The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [122]
My mother used to say that each of us is unique in God’s eyes, that God offered a fullness of life if we but allowed it, even if no one else on this earth did. I have loved thee with an everlasting love. I remembered the scripture from Jeremiah.
“Women friends fill up a certain space in our hearts,” my mother told me following a presentation in Omaha, “and romantic love fills another. Family, though, has a special chamber that expands and expands.” She’d widened her hands to show me how large a family place could be. “There’s room for sunsets and rainbows and shiny rocks that remind us of our strengths, for dogs and horses and cats too. Room for the giggles of toddlers you don’t even know. And over all is God’s love, which flows through all the chambers, seeping into cracks and filling up the empty spaces until you’re so full you almost cannot breathe. It’s God who shines in the faces of all those other people looking back at you. You don’t really need Forest Stapleton or anyone else.”
Now, years later, I had to accept that at thirty-eight years of age, it was unlikely I’d ever find that special spark of romantic love. Franklin had come as close as any, and now he lit another woman’s life.
Franklin’s second call came a week later. He and Sharon were heading west as soon as the shipment arrived and he’d placed the garments in the retail shops in New York. He’d make deliveries along the way in Chicago and Detroit, Minneapolis too. Once here, we could celebrate and confer about our affairs.
I tried to imagine what Sharon looked like. He said she was French, and he pronounced her name with emphasis on the second half, “share-own.” I wondered where he’d met her and how apparently effortlessly he’d brought her into his life. He might have been lonelier than I imagined to have taken a wife he’d known for such a short time.
Or maybe he’d known her for a long time. I’d had a chance with Franklin, and I’d turned it down. I felt a little sorry for myself, but I deserved this. I hadn’t taken the risk of the heart. Only in business had I ventured into the unknown.
I blew my nose and lifted my chin. It was what a Doré did.
Then the third call, at three in the morning.
Franklin’s voice cracked. “She’s gone,” he said.
“What! Who? Sharon’s gone?”
“No,” he said. “The ship. It went down and—”
“What! No! No, don’t tell me that! Don’t say that.”
“What is it?” Olea asked, stepping out from her bedroom, the kitchen phone having awakened her. I shushed her.
“January 27,” he wailed. “I don’t know what she was doing in those waters, but the Germans sank her on January 27. No lives were lost, and they didn’t even try to save the cargo. Ours wasn’t the only cargo lost.”
“The garments? They’re … gone? Nothing was salvaged?” I thought of the beaded cape.
“Nothing,” he said. “If it had been, the Germans would have taken it.”
“Are you certain? Are you?”
“I am. I’m … so sorry. I …”
“I’m ruined,” I told him, sinking onto the chair. “We’re ruined.”
Franklin had been right those years before: only God and love last, with the latter having a statute of limitations.
FORTY-TWO
Necessary Alterations
Sharon, tall and slender with eyes as dark as good earth, was gracious when they arrived in Coulee City after the disaster. That’s what I called my investment gone so wrong. She told me how much Franklin cared for me. “He is like a brother to you, oui?”
“Yes,” I told her. “A very fine brother.”
“This is good then. I have a new family with a sister-in-law