“But I don’t want to miss that flight.”
Will released her. He stared at Alex, nodded. He touched the baby’s dewy cheek.
“Thank you,” Alex said graciously. He lifted the baby from Cassie’s arms through the window, as if he knew that was the sure way she would follow. “I appreciate your taking care of my family.”
My family. Will narrowed his eyes. He didn’t trust himself to say anything.
Alex settled Connor on his shoulder, then looked at Will again. “I know you,” he said simply.
Will smiled broadly. “I broke up a fight of yours once. I was with theLAPD.”
“Well,” Cassie said between them, and Will turned to her. Always the peacemaker.
She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t get out of the truck right away, either. Instead they slipped into that comfortable zone where there didn’t have to be words. They caught each other’s eyes.I love you, Will thought.
I know, Cassie answered. But while he was still savoring that smallest triumph, she slid from the truck and walked right out of his life.
WHEN THE RIVERSES’ SCHEDULED PLANE TOOK OFF FROM RAPID CITY, Will was more drunk than he’d ever been. He planned to be unconscious by the time Cassie landed in L.A. with her husband and her son.
He cursed himself for ever picking Cassie up from that goddamn cemetery. He cursed himself for quitting theLAPD, where he would have been able to keep an eye on her. The way things stood now, she was dead to him. Or as good as dead.
It was this thought that got his mind turning. There was a common practice among the People, the giveaway, that came on the anniversary of a relative’s death. The grieving family showed their respect for the dead person by making gifts and saving up staple foods and offering them as presents to as many people as possible. Will vaguely remembered the year that his own father had died, how his grandparents had saved up to make a good showing that proved how much they had cared for their son.
He remembered that when his father died, Joseph Stands in Sun had told him about ghost owning, the ultimate giveaway ceremony which had transpired in the days of the buffalo. For a family that lost a child, not only would food and skins and utensils be saved up over the year.
In addition, the couple would give to other members of the tribe their own horses, their very tipi, even the clothes off their backs, all as a tribute to someone well loved. “You give till it hurts,” Joseph had said.
Wild-eyed, Will began to rummage through the back of his truck,
finding little of value except for an old shotgun and a sheepskin jacket that had belonged to his father. He drove through town like a madman, stopping at Bernie Collier’s, a neighbor he had never liked. He banged on the door until it swung open under his pounding.
“Will,” Bernie said carefully, taking in Will’s unkempt hair and the untucked edges of his shirt.
“I got something for you, Bernie,” Will said, thrusting the shotgun into his hands. “No strings attached.”
He turned on his heel before Bernie could call after him, jumped into the truck and sped toward the Laughing Dogs’ house.
Linda Laughing Dog frowned when she saw him, and waved her hand in front of her face, trying to ward off the smell of whiskey. “Come on in, Will,” she said. “Let me get you some coffee.”
“No coffee,” Will said. “I’m here to give you something.” He held up the sheepskin jacket. “Think how many kids will go through the winters in this,” he said. “It’s yours. Do what you want with it.”
Rydell Two Fists adamantly refused to take his truck, and Will sat down on the stump in front of his log cabin and bawled like an infant before he figured out what he could do with the keys. He went around back to the old knotty pine where Rydell and Marjorie kept their mutt tied up, and threaded the key ring through the dog’s collar without even waking it.
Giveaway worked; he was coming to see that. He ran through the back woods to Joseph Stands in Sun’s lodge, feeling lighter than he had in months. He stripped off his coat as he ran. He left his hat on a clothesline, his boots in front of the cabin of a stranger. He gave his shirt to a little girl who was dragging a bucket of water back up to her parents’ home.
By the time he reached Joseph’s lodge, he was wearing only his jeans and his underwear, and he was shivering from the cold. He obviously hadn’t drunk enough, he thought, if he could still judge the temperature and if he was too embarrassed to knock on the door and give the medicine man the last of his clothes. Instead, he stripped down to his bare skin, folding his jeans and his shorts and leaving them in a neat pile in front of Joseph’s door.
He began to run wherever his legs would go. As he stepped on thistles and pinecones his feet began to bleed; still he kept running.
He was an animal. He was primitive. He could not think and he could not feel. He came to a high butte that he did not recognize, and there he threw back his head and cried in pain.
He had only one more thing to give away, something that he knew was worthless, but something all the same. Will yelled the words over and over in English and in Lakota, sobbing and scratching at his own skin when he needed to remember how much it hurt to be here when she was gone. “Imacu yo,” he shouted to the spirits. “Take me!”
CHAPTERTWENTY-FIVE
THEreporters and photographers waiting at the security checkpoint atLAXwere taking bets. “I still say he’s gotten rid of her,” a man from theNational Enquirersaid. “As in six feet under.”
ThePeoplereporter sniffed. “Then why go to all this trouble to announce their arrival in L.A.?”
