Chapter 24 Claire
Claire got halfway home before she had to pull over, tears blurring her vision and her breath searing her chest. She turned into the parking area at Beryl Spring, jammed the truck into park, and stared out the windshield into the cloudless blue sky.
Jenny began to fuss, and Claire picked her up, holding her close to her aching heart.
At the Canyon Lodge, she’d been dimly aware of the laughter and music around her, but her mind had been numb with shock. Red didn’t leave us like Mother did. He’ll come back. As she’d said those desperate words, she’d seen her own disbelief mirrored on Bridget’s face.
Red would come home to them. Of course he would come home.
Jenny snuffled against her neck, fussing as the afternoon sun heated the cab.
Claire pushed open the door and followed the boardwalk toward the cloud of steam rising from the hot spring.
The wind dried her sweat-dampened blouse as she walked, blind to the blackened trees, the barren landscape where no vegetation grew in the sulfur-filled soil.
At the spring, the acrid scent stung her nose.
Claire gazed, unseeing, at the brilliant blue water bubbling up from deep under the earth.
She held Jenny close, rocking her and fighting against the memories she’d thought were buried forever. Bridget’s hand in hers, Dad’s anguished voice. The smell of Mother’s perfume and the sticky touch of her lipstick on Claire’s cheek. The pain in her chest like she was drowning.
We don’t need her, Dad said that cold spring day. We’re fine without her.
But mothers didn’t leave their children, and Claire hadn’t stopped hoping that her mother would come back.
Every day when Claire came home from school with Bridget, she hoped Mother would be waiting for them.
Claire imagined how Mother would hug them both and say she was sorry, then everything would go back to how it had been.
Spring went by, and then summer. Claire kept hoping, even when Dad hired Flo to take care of Frannie and the house.
In September, Claire hoped Mother would be home for her birthday, then for Bridget’s birthday in December.
When Frannie turned one year old, Flo made a cake, and Dad brought home presents from Reilly’s. Mother didn’t come back.
Finally, Claire stopped hoping, because hoping hurt too much.
We’re fine without her.
Dad was wrong. The Reilly girls were far from fine.
Bridget had cried herself to sleep for months after Mother left.
When she got older she buried her nose in books with happy endings, worked impossibly long hours, and pushed away anyone who got close.
Claire—she knew, because Bridget often told her—refused to be helped.
She could do whatever she set her mind to on her own, thank you very much.
And Frannie . . . well, nobody could say that Frannie was fine.
Even when Frannie started to blow up at Dad and get in trouble, they kept up the charade that all was well in the Reilly household, even when it wasn’t.
When Millie came up with the plan to work in Yellowstone, Claire leapt at the chance to leave Claire Reilly behind for a summer. Then Claire married Red and left that hurt little girl behind in Willmar for good.
Or so she thought.
Claire stood in the billowing steam, the pain hot and caustic and very real. That young Claire Reilly was still with her. The little girl begging her mother not to leave. The desperate child, clinging to her mother’s legs had been with her all along.
Red, please don’t go.
Claire’s eyes stung from the sulfur-filled air billowing from the hot springs. She laid her cheek against Jenny’s soft head. Red wouldn’t leave. He loved them.
When he told her he was leaving, she wanted to pull him closer but something inside her pushed him away. We don’t need you. We’re fine without you.
Those caustic words had scalded her throat even as she said them.
Was it too late to cross that distance between them?
The distance not only between Riverside and Libby, but the rift between Red’s heart and her own?
She gazed at the brilliant turquoise water, the steam billowing into the azure sky. Lord, let it not be too late.
Jenny was almost asleep. Claire rocked gently.
Red had kept secrets from her, but she kept one from him as well.
A painful secret buried so deep it had never healed.
He’d asked about her mother when they started dating.
“She’s not with us anymore,” Claire had said.
“I’m sorry,” Red had answered, like people do when you tell them someone has died.
She didn’t correct him. It didn’t seem like a lie then, but now that deeply buried wound had broken open and the pain of it was hurting them both.
Claire’s breath came easier as a conviction grew in her mind.
She had to tell him about Mother. She’d tell him Bridget was wrong, too.
That Claire didn’t care if they didn’t have a dollar to their name, or what her Dad thought of their home or their life together.
Red was all she wanted, with Jenny and the sky and the river.
Claire walked back to the truck and drove home with a certainty thrumming through her veins. She’d fix this. She would write Red a letter. She’d tell him the truth about her mother. She’d ask him to come home, and tell him she loved him. She needed him.
She wasn’t fine without him.