Firstborn

by Robin Lee Hatcher

  The thoughts and images taunted and haunted him throughout the night as he lay in their bed, clinging to his side so there was no danger they might touch. When sleep still hadn’t visited him by four o’clock in the morning, he got up, showered, and left early for the Thursday morning men’s Bible study he’d attended for the past seven years.

  Steven put on his I’m-a-good-Christian-all’s-right-with-the-world face as he talked with the other men. He participated in the prayer time. He quoted Scripture. He even had the audacity to offer words of advice to a brother who was struggling in his marriage.

  But as Nick Franklin gave a brief devotional, Steven’s thoughts drifted, recalling the way his wife had looked on their wedding day, coming down the aisle dressed in white satin and lace. He remembered the joy of her countenance. She’d been indescribably beautiful, her pale blue eyes shining with love for him. He’d felt like the luckiest guy in the world.

  At least, he’d thought she was in love with him. He’d thought himself lucky. But maybe that too had all been a lie.

  Confession might have been good for the soul, but there was no way he was telling anybody from church that his wife had slept with his best friend and then given birth to an illegitimate child. No way. Many couples looked to him and Erika as an example of what a marriage should and could be.

  What a crock!

  Kirsten wasn’t surprised when she opened the door to her apartment at a quarter to eight in the morning to find her mother waiting on the other side. She’d known her mother would come by as soon as her shift at the all-night diner was over.

  “You’re really going through with this move, aren’t you?” Donna Lundquist asked after kissing Kirsten on the cheek.

  “Yes.” She sighed softly. “I’m really going through with it.” She held the door open wide. “Come in, Mom.”

  “What if you don’t like living out there?” Donna’s tone made it sound as if Idaho were on the moon.

  “I won’t know until I get there, will I?”

  Her mother moved to the middle of the living room, her gaze sliding over the boxes stacked everywhere. “You won’t know anyone. What if you get sick? There’ll be no one to care for you. Why don’t you stay and marry Van?”

  “Well, for one thing, he’s never asked me.”

  “He will if you give him time. Maybe you just need to drop a few hints, give him a little encouragement.”

  Kirsten sighed again. “Marriage isn’t the answer to everything.” She knew her mother would never accept that comment as truth. Donna Lundquist—who’d been so happily married—was a throwback to another age, believing that a woman’s only way to true fulfillment was through a husband.

  Donna walked toward the kitchen. “If your father were alive today, you’d think differently.”

  Maybe that was true. Maybe if Felix Lundquist had lived, Kirsten’s life would have been different, better, just as her mother said. But he hadn’t lived. He’d died from a massive heart attack at the age of forty-four, thrusting his widow and two-year-old adopted daughter into almost instant poverty. What little insurance he’d carried had gone for hospital bills and funeral expenses.

  Donna had ended up as a waitress in a bar and grill, the first of countless waitressing jobs she’d held over the years.

  She had sacrificed in countless ways for her daughter, had done her best to give Kirsten everything she’d needed and much of what she’d wanted. But what Kirsten had wanted most was a dad, and that she’d never had.

  “I’d like to make some decaf,” Donna called from the kitchen. “Where’s your coffeemaker?”

  “It’s packed.”

  “Which box is it in?”

  Kirsten clenched her hands at her sides as she stepped into the kitchen doorway. “I don’t know, Mom. You’ll have to make do with instant.”

  “Instant coffee?” Donna made a face. “I can’t stand the stuff. Never could.”

  “It’s all I’ve got.”

  Suddenly, her mom burst into tears. “How am I going to bear it without you? You’re all I have.” She hid her face in her hands, her shoulders trembling. “I’ll be lost without you. I’m afraid you’ll never come back.”

  “Oh, Mom.” Kirsten crossed the kitchen and put her arms around Donna, squeezing tightly. “I love you. That isn’t going to change, no matter where I live. I need to do this. It’s my job. And who knows. Maybe I’ll get a promotion. Besides, it’ll be good for me to see a little bit of the country.”

  Her mother met her gaze as she drew in a shaky breath. “Have you heard from her?”

  Kirsten knew whom she meant. “No.”

  “What if you never do?”

  “I’ll do exactly what I’m doing now. I’ll work hard at my job and live my life the best way I can. It’s all any of us can do.”

  “Mom?”

  It took a moment before Erika registered her son’s voice, a moment longer before she found the strength to turn her head and look at him.

  “What’s going on?” Ethan came into his parents’ bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed next to her.

  She touched his cheek with her fingertips. She remembered how smooth and soft his skin used to be. Now she could feel the stubble of his youthful beard.

  “Mom? Are you and Dad… are you having some sort of trouble?”

  She almost laughed. Almost.

  “You can tell me,” Ethan went on.

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “I’m not a kid anymore.”

  They’d always been close, she and her son. She’d always been able to talk openly with him about so many things. Maybe it was because he was an only child.

  Not really an only child. The thought pierced her heart afresh.

  Erika drew a deep breath. “This is all so hard.”

  “You’re not…” Ethan stiffened. “You and Dad aren’t getting a divorce, are you?”

