Chapter 12 Bridget
“Why can’t you drive me to Mammoth?” Bridget asked Claire on Sunday morning. Bridget didn’t want to be a pain, but an hour and a half in the truck alone with Red wasn’t a pleasant prospect.
Red hadn’t said a word to her since yesterday. Honestly, she hadn’t meant to offend him.
And what was so terrible about letting Dad buy them lunch?
It hadn’t helped that Jenny had been fussy during the night and Claire was up walking her back and forth in the tiny hallway. Bridget offered to help but Claire wouldn’t hear of it.
They’d gone to church this morning in West Yellowstone and of course Frannie spent the entire Mass fidgeting.
When the last hymn was announced, Claire shot Bridget a smile.
“Amazing Grace.” It was Claire’s favorite, and one they’d all sung together in the choir at St. Malachy’s.
Those had been good days, before Frannie started acting up and Claire left them.
Bridget had nudged Frannie. “Sing.” Frannie had stubbornly kept her mouth closed.
Now, Claire held the fretful Jenny against her shoulder and bounced gently. “I don’t want to leave Jenny or take her in the truck all that way,” she said in response to Bridget’s question. “I don’t know what’s wrong. She’s been sleeping through the night for weeks.”
Bridget was tempted to give Claire a well-deserved I told you so.
If Claire had taken her advice about breastfeeding .
. . but poor Claire looked at the end of her rope.
“Try putting a warm hot water bottle under her tummy,” Bridget suggested.
“If she’s still fussy tomorrow, call me at the hospital. ”
Claire picked up Jenny and rocked her in her arms. “Do you mind terribly having Red drive you?”
“Of course not.” Bridget forced a pleasant expression onto her face. What else could she say? She had to get to her first shift at Mammoth Hospital, and she couldn’t very well hitchhike.
After a lunch of cold cuts and potato salad, Bridget repacked her bags and changed into an appropriate outfit of a navy pencil skirt and white blouse, just right for meeting her new supervisor.
She came into the kitchen to find Red walking Jenny back and forth while Claire warmed a bottle on the stove.
“Frannie,” Claire called out, “do you remember how I told you to make the formula for Jenny yesterday? Could you make another batch, please?”
Frannie shrugged and slumped into the kitchen. “Sure, it’s not rocket science.”
Bridget watched Claire worry over Jenny. Dad was right, it was too hard to raise a baby without family. Claire should come home, where she would have help. If only her sister wasn’t so stubborn and her husband wasn’t so . . . hostile.
Claire sat down on the couch and Bridget watched Red settle the baby in her lap.
Still, she admitted that Red was better with the baby than most fathers.
He even changed diapers. Red didn’t like her—that was obvious—but he loved Claire and Jenny.
Maybe she could make him see the sense of moving his family back to Willmar for their sake.
She said goodbye to Claire with a firm hug, kissed Jenny, and told Frannie to behave herself. “You’re sure you’re okay?” Bridget asked her sister while Red started the truck.
“I’m fine, Bridget. Red and I are fine. Everything is fine,” Claire said with a sharp note in her voice and weariness in her face.
Bridget didn’t believe it for a minute, and she was going to help her sister, even if Claire insisted she didn’t need help.
Red pulled the truck off the gravel road and onto the highway in silence.
Bridget smoothed her skirt and rolled up her window so as not to mess her hair. “I appreciate you driving me, Red.”
He gave her a curt nod and they drove in silence for what seemed like a very long time.
“It was good to see Claire,” Bridget tried again. “She looks wonderful.”
He nodded again.
The National Park Service ranger at the West Entrance waved them through when Red explained that he was driving Bridget up to her job in Mammoth. Then, there was nothing but the rumble of the road for over ten minutes.
Red wasn’t going to make this easy. But this was for Claire, so Bridget took a deep breath and turned to her brother-in-law. “Red, I feel like we got off on the wrong foot.”
He glanced sideways.
