by Donna Fasano
The milky skin between her brows creased. “Please, Chay, try to understand. I had to keep this a secret.”
He wanted to empathize with her. He wanted to understand. He did, actually. But suddenly it seemed that his wounded feelings began to ooze fresh blood.
“After seeing you with Dakota and Lyssa, with Mat and Julie—” the enormity of the affront and hurt in his tone took him aback “—it seems that the only person you kept your secret from was me. And there seemed to be an amazing familiarity between you and my grandfather. Does he know, too?”
She pursed her mouth as she nodded her head. “He does,” she admitted.
It was as if she’d reached out with her fingernails and torn fresh gashes in his flesh. His bark of laughter was grim. “So why all the secrecy, Tori? You make lame excuses to keep me away from the inn. Away from the carriage house. Away from you. Yet everyone knows what’s going on there! Everyone but me.”
“Everyone doesn’t know, Chay.”
His jaw dropped incredulously. “I heard them. Dakota and Lyssa were too eager to accept your nonexistent explanation to leave the party early. And Julie was standing right there when Mat slipped you some money. My cousin is funding your cause. Are you going to deny that?”
“No, I’m not. I can’t.”
The confession he’d wrung out of her should have made him feel vindicated, but it didn’t. What she was doing was noble. So why was he feeling so angry? He had no answer as the cloud hovering over him only got thicker. Darker.
“They know about my work, yes,” she said. “Mat has offered his help in case I need him. And Lyssa and Julie… well, I know them because they came to me seeking help. They came to Vermont because they were both fleeing abusive relationships. Lyssa was being stalked by her ex-husband. And Julie was trying to save her brother from a violent stepfather.”
Her chin tipped up determinedly. “Like I said, they know about my work. They’re good friends, one and all. They help when they can. They ask no questions. They don’t discuss my work with anyone. Ever. They don’t know about specific individuals… when they arrive… or when they leave. Dakota treated Brenda’s physical injuries, and he came in the middle of the night to do it. Grayson counseled her. No one knows of her presence at Freedom Trail except for Grayson and Dakota.” Quietly she added, “And you.”
Tori’s chest rose and fell several times. “You probably won’t believe this now, but… I was going to tell you everything, Chay. Tomorrow morning. Just as soon as Brenda was on her way.”
She reached out to him then. Let her tapered fingers slide over his biceps.
His brain churned and boiled, and he drew in a shaky breath. He wanted to believe her. He wanted—
A twig snapped and both their heads swiveled, their gazes leveled on the shadowy trail from which they both had come.
The boy was young, Chay saw. Not much more than nine or ten.
“Scotty,” Tori said, surprise coating her tone, “what are you doing out here in the dark? Honey, does your mother know where you are?”
The child shook his head. “She’ll be mad when she finds out I left the house. But I was w-worried about you, Tori. I want you to come back now. Okay?”
Distress filled the boy’s gaze as it darted from Tori’s face to Chay’s and then back again. He looked to Chay as if he wanted to bolt.
“You don’t want us to miss our bus, Tori,” Scotty pleaded. “We should go back. We should be leaving for town soon.”
Like the corroded cogs of some age-old machinery, Chay’s brain finally ka-chunked with a grand, mind-blowing realization. Insight made him gasp.
“You’re taking that boy from his father!” He leveled the accusation on Tori as if he was indicting her for a crime.
“I want to go, Tori.”
The fear in the child’s tone filtered into Chay’s hazy mind, but he was too inundated with cataclysmic emotion to react properly to what he heard.
Chay couldn’t take his eyes off Tori’s face. “Do you know what you’re doing? Do you have any idea what it’s like for a kid to grow up without his father? A boy needs his dad, Tori.”
His supplication was on Scotty’s behalf. Chay knew what the child’s life was going to be like. The empty ache that never went away. But he had to admit that it was the still-grieving child deep inside him who cried out with such pain. Moisture scalded the backs of his eyelids, shattering his vision into sharp splinters illuminated by murky moonlight.
“I can’t let you do it,” he said. “I can’t be a party to—”
“Chay.”
The sheer determination in her tone sliced into his sentence like a well-honed blade of steel.
“I’m taking Brenda and Scotty to the bus station,” she said, her voice dead calm. “And nothing you can say will stop me. If there was any other way to save them, don’t you think I’d make it happen?”
Scotty came to stand beside Tori. “I want to go, Tori. Please.”
Chay’s shoulders rounded as he realized that the child was trembling, his eyes wide with anxiety. Crouching onto his haunches, Chay looked into the boy’s face. “You don’t understand what’s happening here. What’s your last name, Scotty? Let me help you.”
“It’s you who doesn’t understand, Chay. This boy has witnessed things no child should ever see.” Ire flashed in Tori’s sapphire eyes. “He doesn’t need you—no matter how good your intentions might be—to send him back to a place he doesn’t want to be. To the kind of person his father is. He doesn’t need the kind of help you’re offering.”
