My Sister, Myself

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Not Tory, of course, but a woman who was free and whole and able to love.

  AT THE HEAD of his dining-room table, Will leaned back in his chair, replete. As usual, Becca’s ham-and-apricot casserole had been superb. He was enjoying their company. And, in another half hour or so, Bethany would be awake for her eight-o’clock feeding. Life didn’t get much better than this.

  “Did you grow up on the reservation?” Becca, resting her arms on the table, asked their guest. She’d been keeping him occupied with one question after another from the moment they’d sat down to dinner.

  “Maybe the man would like to catch his breath, Bec,” Will told her, loving the excited glow in her eyes even as he took pity on Ben Sanders.

  She nodded. “I’m sorry, Ben. Am I making you uncomfortable?” she asked.

  “No.” Ben’s gaze slid to Christine and then back to Becca. “It’s hard to be offended when you care so much about the ancestors I’ve been waiting most of my life to find.”

  “So did you grow up on the reservation?” Christine asked.

  She’d been quiet most of the evening, but that was how Will remembered her from the interview last spring. A quiet woman with sad eyes. There was something changed about her, though. She seemed less confident somehow. Remembering how difficult it had been for Becca and her sister Sari to deal with Sari’s daughter’s death a few years before, Will figured Christine must be experiencing something similar. Her own sister’s death was still recent, and as sudden and unexpected as his niece’s death had been.

  Christine looked different, too. Had lost a lot of weight over the summer, cut her hair much shorter.

  “No, I didn’t grow up on the reservation,” Ben was answering quietly. The young man was mature beyond his years. As though he’d already learned a whole life’s worth of lessons.

  “My father was born there, lived there until he was sixteen. His father, John Cloud, had been killed in a hunting accident when he was still a young boy, and his mother, Samuel Montford’s daughter, died when he was about ten. Gradually my grandfather’s people became less tolerant of the half-breed kid who preferred to wear his hair short and wasn’t particularly interested in Indian ways. They’d loved my grandmother dearly, had accepted her as one of them and, out of respect for her, I guess, had put up with her son, as well, but after she was gone…”

  Ben’s voice drifted off as he shrugged and took a sip from the cup of coffee Becca had placed before him.

  “It was just as Samuel Montford had feared,” Christine said. Will was rather surprised to see this private and subdued young woman so enthralled by the story. Pleasantly surprised. “Some people still seem to have a hard time accepting racially mixed unions,” she elaborated.

  “Especially if there are children,” Becca added.

  “I guess.” Ben ran his finger along the edge of his saucer, frowned. “He also had a hard time finding his place in the white man’s world.”

  “A man without a people,” Will said, feeling himself supremely blessed. He knew who he was, who his people were, past and present.

  “He changed his name and married my mother, a white woman, and had me—but it only lasted about ten years,” Ben continued. “I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but physiologically, many Indians don’t have a high tolerance for alcohol. Something about a missing enzyme—”

  “Which is why most reservations in this state are dry,” Becca interjected.

  “They are?” Christine’s brows rose.

  Will nodded. “There are some places in Phoenix—businesses, including casinos—that are built on rented Indian land, and because of that, can’t get a liquor license.”

  “My father inherited that low tolerance from his father,” Ben said.

  Will felt for the younger man, knowing what was coming next.

  “He started drinking when he moved off the reservation,” Becca guessed, mirroring, as she often did, Will’s thoughts.

  Ben brushed crumbs into a pile on the tablecloth. “He couldn’t hold onto a job, or a home, either. And every time we had to move, it was the fault of whatever town we were in, whatever people we dealt with. Everyone was prejudiced against him because he was a half-breed.”

  “I’m sure there was some truth in that,” Will said.

  Becca smiled at him. “Will’s had to do battle for a number of Indian students over the years. The injustice this country has handed out to its aboriginal people is something that can always be counted on to raise his blood pressure.”

  Maybe. But nothing could raise his blood pressure like she could. In the most thrilling way….

  “There was some truth to it,” Ben said, “but it was also an excuse, a resentment he carried with him to his grave.”

  Frowning, Christine pushed her coffee cup away. “Did you have brothers and sisters?”

  “Nope. I think by the time I was born, my mother was already disillusioned and that I’m the reason she hung on as long as she did. She took me with her when she finally left him, but died the next year—complications from diabetes. I was sent back to Dad….”

  Will jumped up as his ready ears picked up the faint sound from the bassinet in the other room.

  “The baby’s awake,” Ben said, standing, too. He followed Will out of the room.

  “Come here, sweet girl,” Will crooned to his infant daughter, lifting her out of her bassinet for a hug and a couple of kisses before laying her back down.

  Ben watched him change the baby’s diaper. “You do that a lot,” he said.

  “You sound as though you know what you’re talking about, too.”

  “My daughter was born when I was eighteen,” Ben said. “Used to do a lot of the caring for her myself.”

  Will turned, his hand spanning the baby’s stomach as he looked at Ben. “Used to?”

