A Thousand Voices

by Lisa Wingate

  My emotions ricocheted, and I smiled without even wanting to. “That sounds good.” In spite of the morning’s emotional crash, I was suddenly looking forward to the afternoon. “I think I need to just sit here a few minutes, think about things. Then I’ll be over.”

  He ran a thumb along the outline of his bottom lip. “Sure you’re all right to drive?” His eyes caught mine for a flickering instant, and I was pulled in again before he took his keys from his pocket and turned his attention to them.

  “I’m okay,” I told him. “I’ll be along in a little while.”

  “You’re not planning to ditch me and drive off searching for more Clays on your own—nothing like that, right?”

  I shook my head.

  He pulled a business card from his shirt pocket and wrote something on it, then handed the card to me and tucked the pen back in his pocket. “Here’s my cell number again. Call me when you get over to the festival, and we’ll meet up. I’ll buy you an Indian taco.”

  I nodded, vaguely reminded that I had less than twenty dollars in my pocket, and ready cash would soon become an issue again. I couldn’t ask Shasta’s friend at the variety store to cash another check. And it was already Saturday. James and Karen would be expecting me back in Kansas City tomorrow, but the Choctaw tribal offices and the courthouse here wouldn’t be open again until Tuesday. If I could catch Jamie away from Lana, maybe I could get her to check the online records again, see if she might have confused my father with this other Thomas Clay, the young man who’d suffered a hunting accident as a teenager and couldn’t possibly have fathered a child.

  I rubbed my forehead, my mind starting to race again. Jace slipped his fingers into my hair, tipped my chin up so that he could catch my gaze. The noise in my head stopped. He had beautiful eyes. Dark, and liquid, and warm like a blanket. I wanted him to kiss me again and make everything else disappear.

  “Promise me, no setting off on reconnaissance missions alone.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  His mouth straightened into a stern line. Part of me wanted to argue with him, the way I would have if my parents tried to tell me what to do. I’m twenty years old. I’ve been around the world. I’ve been taking care of myself as long as I can remember. I can handle it.

  “I don’t have any more leads to follow,” I admitted finally. “The courthouse and the Choctaw offices in Durant are closed for the weekend. Where would I go?”

  He nodded, seeming satisfied that I wasn’t planning to do something rash. “Hang in there, kid.” He gave my shoulder one last squeeze, then climbed into his truck, waved out the back window, and disappeared.

  I wished he wouldn’t call me kid.

  After he was gone, I sat on the picnic table, decompressing, thinking about everything that had happened since my arrival on Thursday. My birth family could be anywhere—the next town, the next county, the next state, the next campsite, and I wouldn’t know it. I might find them tomorrow, or I might search for years and never find them. My father could be dead, or he could be living somewhere, maybe with a family, kids of his own and a normal life. He might be happy to see me, and he might not.

  I might never learn the truth.

  Sitting in the quiet campground with only the dull flapping of canvas and the faraway sounds of human activity somewhere near the water, I tried to contemplate the possibilities, then finally I surrendered to the final one. I might never discover the truth about my father and the circumstances of my birth. One way or another, I had to learn to live with that. Life goes on after the corn fails, Grandma Rose used to say. You can sit by the field and cry about it, or you can harness the mule and plant something else.

  Giving Camp Reid one last look, I harnessed the mule and headed for town.

  Halfway there, my cell phone, plugged into the cigarette lighter on the dash, picked up a tower somewhere across the mountains, and started to beep. I checked the screen. VOICEMAILS: 11.

  Adrenaline rocketed through my body as I disconnected the cord, punched the button, and read the list. The messages had started around midnight last night, while I was asleep at the campground, the phone out of range of a cell tower. The log told a frightening story. Karen Cell 12:25 a.m., Karen Cell 12:57, Karen Cell 1:43, Karen Cell 3:15, Aunt Kate Home 5:35, Aunt Kate Cell 7:00, Barry 7:26….

  My family had been desperately trying to contact me since the middle of the night. Something was wrong.

  I thought of James, still out flying somewhere, and a cold dread soured in my throat and oozed to my stomach. He wasn’t in my cell log. What if something had happened to him? An accident? A crash? I hadn’t seen a television in two days. There could have been an airline accident, and I wouldn’t even know.

  Oh, God, I whispered, the phone shaking in my hand, my fingers suddenly too stiff, too clumsy to operate the controls. Oh, God, please, God, no…. Pushing the redial for Karen’s number, I pressed the phone to my ear, but the call wouldn’t go through. There was only static as the highway wound into a valley.

  Holding the phone so that I could see the tower indicator, I pressed the gas, sending the car careening over hills and zipping around corners. As I crested the last hill and drove into town, the tower indicator shot upward, and I started trying to dial Karen’s cell number, but my fingers wouldn’t cooperate. I ended up dialing into my voice mail instead.

  “Press seven to hear the first message,” the electronic operator said, her pleasant greeting out of keeping with my frantic state of mind.

  My thumb trembled on the seven, then I listened as Karen’s recording came on.

