LITMIR.BIZ

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listed off the names of the juveniles she’d worked with prior to Kiya’s suicide.

      “Can you think of any reason why she’d show up at the center after taking meth?”

      “No. And the tribal police were clueless. It didn’t make sense. If she was back on drugs after all everyone had done for her, I’d think she’d feel so guilty she’d hide in shame.”

      “Unless she realized her mistake and came back for help.”

      “A little too late.” Maggie had thought of that, distraught that she hadn’t been there for Kiya when she’d needed her most.

      “I can’t understand what went so wrong during the time I was gone.” Joe tapped his pen against the metal desk.

      “Things were different. The tribal police didn’t have their leader. They tried to keep things together, but all I could figure was the teenagers were being influenced by an outside source.”

      Joe shoved a hand through his dark hair. “My deployment couldn’t have come at a worse time.”

      Maggie almost snorted, but held her reaction in check. You’re telling me. She’d listened to the man she’d fallen in love with inform her they had no future. Then he’d walked away—or rather flown away—to the other side of the world. Two weeks later, she confirmed her suspicions, she was pregnant.

      She gazed at the top of Joe’s head as he bent to the task of noting her responses and her heart softened. Fourteen months had given her time to get over her anger and to learn more about this man through the people on the reservation. The more she learned, the more she understood the reasons for his reaction to their night of lovemaking.

      Joe had lost his father when he was ten years old. Chaska Lonewolf had been a gentle man, proud of his heritage, proud of his son and determined to instill in him the ways of his ancestors. But he hadn’t had the chance. He’d died while out hunting when his truck had flipped onto him.

      The loss of Chaska Lonewolf as a husband and financial provider for the family had devastated Joe’s mother. She’d taken Joe from the reservation, the only home he’d ever known, and gone to work in Rapid City, where she’d met and married Kevin Brandt. Shortly after the wedding, Kevin’s ex-wife had dumped six-year-old Paul on the new family and left town.

      School wasn’t easy for a Native American boy in a white man’s world, but Joe had kept his head low and studied hard, determined to return to the reservation and his way of life as soon as he was old enough. The time had come sooner than he’d expected when Kevin was laid off and once again the family was destitute.

      They’d packed up their meager belongings and moved back to the reservation where Kevin drank, bragged about Paul and berated Joe every chance he could get. A miserable life for a little boy who’d lost a loving father. No wonder he’d pushed Maggie away. What had the white man done for him besides give him pain?

      Maggie felt deep compassion for the ten-year-old Joe. She’d struggled with the truth of Dakota’s parentage. He deserved a father like Joe’s. He deserved Joe. But Joe had spelled it out in his parting speech. There was no room in his life for her. So Maggie had to make arrangements to keep the tribe from knowing the baby was Joe’s.

      Her first instinct was to leave her job and run as far from the reservation as she could. But the teens she’d been working with needed her almost as much as her unborn baby. When Paul started coming around her work, flirting with her, she jumped at a solution.

      As it turned out, Paul was the only one who’d known she was pregnant before she married him. He’d been patient, waiting for her to get over the man who got her in that condition. In love with her from the start, he waited throughout her pregnancy, showering her with encouragement and as much affection as she’d let him. But when the baby was born, the wall of her emotions for Joe still stood between them. Maggie wanted to love this man who’d stepped in and helped her in her time of need, but she couldn’t.

      Paul must have realized this because he spent more and more time working at the casino. Maggie never saw him. For the most part, she and Dakota were on their own.

      Without her son, Maggie felt more alone in the world than ever. If not for Joe, she didn’t know what she’d do.

      AFTER MAGGIE’S INTERVIEW, Joe dropped her off at the youth center, despite his better judgment. She’d insisted, saying she needed time to check on her kids and to think.

      He’d grabbed her hand before she slipped out of his vehicle. “Promise me you’ll call if you need anything?”

      “I will,” she said, climbing down.

      “I’ll pick you up around three.”

      Her head jerked up and she stared at him, her eyes glassy as if she had to concentrate to focus. “No need.”

      A gentle smile lifted his lips. “You don’t have your car here.”

      “Oh.” She was preoccupied, and rightly so with her baby missing. “Okay.” That was all she said before she turned and walked toward the building, pulling her coat tightly around her.

      Joe wanted to go after her and coax her into telling him everything going on in her head. He felt like she was living detached from him and the world around them and he couldn’t get through to her.

      With his stomach knotted, he swung his SUV to the west, bumping along a rutted track that shouldn’t be called a road by anyone’s standards.

      Fifteen minutes later, he pulled into a dirt driveway and sat for a moment, staring at the one-story clapboard house standing alone on a knoll. The yard was free of clutter with not even a bush to adorn the base of the building. Two naked cottonwood trees edged up out of the dead grass, a poor break against the bitter north wind.

      A nondescript house for one of the most respected members of the Painted Rock Tribe. Matoskah, or White Bear, had been the tribal Medicine Man for as long as Joe could remember. His reputation for native cures for common physical ailments had Lakotans from towns scattered across the reservation traveling the lonely back roads to seek his help. But more than the cures for disease and sickness, people sought him out for spiritual healing.

      And that was the reason for Joe’s visit.

      With the burden of a child’s life weighing on his shoulders, Joe needed focus and a mind clear of emotions, memories and confusion.

      A mind clear of Maggie.

      How could he still be upset that she’d married another man? He’d told her to take a hike, that she had no place in the life of a Lakota. Of this Lakota.

      What they had shared was lust—deep, powerful lust. Not enough to maintain a relationship, not on a reservation where poverty and destitution were the norm. For some of his people, lust might be enough. But he and Maggie were from two different worlds. She was white and Joe was a dark-skinned Indian, sworn to uphold the ways of his people and preserve the Lakota bloodline and traditions for future generations.

      Memories and regrets punctured his soul the day of his stepbrother’s funeral, when he’d seen what he could have had. Maggie and her baby—a family to call his own.

      Shoving his shoulders back, he knocked on the faded door and waited in the cold. After one long minute, Joe stepped from the concrete stoop and strode around the house. In the backyard stood a dome-shaped structure. Vapor wafted in the bitter morning air, a hazy fog lifting from the taut hide stretched over arched willow branches.

      A smile lifted the edges of Joe’s lips. Only Matoskah kept his sweat lodge erect year-round, when others were dismantled after powwow and tourist season ended. The buffalo hide, darkened with age and years of smoke, held the secrets, hopes and dreams of many Lakotans, divulged in the way of the ancients.

      Joe hesitated to intrude on the shaman’s meditation.

      “Enter the womb of our people, Son of Lonewolf.” Age did little to diminish the powerful voice of the tribe’s trusted healer.

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