  She stared at him, not knowing what to answer. She didn’t know what was going to happen. Steven wouldn’t talk to her. For that matter, she hadn’t seen him since he walked out of the house yesterday morning, slamming the door behind him. She knew he’d returned last night. She’d felt his presence in the bed even in her troubled sleep. But he’d left again this morning without a word.

  “Tell me, Mom.”

  “All right,” she said on a sigh. “But it won’t be easy.” She lowered her gaze, unable to look at him and say the things she must.

  “It’ll be okay, whatever it is.”

  Will it? I don’t know. I just don’t know.

  She took another deep breath. “When I was sixteen… Well, your grandpa and I weren’t close the way you are with your dad. But you know that. I felt really alone a lot of the time. Then I met your dad and fell in love. I had all kinds of girlish dreams for our future.” She smiled, but it was tinged with sadness. “When Steven went off to college, I felt more alone than ever. I missed him terribly.”

  Ethan’s expression revealed his bewilderment. He’d heard the stories of his parents’ high school romance countless times, and he had to be wondering why she’d said this was difficult to talk about.

  “That fall,” she continued resolutely, “after your dad left for college, I went to a party where they had some of those big kegs of beer. I got pretty tipsy that night.”

  “You?”

  “Yes.” Erika sighed. “I did something stupid. I went home with… with a boy.” She fell silent, and the bedroom seemed to be holding its breath. Somehow she found the courage to meet and hold her son’s gaze. “Ethan, I… I got pregnant.”

  He recoiled as if she’d slapped him.

  She wanted to stop. She didn’t want to say more. She wanted things to go back to the way they’d been a week ago.

  But she couldn’t stop. That option no longer existed.

  “I went away to have the baby. I gave her up for adoption. Your dad never knew about it. Neither did your grandpa.” The words came tumbling out of her now, in a hurry to be done. “When
your dad came back after getting his degree, he and I started dating again. I never told him what happened to me. It was my secret.”

  Ethan frowned. “So Dad found out about the baby. Is that it?”

  “That letter I got last weekend. It was from—” her voice dropped to a whisper—“my …my daughter.”

  “Your daughter?” His eyes widened. “She wrote to you?”

  Erika nodded. “Her name is Kirsten. Kirsten Lundquist. She’s moving to Boise, and she wants to meet me.” She took hold of his hand, clutching it between both of hers. “She’s going to want to meet her father, too.”

  A thick silence blanketed the room before Ethan said, “Is he somebody I know?”

  Erika’s grip tightened, not wanting him to pull away. “Ethan, honey, it’s Dallas.”

  He did pull away. “What’re you saying?” He stood.

  “We didn’t mean … We never—”

  “You and… and him!”

  She could see the horror on her son’s face. Dallas was like a second father to Ethan.

  “That’s… that’s sick, Mom!”

  “We made a mistake. Try to understand, honey.”

  He took a step back. “You and Dallas hid it from Dad all these years? How could you do that to him? How could both of you lie like that?”

  It was her turn to draw back. “I’m the one who hid it.” She shook her head. “Dallas doesn’t know.” She turned, unable to look at Ethan a moment longer. “I never told him I was pregnant.”

  August 1980

  “That’s it, Erika. You’re doing great. One more push. Just one more.”

  A groan that increased to a scream was torn from her throat at the precise moment her young body pushed the new life into the world.

  “It’s a girl,” the doctor announced.

  Erika closed her eyes and turned her head to one side as the baby began to cry.

  “Do you want to see her, dear?” the nurse asked.

  “No,” Erika whispered.

  She’d been told that would be better: Don’t see the baby. Just let it go. You’re doing the right thing.

  There’s a wonderful couple waiting for a child. The baby will have a terrific life, and now so can you.

  She wished Grams was with her. She longed for home, for the familiar. She missed her room, her friends, her school. She even missed her dad.

  Most of all, she missed Steven.

  Tears slid from beneath her eyelids.

  It’s over now. It’s over.

  In the following minutes, her body expelled the afterbirth. The nurses removed the baby from the delivery room. Erika’s medical needs were attended to with crisp efficiency, and she was taken to another room on another floor, far from the maternity ward and the nursery full of babies.

  It’s over now. It’s over.

  A hospital was a place full of strange sounds and strange smells, and in the middle of a sleepless night, it seemed the loneliest place in the world to a young girl who would never meet the daughter she’d just borne.

  Twelve

  Erika awakened from a deep sleep borne of depression and exhaustion.

  Her first thought was Call her.

  With her husband angry and her teenage son confused, Erika didn’t know if she could call Kirsten, didn’t know if she should.

  Call her.

  She sat up, not wanting to awaken Steven. He’d stayed out late again last night. When he’d returned, he’d lain in the bed beside her, his body rigid, as if afraid they might accidentally touch. As if she were… unclean.

  She got out of bed, then more out of habit than anything, she reached for her devotional journal in the drawer of her nightstand. Beneath it was the letter. She picked it up, too.

  Call her.

  How could she? How could she now, with her life crumbling about her ears?

