“Can’t what?” she asked.
He threw her a glare. Was she really going to make him say it? But her expression was truly bewildered.
“Can’t read.” A wave of shame rushed up his neck and into his face as he waited for her scorn. For the mocking like the kids at school. Stupid Red Wilder.
“That can’t be,” she said in disbelief.
Did she think he’d make something like that up?
“You wrote letters—you and Claire—that winter after you met.”
He jerked his chin. “I didn’t write.” Not really. After she left him to go home to Minnesota, Red couldn’t eat. He hardly slept. Everything he saw reminded him of Claire. She’d left him her address, and he mailed her bits and pieces he picked up on the trail or at the river. A blossom of pink bitterroot just the color of her cheeks when she blushed. A hawk’s feather. A sprig of fragrant sage. He even bought a cheap Brownie and took a picture of the place they’d fished on the Madison the day she caught her first trout. He put an X on the spot and sent it to her. He carefully copied her address onto the envelopes, but he didn’t write any words of his own.
“But she wrote to you,” Bridget continued to object. “Didn’t you read her letters?”
Red remembered the day he got that first letter from Claire. He’dput it in his pocket and walked the streets of West Yellowstone for an hour until he found himself standing at the back of Our Lady of the Pines Catholic Church. The church was small, with peeled pine benches and a single stained-glass window behind the altar. Nothing fancy, but Red felt something expand in his chest—the same feeling he got when he saw the colors of the Grand Prismatic or a sky full of stars. Or Claire Reilly. It was something he couldn’t put into words, but in the silence of that little church he felt a measure of peace he hadn’t had since she left.
“Father Donahue read them to me,” he admitted to Bridget.
The old priest hadn’t asked his name or what Red was doing in his church. He walked right past Red and disappeared out a side door, came back a minute later with two bottles of root beer. Red thanked him and they sat in silence on the front step of the church, soaking in the last of the September afternoon. Red took the unopened letter from Claire out of his pocket and looked again at the neat address, her perfect handwriting.
“What’s that you have?” the priest asked.
“A letter from a girl.” He wanted to sayhisgirl, but he didn’t think she was that. “She came out for the summer.”
“Afraid to read it?” the priest asked.
Red nodded. That was part of it. Maybe Claire would tell him to stop mailing her reminders of Montana. Or that she was getting married to that Luke fellow he’d heard Millie tease her about.
“I’ll do the honors,” the priest said, holding out his hand. “Sometimes it’s easier that way.” Claire’s letter wasn’t very personal, but she didn’t tell him to stop sending her gifts. And she didn’t say anything about marrying Luke Charpentier. Red thanked the priest and left the church feeling twenty pounds lighter. He wasn’t going to tell Bridget that the next time he saw Father Donahue, it was in the county jail. He spent three months up in Bozeman after the conviction on the Lacey Act. The priest brought him his mail every week and read Claire’s letters to him.
He glanced over at Bridget and she wasn’t eyeing him with the disgust he’d expected. “Can I read it to you?” she asked.
Humiliation swamped him at her gentle tone and he wished she’d stay bossy and aggravating. Anything was better than her pity. He didn’t want to hear through Bridget that Claire had given up on him. But... what if Bridget was telling the truth and Claire wasn’t leaving him? He jerked a nod, cursing that flame of hope that refused to die.
Bridget stuck a finger under the seal and popped it open.
He steeled himself for whatever would come.
“Dear Red,”she began, then her voice halted. “Oh, no,” Bridget said softly. “Oh, Claire.”
An iron band clamped around his chest. “Out loud,” he said, his voice rough. He watched the road but he didn’t see the white lines or the dark trees flashing past.
“Dear Red,”Bridget said again, her voice quivering,“I’ve always thought it didn’t help to dig up the past, that it was better to keep it buried. I think now I was wrong. I should have told you about my mother.”
Red sent a sideways glance at Bridget. Her mother? What did their mother have to do with Claire leaving him?
Bridget cleared her throat and continued.
“Mother left us when I was eight years old. I didn’t understand at first. I hoped that she would come back. For years, I hoped. I hoped for me—and for Bridget and Frannie and Dad. She didn’t come back (not even once). I stopped hoping, because hoping hurt too much.”
Bridget’s voice broke and she took a gulping breath.
Red gripped the steering wheel hard. Claire had let him believe her mother had died. Why hadn’t she told him what really happened?
“Then I met you, and Red, you have so much hope. You hope every time you go fishing (even if they aren’t biting), every time you deal out the cards for solitaire (which you always lose). You hoped every time you asked me to marry you (even when I always said no).
“I’m not good at hope, Red. I gave up on us at the end of that summer. Putting you out of my mind and out of my heart felt safer than hoping. But you didn’t give up. You hoped so much that you bought me a horse and showed up at Tara with a ring.
