Chapter 4 Bridget
Willmar, Minnesota
Bridget made one last notation on the patient chart and thanked the Lord her shift was over. Her feet hurt, her shoulders ached, and she was hungry. All she wanted was a big serving of Flo’s Wednesday night meatloaf, then she’d take off her girdle and settle into bed with her book.
“The heart attack in four didn’t make it,” Bridget informed the junior nurse at the desk as she signed off the floor. The middle-aged man had come in by ambulance to Willmar General last night. “Notify his family, please, Harmon.”
“Oh, please, Reilly,” the junior nurse said with a catch in her voice. “Can’t someone else do it?”
“Harmon,” Bridget said firmly, “getting weepy won’t help anyone.” Bridget hadn’t become the youngest supervising nurse at Willmar General by getting emotional about her patients. She was duty bound to be a good example to the junior nurses—at least until her last shift tomorrow.
Bridget said goodbye and pushed through the double doors into the humid August dusk.
Most summer evenings, it was a pleasure to walk the six blocks home after work, but with the way her feet felt tonight she wished she’d learned how to drive.
Her regret doubled when she saw Chuck Reed lurking under the streetlight.
“Bridget.” Chuck stepped forward with a hopeful expression on his handsome face. “Can I give you a ride home?”
Bridget mustered a polite smile. “No, thank you. I enjoy the walk.” Chuck fell into step beside her.
She stopped with a sigh and looked up at him.
“Really, Chuck. I meant what I said.” They’d met when Chuck brought his mother in with a broken ankle, and Bridget had enjoyed his company on a few dates .
. . until he started to get serious. She’d broken things off in the usual way, but Chuck didn’t get the memo.
“Is this about you going to Yellowstone?” Chuck said. “Because I’ll wait.”
“Goodness no.” Bridget’s gaze met his brown eyes.
This wasn’t about Yellowstone, and she didn’t need a lovesick man waiting for her.
She wasn’t like Claire, ready to rush to the altar with someone she hardly knew.
“Like I said, Chuck, I’m just not interested.
” She brushed past him, ignoring the crushed expression on his face.
Of course she felt bad for him, but it had to be done.
Ten minutes later, Bridget quietly let herself in the front door of the three-story house where she’d lived all her life.
She hoped she could sneak in, get the plate Flo had left in the warming oven, and get upstairs before she saw either her father or Frannie.
She’d taken one careful step on the polished wood floor of the foyer when her hopes went out the window.
“I’m not a child!” Frannie’s voice came from the kitchen.
“Then stop acting like one.” Dad sounded fed up.
Good grief. They were at it again.
Bridget peeked around the doorway. The kitchen with its polished Kenmore stove and buttercup-yellow refrigerator was spotless, but the air brimmed with tension.
Dad stood beside the kitchen table, his arms crossed and looking exhausted.
He was only in his fifties, but his hair had gone white earlier than most men.
Raising three girls on his own would do that, he was known to say with a laugh. Dad wasn’t laughing now.
Frannie faced Dad like a boxer ready for the bell, wearing her standard getup of rolled denim jeans, an oversized men’s shirt, and sneakers. She was more petite than either Bridget or Claire, but what she lacked in size, she made up for in fight. “I can make my own decisions, thank you very much.”
“Like the one that got you kicked out of summer school?” Dad shot back. “And how are you going to get into teachers’ college with that on your permanent record?”
“I’m not going to that stupid college,” Frannie spit out.
“This is about that juvenile delinquent, isn’t it?” Dad asked, and Bridget stifled a groan.
Frannie’s voice increased like someone had dialed up her volume knob. “Jonny’s not a delinquent.”
“He got you arrested,” Dad snapped back.
Frannie stamped her foot. “We were having fun.”
“No daughter of mine is going to go around with a bunch of lunatics.”
“What about my rights?” Frannie’s voice peaked on a high note of indignation.
“Your rights?” Dad scoffed. “What a bunch of baloney.”
Bridget stepped into the kitchen. This needed to stop before Frannie got herself grounded for life.
“I hate it here and I hate you!” Frannie bolted from the kitchen, pushing past Bridget and pounding up the stairs. The door to her room slammed and muffled sobs filtered through the heating vent on the ceiling.
Dad sank into a kitchen chair and rubbed a hand down his face. “Her rights,” he muttered, then looked up at Bridget. “What am I going to do with her?”
Bridget didn’t have an answer. Frannie had been a handful since she turned sixteen, as if the magic number had released a monster. When Claire was here, at least they’d been able to reason with her. “I’ll go talk to her.”
Dad gave her a tired nod. “Good luck, sweetheart.”
She went up the stairs and let herself into Frannie’s room.
Her sister was lying on her pink chenille bedspread sniffling, and two flounced pillows lay across the room on the floor.
Bridget dredged up a kernel of sympathy, remembering the little girl she and Claire had dressed and walked to school, holding her hand to cross the streets.
Why had Claire left Bridget with this mess?
Frannie threw a third pillow across the room. “He hates me.”
Bridget sat down on the bed and smoothed Frannie’s short blonde hair away from her tearstained face.
When was her little sister going to stop being such a baby?
At eighteen, Bridget had been studying to get her nursing degree, not failing high school and getting arrested for climbing the water tower.
Her courses and then working at the hospital had required her to grow up fast and keep her emotions under control. “That’s ridiculous and you know it.”
“It’s true.” Frannie turned her face to the wall and her voice went to a whisper. “I’m the reason Mother left us.”
