Reunion Beach Elin Hilderbrand (best selling autobiographies .TXT) 📖

drop. “From what I could tell on the phone, anyway.”

“What’s she like?”

Kristina’s eyebrows rose. “Gee, I don’t know much. She’s retired. She was a teacher. Of biology. Oh, she loves books, too,” she said with pleasure. “You know how I’m drawn to books about water. I was a mermaid fanatic when I was young. I found out we have that in common.”

“Does she have any other children? Like, will you have half brothers and sisters?”

“No. She said she never married.”

Ann lifted a finger to her brain in a gesture of Aha! “So that’s where you get it from.” Ann laughed. “Genetics will out.”

Kristina blushed. “I don’t think being single is on anyone’s DNA.”

“I wonder if she looks like you.”

Kristina’s eyes widened. That was what she most wanted to know. “I know, right? All my life I wondered who I looked like. I hear people say they have their dad’s chin, or they look just like their grandmother. I never knew my adopted father, but from photos he didn’t look at all like me. Deborah was a redhead with brown eyes. When I looked in the mirror, I saw this blond hair and blue eyes.”

“You have beautiful eyes.”

Kristina smiled, grateful for the compliment. “And Deborah’s a husky woman. Me? I’m skinny with as much shape as a toothpick.”

“Stop. You’re not. I’d kill to be as thin as you.”

Kristina rolled her eyes. She knew her kind of thin was never photographed in fashion magazines. “Be careful what you wish for. And by the way,” she made a face. “I’ve heard the whispers that some people think I have an eating disorder.”

“Not from me!” Ann said, aghast.

“Not from you. But still. You can tell them from me that no matter how much I eat—and I eat a very healthy diet—I never can gain the weight.”

“Fast metabolism?”

She shook her head. “I’m a librarian. I spend my days reading. Maybe I take a walk a few times a week but that’s it. No, I believe it’s because of the many years of near starvation I had to live through at the hands of my mother. She wanted me to look thin and ill,” she explained, then released a short laugh of scorn. “Not a diet I’d recommend to anyone.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Kristina shrugged it off. “It’s all history now. You know, I used to like to watch television as a kid,” Kristina added. “I was obsessed with family shows, comedies and dramas, I loved them all. I’d watch and critique the casting based on whether family members looked alike.” She crossed her arms, remembering. “It was my pet peeve if they didn’t. Silly, I know, but I was always looking for those family-inherited qualities.”

“I’m looking more and more like my grandmother. The way she looks now! She’s seventy-two.”

Kristina laughed, grateful for Ann’s sense of humor.

“Seriously,” Ann said with concern. “Do you know what you’re going to ask her? Like . . . why she gave you up? Don’t you wonder?”

“Of course I wonder. What child wouldn’t?” She puffed out a plume of air. “Truth be told, I already did ask her. When we talked on the phone,” she explained, seeing the surprise on Ann’s face. “Elinor, that’s her name, told me that she was young when she found out she was pregnant. Still in high school. It happened with her boyfriend. Back then, girls didn’t have as many choices as they do now. Her parents sent her away to have the baby”—she spread out her hands—“me. They didn’t want any gossip.”

“Aren’t you just a little bit angry that she gave you up?”

“Angry?” Kristina shook her head in wonder. “No, not at all. It’s funny, but I always knew she loved me. That she was looking for me. Even when I was very young, I never doubted it. Don’t ask me how. I just . . . felt it.”

“But to give you up.”

“She did the only thing she could,” Kristina said, feeling the need to defend her birth mother. “Think about it. She went through nine months of pregnancy, alone and far away from home. Then labor and delivery. Who does that unless there’s love? She told me that placing me for adoption was the most selfless act of love she’d ever done. Because she wanted me to have a better life.”

Ann snorted. “But look where you ended up.”

Kristina’s lips tightened and she shook her head. “She couldn’t have known that. She thought I’d been given to a good family. That I’d been happy. And besides, I didn’t realize how horrible my life was when I was little. It was all I knew.” She shrugged in a that’s life kind of way.

“You can’t be so nice all the time. So forgiving,” cried Ann. “Deborah was nuts! She gave you pills to make you sick. There’s a name for what she did to you. Munchausen by Proxy.”

Kristina held up her hand, feeling herself shut down. “Stop. Please, Ann. I can’t go through all this now. That’s my past. I survived. It’s over and buried. Right now, I’m trying to garner up the courage to meet my birth mother. My future. I have to believe it’s going to be better.”

Ann rushed over to put her arms around Kristina, engulfing her frail frame. “It will be. I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I shouldn’t have dug into all that. I just care about you so much. I want to protect you from ever getting hurt again.”

Kristina sniffed and said with exaggeration, “You can’t.”

“I can try.” Ann released her and stepped back a bit self-consciously. “But hey, you’re right,” she said, striving for levity. “This will be a wonderful day. You deserve this to be the happiest day of your life.”

Kristina spoke in a choked voice. “I just want the chance to tell her that I’ve loved her all my life. And maybe, just maybe, hear that she loved me.”

“From your lips to God’s ear.” Ann pulled back her hair into her hands, her smile ripe with encouragement. “Now you’d better go. You know how Atlanta traffic can