“I just want Claire to be happy,” she said. That was the absolute truth.
“You don’t think she is?” Red said without taking his eyes off the road.
Bridget said the words she’d rehearsed in her head. “It’s hard to have a baby and not have family around. She doesn’t even have any friends, even though she’s lived here for over a year.”
Bridget saw Red’s knuckles go pale on the steering wheel. “She has me.”
“That’s not enough.” Bridget regretted that reply immediately and tried to backpedal. “I mean—”
“I know what you meant,” he interrupted, his voice hard. “I’m not enough. The house we live in isn’t enough. The life I’ve given her isn’t enough.”
The intensity of his words shouldn’t have surprised her after yesterday. “You’re putting words in my mouth.”
“Your father is putting words in your mouth,” Red spit back.
That sparked her temper. Was it so wrong that Dad worried about his daughter marrying an utter stranger and flouncing off without a backwards glance to her family? “What exactly do you mean by that?”
Red shrugged, his eyes on the road. They came up behind a pink and chrome sedan pulling a long bullet-shaped trailer and followed it closely around a series of curves.
Bridget’s mouth went dry. On one side of the road was a sharp drop-off down to a river, and a steep slope of shale-covered rock rose on the other side.
Red edged the truck over the center line to look for oncoming cars.
Bridget gripped the edge of the seat.
Red pulled out into the left lane and the truck surged past the trailer. Bridget’s heart skipped a beat when she saw an oncoming car in the distance.
“Your father,” Red said, as if he wasn’t rushing headlong into a collision, “can’t bear to let go of his daughters, or—God forbid—let them love a man other than him.”
Bridget’s heart rate rose at the unfair accusation and their imminent death.
They passed the sedan, and Red calmly steered back into their lane.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said when she could breathe again.
“Dad made us the center of his life.” She didn’t say after Mother left.
Bridget wasn’t going to open that can of worms.
“Did he?” Red asked her now.
“Did he what?” Bridget wished she’d never started this conversation. Red was impossible to talk to, and with him carrying on like this they were going to end up dead in an accident.
“Did he make you and Claire and Frannie the center of his life?” Red stepped on the brakes as the car in front of him turned left. “Or did he make himself the center of your lives?”
Bridget snapped her gaze toward him. “I don’t like what you’re implying.” Bridget looked out the window at the scenery. Trees, a picnic area, a small waterfall with a cluster of parked cars. She was done trying to reason with Red.
The truck surged to a higher speed, as if he wanted to get to Mammoth as fast as he could.
Well, she did too. Red’s accusations rankled—about her, and about Dad.
Was it selfish of Dad to want to keep his daughters close, or was it love?
She supposed—although she wasn’t admitting Red was right—that it could be both.
And even if there was a grain of truth in what Red said, it didn’t change the fact that Claire needed her family.
Bridget steeled herself against Red’s hostility and went on to her second point—one that she knew he couldn’t refute. “Jenny would have so much more if you moved back to Willmar.”
Red looked over at her with disbelief. “Dresses and pretty shoes, you mean.”
“Family,” she shot back. “Not that you’d understand.” She felt a little bad saying that—it wasn’t Red’s fault he’d been left in an orphanage—but he had to see her point.
“She has a family,” he ground out. “Claire and me. And brothers and sisters someday.”
“She needs more than that.” How could Red not see they both needed more than what he was giving them?
“Jenny needs her grandfather, her aunts who love her.” Bridget was wound up now and knew she should stop.
But she didn’t. “Not to mention a decent place to live. You don’t even have a doctor within an hour.
” She turned and looked at him. “I’ve seen terrible things happen to children.
What if Jenny got hurt or sick? What if she died because you insist on living in this godforsaken wilderness? ”
He shot her a look and she saw a flash of fear before the shutters came down. He stared straight ahead at the road. “This is her home, with Claire and me. You and Daniel Reilly are not getting your hands on my family.”