The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [79]
He said to his secretary, “Give her one of our … brochures. Have her leave her card. I’m sorry,” he said. “I never …” The last thing I saw was the confused eyes of his secretary and the back of my father as he closed his office door in my face.
How would he have finished that sentence? I never knew of her plight? I never meant to hurt her? I never would have abandoned her had I known? Or maybe, I never wish to hear from you again.
THIRTY-TWO
Hunger
Let’s stay here a few days. Weeks even,” Louise said when I arrived back in Ludington, where I’d left the two of them while I investigated. Investigated. What had I gained? Nothing. All I’d done was waste my time and the time of the women with me as well.
“It’s a lovely place,” Louise insisted. “Perfect climate with lake breezes. Nice hotels—”
“It’s time to move on,” Olea said.
We ate supper in the hotel dining room in Ludington. They didn’t pry, but I eventually told them what had happened. “I even found where my mother once lived,” I said. The house was run-down now, but once it would have been considered modest with its wide porch sweeping around the front. An orchard groaned for attention in the back. It was a nicer place than what I remembered in Yellow Medicine. They’d left it all. Sacrifice. That’s what family was about, doing what must be done despite the agony.
Tears welled up in my eyes. “It’s … the time. Meeting him. It’s been more difficult than I thought it would be.”
“We don’t always get what we’re after,” Olea said, not unkindly.
“I’m not at all sure I knew what I wanted.”
“That’s a problem too. If you don’t know, then all those around you who do will likely get their hungers met, and you’ll find yourself serving them while you starve. You’ll be on your deathbed wondering where the time went and why you never got to Europe as you’d always planned or never spent an entire afternoon at the aquarium lazily watching fish.”
It sounded like experience talking.
“I hoped he’d open his arms to you and say how much he longed to have done the right thing all those years ago and then sweep you into his chest.” Louise wrapped her arms around herself and sighed. “I hoped he’d ask about your mother and say he would leave his entire estate to you, his only daughter.”
“You read too many of those dime novels,” Olea told her, patting her shoulder. “Family inheritance is never so easily given.”
“I like your version of our meeting,” I told Louise. “But Olea’s right. It is pure fantasy.” I looked at Olea. “Meeting him wasn’t about an inheritance. I wanted to know … who I belonged to.”
“Why, you belong to God, Clara, no matter where you set your feet,” Louise told me.
“Will you keep his name?” Olea asked. She added extra sugar to her tea, as was her way. “Now that you’ve met him?”
“I always wondered why you kept the Stone name,” Louise said to Olea.
“That’s none of your affair,” she said.
Louise dropped her eyes. “I’m sorry. I go too far.” She glanced at me.
Olea’s harsh response surprised me. I found important interest in my fingernail. I’d seen the “Stone and Bostwick” name as furriers on invoices, and then “Stone” in Detroit and “Bostwick” in St. Louis. The women did business with both. Olea’s middle name was Stone. Perhaps there was a connection there, but both women had once said they’d never married.
Or had Olea only said she hadn’t married the love who never returned from the sea?
“We’re talking about Clara now,” Olea continued. “Your name?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll keep the Doré name. I’m not an Estby anymore. My stepfather was clear about that.”
“You could become Clara Gubner or Clara Ammundsen,” Louise said. “We’d be honored, wouldn’t we, Olea? You belong with us.”
Olea nodded.
I hadn’t told them I’d requisitioned Gubner for an hour or so. “It’s a nice offer,” I said. “We’re sisters in spirit. But I think we can keep our separate names.”
They could absorb me, these women who knew what they