The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [116]
A bird chirped over Ida’s shoulder. “I … can’t come home, not the way you want.” I couldn’t stop the tears. I wiped at them with my fingertips. I reached to hug her and she allowed it, though her arms did not hug back. “I have another family now; I can’t leave them,” I whispered.
“They’re not family, Clara. You’ve chosen wrongly.” She brushed my arms aside, moved past me back into the house. From the other side of the screen door she said, “I won’t tell Mama you were here. It would just upset her that you’ve chosen not to return after you’ve been welcomed.” She turned away, then looked back, squinted. “Your hair looks nice with that shorter style. And the color is good. You look like an Estby now.”
I drove home, aware that I did have a family, with its ups and downs, but that family didn’t silence me, didn’t stand in my way of success or making my own mistakes. Maybe Mama knew the price I would have paid if I’d remained. I would have suffocated inside the silence, watching my tongue, not pursuing what I wanted. I had a freedom Ida never knew, never chose. My mother gave me a gift by sending me out, an expression of confidence that I could make it on my own.
The idea of a shopping spree crossed my mind, but I resisted. The sound of the car engine numbed as I chugged along but soothed too. I knew I had work to do. I needed to bring Olea back home. I needed to move forward on something that could sustain us through the years. I needed to be grateful I’d chosen the road I’d been given, even if I could never be sure where such roads would take me. Maybe I was my mother’s daughter after all.
FORTY-ONE
Risk for All
Both Olea and Louise were at my house when I arrived. “We had a little problem,” Louise said. She sniffed at her lavender sachet, looked away from me.
“She scorched the kitchen,” Olea told me.
I looked around them through the door. The kitchen looked fine. I didn’t smell smoke.
“My kitchen,” Olea said.
“I started to fry the chicken, but then I heard Lucky groan and went to see about him—he’s so old, you know—and Olea smelled the smoke and came downstairs. I heard her and noticed the fire then and tried to lift the pan, but I burned myself and threw fiery grease all over the kitchen.”
“We got it out,” Olea said, “but not before significant damage and the sacrifice of a perfectly good quilt to smother the flames.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “I’ll be doing carpentry work and painting. I find I like that kind of work, especially now with European imports drying up with war talk. It’s as much fun to make furniture as to buy it.”
“It’s perfect timing then,” I said.
“I don’t see how,” Olea said.
“You’ll need a place to stay while you rework the kitchen. I want you to come home, Olea. We do. I’m not sure we ever said that out loud when I got back from Finland and learned you’d bought your house, but I am now. You are my family, you and Louise, and I’d like us to be together.”
“What’s brought this about?”
“I don’t know why you left. Maybe you thought I wanted you to go, or maybe you were offended by my wanting to go to Finland alone, but—”
“But you went with Franklin,” Louise said. “Didn’t you?”
“Yes. I did. It was selfish of me, and I’m sorry.” I took a deep breath. “I just saw my sister,” I said. “She invited me to come home and told me I hadn’t been sent away, that I’d gone on my own. I don’t remember it that way at all. I guess in a way I had, but—”
“So you need Louise and I to be together now that you’re going home.”
“No! They want me to return but to act as though what I’ve done these past years has no meaning because … you gave me the start. And they still don’t allow my mother to talk about the trip. Apparently she’s accepted that, even though my stepfather has passed on.”
“I’m sorry,” Louise said. “He was a good man.”
“You didn’t know him, Louise.” Olea said, turning to her.
“Didn’t I?”
I patted her hand. “But seeing Ida helped me realize I’ve been dreaming of a reunion that could never be. I’d like to help