveness or any of that stuff. I just wanted to get out of there.
Crawley was asleep in the car, his mouth hanging open, with a shiny piece of dribble on his bottom lip. He made me sick. Why had I ever let him touch me?
Lizzie opened the door and punched his arm. “Wake up, Crawley. It’s over.”
He squinted up at me. “She okay?” He was too much of a wimp to address me directly.
“She’s fine.” Lizzie stepped back to let me get in first, but I didn’t want to be near him. I didn’t want to be near anybody. I got into the backseat and pushed aside a coat and two ratty shirts that had been in there for about six months. I knocked away the fast-food bags and the crumpled beer cans and the CDs scattered across the seat and floor.
I’d probably get some kind of infection from being in such a nasty car so soon after my procedure, as the doctor called it.
I rolled that smelly jacket up as a pillow and lay down on the seat, trying to pretend like I was asleep as we headed home.
Something had changed inside me, and I knew those people with the signs were right. I probably wouldn’t ever get over it.
TWENTY-SIX
They told me I would be over it in a couple of days, that the cramping would stop and I’d be as good as new. But the night of the abortion, I started feeling spacey and cold. I had dreams about my baby lying in the garbage bin behind the SOS Truck Stop where I worked and people throwing rotten food and broken glass on her.
And I dreamed about hell. It seemed like a place I recognized, a place where I could never really rest, where danger breathed down on me from every angle, where it was hot and smelly and I could hardly catch my breath . . .
I dreamed about a jury sitting in a courtroom, laughing at the idea that I deserved any kind of inheritance. Me, a dropped-out, used-up redneck tramp . . . trying to get money out of Amanda Holbrooke, who seemed so sincere.
You’re so beautiful. Look at you! I love you girls.
I can’t say why her voice was mixed in with the images of dead babies and hell and the laughing jury, but it kept coming at the strangest times.
Call me if you ever need me. I’ll always be there.
I saw images of her stricken face in the football stands, her tears as she’d brought us presents on our tenth birthday, her warm eyes and the way she smelled when she bailed us out of jail.
Then I saw that jury again, full of mocking, cackling executioners, telling me I didn’t deserve anything, nothing at all, just a life in Barton where I belonged . . .
I woke up in a shiver and drew up the covers around me. I was freezing to death, and my head hurt, and I was too weak to get up and try to find another blanket. My stomach hurt like I’d been kicked, and cramps doubled me up. “Lizzie,” I managed to say. “Lizzie . . .”
Next to me, she stirred. After a second, she turned over. “Kara, are you okay?”
“C-c-c-old.” I could hardly get the words out.
She sat up and touched my forehead. “Kara, you’ve got fever. You’re burning up!”
“B-b-blanket . . .”
Lizzie disappeared, and I heard that jury again, laughing and mocking. I saw Crawley with his buddies down at the truck stop, cackling about how I’d acted today, making fun of my tears, telling everybody what I’d done.
I felt somebody lifting me off of the bed, carrying me out into the brisk night air, dropping me onto the backseat of the car. I pulled my knees tighter to my chest, trying to stop the cramping.
It’s okay, sweetie.
The whispered voice whirled through my mind, calming me into a soft, surface sleep.
I woke in a hospital bed, and the first person’s face I saw was Amanda’s. She stood over me, her face wet and weary, her hair messed up, as if she’d just gotten out of bed and hadn’t bothered to grab a brush.
I was frightened at first. Then shame ached through me because, for some reason I couldn’t pinpoint, I didn’t want her to know what I had done to my baby.
; Lizzie came up beside her and touched my forehead. “Your fever’s down, Kara.” I could see the relief and fatigue on her face. “How do you feel?”
I tried to sit up, but they made me lie back down. “What happened?”
“You were hemorrhaging and you got an infection. Eloise and Deke weren’t home, so I got Crawley to come over and drive us to the hospital. But then I couldn’t pay.”
Amanda touched my hand. “She called me, Kara. I’m so glad she did. You might have died if they hadn’t taken care of you when they did.”
