The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter (best classic novels TXT) 📕

your brothers, not from you.” Mom took her keys from the ignition. “I’ve got some boardsand plywood from a couple of your dad’s construction sites in the trunk. Flimsy stuff. We’re going to break them down and—”

“We?”

“Not you. Unless you want to.”

“‘We’ who?”

“We, you know, uh, the Respect Life committee. We’re going to try to use them for signs at our next day of action.” Mom wasalready opening her door and sliding out of the front seat.

“Mom . . .” Lauren whined. She slumped in her seat.

Mom was opening the door on Lauren’s side. “C’mon, you don’t have to carry anything—I mean, not if you don’t want to. It won’ttake long. Just be another pair of eyes on Mirela for me,” she said, and walked around to the trunk to start removing theboards.

Lauren got out of the station wagon and opened the door to Mirela in the back seat as Mom lugged a stack of plywood to the rectory. As Lauren unclipped the car seat straps, her diaphragm collapsed and the air in her belly coughed out of her throat; she crumpled over in surprise, a shrunken balloon. Mirela had punched her in the stomach, and now she was scooting under Lauren’s hunched frame to escape the car, and Lauren wheezed as she caught Mirela around one thin wrist, the girl pulling and scratching to get away. Lauren steadied herself on the door frame, then sat down on the pavement, her hand clenched around Mirela’s arm, to keep the screaming, fighting girl safe at her side. She watched as Mom hurried out of the rectory and back to the car. Mirela was tugging at her with mounting fury.

“Lauren,” her mother said, exasperated, “why are you sitting on the ground when you could be helping?”

“Lolo!” Mirela screamed.

Ridiculous tears filled Lauren’s eyes as she tried to remember what Mom had demonstrated with the Raggedy Ann doll. The squeeze.It had looked like it would be so easy, Mirela had roughly the proportions of Raggedy Ann, but her head was a swinging club,her arching back was a rubber band she could use to catapult herself out of the hold, she had ten hitting limbs, she had teeth.A fat tear fell from Lauren’s eye into the crook of Mirela’s neck, and Mirela wailed like she’d been scalded.

Lauren again felt herself altered. Bewitched. Her internal organs had grown or shifted around, or the casement of her bodyhad shrunk. She’d been tricked. Her anger was childish, and she was embarrassed by it, and the embarrassment magnified heranger. It was Mom who had staged this, but why? This was not where she was supposed to be. This was not supposed to be hersister. Mom was not supposed to be this strange child’s mother. This strange child was not calling her name.

“You offered me a ride to Paula’s!” Lauren shouted, as Mirela bicycled her legs in an attempt to escape her grip. “If youdidn’t want to just give me a ride to Paula’s, you should have said so!”

“Lauren—”

“Lolo!”

“I didn’t ask for this!” Lauren said. “I don’t want to be here! I’m not supposed to be here!”

“Be here!” Mirela said.

“Ladies, can I be of some assistance?” a man’s voice called out. An average man of average build, striding out of the rectorytoward their car. Salt-and-pepper hair and beard, pressed jeans and a blue crewneck, eyes crinkling with benevolence. It tookLauren a couple of seconds to register his priest’s collar, long enough for Mirela to break free and run to the man, her stickarms outstretched. Mirela flung her head away from him as he scooped her up into the hug she begged for and refused, screamingin delight as he tossed her around and dangled her upside down.

He was new here, Lauren remembered—he was the one who had replaced Father Paul, who had been put on “medical leave.” Mom andDad would always laugh with each other in a secret way when Father Paul’s “medical leave” came up, usually when Nana Gleniswent out of her way to mention it so she could go on and on about how Father Paul had gotten “railroaded,” and then Dad wouldmake some horrible dirty joke about “railroading” that PJ and Sean would repeat for days, and Dad would find that funny atfirst and then he would get mad at them, even though they learned it from him, so really it was like Dad was mad at himself.

This new priest, Father Steve, was the one Mom would get giggly about, and he appeared to know Mirela already, well enoughto understand that she seemed happiest when she was spinning and flying and losing her breath.

“Father Steve,” Mom sighed, sheepish, relieved, as Lauren got to her feet. “Could you just keep an eye on Mirela while wefinish unloading these? Oh, and this is my older daughter, Lauren—I’m sorry you haven’t met before now.”

“How do you do,” Father Steve called. Lauren ignored him and took the last pile of boards out of the trunk.

“Manners, Lauren,” Mom said.

“Nice to meet you, sir,” Lauren mumbled, pushing her palm against an edge of plywood, hoping for a splinter.

“Maybe next time you can be thoughtful toward your sister and me, even when you think no one is looking,” Mom murmured toLauren as they dragged their parcels over the sidewalk and into the rectory.

By the time Mom and Lauren reached the classroom where the Respect Life committee convened, Mirela had moved on from FatherSteve to the Huebler sisters. She danced ring-around-the-rosie with Summer and she climbed Charity like a ladder.

A door-sized poster was laid out on the table closest to the entryway, all reds and purples, the imagery dripping, steaminghot.

“Jesus, Mom, what is this?”

“Lauren, watch your language,” her mother said.

“What are you going to do with this?” Lauren asked.

“We are trying to be truth tellers, Lauren,” Father Steve said. “We just wish we had a different truth to tell.”

“But that’s disgusting,” Lauren said. Her mother began silently rolling up the poster, her face unreadable.

“You are absolutely right, Lauren,” Father Steve said. “It is disgusting. I’m afraid that’s why we’re