Holding the Dream Page 0,69

to be the best. I never wanted you to question whether you'd done the right thing by taking me, by loving me."

With her own heart still aching, Susan folded her arms. "Do you think we measure our love by the accomplishments of the people we care for?"

"No. But I did - do. It's my failing, Aunt Susie, not yours. At first, I'd go to bed at night wondering if you'd change your mind about me in the morning, send me away."

"Oh, Kate."

"Then I knew you wouldn't. I knew you wouldn't," she repeated. "You'd made me part of the unit, part of the whole. And I'm sorry if it makes you angry or hurts you, but I owe you for that. I owe you and Uncle Tommy for being who and what you are. I'd have been lost without you."

"Did you ever consider, Kate, what you did to complete our lives?"

"I considered what I could do to make you proud of me. I couldn't be as beautiful as Margo, as innately kind as Laura, but I could be smart. I could work hard, plan things out, be sensible and successful. That's what I wanted for myself, and for you. And... there's something else you should know."

Susan turned to switch off the spurting kettle, but didn't pour the hot water over the waiting tea. "What, Kate?"

"I was so happy at Templeton House, and I would think that I wouldn't be there with you, with everyone, if the roads hadn't been icy that night, if we hadn't gone out, and the car hadn't skidded and crashed. If my parents hadn't died."

She lifted her eyes to Susan's. "And I wanted to be there, and as the years passed, I loved you so much more than I could remember loving them. And it seemed horrible to be glad I was with you instead of them."

"And you've nurtured that ugly little seed all these years." Susan shook her head. She wondered if parents and their children ever really understood each other. "You were a child, barely eight years old. You had nightmares for months, and you grieved more than any child should have to. Why should you go on paying for something over which you had no control? Kate." Her fingers stroked gently over Kate's temples. "Why shouldn't you have been happy? Would you have been better off clinging to the pain and the grief and the misery?"

"No."

"So you chose guilt instead?"

"It seemed that the best thing that had ever happened in my life had grown out of the worst. I could never make sense of it. It was as if my life began the night they died. I knew if a miracle had happened and my parents had come to the door of Templeton House, I would have run to you and begged you to keep me."

"Kate." Susan shook her head, smoothed Kate's hair back from her face. "If God Almighty had come to the door, I'd have fought Him tooth and nail to keep you with me. And I don't feel the least bit guilty about it. What happened wasn't your fault or mine. It doesn't make sense. It just is."

Nearly believing it, Kate nodded. "Please say you'll forgive me."

Susan stepped back, eyed her. Her child, she thought. A gift given to her out of tragedy. So complicated, so layered. So precious. "If you feel you have to owe me for - how did you put it - making you part of the unit, the payment is that you accept who you are, what you've made yourself. We'll be even then."

"I'll work on it, but in the meantime..."

"You're forgiven. But," she continued as Kate sniffled, "we're going to work on the rest of this together. Together, Kate. When Bittle deals with one Templeton, he'll deal with all of them."

"Okay." Kate knuckled a tear away. "I feel better."

"I'm sure you do." Susan's lips curved. "So do I."

Eyes wide and a little wild, Margo burst into the kitchen. "Let me see that coin," she demanded, and thrust a hand into Kate's pocket before Kate could move.

"Hey!"

"Oh, my God." Margo goggled at it, then goggled at the matching doubloon she held in her other hand. "I checked my purse. I really thought you were playing some sort of idiotic joke on me. They're the same."

And the world somehow settled neatly back into place. "I was trying to tell you," Kate began, then grunted when Margo grabbed her and squeezed.

"They're the same!" Margo shouted and held the coins