The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [51]
I hesitated. What good would it do to tell her of my concerns now proven to be true? “I think … not having a better way to adjust the contract for the unexpected was imprudent, not properly thought out.” I pointed to my ankle. “I don’t want you to compound it now by letting the book contract go.”
We sat in silence, and I wondered at my arguing for the very thing I’d once called another foolish act. “What if we told the sponsors that the book was ready and we needed the train ticket east? That way we’d know if they intend to keep their word, and I could use your notes and my own to write it like a long travel article, without mention of how it affected us, nothing personal.”
Mama reached across and brushed my soft curls. “Clara, if they did send the ticket and you wrote it, then your father would never speak to either of us again. The money would mean less to him than that I disobeyed his wishes. I can’t have that. I can’t live without my children, and I want no animosity between you and your father. And if they didn’t send the ticket, then we’d be where we are now, but we’d know for certain of their intentions.”
“So we’re victims. They exploited us; they got their promotion for reform dresses, and we got nothing.”
“Nothing can take away the journey, Clara.” She sighed. She was always so tired now. “Or what we gained as two women. We are simply asked never to speak of it again.” Her voice caught. “It is important for our family to remain together.”
“You may think it’s about family, Mama. But from where I sit, it’s still all about money and maybe power too.”
“Oh, Clara.” She patted my back. Then, “Where’s Lillian?” Mama stood, looking to the barn, the house, back toward the fields. “Where is she?” A frantic look filled her face.
“She was right here, Mama. I’m sure she’s all right.” Mama started toward the barn, turned back toward the house. “There, Mama. In the barn shadow. Looking for eggs maybe. She’s fine.”
“Ja, ja, okay. Good. You’re right. She’s fine.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Mama. It wasn’t.”
Mama sighed. “I didn’t listen to God’s guidance,” she said then. “That’s my fault. I didn’t listen for His voice telling me right or left, walk this way. I prayed for wisdom, but only after I accepted the wager. I thought He opened the door to save our farm, but He didn’t. I never should have left. Remember that, Clara. Listen for His voice; don’t trust your own.”
TWENTY-THREE
The Way of Wounds
Swallowing my pride, I approached the Stapleton residence. It was futile, I knew, but I hoped I’d find Forest at home for the summer and maybe move our relationship along. Absence made the heart grow fonder, didn’t it? I wouldn’t be as foolish as my mother had been, forced into a marriage without love. With a year passed, Mrs. Stapleton might relent and consider hiring me again, opening a door the trip had closed.
She had not and did not. Nor would she give me a letter of reference. “Your choice will have long and far-reaching consequences,” she told me. “No one in Spokane will hire you as a domestic. That latest news article, about your writing a book about that ridiculous trip? Nonsense. Your father must be mortified to have a wife and daughter who are so public about your financials.”
I wondered how mortified he would be when our farm went into foreclosure.
But her hostility toward me forewarned. I was refused interviews, not hired at the one or two I was given. No suffragette women sought a domestic, apparently. It would take time for our story to be forgotten. Until then, I daydreamed again, but this time about how I might make contact with Forest to have that luncheon he once promised.
The newspaper carried the story in the spring of 1898 announcing the engagement of Forest Stapleton to a local girl. Forest worked in his father’s bank, and the newlyweds would make their home in Spokane.
I stuffed the letters I’d written to him since the theft into a packet, along with the clippings and the signatures and my sketches. I couldn’t bring myself