Bridget stared at the back of her sister’s head, too stunned to answer.
They never spoke of Mother. And how could Frannie blame herself for something that happened when she was a baby?
She pulled at Frannie’s shoulder, a sudden emotion welling in her chest as her eyes smarted.
“Frances Marie Reilly, that is absolute nonsense.”
Frannie blinked and two tears ran from the corners of her eyes.
Bridget swallowed hard. This wasn’t the time to get sentimental and certainly not about something so long ago nobody even remembered it. “Mother didn’t leave because of you or me or Dad or anyone.”
“Then why did she?” Frannie whispered.
Bridget didn’t know. And it didn’t matter. “It doesn’t help to go digging up the past.” It was what Claire always said, and Bridget believed it, too. “And anyway, we’re just fine without her.”
Bridget wiped the tears from Frannie’s face with a corner of the crisp cotton sheet, then leaned down and kissed her forehead like she’d done when Frannie was small.
“Go to sleep now and don’t forget your prayers.
” She covered her little sister with the bedspread.
“Things always look brighter in the morning.”
When Bridget finally settled down with her book in her bedroom across the hall, the predictable plot and romantic settings didn’t let her escape her thoughts.
What had got into Frannie, talking about Mother?
Did she really blame herself for their mother leaving, or was it just another way for Frannie to be dramatic?
Bridget slipped the bookmark into the pages and turned off the lamp. She’d take her own advice and hope that things would look better in the morning.
Bridget woke early, washed her face, and dressed in her nurse’s uniform for her last shift at Willmar General. Downstairs, Dad sat in the dining room in his suit and pressed shirt, looking like he hadn’t slept a wink. The newspaper was folded in front of him instead of open to the baseball scores.
“Morning.” Bridget grabbed the toast Flo had put out. “Do you need anything at Rexall’s?” She had a list of sundries she needed for her trip, then she had an appointment at the hair salon before her shift started.
“Bridget.” Dad motioned to the chair opposite him.
Bridget glanced at the door. She really had so much to do today.
“It’s important.”
“Is this about Yellowstone again?” He wasn’t going to fuss about her trip now that everything was arranged, was he?
“It’s about Claire.” He pushed an envelope across the table. “Got this in the morning mail.”
The envelope was addressed to her but already opened. She felt a twinge of irritation. She would have shared the letter with Dad, of course, but would it hurt to let her read Claire’s letter first? She pulled the single sheet from the envelope and a twenty-dollar bill fluttered to the table.
Bridget read through the few lines and glanced up at her dad. “She says she’s fine.”
“I don’t think she is.”
Neither did Bridget. The letter was like the rest they’d been getting for the past six months—woefully short and uninformative. “She wants you to take back the money, of course.” Dad insisted on sending money every week and every week Claire sent it back.
Dad took the letter back, as if he could read something more between the lines of perfect cursive.
“When she went out to that place with Millie, she wrote pages of news every week. And sent photos. I only have one picture of my grandchild. And this.” He waved the single sheet. “Something isn’t right.”
Dad always referred to Yellowstone—where Claire had gone to work for a summer with Millie two years ago, and where she’d met Red—as that place.
When Claire came home after that summer, Dad hugged her like she was returning from war and told everyone that she had got that adventure out of her system.
He’d been wrong.
Claire had put her toe in the water, and then promptly jumped in over her head.
Bridget tucked the letter back in its envelope, leaving the money where it lay. “She’s busy with Jenny. That’s all.” She didn’t want him to worry about Claire until she knew what was going on.
Dad picked up a piece of toast, then set it down on his plate without taking a bite. “It’s not right to raise a baby without family, Bridget. You tell Claire that. She needs to come home. I can give Red a job at the store and they can live here until they find a place of their own.”
Bridget raised her brows. It would be wonderful to have Claire back home, especially if Bridget’s plan for September worked out as she hoped.
But Red working at the menswear counter of Reilly’s Department Store?
Taking orders from Dad and living under his roof?
She didn’t know Red well, but that suit didn’t fit.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to ask Claire about it.
“I’ll mention it, Dad.” She hoped that was all he needed or she was going to miss her hair appointment.
“Promise me, Bridget.” Dad reached across the table and gripped Bridget’s hand. “Promise me you’ll bring your sister and Jenny home.” His voice was somehow desperate and demanding at the same time.
Bridget felt the beginnings of alarm. “I’ll talk to her, Dad.”
He didn’t loosen his grip. “And if Red won’t come”—his worried eyes met hers—“you bring Claire and Jenny back without him.”
Bridget stared at her father. “Dad, I don’t think—”
“Red will come around if he really does love her,” he insisted.
Bridget considered her Dad’s reasoning. If Red loved Claire, of course he’d want what was best for her. But would this be best for Claire? Living at home with Dad and her new husband? She wasn’t so sure.
“Bridget,” Dad said, this time gentle and pleading. “Promise me.”
She felt a wrench of dismay. She never could defy Dad like Claire and Frannie did. His gaze met hers and her resistance crumbled. “I promise, Dad.” She wanted to take the words back as soon as she spoke them. “I have to go.”
“One other thing, Bridget,” Dad said, opening his newspaper and turning to the baseball scores.
What could it be now? Bridget hoped it was something easy like reminding Flo to bring his suit to the cleaners.
“It’s about Frannie.” He looked up at her and Bridget had a sinking feeling she wasn’t going to like what came next. “She’s going to Yellowstone with you.”