Chapter 50 Red
Red felt like Bridget was telling him what he should have known all along. Claire wasn’t fine. The letter proved that. How could he not understand his wife, after a year of marriage?
Marigold stopped, and Red strained his eyes in the dark to see what had brought her to a halt.
He threw his leg over the saddle, slid down, and pulled his pack saw from the leather scabbard.
It was the third time he’d had to stop to clear a fallen tree from the trail.
Bridget silently waited on Flick. His sister-in-law wouldn’t win any prizes in a rodeo, but she was staying on and not complaining.
His ears strained for the sound of falling rock, and every muscle was tight with tension in anticipation of another tremor. They’d had two since they left Sunnyslope, but by the grace of God no trees or rockslides had come down on them.
The cold sweat chilling his back had little to do with the hard work of sawing through the Douglas fir and dragging the two halves of the tree out of the way. His gut told him they didn’t have much time.
They had to move faster.
“Red?” Bridget said as he pulled himself back on Marigold and nudged her to a fast walk. “Can I ask you something?”
He would have preferred to ride in silence, thinking over Claire’s letter to him and what Bridget had told him. He should have been honest. Should have brought everything out into the light instead of hiding in the dark.
Bridget didn’t take the meaning of his silence. “Did you leave because of what I said to you, on the drive to Mammoth?”
His hands tightened on the reins and Marigold hesitated. He urged her forward. “Partly,” he answered but the truth was, he couldn’t blame Bridget.
The fault was all his own.
He’d been a heel when Claire’s sisters showed up, and that day they toured the park.
He’d snapped at Frannie and bit Bridget’s head off when she offered to pay for lunch.
Even now, his neck got hot with humiliation.
Then, when he drove Bridget to Mammoth and she’d told him Claire needed more than he was providing for her, he’d believed every word.
When Bucky told him about the job in Libby, he knew he was running away again—and for more reasons than money.
Claire had begged him to stay, but he’d refused to hear her.
Bridget was quiet behind him, and he hoped she was done questioning him. No such luck. “Why did you come back?”
The answer to that question was easier. Being without Claire and Jenny was like trying to breathe underwater.
The longer he was away, the more he realized he’d been wrong to leave them.
He’d hit rock bottom and being without them had hurt more than admitting he’d failed.
Then he got the letter. “Because you were right,” he finally said.
He heard Flick let out a bray and turned in his saddle to see Bridget’s open-mouthed surprise. “Don’t pull on Flick’s mouth like that,” he told her.
Bridget loosened her grip on the reins. “I was . . . what?”
Had it just been this morning when he’d knelt beside the bed in Libby in the cold dawn and asked God to guide him? Lord, let me do the right thing. Show me how to take care of them.
He didn’t get an answer.
When he was in jail, he’d asked Father Donahue how he was supposed to know what God wanted him to do—about Dell, about Claire Reilly who had left him heartbroken.
“I ask him to tell me, but he doesn’t answer.
” It was all fine and good for the priest to tell him to pray, but what was he supposed to do?
“Son,” Father Donahue said, “that’s not how it works. The important thing is to trust him.” The priest pinned Red with his sharp gaze. “Then do your best. He’ll work with what you give him.”
The advice seemed backwards to Red, but now he thought maybe he understood a little better.
Here, on a trail in the dark, on his way to a canyon that might be flooded, his wife and daughter missing.
He’d do what he thought best, and trust that God would make it the right thing.
And when he found Claire, he knew what he had to do for her—for their family.
He pulled Marigold to a halt and turned her sideways on the trail so he could look at Bridget. “You were right,” he said again. “She needs more than I can give her. She needs her family, and so does Jenny. When I find Claire and Jenny, I’m taking them back to Willmar, like you said.”
Bridget opened her mouth, then closed it.
Red hadn’t figured he could render Bridget speechless, but he’d take silence if he could get it.
He touched his heel to Marigold and turned her down the trail, suddenly desperate to find his family.
If something had happened to them . . . if he was too late .
. . He wouldn’t let his mind go there. He’d find them both. He wouldn’t give up hope.
I’m not good at hope, Red . . . you had enough hope for us both. Claire’s words beat into his brain to the rhythm of Marigold’s hooves on the trail.
Lord, wherever Claire is, whatever she might be facing, give her my hope. Give her the hope she needs to hold on.