Page 38 of Nineteen Seventy-Six

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

VACHERIE, LOUISIANA

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

CHAPTER 11

Worst Kept Secret

Robyn Sullivan was a beautiful baby. Colleen thought most babies were beautiful, especially in the glow of their mother’s arms, but Robyn had a special radiance about her, as if she was given something a little extra to make up for her inauspicious entrance into the world.

But although she would not be raised by either her birth mother or father, Robyn would never know anything but unconditional love. To see the small family, an outsider looking in, one would never know Robyn wasn’t anything more or less than the daughter Carolina so desperately wanted. Their miracle baby, they called her, in the birth announcements, and from the damp twinkle in Carolina’s eyes anytime she looked at Robyn, this was undoubtedly true.

Rory’s worries melted into wonder as he held his baby daughter. If he still had doubts, he didn’t put them into words.

Their family was complete.

While Noah made conversation with the happy new parents, Amelia sleeping soundly in his arms, Colleen slipped away to the bedroom where Catherine stayed throughout her confinement. She found the new mother packing her small suitcase, hunched over the bed with the weight of weariness spread over and through her. Three weeks had passed since Robyn’s birth. It was time for her to leave and let Robyn be loved by her forever family now.

“I haven’t thanked you properly, Colleen,” Catherine said, without turning her head. She tossed her clothes in haphazardly, without a care for neatness or organization. A hairbrush lay akimbo atop skirts, skirts atop tubes of mascara. A can of hairspray nested between clothes.

“How did you know it was me?”

“They can’t even look at me,” Catherine said with a laugh. “It’s as if they think I’ll change my mind and take my baby back. Their baby.” She tossed her feathered hair, jagged and dry from lack of care, and her laugh turned darker. “As if I lived in a world where that was possible.”

“That may not be possible, but your happiness is,” Colleen said carefully.

“Is it?”

“Only you can find it for yourself.”

Catherine ripped at the zipper on her bag, her movements clipped, angry. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to be okay,” Colleen replied. She’d never been especially close to Catherine and never approved of her behavior with Charles, but there was a deep sadness about Catherine that made it hard to ever really want to see the young woman suffer for her errant and indecisive recklessness.

“I’ve never been okay,” Catherine said. “I’ll never be okay.”

“What will you do?”

“Go home.”

“To Colin.”

“Yes, Colleen. Where else would I go?”

“Your life doesn’t have to be a series of things you think you should do. Have you thought about what you want to do?”

“I wanted Charles.”

Colleen tensed. She didn’t want to upset Catherine further, but this line of conversation was infuriating. She could’ve had Charles, but chose stability over passion. Catherine’s life was a series of misguided choices, each one focused on self-preservation, no matter the cost to herself or others. “That ship has sailed.”

“You don’t think I know that? I hear he’s moved on, anyway. To his fucking maid, of all things.”

“His marriage is unhappy. Something I know you understand.”

“And now she’s pregnant, but unlike me, she’ll get to keep her baby. Her Deschanel bastard.”

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