Souvenir by Therese Fowler Page A

built stables, with the goal of not just boarding Thoroughbreds but also breeding them. Her father was sure his powers of persuasion wouldn’t be lost on the horses
or
the people who liked to buy them. He succeeded just often enough to encourage him to sink more money into the venture, and by the time Julianne was born nine years after Meg, the family was firmly shackled to what would become her father’s most enduring obsession.
    She remembered many times—whole seasons, in fact, when all she and her sisters ate for lunch was bread and jam, or eggs from the noisy, skittish chickens they raised. They wore shoes from the thrift store and clothes bought at Saturday-morning yard sales. They learned early how to answer the phone and politely tell the bill collectors that their parents were busy, but could they please take a message? She had coached her sisters, the three of them standing in front of her looking like uneven stair steps, each taking a practice turn with the phone. She’d been twelve, maybe thirteen. “Show them all,” her mother had directed. “You know how Julianne likes to run for the phone.” Julianne, at three, was easiest to train—she was happy to imitate, to earn Meg’s praise, while Beth and Kara had asked questions Meg couldn’t answer and knew better than to forward to their parents:
    “Why do the people keep calling, Meggie?”
    “Why won’t Mommy or Daddy answer the phone?”
    Only when some large man or another showed up—always in an ill-fitting suit—did her father deal with matters himself. From her bedroom window she would watch the men leave, her father putting them into their nondescript sedans with a smile and a handshake. Making dubious promises that had, a few years later, led to one of her own.
    Her affluent adult life could hardly compare with the craziness her mother endured for so many years, but she liked that they shared a steady temperament. For as far back as she could remember, she too had weathered what crises came by trusting that solutions would present themselves—always with the help of the Blessed Virgin, of course, or so her mother wanted her to believe. Meg endured, too busy minding her sisters, or feeding the chickens, or currying the succession of horses her father always insisted were Triple-Crown winners in the making, to do anything else.
    Tonight the low chirping of crickets outside the porch spoke of good luck, something she felt sorely short of just now. Yet as quickly as this self-pity reared up, she pushed it down; she had no right to feel sorry for herself,
none
, and she buried the urge by remembering that, short of the unstoppable medical crises she’d faced now and then as a doctor, she was responsible for everything in her life, good
and
bad.
    Responsible:
that
was the trait that made her rescue her parents from looming foreclosure and allow her sisters to finish growing up there on the farm, instead of crammed into some tiny, roach-infested apartment. That was the trait that kept her from seeking out a definitive answer to Savannah’s paternity. The trait made her a popular, respected doctor—and tempered her guilt when things went wrong even after she’d done everything right. She was always careful, responsible, even when she didn’t want to be. Almost always.
    But in the same way her mother could not, despite valiant efforts, save the family from the ruin that seemed sure until Meg married Brian, Meg’s effort had not been able to save the Langs’ baby. Nor had it secured the satisfying life she’d rationalized would follow her marriage in due time. You could work hard, stick to all the rules, and still fail.
    Which made her wonder why, then, she bothered to be so damn careful.
    The sweet, musky smell of aging honeysuckle blooms drifted to Meg on the warm night’s breeze. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, putting aside the heavy thoughts, her worry about her arm, the guilt she felt over losing the Langs’ baby, and the odd