  “Hi, honey. I’m trying to get in touch with you, but I guess you have your phone off.” There was a pause, a shudder of breath that said, Where are you? I need you to pick up the phone. Now. She finished with, “It’s a little after midnight. Give me a call when you get this message. I’ll be”—her voice choked out momentarily, then came back—“on my cell.” The words were coated with an eerie layer of forced control, like a blast blanket over a bomb about to detonate. I’d never heard my mom sound like that. Just before she hung up, a car horn blared in the background; then a siren echoed through the phone.

  The call-waiting beeped as I was closing the voice mail, and I answered, my body flushed, and my head pounding.

  Karen was on the other end. “Oh, honey, thank God,” she breathed, her voice thin and hoarse. “Where are you? Everyone’s been trying to reach you since last night. I tried to look up Barry’s number, but it wasn’t listed. I tried his mother, and she was out of town. Then this morning, Barry called and left a message for you at the house, and it was obvious you weren’t with him. I was scared to death. I finally called Mrs—”

  “Mom, what’s going on?” I cut her off before she could ask again where I was.

  She took a long, slow breath. I knew that sound. She always did that when she was about to deliver bad news, when she was trying to decide how much to tell me.

  “Mom, what’s happening?” The pounding in my head was growing louder. In my hand, the phone felt like a hot coal. “What’s wrong?” Tears quivered in my voice, and the overload of emotions from the morning came rushing back.

  As usual, Karen sought first to protect me. “Calm down, honey. If you’re driving, I want you to go ahead and pull over.”

  “Mom, tell me,” I pleaded, turning into a Handi Stop and putting the car in park. “I’m pulled over.” Another deep breath. She blew out like a woman trying to calm the pain during labor. “James is in the hospital. Everything’s all right now, but he’ll be here for a few days.”

  “What happened?” A hundred possibilities rushed through my mind.

  “Calm down, sweetheart. It’s all right.”

  “You didn’t sound all right on the voice mail.” My emotions overflowed, and the words ended in a sob. This day, this trip, was suddenly too much. “Why is Dad in the hospital?”

  She paused, carefully gathering her thoughts the way she always did. The wait was agonizing. “Th
ere was a fire at the house last night. James came home from the airport and found it. He didn’t know I wasn’t home, and he was afraid you were there, and he wasn’t sure if the cats were inside or outside, so he took in some smoke, looking for everybody. By the time the fire department got there, he was experiencing chest pains.”

  The picture of James in the hospital squeezed around my throat like a fist. It’s my fault. It’s my fault. If I’d been there, I could have made him get out. If I’d been honest about where I was and how long I’d be gone, he would have known not to look for me in the house. “Is he okay?” I was sobbing now. I’d caused this. I’d caused it by leaving, by sneaking away, by acting as if a birth family I’d never met mattered more than the one that had taken me in, loved me and raised me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  “He will be.” The words were gentle, meant to wrap around and protect me. As always, Karen was trying to make things easier. I didn’t deserve it. “They found a blockage in his heart that didn’t show up on his last flight physical. They’ve checked to make sure his lungs are clear, and they’ve scheduled an angioplasty for the morning. A few days of rest and he’ll be fine.”

  “They’re doing heart surgery on Dad tomorrow?” I felt sick, weak. Memories flashed through my mind—James taking me fishing, teaching me to play the guitar, letting me tag along when he was scheduled for a long layover. Now he needed me, and I was miles away, searching for some stranger who hadn’t even cared enough to stick around.

  Please, God, please don’t take my dad away. I love my dad. I need him. I don’t care if I ever find my real father. I want the father I have.

  “Honey, it’s all right,” Karen soothed. I realized I was sobbing into the phone, babbling, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over.

  “Sweetheart, calm down,” Karen said softly. “It’s just orthoscopic surgery, like Grandpa Sommerfield had, remember? This kind of problem runs in the family. James will just have to keep on top of it from now on. Being young and healthy doesn’t absolve you from plaque in the arteries, apparently.” She waited as I tried to get myself under control.

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “He’s sedated right now.”

  I started crying again.

  Karen went on, probably afraid that if she ended the conversation I’d drive off in hysterics and have a wreck. “The fire department got the fire out, but there’s quite a bit of smoke and water damage. Looks like an electrical problem in the downstairs bathroom vent fan started it. The bad news is, between the smoke and the water, most of the things in your room are damaged. The good news is Dad’s fine, the cats are fine, and we’ll be getting new carpet, and remodeling your bathroom, bedroom, and the kitchen.” I knew she was trying to lighten up, to move into our family’s usual disaster-recovery pattern. Whenever things got dire, whenever there was a crisis or an argument, someone eventually made a joke to soften the blow.

  But I didn’t feel like laughing. I felt nervous, and sick, and guilty, as if the phone were a high-voltage socket and my emotions were zipping around on the current. “I don’t care about the stuff in my room. I just care about Dad. I’m coming home.” I checked the clock on the dash. Almost noon. By supper time, I could be back in Kansas City. “Mom, I’m really sorry.”

  “None of this was your fault, Dell.” She seemed confused by the apology. “It was an electrical fire and too much high-fat food. Your dad’s going to have to give up Barbeque Barn and Cheesy Charlie’s meatball sandwiches, that’s all. Cheesy Charlie may have a tough time making it without our standard monthly contribution, but think of all the money we’ll save.”