Chay stood then, lifting his gaze to hers, ready for this face-off. “I’m glad that I finally discovered the truth about you before…”
Before I completely lost my heart to you, was what he’d been about to utter. Thank the Great Spirit above, he’d been able to stop himself. Nothing made a man weaker than revealing his innermost thoughts to his adversary. And right at this moment that’s how he viewed Tori. As someone with whom he was in direct opposition.
Some unreadable emotion flickered in her gaze then, the anger that tensed her face easing.
“Chay, listen to me,” she said. “Please listen.” She paused long enough to swallow, to moisten her full bottom lip. Her tone impassioned, she added, “Some men don’t deserve to be fathers.”
Then without another word she took the boy’s hand and led him down the darkened trail.
~oOo~
Chay hacked at the sapling’s base with the ax and felled the small tree in a single swing. He picked it up, stripped it of its limbs and then stacked it on the pile.
He had never realized that the human mind was capable of going through such changes as his was doing tonight. He would reach one conclusion only to find that that line of reckoning was erroneous, then another revelation would slam into his head with what seemed the speed of light.
The one and only issue he’d come to any firm verdict on was Tori and his feelings for her.
He loved her. Of that he was certain, and he was man enough to admit that there would be no wavering on that observation.
It was due to the depth of his emotion for her that he’d made so many mistakes tonight. He’d forced his way into her private affairs. Then he’d had the audacity to feel hurt when she’d declared that what she was involved in was none of his concern. And when she’d tracked him down on the pathway through the forest to apologize, he’d actually accused her of letting everyone in the world in on her secret—everyone, that was, but him.
Tori twisted his emotions inside out. He wanted her. She was a beautiful woman. But what he felt ran deeper than mere physical desire.
He admired her. Admired her courage for all she’d gone through, for her dedication to helping others. Chay still wasn’t convinced that separating that boy from his father was the right thing for Tori to be doing.
This boy has witnessed things no child should ever see. Her words rang through his head.
It had been wrong of him to make judgments against
Tori and her actions regarding the boy without knowing all the facts. She was an intelligent woman. She wouldn’t be putting so much effort into dividing this family without good, solid reasons.
If there was any other way to save them…
Tori’s incensed appeal reverberated through his thoughts, reminding him of some other time… some other place. But he shoved the dark memories aside.
Wrapping his arms around the pile of saplings he’d cut Chay dragged them to the clearing he’d made earlier. He stuck one flexible sapling in each of the narrow, shallow holes he’d dug, then he began to bend the trunks and secure them together with strips of bark. He stopped only to lay more dry wood on the fire he’d built to heat the rocks that would fill the sweat lodge with steam.
As he worked, the image of the little boy’s eyes haunted him. Scotty, Tori had called him. His fear had been immense, that much had been obvious. It bothered Chay to know that he had been the object of Scotty’s terror. The child had stirred something in Chay’s subconscious, or rather the boy’s angst had. Again Chay shoved away the dark clouds that threatened. He wanted to complete the lodge before he opened the door to the past.
Once more, Tori’s voice whispered through his head, Some men don’t deserve to be fathers.
Like a double-edged sword, her words had held dual meaning. She’d intended to push home the idea that Scotty would be better off without his violent father… and Chay suspected she’d been offering another message, as well. One that, at first, had offended him to the very marrow of his bones. Had she insinuated that his father had been in some way unworthy?
In that instant he’d felt as if he’d been standing before her already wounded and bleeding, yet she’d coldly delivered the fatal blow.
He’d come back to the cabin to pace its close confines, too angry with Tori to even think straight. But that anger subsided enough that common sense had filtered into the chaos rioting in his mind. Rather than having a calming effect, though, logic only had him agitated all over again.
Not with anger—no, his anger was spent, gone. But he was suddenly captured by a single-minded determination to solve the mystery of his dreams—of his past—once and for all.
With the frame of the sweat lodge complete, Chay went in search of several thick boughs from a pine tree that would contain the steam and heat. As he secured the fragrant pine to the sapling framework, he sent out a silent prayer of appreciation to Mother Earth for supplying his needs this night.
Chay smothered the fire and then used a heavy Y-shaped stick to transfer the pile of hot rocks from the smoldering embers to the sweat lodge. Then he picked up the bucket of water he’d hauled from the lake. Tugging his sweatshirt from his body, he secured it over the opening in the lodge as a makeshift door. He crouched down and crawled into the cramped confines of the lodge he’d built.
Thoughts of Tori floated in and out of his mind, but he did what he could to ignore them. There was so much that needed working out, so many dilemmas to solve. But right now he had to focus on himself.
It was time to face the memories—the realities—of his childhood.
Chay cleared his mind. The water he ladled from the bucket sizzled as it came into contact with the rocks. Closing his eyes, he inhaled, pulling the scent of pine and hot steam deep into his lungs. He fixed his thoughts, his inner sight, on a tiny pinprick of light that he conjured. His spiritual ear heard the sounds of ancient Kolheek meditating drums that beat to the simultaneous rhythm of his heart.
With his breathing slow and steady, his thoughts void, Chay let himself slip into a dreamy state of consciousness.