  She grabbed her Bible, setting it on top of her devotional, then left the bedroom. At Ethan’s closed bedroom door, she stopped and placed one hand flat against the surface, as if she could touch him through it.

  I’m sorry. I never meant to disappoint you.

  Ethan had shut himself in his room last night, the music on his stereo blaring away for hours.

  I was young. I made a mistake. I’m sorry.

  But neither Ethan nor his father seemed inclined at this point to hear her.

  Erika moved down the hallway and into the family room, where she sat on the couch and switched on the nearby table lamp.

  I feel alone, God.

  She ran her fingers across the cover of the journal. Not long ago, within these pages, she’d begun to write about the men in her life. It had started because of a comment Barb Dobson had made.

  “When I go to God in my quiet time,” Barb had said, wearing a peaceful smile, “I usually begin with, ‘Hi, Daddy. It’s me.’ Then I just bask in His presence and let Him love me for a while.”

  Erika had experienced a sharp stab of envy upon hearing those words. She loved God, but she’d never imagined approaching Him in such a fashion. Why not? she’d wondered.

  And so she’d begun to write as a means of discovery.

  Erika opened the journal, then flipped through the pages, stopping to read a few paragraphs, then turning a few more and reading again, then again and again.

  Poppa Clyde, my dad’s father, always reminded me of Santa Claus. He didn’t have a white beard, but he had a big, soft belly and a nose that was round on the end, like a little ball.

  I didn’t get to see Poppa Clyde often because he lived in Oregon, but those times he came for a visit were always special. He kept those little caramel squares in his pockets and would slip them to me whenever my dad wasn’t looking.

  I always felt like I couldn’t do any wrong in Poppa Clyde’s eyes. He died when I was about six or seven. I wish I could have known him longer.

  I wonder if God sees me the way Poppa Clyde did?

  My father. It’s hard to write about Dad because I always feel so confused. And it’s sad that I feel that way at my age, I think. It isn’t that I’m still afraid of him, the way I was when I was young, but I’ve never quite gotten over that need to please him, to make him proud of me. Just once to feel like he really, really loved me.

  Do I love him? Yes, but even that’s confusing. It’s colored by the way he is with me.

  Sometimes I remember him as being different. That was before Mom died, I guess, because she is always part of those memories, too.

  Why is it that I can’t seem to move on, that I seem stuck in my teen years whenever I’m with him? It isn’t healthy. I’m sure of that, and I think it’s why I can’t say, “Hi, Daddy. It’s me,” when I’m talking to God.

  I’m so blessed to be married to a man like Steven and to have a son like Ethan. They mean the world to me. When I think how different it is for wives and mothers all over this country, I wonder why I have been so fortunate. I really do have the perfect family.

  Erika felt those last words echo in her heart. The perfect family. Steven… and Ethan… and Kirsten.

  Call her.

  Kirsten awakened that morning in a cold sweat, wondering if she was making a colossal mistake. She’d ended her relationship with Van. Her mother was heartbroken. She’d given up her apartment. She was preparing to drive across the country in a ten-year-old vehicle to take a job with a modest salary in a strange city.

  How much crazier could a girl get than that?

  Yet she couldn’t back out now. She had to go. She had to see this through. Crazy or not, she was going.

  Besides, the movers had loaded her meager belongings into the van yesterday and had driven away. If she changed her mind, who knew when she might see her things again.

  “Boise or bust,” she muttered as she rolled up her sleeping bag.

  After a quick shower, she took one last look around the empty apartment, then retrieved her keys from the front pocket of her purse and headed for the door. The ringing of the telephone stopped her.

  Grabbing th
e handset, she said, “Hello?”

  Silence.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m sorry. Is this …is this Kirsten Lundquist?”

  “Yes. Who’s this?” If it was a sales call at this hour, so help her, she would slam the phone in the woman’s ear.

  More silence.

  “Listen, I was just about to—”

  “It’s Erika Welby.”

  Kirsten caught her breath.

  “Is this a bad time? I can call back later if it would be more convenient.”

  “No, I… I can talk now.” Kirsten tried to steady her nerves. “I guess you got my letter.”

  Another pause, then, “Yes.”

  The woman had a soft, pleasant voice. Kirsten closed her eyes, imagining what she looked like.

  “It came as a… surprise,” Erika added.

  Kirsten’s grasp on the phone tightened. “Are you my birth mother?”

  “Yes, I believe I am.”

  Kirsten had a thousand questions to ask, and yet she couldn’t speak a one.

  “Are you… are you still moving to Boise?”

  “Yes. I’m leaving today.”

  “When does your flight arrive?”

  “I’m driving.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. It’s just me.”

  “I see.” Another silence.

  Do you care who I am? Will you tell me who my father is?

  As if reading Kirsten’s thoughts, Erika said, “I don’t know when we’ll be able to meet.”

  Kirsten heard the unspoken qualifier: Or if we’ll be able to.

  “Things are … they’re rather complicated right now.”

  “I see.” Kirsten hoped she’d kept her disappointment out of those two simple words.

  “I… I’ll call you after you’ve had time to get settled.”