  She expected me to laugh, but I couldn’t. A new wave of tears pressed my eyes, and I sniffled into the phone. “I shouldn’t have left.”

  “Honey, you did not cause this. It was not your fault.” Concern deepened in her voice. “The fire started in your bathroom ceiling and traveled to the wall between your bathroom and bedroom. It’s a good thing you weren’t home. You could have been sleeping in there.”

  If I’d been home, I might have seen the fire sooner, stopped James from taking such a risk. “I just wish I’d been there to help. I’m sorry you were worried about me, on top of everything else.”

  There was a gap in the conversation, and I could tell the joking was over. “Dell.” All hints of laughter were gone. This was the serious tone, the firm-but-caring Mom tone. “I finally got in touch with Mrs. Bradford a little while ago, since she was the last one who’d seen you before you left town. She said she’d given you some information about the Choctaw Nation offices, and she thought maybe you were in Oklahoma looking for your birth records.”

  Everything inside me slowly sank. She knew the truth. “I didn’t find anything,” I said, as if that somehow mitigated what I’d done.

  “But, honey”—she was in pain; I could hear it in her voice, and I knew I’d caused it—“why would you do that without saying anything?”

  Why, indeed? Because I was a coward. Because I couldn’t tell anyone that part of me was still waiting for Mama to come home and tell me she loved me, after all. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I knew you and James didn’t want me looking.”

  “Dell, we would have understood,” she said. “When you were younger, your dad and I were always concerned about your father resurfacing, or his relatives finding out about you and trying to gain custody. You hear some awful stories about children being taken away from adoptive families after they’ve been together for years, and we couldn’t take that risk. We felt it was best to leave the situation alone, but we always knew that there might come a day when you’d want to look for your biological relatives.”

  “I don’t want you two to think I don’t…” A ragged breath trembled from my throat, ended in a sob. “That you’re not my mom and dad.”

  Karen sniffled on the other end of the phone. “Honey, James and I just want you to be happy. We know there are things in your past you’re still dealing with. It doesn’t change the fact that we love you.”

  “I don’t deserve it.” That was the heart of the matter, the essence of everything, even after all these years. In the back of my mind, there was still the question, If my own mama didn’t want me, how could anyone else? Ever.

  “Of course you do, Dell.” Karen’s voice held the soft reassurance of a mother’s love. “You’ve had so much trauma in your past, and you’ve never let it stop you. You know, Grandma Rose used to say it’s not how you fall down that matters, it’s how you get back up. Every time I remember her saying that, I think of you. You deserve every good thing that comes your way. You’re the strongest person I know.”

  I laughed and cried at the same time. How could she possibly mean that? “You’re the strongest person I know.”

  “Dell, everyone has doubts on the inside,” she whispered, and I could picture her face as she said the words. I wished I could hug her through the phone. “Finding yourself is just part of growing up.”

  “It’s hard.”

  “I know,” she replied softly. “Your dad and I don’t mean to push you about Juilliard and all the rest of it. We want you to find your own way, and whatever you decide will be okay with us, I promise. Our love for you isn’t conditional on anything, all right?”

  “All right.”

  “Coming home?”

  “I’m coming home.” Checking the clock, I switched the car into gear. “I should make it by supper time, or a little later.”

  “Do me a favor,” Karen said before she hung up. “Take a little while to dry your eyes and settle down before you get on the highway. Get a little lunch or something. Don’t hurry. We’ll be waiting for you when you get here.”

  “Okay.” I pulled down the rearview mirror, then took a discarded napkin and started wiping my eyes. “I love you, Mom.”

  “I love you, too.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Pulling onto the road again, I thought about Jace and Shasta. Shasta had retrieved her quilt and pillows fro
m the back of my car sometime after I’d left the campground, but I couldn’t leave without telling her and Jace good-bye and that I’d be back again after the crisis was over back home.

  Drifting by one of Shasta’s murals, a warrior on horseback gazing at an eagle fly overhead, I felt a sense of loss. The warrior was so real, he seemed to watch me pass. His face, the strong chin, the full lips and pensive frown reminded me of Jace. I wondered if Shasta had used her brother as the model, or if I was only seeing what I wanted to see. In my mind, I was already writing a script in which Jace looked at me the way the warrior was looking at the eagle, as if it held him with a gravitational pull he couldn’t understand, as if he wanted to bring it closer, even though the idea was impractical.

  This doesn’t make sense, part of me was saying. You barely know him. He has kids, a family, a life.

  He’s too old for you, Nana Jo added.

  Despite the voices of reason, I remembered the way he looked at me just before he kissed me, the way I felt when his arms slipped around me, strong and firm, drawing me in until his lips met mine and a hush fell over everything. In that moment, time stood still and there was nothing else in the world. My heart beat with his, as if we were one person, not two.

  It was like nothing I’d ever experienced, like something from a movie or a fairy tale. When Jace took me in his arms, I could pour myself into him, and it was wonderful. The only other thing that swept me away like that was my music. Now music and Jace were intertwined, two passages to the innermost part of my soul.