Maybe it was an omen, but I decided to take it as a good one. I’d heard that crows mate for life and are known to raise their young for as long as five years.
Sometimes you don’t get that long.
I thought about Audrey Plain Feather and how her life hadn’t turned out the way she’d hoped—maybe nobody’s did.
My wife Martha’s hadn’t. Mine hadn’t. Even Henry’s hadn’t.
Maybe Cady’s would.
It’s hopes like this that you cling to at major turning points in your life and, more important, the lives of your children. You keep going, and you hope for the best, and sometimes, maybe not very often, your hopes come true.
I took the luxury of watching the crows playing tag above our heads for a moment more, the graceful arc of their patterns intertwining in figure eights of infinity. That was probably our job here, to keep going and to do it with as much artistry and beauty as our hearts could bear.
Henry was talking to me when I lowered my face.
I hadn’t caught what he’d said, and it wouldn’t have made any difference if I had, because I wouldn’t have understood it, but I looked down at the young woman on my arm, all my dreams and hopes bundled together in one achingly beautiful woman.
I turned to my friend and the world, and the words poured from me like a fervent prayer. “E-hestana Na-he-stonahanotse.”
Table of Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Epilogue
As the Crow Flies Page 30