Chapter 69 Claire
Claire walked into the Depot with Bridget beside her.
She’d had a rock of worry sitting in the center of her chest since her father called her this morning.
“Meet me for lunch at the Depot with your sisters. We have to talk.” Dad had refused to say more.
Claire had planned on seeing her father off this morning at the Depot, but the tone of his voice didn’t bode well for a happy goodbye. Red said he’d keep Jenny, and told her not to worry when he kissed her goodbye.
“Do you know something I don’t?” she asked him. He and Dad had talked a long time that first night. Red told her Dad had apologized to him about the wedding, and that made her worry even more. That was so unlike her father.
Now Red said, “I think it’s a good thing he wants to talk to you all together.”
“Do you think he’s sick?” Bridget asked after she picked her up at the Red Cross headquarters in Ennis. “Maybe he has cancer, or TB.”
“Maybe he is going to try to convince me to come home again,” Claire said.
“You don’t think he’s going to get remarried, do you?” Bridget asked, turning to face Claire with horror. “To that lady from church that has had her eye on him?”
“Absolutely not.” But Claire couldn’t shake the feeling whatever he had to say wasn’t good news.
The Depot was teeming with customers. Reporters with camera bags, Army National Guard and Red Cross workers, and tourists waiting for trains out of town.
Helen and Tom Eagle were at a table filled with locals. “Hello, Claire,” Helen said with a friendly smile.
Claire. Not Mrs. Wilder. Would wonders never cease?
Helen’s eyes lit with interest on Bridget. “This must be the sister we read so much about.” Helen introduced herself to Bridget and told her how much she admired what she’d done with Red—“Isn’t he a local hero?”—while Claire searched the tables for their father.
“There he is.” She took Bridget’s elbow and dragged her away from Helen Eagle.
“Isn’t she the one you said didn’t like you?” Bridget whispered as they veered through the room.
“Yes,” Claire said. The earthquake had changed more than the landscape of Gallatin County, it had turned Red from an outsider to a hero.
Red had a new job starting next week in the park, and Claire had an invitation to Helen Eagle’s bridge club.
Claire was glad about the job, but would rather go fishing than play bridge.
She veered through the crowded room, stopping where a waitress blocked the aisle.
“I woke up and didn’t know what was happening, but I knew I had to get out of the house.
” Grace Miller’s rough voice cut through the rattle of cutlery and the clink of coffee cups.
She sat among a bevy of reporters, all staring in rapt attention at the silver-haired woman.
“I had to kick the door open, and Sandy, that’s my dog”—she leaned down to pat a furry malamute at her feet—“Sandy was right with me. I got the door open and then I saw a big crevice opening up in front of me. I jumped, and so did Sandy and then the house dropped right into the lake.”
“Excuse us,” Claire said to the waitress.
As they moved away, she heard Grace Miller cackle. “I hope they find my house, because I left my teeth right beside the sink and I’d sure like to get them back.”
They reached the corner booth where Dad and Frannie sat. She slid into the booth and raised her brows at Frannie. Her little sister shrugged to say she didn’t know what was going on either.
“What is it, Dad?” Bridget said in her imperative tone. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” Frannie said. “What’s up?”
Dad picked up a paper napkin and folded it into a square. “I have some things that need to be said.”
Claire felt like she might be starting to get sick. Could something really be wrong with Dad?
“About what?” Frannie said with a frown.
“You’re scaring us,” Bridget said, all her bluster gone.
Dad cleared his throat, looking down at the napkin that was now a crumpled ball in his hand. “It’s about your mother.”
Claire’s mouth went dry. She glanced at Frannie, and then at Bridget. No one said a word. What on Earth had got into Dad?
“I realize—well, I mean—I know we don’t talk about her.” He cleared his throat. “And I’m sorry about that.”
“Dad,” Bridget said, “You don’t have to—”
“Let me finish.” He held up a hand. “I wasn’t an easy man to live with,” he said quickly.
“When you girls were born, things were tough. The Depression was on, and I’d just started the store.
I worked too much.” His voice cracked. He leaned an elbow on the table and pinched the bridge of his nose like he did when he was tired.
Claire’s heart twisted. Her father shouldn’t have to go through this, but now that he’d started, she wanted to hear the rest. She needed to hear it.
Dad went on. “I thought making money was what I had to do—all I had to do—to be a good husband and a good father. It was hard work, keeping the store afloat in those early years.”
Claire remembered. Dad would sometimes come home late at night, too tired to help her with her spelling list. He’d spread papers out on the kitchen table and tell Mother to turn the radio down. Dad went on. “Your mother told me—when she left—that I was married to the store, not to her.”
Bridget’s hand searched for Claire’s and they locked fingers together. “But she’s the one who left us,” Bridget said, always the one to defend Dad.
Dad stared down at his coffee. “She made the decision to leave,” he said. “But it’s my fault she didn’t come back.”
Claire’s throat suddenly felt thick and swollen. I’ll come back to visit. But she never did. She’d hoped for so long, because of that promise. Until hoping hurt too much, and she gave up not only on Mother, but on hope itself. “What do you mean?” Claire managed to get the words out.
Dad let out a long breath. “I told her that if she left, it was for good. That if she walked out that door, not to come back.”
The memory rose in Claire’s mind. Marie, I meant what I said.
“I thought it was best for you girls,” he said, raising his gaze with a pleading look. “A clean break. No coming in and out of your lives. Visits in the summer, passing you back and forth like a used car. It would be too hard on you. And,” he looked down at his hands, “too hard on me.”
Frannie’s brows were pulled down. “So it wasn’t my fault?”
Dad let out a breath that sounded like a sob. “No, sweetheart, it was mine.”
“It would have been nice to know that,” Frannie said, but without anger.
Claire reached across the table to Frannie. They had learned not to talk about Mother, because it hurt Dad. Frannie—growing up with no answers to her questions—had filled in the blanks herself, and got the answers wrong. She took Frannie’s hand in hers, as she’d done for so many years.
Bridget let out a breath. “Did she try to come back?”
He nodded. “On each of your birthdays for a couple years.” A tear leaked from the corner of his eye. “I did what I thought was best. But now, well”—he took a deep breath—“I see it was a mistake, and I’m sorry.”
Claire wasn’t sure how she felt. Relief, that their mother hadn’t forgotten them.
Sorrow that they could have known her. Hope that perhaps it wasn’t too late to find her .
. . to know their mother again. There was a hint of anger, too, even as she knew that what Dad had done, he’d done out of love for his daughters.
“You girls are everything to me,” he said. “And now that you’re grown, it’s—” He reached out to Bridget and clasped his hand over hers. “It’s so hard to let you go.”
“Dad,” Frannie said as if he was a child himself. “You can keep holding on.” She gave him a stern look. “Just not so tight.”
Frannie grabbed Dad’s hand so that they were all linked together. Frannie and Dad and Bridget and Claire. The Reilly sisters and their father—broken apart, but by the grace of God brought back together.
Stronger and closer than they’d ever been.