The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [47]
“Yes. The article mentioned that. Well, I’ll look forward to reading your book,” she said.
A porter leaned at the waist and offered service. “Would you join us?” she said. “I’ll go get my cousin, and you could invite your mother.”
“Oh, we have our basket for supper,” I said.
“Another time then. My cousin, Ms. Gubner, will be wondering where I’ve gone off to anyway.” She looked thoughtful, lifted her binoculars, then let them rest. “New adventures await you, Miss Estby, you and your mother. What a pleasant time you must have had on this journey together.” Then the woman removed a calling card from the reticule hanging at her wrist. “Here,” she said. “Perhaps we’ll have a little more time to talk on the train, but if we don’t and you’d like to meet in Spokane, you can reach me at this postal address of the friend we’re staying with. I’m always interested in the future of young Norwegian women who show such promise.” I felt my face grow warm.
Miss Ammundsen turned away, then stopped and looked back. “I think you should call me Olea when we meet again,” she said. “And if I may, I’ll call you Clara. We’re reform women, yes?” I smiled. “It’s been such a pleasure to meet you, Clara.”
“Likewise, Olea.”
I watched her walk away with a twinge of envy and no anticipation that one day she’d be back into my life. But I hoped for the financial security to travel, dress well, and consider real business risks as she did—well-studied risks, nothing foolish, decisions that didn’t put my family in jeopardy or change their lives forever.
TWENTY-ONE
Homecoming
The train arrived earlier than expected, so no one was there to meet us at the stop near Mica Creek.
“Well, I guess we walk up to the house,” Mama said.
“They’ll come greet us, surely,” I said. “This gives us time to find the frog.”
“That’s right! Johnny would never forgive us if we forgot his frog.”
We stepped across the tracks, headed toward the banks of Mica Creek, then set our bags down. The air smelled of new-mown hay, and the sky was as blue as Mama’s eyes. The landscape seemed to open its arms to us, welcoming. I squatted beside the little creek that rushed across leaves and swirled broken willow boughs around. I could see where the water had been higher with spring rains before time tamed it.
“Here’s one,” I shouted. I shivered at the feel of its skin, all rippled and wet, and it leaped from my hand.
“I’ve got one too,” Mama said. “Well, I guess I don’t,” she added when the frog disappeared from her palm. We hollered back and forth, laughing as our prey departed, and then I found another.
“Here, put it in my grip,” Mama said.
“No, it’ll mess up your papers. Take off my hat,” I said. “Plop him in here. Johnny will be so surprised and he’ll never guess we didn’t bring it from New York. I wonder where they are? You don’t suppose they’re still—”
“In quarantine,” Mama gasped. Color drained from her face. “I should have thought.”
We heard Sailor barking as we left the road and walked up the lane to the house. The sign “Quarantined” hung on the gate like a pox. Mama hesitated, inhaled deeply, gearing up for what lay ahead. I patted her back. In a strange way, I felt stronger at that moment, perhaps because I had lost a sister while she had lost a part of her flesh and her heart.
The farmhouse sat in a dimple of green, the pig shed and barn beyond, and I heard my heart pounding against my temple. We stood for a moment, Mama and me as we’d been for over a year, just the two of us. Now all that would change. Sailor nosed up and I bent to hug him. “Where is everyone?” I said scratching at his ears. He leaned into me, sniffing at my closed hat.
“Hello!” Mama shouted. “Ole, children, we’re home.”
The sound of muffled talking reached us as my brothers and sisters came out of the house, their slender forms straight as arrows, eyes hollow. Arthur and Billy stepped out first, followed by Ida holding Lillian’s hand, with my