I sighed. It was so stupid for Lizzie to involve her. “I would have been all right. Lizzie, we didn’t need her.”
“Kara, they wanted insurance or cash. I didn’t have it.”
“Hospitals treat poor people all the time.”
“Maybe so, but I didn’t want to bog things down in paperwork. I wanted them to help you.”
Amanda’s lips trembled as she looked down at me. “Kara, why don’t you want me here?”
“I just don’t. I don’t need you here. I know you don’t really care about us. You just don’t want us coming after your precious money.”
“What?”
“I know all about you.” I tried sitting up again. I had an IV attached to my arm and a clip thing on my finger. I was wearing one of those twisted hospital gowns that some genius designed to give you the least amount of dignity when you were at your lowest.
Lizzie touched my shoulder. “Amanda just wanted to make sure you were all right. She came the minute I called her and took care of every thing. I sent Crawley to the Isle of Capri to find Eloise and Deke, but they still haven’t come.”
“That surprises you?” I felt about a hundred years old . . . nothing surprised me anymore, especially about Eloise and Deke. I slid my feet off of the bed and tried to get up.
“What are you doing?”
“Going to the bathroom. And then I’m going to get dressed and get out of here.”
“They don’t want you to go home yet,” Lizzie said. “Kara, I’m not taking you home.”
“Well, I’m not staying here, in the enemy camp.” My feet hit the cold floor, and when my knees almost buckled, I realized just how weak I was. I tried not to show it.
“The enemy camp? Kara, it’s a hospital.”
“She’s here,” I pointed out. “She’s paying, and she’s ordering . . .” I pulled the tape off my arm and slid the IV needle out. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, coming in here and pulling this on me when I’m sick . . .”
“Pulling what on you?” Amanda guided me back to the bed. “Kara, I’m not here to hurt you. What in the world have they told you about me?”
“That we’re your biggest nightmare. That you want us out of the way, just like you wanted our father and our mother and our grandparents out of the way, so you could get their money.”
“Those are lies!” She bit the words out. It was the first time I had seen her angry. “None of that is true! All I’ve wanted my whole life is to watch over you and make sure you’re okay. And I’m counting the days until you turn eighteen and you can come and live with me, and I can restore everything that’s yours. I’ve taken care of HolCorp, your grandfather’s company, and I’ve saved the mansion for you, and everything that’s yours will be—”
My hand started bleeding where I’d pulled the needle out, and I mashed it with my finger and started looking for my clothes. “What did you do with my clothes, Lizzie? Where are my clothes?”
Amanda started to cry, and finally, she started toward the door. “Look, I’ll just leave. You don’t have to run out of here because of me, Kara. I’m not going to force myself on you.”
“Fine. Leave, then.”
She stopped at the door, her face all twisted and tears on her red cheeks. “Lizzie, don’t worry about any of the paperwork or money. I’ve taken care of everything.”
“I can pay my own way!” I shouted the words as she left the room, but I knew it wasn’t true. Even all the money I’d saved in the Secret Tree wouldn’t begin to cover what a hospital bill would cost.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Kara.” Lizzie walked the line between anger and gentleness. “She came when I called, just like she said she would. She’s always come. The things they’ve told us about her aren’t true. They didn’t come, but she did.”
“Take me home, Lizzie.”
I should have known better than to try and bully Lizzie. She crossed her arms and stood firm. “Not until the doctor comes in and releases you and gives you the antibiotics you’ll need at home. You’re not going anywhere until that happens.”
I disappeared into the bathroom then and found my clothes folded neatly next to the sink. They had brought me here in my sleepshirt and a pair of white leggings, but that would do just fine. I got into them, feeling a little wobbly, and cursed the abortion doctor who’d done this to me, and the boy who’d impregnated me, and Eloise and Deke who’d raised me, and my father who’d abandoned me, and Amanda Holbrooke . . . who tormented me.
I hated everybody and everything. I couldn’t think of one person in the whole world that I didn’t hate at that moment. I even hated Lizzie.
Most of all, I hated myself.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I soon pushed my hatred of everything that breathed to the back of my mind and decided to exist in this sorry world, to just make the best of it. I counted down the days until I was eighteen and could get that lawyer and clean out Amanda Holbrooke’s bank account.
