Free Things Remembered by Georgia Bockoven Page A

things like that about her. I used to love hearing him, especially when he said it in front of my friends.” Grateful that they’d stumbled onto something neutral that they could talk about, Karla added, “They thought he was the most romantic man alive, straight out of the movies. I told him how they felt one day, even admitted I was proud that my friends thought he and Mom were special, and that I hoped when I grew up someone would love me the way he loved Mom.” She’d never told anyone about that conversation, saving it the way she had the four-leaf clover she’d found at the cemetery on her mother’s grave, giving the memory and clover special power without knowing what the power was. How ironic that when she’d finally told someone, it was Anna.
    â€œAnd how did he answer you?”
    What he’d said was so touching, so special, as she’d grown older she’d developed doubts about the accuracy of her memory. “He said I was destined to have one of the great loves of all time . . . poets would be unable to find the words to describe this love . . . that it would come to me so gently I wouldn’t recognize it at first.” She glanced at Anna and met her gaze. “Being the father of three daughters, it was almost a given that he’d develop a gift for telling fairy tales.”
    â€œThere are so many things about your father I don’t know. I was content that he made Marie happy and never thought to ask anything else. I missed so much of all of your lives.”
    â€œWhy did you let it happen?” For once, she wasn’t being judgmental, just curious as to how a mother could remove herself so completely from her own daughter’s life. As far as Karla knew, her mother and grandmother loved each other, they just weren’t particularly close.
    â€œI didn’t want your father to think I was interfering in their marriage. I had such a terrible time with Frank’s mother that I swore I would never do anything like that to my own daughter and her husband. But I let it go too far. I thought I was giving her freedom, and now I’m afraid she actually saw it as disinterest. She must have thought I simply didn’t care.”
    Again she reached up to loosen the shoulder harness. “Then you met Jim and I was so sure he was the wrong man for you that I rode that pendulum all the way to the other side. Frank’s mother wouldn’t have dreamed of doing what I did to you. I had no business telling you not to marry Jim, and I’ve regretted that I didn’t go to the wedding every day since.”
    â€œAnd you still feel that way? Even knowing you were right about Jim?” Karla was testing. Anna wasn’t the kind of woman who backed off easily or without laying groundwork for the retreat. Somewhere in the fractured apology was an “I told you so.”
    â€œYes,” Anna said without elaboration and then laughed. “Did I pass?”
    Karla laughed, too. How could they know each other so well and be such strangers? “Mom said you never came to see us because you lived so far away. I told her I thought it was because you didn’t like us. It must have hurt her feelings. She didn’t talk to me about you for a long time afterward.”
    Anna didn’t say anything.
    â€œIt’s so strange . . .” Karla went on. “I can reconstruct the entire conversation in my mind, everything except her answer.” Again she looked over to Anna. “I know now why you never came to see us, but why didn’t we visit you?”
    â€œYou did. A couple of times before Heather was born and then once after. You probably don’t remember because you were so little. Then Frank died, and your father was transferred so often you barely had time to unpack before you were packing up to move again. Marie and I were always making grand plans to get together, but then something would come up and