“Like hell you are,” came a woman’s voice, and then a heavy highheeled footstep. Alex leaned his head against the back of the wicker chair and closed his eyes, wishing he hadn’t recognized the voice. “In fact, I probably get more work than you do these days.”
Ophelia stepped in front of him, smart in a tailored beige linen suit and a wide hat that was more suited to Ascot than L.A. She bent down and pulled the glass out of Alex’s hand, ran her fingers over the light growth of beard on his chin. “You look terrible, Alex,” she said, “although I imagine these days you don’t have many visitors.”
“Ophelia,” Alex sighed, “what the hell do you want from me?”
Ophelia sank down in front of Alex so that they were exactly at eye level. They stared at each other, neither willing to break away. “Let’s just say it’s in our best interests for me to come to bury the hatchet,”
she said. “It’s been four months and Cassie still hasn’t gotten in touch with me or with you—”
Before he could remember to act, Alex turned his face away.
“Holy shit,” Ophelia said, her mouth dropping open. “You’ve heard from her.”
Alex shook his head and began to cover his mistake with a run of words.
“Alex,” Ophelia interrupted, “give me a break.” She stood up and slapped a pair of white gloves against her thigh. “I came over here to join forces, but you’ve already found Cassie.” She peered at him. “So why aren’t you with her?”
“She wouldn’t tell me where she was,” Alex admitted. “Just that she was all right. And that she’ll call when she wants to come home.”
“And you’ve been trying to track her since then?” She cocked her head. “Of course you have. If you weren’t preoccupied with Cassie, you might have actuallynoticedthat your entire career is shot to hell.” She laughed; a bright, clarinet sound. “She really called you. Well. Maybe I wasn’t giving credit where credit was due. I may not like you very much, but Cassie seems to.Still. So I’m willing to take it on faith that you honestly care about her too.”
Alex lowered his eyes. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Make your point.”
Ophelia knelt beside Alex and plucked the glass from his hand. “My point is this,” she said coolly. “You don’t deserve Cassie, but apparently she hasn’t run away for good. And Cassie most certainly doesn’t deserve to see you like this when she walks back through the front door.” She emptied the highball onto the wide wooden planks of the veranda and pulled Alex up, dragging him into the bedroom to the mirror that hung over his dresser. She stood behind him while he glanced at his bloodshot eyes and sallow skin, while he breathed in the sour smells of bourbon and self-pity that perfumed his clothes. “Alex,” Ophelia said, clasping his shoulders and forcing him to stand taller, “this is your lucky day.”
WILL SAT IN THE DARK CORNER OF JOSEPH STANDS IN SUN’S LODGE, wondering where an eighty-seven-year-old medicine man could be this late at night. He had been here for over an hour; he wasn’t even quite sure why, but he wanted to talk to the old man and he knew it had to be soon.
There were beautiful beaded artifacts hung on the walls, and a long stretch of deerskin with a mural about the slaughter of some Chippewa by a Sioux hunting party. There were bundles of curled dry tobacco and sage tied to the hinges of the door. A star quilt, one Joseph used for healing ceremonies, was draped over an Adirondack rocking chair.
That’s where Will was sitting now, holding the Big Twisted Flute that Joseph had carved sometime before Will was even born. It was a knotted tube of cedar, long and thick, painted with the image of a horse. It had the ability to give a young man power over a young woman, and Will remembered Joseph telling him the story of how he had seduced his own wife. “I dreamed of the music,” Joseph had said, “that came from her soul. And when she heard it she left her parents’
lodge and followed the melody until she realized she was only following me.”
Will ran his fingers over the air holes of the flute, the mouthpiece.
He touched it to his lips and blew once, making a sound like an unmilked cow. Then he rocked back and forth, tapping the flute against his wrist, watching the moon slide through the cracks in Joseph’s front door.
He recalled a dream that began with thunder. He was in the middle of a storm, the rain lashing his bare shoulders and his back, and he was screaming for the doe to move. He knew that the lightning was coming, that it was going to hit the spot where she stood, but she was perfectly still, as if she didn’t even know it was raining. She was the most stunning creature Will had ever seen, with a high curved back and chains of dandelions around her stepped ankles. A road opened up before him;
he saw that he could walk to where the doe stood, or move off to the right where there was no rain at all. It was so easy to just turn and leave, and he didn’t want to be flooded by the rain.
He started toward the doe. He shouted, pushing her with his fists, and finally she bolted down the other path into the sun. Will tried to follow, but at that moment the lightning that he had known was coming split down his back, searing him with fire and breaking his bones.
He fell to the ground, amazed that there could be this much pain in the world, and he knew that he had saved her.
It stopped raining, and he lifted his head—the only part of him he could still move—to find the doe standing over him, nuzzling the palm of his hand. Then the doe was gone and Cassie was there, touching him, healing; and safe, because of him.
Will looked up when the door swung open. Joseph Stands in Sun pulled off his jacket and sat down on the edge of a picnic bench. He waited for Will to say something.
Will shook his head clear. It would mean coming back to Pine Ridge—not just physically, but in histon, his soul. Then again, he realized, he had fit in no better in California than he had among the Sioux; maybe it was his fate to shuttle between the two worlds for the rest of his life, until he found some hybrid oasis like the home his parents had created.
He handed Joseph his Big Twisted Flute. There was only one strain of music that Cassie would hear, because she herself had played it a thousand times. Eyes glowing, Will leaned toward the medicine man, and asked how he could take away her pain.
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
MARJORIETwo Fists looked up from the pair of child-size moccasins she was beading and watched Cassie make another mistake.
“Hiya´,” she said, pointing. “If you don’t concentrate, you’ll have to throw the whole thing out.”