The blackness behind his eyelids lightened and a smoky haze seemed to billow as images gradually emerged. Just as in his familiar nightmare, the first sensation he became aware of was the heat.
Next, the shapes took form: the frightening, animated bear, the mighty oak. And yet again Chay found himself separated from the happenings in the dream by a thin veil of pure white light. The glowing curtain gave off the feeling of security, protectiveness, a shroud through which Chay could see the dream, but not be affected by it. Prior to returning to the rez, the dreams had been so harrowing that he would awaken with his heart in his throat, a sheen of sweat covering his body.
Then he realized that even after returning to Misty Glen, he had been jarred awake, panting and fearful. So when exactly had this shielding cloak become an element of his dream?
Chay remembered that the last time he’d experienced the dream as a full-fledged nightmare had been in Tori’s home. He’d awakened with a start from where he’d fallen asleep on her sofa. After that incident, the dream had ceased to be so nightmarish and had become more of a night vision that needed sorting through. A problematic apparition that required deciphering.
He had no idea how or why Tori might have caused this change, but he was grateful for it nonetheless.
Sinking deeper into the mental picture from the past, Chay realized that the small boy from his dream—he, himself—was standing outside his grandfather’s sweat lodge, his face pressed against the soft pine as he peered through the cracks between the saplings. Never before had the images been so clear.
No wonder the heat in his nightmare had been so intense. He watched as his grandfather ladled water onto the huge pile of rocks. The air wafting about his face was sweltering, but what was taking place inside the lodge was too important for him to back away.
An odd feeling of disembodiment gave Chay the sensation of being the anxious and guilt-ridden little boy while standing on the sidelines behind the screen of light, calmly watching the proceedings take place.
Apprehension urged him to lift himself out of the image, to wipe the dream—no, the memory—from his mind and not deal with it. But doing so was no longer a possibility. The truth would be faced. As a young Kolheek he was taught that truth could never harm. It might be a teacher of hard lessons, but one was better off walking in the wisdom of reality than stumbling in the darkness of idealism.
Wrapping himself in the light, he pressed to become one with the boy. He needed to see through the child’s eyes.
Inside the sweat lodge an argument was taking place. His father was there. And his grandfather, too. The two men were locked in a battle of wills.
He was startled to see that the image he had always taken to be the animated bear, swinging out its sharp-clawed paws, did not have the face of his grandfather. The bear was his father. Furious, shouting, insistent… and staggering drunk.
“You cannot take Chay from me,” he bellowed. “He is my son! You are an old fool if you think you can steal my boy.”
Unrelenting, Grayson Makwa stood as firm as a mighty oak.
“You will leave Misty Glen,” he said to his son. “And you will not return until you have stopped drinking. Chay will stay with me. I will get the elders involved if I have to.”
Involving the tribal elders in a family dispute was the equivalent of going to federal court—the consequences were that binding.
Gut-wrenching guilt lay heavy in the belly of the eavesdropping boy, and the reasoning behind that fearful remorse came flooding into Chay’s brain like a rushing, rain-swollen river.
Chay remembered having gone to his grandfather. Remembered having complained about his fear of riding in the car with his father. Remembered describing the way the car would swerve from one side of the road to the other. His grandfather had hugged him tightly, had told him not to worry, that he would take care of everything.
And he had.
Grayson Makwa had banished his son from the rez. He had taken custody of Chay. Had raised him as his own.
And how had Chay repaid the man? By conveniently forgetting that he himself was the impetus behind the drastic change in his life. As a six-year-old boy, he had ratted out his father, thus resulting in the exile that had left him aching and lonely for the very man whom he’d betrayed. Chay realized it was that little boy’s guilt that had caused him to forget. He’d put the truth out of his m
ind in order to live with the fact that he had been the cause of his father’s departure.
Memories continued to rain down in a torrent.
His father had worked as a deliveryman, driving long distances to and from towns all over New England. And it was common practice that Chay would accompany his father. It was these very trips that Chay had complained to his grandfather about… and it was on one of these trips not three months after being exiled from the rez that Gray Makwa had died.
A scalding tear welled from Chay’s closed eyes, trailing down his face as he remembered that his father hadn’t been killed by a drunk driver, but had been the drunk driver who had caused the accident that had taken his life. The fancies of a child who wanted a perfect parent had caused him to twist and turn the truth into a dark ideal. And he’d spent quite a few years stumbling around in that darkness.
Chay wept. He mourned the death of his father. He also grieved for all the years he’d lost with his grandfather. He’d wasted so much time blaming the man who loved him, who had saved him.
There was nothing he could do that would bring his father back, he realized. But although he couldn’t bring back a single day of those years spent impugning his grandfather, he could still make things right with him. Starting today.
Hope budded in his chest like a flower, fragrant and beautiful.
The images in his head had evaporated. But Chay sat there with his eyes closed, still and silent, realizing that the glowing veil remained. It radiated with a peculiar and mysterious light. A light that was nearly lifelike.
The curtain drew in upon itself, gathered up into a ball and metamorphosed into a pristine-white dove. Its wings fluttered gracefully. Its coo brought peace to his mind, tranquility to his soul.