  “Turns out she wasn’t mine biologically. She’s living with her mother and real father as of this summer.”

  “That’s rough,” Will commiserated. He couldn’t imagine anything more awful than losing Bethany. Except losing Becca.

  He’d come close to doing that earlier in the year and knew firsthand that it was an experience worse than death. To be dead while still alive…

  “Mind if I hold her?” Ben asked as Will finished changing Bethany.

  “No, of course not.”

  Watching, Will was impressed with the way Ben gently held Bethany, cradling her head protectively. But it was the genuine look of delight on the man’s face that won Will over completely.

  Ben Sanders was quite a guy.

  A woman would be lucky to have him on her side.

  And his new professor looked as though she needed a little luck.

  Unfortunately Ben Sanders was off-limits to her because he was her student—at least for the current semester.

  Christine glanced up when Will and Ben walked back into the room, her eyes darting to the baby in Ben’s arms and then away.

  “You want to hold her?” Ben asked. “She’s not fussing yet.”

  “You’ve got about five minutes.” Becca laughed.

  “If she’s not eating by then, she’ll scream the house down.”

  “No—you go ahead,” Christine answered Ben, smiling awkwardly.

  Will was relieved to see that awkwardness. When Becca had told him the two of them would be arriving together, he’d gotten the same sick feeling he’d had last spring when he’d heard rumors about Todd Moore’s possible liaison with a student.

  He’d had to force his best friend, who was also head of Montford’s Psychology department, to resign when the rumors turned out to be true.

  He sure as hell didn’t want to see the same thing happening to Christine Evans. He barely knew the woman, but he’d had a soft spot for her from the first time they’d met.

  Maybe Becca could suggest someone for Christine. That might be the best solution. Invite them both to their annual Christmas party—if they had one.

  With Bethany in the house, he didn’t dare p
lan too far ahead. He never knew what she’d dictate from one minute to the next and had already changed his plans so many times in the weeks since she was born that he knew better than to be sure of anything.

  But he was damn glad to have her dictating. Thankful for the sometimes sleepless nights, the curtailed freedom, the smelly diapers and stained shirts.

  And would be thankful until his dying day that Becca was there, sharing the whole experience with him.

  He’d almost lost her. He was never going to forget that or how fortunate he was to have this second chance. The first twenty years he’d lived with Becca, he’d taken their love for granted. He planned to spend the next fifty years fully aware of its value.

  As Christine walked out to Ben’s truck a short while later, he couldn’t help but hope that someday his wife might able to work a little magic on her, too.

  “SO TELL ME about your family,” Ben said, steering his truck slowly down the winding mountain road that served as the Parsonses’ drive. Christine sat stiffly beside him, staring straight ahead. He didn’t know if it was his probing that was making her uncomfortable or the steep dark road.

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Seems only fair, considering that you’ve just heard every intimate detail of three generations of mine.”

  “There’s not much to tell.”

  “It’s safe to assume that at one point in your life you had parents.” Something made him persist. Desert brush loomed in front of them, shadowy and large.

  Christine nodded, her face, when he stole a quick glance, expressionless. No warm memories there.

  “Are they still alive?”

  She shook her head. And then nothing. Were the wounds still that raw? Or so old they didn’t matter?

  “I’m sorry,” he said, slowing the truck further as the shadows grew closer to the road.

  “Don’t be.”

  “They’ve been gone a long time, then?”

  “My mother died when I was ten.”

  His heart lurched. “That must have been hard.”

  Silence.

  “What about your father?”

  “I never knew him.”

  Reaching the end of the mountain drive, Ben turned the truck toward town. He wasn’t in any hurry to drop her off.

  “Then who raised you after your mother died?”

  “My sister.”

  “She was that much older than you?” Ben asked, glancing sideways. Her features were still. “Old enough to have custody of a ten-year-old?”

  “Our stepfather lived with us.”

  There was really nothing different in the way she’d said the words, no change in the monotone she’d been using since the conversation began, and yet, Ben felt a new chill.

  “Is he still around?” he asked cautiously.

  “He died of lung cancer a couple of years ago.”

  Ben had lost both of his parents, as well. But she already knew that. A car approached them, its headlights momentarily blinding.

  “When you’re little you think your parents are going to live forever,” he mused, “or at least long enough to get old and be grandparents…”

  He paused, slowed to turn. Christine remained silent beside him, her gaze on the road.

  “Makes it even harder to lose them when it happens long before it’s time.”

  “Yeah,” she said so softly he barely heard her, “it does.”

  He heard the pain in her voice, felt it with her.

  “What about your sister?” he asked, hoping to ease that pain a bit. “Was it just the two of you, or did you have other siblings?”

  “It was just the two of us.”

  “Where is she now? Still back East?” Ben wanted to meet her, to unravel at least part of the mystery that was Christine.

  “She’s buried in New Mexico.”

  Oh, God.

  “What happened?”

  “A car accident.” The words were staccato, suspended by the pain that accompanied them.

