Between Sisters

by Kristin Hannah

Her past wasn’t a collection of memories to be worked through; it was like an oversize Samsonite with a bum wheel. Meghann had learned that a long time ago. All she could do was drag it along behind her.

This would be Gina’s intervention week. Usually Gina was the conservative one, the buoy that held everyone up, but she’d finalized her divorce a few months ago and she was adrift. A single woman in a paired-up world. Last week, her ex-husband had moved in with a younger woman.

she thought about the day her life had changed. When she’d learned that love had a shelf life, a use-by date that could pass suddenly and turn everything sour.

The bedrock lesson of her life was that love didn’t last. It was better to be lonely and strong than heartbroken and weak.

if a man would hit his wife, he’d get around to hitting his children. Bullies were bullies; their defining characteristic was the need to exert power over the powerless. Who was more powerless than a child?

That was why Meghann gravitated toward younger men. They still believed in themselves and the world. They hadn’t yet learned how life really worked, how dreams were slowly strangled and right and wrong became abstract ideas instead of goalposts for all to see. Those truths usually hit around thirty-five, when you realized that your life was not what you’d wanted.

Some marriages ended with bitter words and ugly epithets, others with copious tears and whispered apologies; each proceeding was different. The one constant was sadness. Win, lose, or draw, when the judge’s gavel rang out on the wooden bench, Meghann always felt chilled. The death of a woman’s dream was a cold, cold thing, and it was a fact, well known in Family Court, that no woman who’d gone through a divorce ever saw the world—or love—in quite the same way again.

“Sooner or later, Meg, it’s always about family. The past has an irritating way of becoming the present.”

love required boldness. And fear simply came with the package.

We can’t live other people’s lives for them. Even if we love them.”

“Sometimes love means trusting people to make their own decisions. In other words, shutting up.”

“I don’t know why I keep expecting something different from her.” Meg shook her head. “Yeah, I know. Even a mother alligator sticks around the eggs.” “Mama would make herself an omelette.”

Normally she was proud of her independence, but this small-town crowd made her feel as if she lacked something important.

“I swear, I should have left you by the side of the road in Wheeling, West Virginia.” “You did leave me there.” “You always were a hard and unforgiving person. It’s a flaw, Meggy. Truly. So I miscounted my children. It happens. My mistake was in comin’ back for you.”

Each one of them had imparted this pearl of information to her three times in the past hour. She wasn’t sure if they had the memory of gnats or if they thought she was too stupid to understand their words the first time.

Don’t give up on babies; they’re the mark we leave in this world. If you can’t have one of your own, find one to adopt and love her with all you’ve got.