PART FIVE — THE FIRST DAUGHTER WHO LEFT
At seventeen, Rose received a scholarship to a university in Washington, D.C.
Richard was proud until the acceptance letter became real.
Then he began finding reasons she should attend a college closer to home.
The car was unreliable.
Travel was expensive.
The city was dangerous.
Her sisters needed her.
Rose listened quietly.
Then she said, “You promised we would know keeping us together was not the same as keeping us trapped.”
Richard did not sleep that night.
The next morning, he sold the last piece of Anne’s jewelry he still owned—a gold watch—and bought Rose a plane ticket.
At the airport, she hugged each sister.
When she reached Richard, she whispered, “I’m not leaving you.”
“I know.”
“You look like I am.”
“I’m practicing.”
“For what?”
“Having eight more daughters.”
She laughed through tears.
Rose became a lawyer.
Lily studied physical education and later coached high school athletes.
Iris became a historian.
Violet studied music.
Daisy became an engineer.
Jasmine entered journalism.
Heather became an accountant.
Holly became a veterinarian.
Anne studied medicine.
Those futures did not unfold neatly.
Lily dropped out for two years after becoming pregnant.
Violet’s first record contract failed.
Heather nearly lost her scholarship after working too many hours.
Jasmine was arrested while covering a protest because police ignored her press credentials.
Daisy encountered professors who assumed she entered engineering through charity rather than talent.
Anne developed panic attacks during medical school and hid them until she collapsed.
Richard could not solve everything.
He tried.
Sometimes help meant money he did not have.
Sometimes it meant driving through the night.
Sometimes it meant not driving anywhere because his daughter asked only to be heard.
When Lily became pregnant at nineteen, several townspeople waited for proof that Richard’s “experiment” had failed.
Richard heard them at the factory.
“Told you those girls would bring trouble.”
He turned toward the speaker.
“My daughter is not trouble.”
Lily expected anger when she told him.
Richard sat beside her on the porch.
“Are you safe?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to keep the baby?”
“Yes.”
“Then we plan.”
“You’re not ashamed?”
“I’m worried.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No.”
He looked toward the yard where eight sisters waited behind curtains pretending not to listen.
“I have survived nine babies before.”
Lily laughed.
Her son, Marcus, became Richard’s first grandchild.
The town called Richard foolish again when he converted the garage into a nursery.
By then, being called foolish sounded like history repeating itself.