  He’d reached the turnoff for her street, but pulled into the gravel lot at the park, instead, stopping the car beneath a tree. Only the moon’s reflection illuminated them, a confusing contrast of light and shadow.

  “You want to talk about it?” he asked as Christine sat unmoving beside him. She hadn’t even acknowledged that he’d stopped the truck.

  “There’s nothing to tell. The car went off the road. She was killed.”

  Had it not been for the raw anguish he glimpsed briefly in her eyes, Ben might have been able to let it go at that.

  “How long ago?” he asked.

  “Not quite two months.”

  He turned to face her. “Just before classes started?” It explained so much. Her stoicism, her unusual reticence. Christine was in the throes of grief.

  Throes he knew only too well.

  Perhaps this also explained why he’d felt such an unusual connection to her.

  “What was her name?” Would it help her to talk about it?

  “T-tory,” she said, still not looking at him. He had a feeling she wasn’t seeing the grassy area and park benches in front of them, either.

  Compelled by something stronger than his own reason, Ben brushed one hand across her cheek, undaunted when she flinched. With a soothing motion he remembered from his own childhood, he smoothed her bangs away from her face.

  “Don’t!” she cried, pulling back sharply.

  But not before his hand had felt the uneven ridge of skin on her forehead.

  He brushed her bangs again, holding them up so he could see her forehead in the moonlight. No longer fighting him, Christine closed her eyes.

  The scar was angry-looking, long, puffy, as though the tear had been too ragged to repair neatly. And still pink. It was recent.

  “You were in the car, too.” His heart in his throat, he knew he was right.

  Christine nodded. Tears crept out from beneath her lowered eyelids to slide down her cheek.

  “Were you driving?”

  She shook her head. And then nodded. Ben figured it didn’t much matter one way or the other. Except…

  Christine seemed so unhappy with herself, so lacking in confidence, in self-love. Could this be why?

  “Was it your fault?” he asked, knowing that regardless what had happened, the accident was simply that, an accident.

  Christine nodded. Another tear escaped. The woman was consumed by grief and guilt, and Ben couldn’t leave it like that.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Th-there’s not much to tell,” she said, her voice shaky. She turned her head away, looked out the passenger window. “A-another car came around the curve when we did. We swerved too close to the edge and went over.”

  “Was he passing you?”

  “I guess.”

  “And you were in your lane?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sounds to me like the other car was at fault.”

  She shrugged, still facing away from him.

  “Were you cited?”

  She shook her head. “No one was. They considered it a one-car accident and didn’t charge me.”

  He longed to pull her into his arms, to place her head on his chest and shoulder the burdens that were too heavy for her to bear alone. He ran his fingers through the ends of her hair, then lightly stroked her shoulder and the back of her neck.

  Her muscles were tight, strained. He continued to massage gently, but she didn’t melt into his touch, didn’t relax at all. She didn’t pull away, either.

  “If the law doesn’t blame you, why do you blame yourself?” he asked after a while.

  She was silent for so long he didn’t think she was going to answer him. Despite that, he was ready to sit there as many hours as she’d allow him to offer whatever comfort he could, even if that was only by barely touching her neck.

  “We were on our way to Arizona.” It was an effort to make out the words. “She wouldn’t have been coming out here if not for me.”

  He cou
ld tell her that didn’t make the accident her fault. He could insist that the decision to accompany her had been Tory’s, that neither one of them was to blame if the fates had chosen that particular moment to send a reckless driver across their path. He could have told her—but he didn’t. It would have done nothing to help her.

  “The night my father died, he’d been drinking,” Ben said, instead, taking comfort himself now from the brief physical contact. “And the more he drank, the more bitter he got, until this commercial came on about an Indian and littering. The one where someone driving by on the highway throws a bag of trash at an Indian’s feet. I don’t know if my father was feeling his Indian heritage at that moment or his own bitterness, but he threw his glass at the television set.” Ben could still see the shards flying. “The glass shattered and the whiskey dripped down the screen.”

  Christine didn’t move, her head still turned away. But her breathing was growing heavier. She was listening.

  “It was nothing he hadn’t done before, in some way or other. I just happened to have a friend over that night.”

  Her muscles lurched beneath his fingers.

  “Then Dad decided he was going to the bar, and instead of stopping him like I usually did, I let him go. I was so damned humiliated, so eager to have him gone, I practically started the car for him.”

  He paused, concentrated on the warmth of her skin underneath her blouse, the fragile bones at the base of her neck.

  “He never made it to the bar—and I never saw him again.”

  Turning to face him, Christine met his gaze, her eyes filled with more warmth than he’d ever seen.

  “He wrapped his car around a tree,” Ben said in a whisper.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “SURELY YOU DON’T blame yourself for your father’s death?” Tory asked, able to breathe again, to speak, now that she was no longer the topic of conversation.

  “On occasion,” he admitted.

  Tory found it nearly impossible to have compassion for a man. But she hated to think of Ben torturing himself when it wasn’t necessary. She knew about alcoholics. Had spent most of her life at the mercy of two of them.