Lizzie and I worked hard, trying to save up the money it would take to pay the lawyer when the time came. At night, we hung out with Crawley and the others in our group and took to using drugs. At least they spiced up our mediocre lives.
One night, Crawley and a guy named Pendergrast decided to hold up a liquor store with their hunting rifles, just for the excitement, and because they were trying to raise the money to buy a Harley that old Judd Sargent, the owner of the SOS Truck Stop, was selling.
They wanted me and Lizzie to drive the getaway cars. We thought they were stark-raving mad, but we both got caught up in the thrill of the planning, so we were going to go along with it.We figured we weren’t really hurting anything since we weren’t actually going to wave a gun ourselves or even go into the store they were robbing. And we knew they wouldn’t actually shoot anybody.
But at the last minute, Caroline Harper and Milly Luckett, two of the other waitresses at the truck stop, wound up getting sick with some rough kind of stomach virus. So Lizzie and I were both called in, and Crawley and the guys had to find somebody else to drive their cars.
It was a real good thing, because they got caught the minute they came out of the place, and every one of them was arrested and locked in the Yazoo County Jail. Crawley and Pendergrast wound up pleading guilty since they had their faces plastered all over the store security tapes, and they wound up with seven years each.
The others got different length sentences, depending on the competence of their lawyers.
It gutted our group of friends and left me and Lizzie with a lot of time on our hands. We spent it getting to know some of the regular truckers who came through. We decided that one of these days one of them would ride up in a top-of-the-line Mack Truck, and strut inside like Richard Gere coming in to get Debra Winger. He’d pick me up, like a bride being carried over the threshold—or Lizzie, whichever one of us was telling the story—and carry us out to live happily ever after, just like in that movie.
Then, and only then, we’d tell him we were the Billion Dollar Babies, and he’d help us sue Amanda Holbrooke until we had what was rightfully ours. Then we’d live happily ever after, even though neither of us could picture what that would be like exactly.
That dream trucker never did amble into the SOS. Lizzie and I settled for lots of others, though, and the closer we got to eighteen, the more nervous and restless I got. Eloise and Deke spent an awful lot of time planning out their strategy and explaining it to us. We would get a lawyer the week
we turned eighteen. We’d file a lawsuit, and it probably wouldn’t even go to court. Amanda Holbrooke wouldn’t want the bad publicity, so she’d probably settle out of court and write us a check for a few billion dollars. They were quick to point out all the things they’d done for us, and how we would have to split the money with them since they were so willing to walk us through this process and find us the lawyer and everything.
But I couldn’t remember the last time any of Eloise and Deke’s plans had worked out like they’d said. Besides, I kept trying to push back my hatred of the man we’d had to lock out of our room at night. I couldn’t imagine Eloise having the smarts to carry something like this through. Plus, I didn’t want to give her part of my money, any more than I wanted to share it with Amanda. Paul Holbrooke was my blood grandfather. Amanda only knew him by marriage, and Deke and Eloise, as far as I could see, had no claim on him—or his money—at all, except through us. I figured blood must mean something to judges and juries, and Lizzie and I had paid our dues. We deserved our share of the Holbrooke fortune.
I was thinking those exact thoughts while I was at work on my eighteenth birthday, scrubbing up dried-egg crud from the counter where some slob had just eaten.
I heard a crash, and Lizzie cursed. She had dropped a plate, and it lay in fragments on the concrete floor, along with the eggs and biscuits and gravy she’d been taking to a customer.
Irritated, I went over to help her clean up the mess. “What happened?”
“Blake the Snake pinched me, and I dropped it. He thinks he’s Mel Gibson, that I’m just floating around here waiting for him to show me a little attention.”
“Just ignore him.”
“I’m not gonna ignore him. If he does it again, I’ll break his nose.”
Blake spoke up then. “A person could starve to death waiting to get served around here!” He was a fat, self-important guy, who liked the sound of his own voice as he barked out orders to the girls. “Go get me some breakfast.”
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