The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [65]
There was nothing I could do about it.
I captured the faces of my family. Even in my stepfather’s eyes I saw true sadness. He’d said I wasn’t an Estby if I kept the dirty money, as he called it. But even before I’d received the money, I wasn’t an Estby. That was the truth. Maybe that’s why I could see the money objectively, as a means to an end, while my stepfather and mother gave it evil intent.
Life would change for all of them after today, me most of all.
I shook my head, remembering my brother’s sage vision once shared in secret that the foreclosure would at last free them from a terrible debt that sucked them all dry. The thought gave me hope that maybe it would be all right for Mama without the farm. This amputation from the land might in time allow true healing to take place without the daily reminder of the losses suffered here.
“Do you want to go upstairs and see what’s yours to take with you?” Mama said as we finished up.
“I think mostly I’d like …” I rose to the cabinet and pulled it out from the wall. The packet was still there tied with a dusty ribbon.
“What have you got there?” Ida said.
“My drawings. You remember,” I said. I brushed off the packet. “And a few of Olaf’s old newspapers.” I hoped Ida wouldn’t want to look inside. The clippings were there, the signatures of the famous people. It might challenge my stepfather if he saw that I’d kept evidence of our walk. I didn’t want him to grab the packet and see what had been kept of the trip right under his nose.
“Ohhhh,” Lillian said. “Look at all this!”
We all turned.
From the ermine purse, Lillian pulled one-hundred-dollar bills. They unfurled on the floor at my stepfather’s feet like leaves falling from a windblown tree.
“Oops,” Lillian said.
“Lillian,” Ida said. “What are you doing getting into Clara’s things?”
My mother gasped.
Lillian bent to pick up the bills, tried stuffing them back inside. Ida squatted to help her. She looked up. “Clara? There’s so much money here.”
Arthur stopped eating and looked at what his sister held. “There must be … thousands,” he said.
“Maybe millions,” Billy added.
Ida’s face lit up. “You brought it for us!”
I looked at my stepfather. I pleaded with him to take this gift of accident, another chance that Lillian’s curiosity had given. Under his breath I heard him say, “Sjusket kvinne.”
“Who lives like a slattern?” Olaf asked.
“It isn’t dirty money,” I defended.
“Is it yours?” Ida said. “Are you giving it to us, to save the farm—”
“Yes, it’s mine. And I would but—”
“You’ll pay the mortgage? We won’t have to move?” Arthur asked.
“No,” I said. “Ole, Papa, has refused the money.”
“Papa?” Ida said.
“It’s money Mama and I earned by making the trip. The women I work for were two of the sponsors.”
Ida gasped, dropped the money as though it held disease. “And you would take their money after what they did to us?” Her eyes flashed in outrage. “You worked for them, knowing this?”
“I didn’t know when I started. It … The sponsorship … It was a business arrangement, with other people,” I said. “They never intended for bad things to happen. Now they’re hoping to make amends.”
“Dirty money,” my stepfather repeated.
“Papa,” Ida said. “If it would save the farm …”
“No!” He banged his fist on the table, making the plates and forks jump. He shouted so loudly Lillian started to cry. That awakened Mama, who put her arms around her.
“We accept nothing touched by that time. Clara is foolish to want it. Or to work for them, to have anything to do with them.”
For a moment, Ida teetered on our future, but she was driven by the past.
“Well,” Ida said with no longer even a hint of an ally. “You have to quit working for them.”
“They’re the ones that wouldn’t pay you and Mama?” Arthur asked. He looked confused.
Ida nodded. “Papa’s right. It’s a … betrayal to work for such women. Give the money back. Find another job. You need to be loyal to our family, Clara. How can you even consider taking it?”
“But it would save you. Us!” I pleaded. “It’s only money.”
“It has been