Father and Child Reunion

by Christine Flynn

  It wasn’t anger she felt. It was frustration. And a numbing sort of hurt. Knowing how much she loved him, especially that.

  Reaching past her, Rio took the bowl she still held and set it aside, then turned her around. There was as much irritation as confusion in his expression, but the irritation died the moment he saw her eyes.

  He’d been about to tell her she had no business thinking him the hypocrite. Not when she was the one who’d taken off without a word, rather than talk to him about a problem. But he couldn’t attack when she already looked beaten, and he couldn’t defend himself without pointing out how much metal she’d added to his armor.

  “I’m getting lost here,” he admitted, not willing to let the situation disintegrate. “What’s going on with what?”

  “With you and me.” Physically, she had been as close to him as she could get. He’d seen to it. Emotionally, he was light-years away. “You pull me with one hand, Rio, and push me away with the other. You’ve been doing it ever since I got back.”

  “I’m not trying to push you away.”

  “You just did.”

  He stepped back, letting his hand fall. With her arms crossed so tightly, it didn’t seem she wanted him to touch her, anyway.

  “How?”

  For a moment, she said nothing.

  “Eve?”

  “By wanting to bring an attorney into this.”

  Rio pulled a breath. “Look,” he began, wanting to reach for her but not willing to risk having her pull back. “I don’t want to make things any more difficult for you than they already are. If it’ll help, we can wait a while to work out the details. I just need to know that I won’t lose contact with Molly.”

  He was being as understanding as he could be, and as honest. She should have been grateful for that. And she would have been, had that honesty not just told her what this was all about. Rio didn’t trust her not to disappear again. But then, he was hardly giving her any reason to stay, either.

  “You’re going to be late for work,” she said, her tone too quiet.

  Hesitating, he lifted his hand toward her, leaving it to hover like a benediction between them before he finally curved it over her shoulder. Drawing her to him, he folded her in his arms. “Don’t worry about this right now. Okay?”

  He didn’t want to make things harder for her. She truly believed that. Just as she believed he’d never back down from what he wanted. Once Rio made up his mind, he didn’t let up until he’d accomplished his goal.

  As attracted to that quality as she was threatened by it, Eve echoed a quiet “Okay.”

  “I’ll see you tonight.”

  His lips brushed her forehead. Seconds later, with nothing resolved and the set of his jaw marking his own agitation, he turned away.

  Eve sagged against the counter, listening to his footsteps fade and the sound of the door as it closed behind him. Concerned as Rio had seemed to be about her last night and this morning, she doubted he’d have raised the subject at all had Molly not so innocently brought it up. Still, she couldn’t feel relieved by that. Not when it was so apparent that he didn’t trust her not to let him down.

  Having lived for the last six years knowing how terribly she’d disappointed her mother by getting pregnant, Eve couldn’t bear the thought of letting down someone else that she loved. But the only way Rio would ever trust her would be if he believed she truly wanted him to be in Molly’s life, and that she wanted Molly to be fully a part of his. She could think of only one thing that might prove that to him. It was something she had to do, anyway. She needed a better understanding of Rio, of his roots. For herself and for her daughter. It was also time she faced whatever it was she and Molly were up against with his mother.

  * * *

  Less than an hour later, Eve had picked up Molly from day camp in her little red compact and the two of them were heading north on the two-lane mountain highway out of Grand Springs. She had canceled her attendance at the women’s shelter meeting that morning, something she’d hated to do because the meeting was about creating a memorial for her mom, but once she made the decision to drive to the reservation, she hadn’t been able to think of anything else. She wasn’t even sure Mrs. Redtree would be there. But she was winging it a lot these days. She had a map and an address, and she could get directions when she got there. After driving from Santa Barbara last month, an eighty-mile trip was nothing. And Molly was always up for a ride. She especially liked the idea of seeing where Rio once lived.

  It was almost noon when Eve saw the sign indicating that they’d passed onto tribal land and she stopped at a tiny store with tobacco ads plastered all over it. Because she asked the two Indian women behind the counter there for directions to Rio’s mother’s house, news of a white woman and an Indian child headed for Maria Redtree’s preceded their arrival. Fifteen minutes later, when Eve crossed a narrow bridge over a dry wash and pulled into the open area between a small enclave of neat, rectangular houses and an old gray-and-white mobile home, she was met by a welcoming committee of three.

  A middle-aged woman stood with her arms crossed, a few feet from the mobile home’s open front door. Her black hair was drawn back from a gently rounded face and hung over her shoulder in a thick braid. The loose white blouse she wore was tucked into a full blue skirt, and a fist-size beaded amulet hung by a leather thong around her neck.

  On her right was a woman in her early twenties wearing blue nurse’s scrubs and a photo ID tag. Despite the worry etched in her brow, she possessed the same exotic beauty promised in Molly’s fragile face. Gleaming sable hair framed features that were more angular than the woman’s beside her. Her nose was thinner, her jaw and cheekbones more defined.

  Eve knew Rio’s sister was a nurse at the reservation clinic. Even had she not been privy to that information, the woman resembled Rio so closely, she had to be his sister. Considering that they’d obviously been warned of her arrival, Eve would be willing to bet that the thirty-something, dark-haired man in the plaid shirt and jeans protecting the older woman’s left flank was Dusty. Eve knew he worked for the tribal government as an environmentalist. He was about the same height as Rio, but he bore a much closer resemblance to his mother than did either of his two siblings. His features were fuller, his build stockier. Clearly, Rio and his sister had taken after his father’s side of the family.

  Not allowing herself to question what she was doing, Eve handed Molly her books from the back seat. “Stay here,” she told the child, and stepped out of the car.

  There were more people there than she’d first thought. Skimming a nervous smile past the trio ahead of her, she became aware of movement in the windows of the houses, of inquisitive eyes and small faces being snatched out of sight. Two tricycles sat abandoned in the shadow of a blue minivan. Toys were strewn over the clumps of grass and atop a long, oilcloth-covered table beneath the branches of the yard’s only tree.

  From the looks of it, the children had all been chased inside.

  “Mrs. Redtree?” Eve asked, suddenly feeling too vulnerable, too unprotected.

  Dark eyes flicked over Eve’s face before Rio’s mother nodded. “I am Maria Redtree.”

  “I’m Eve. Stuart,” she hurried to add, since they apparently went by whole names here. “I’m a friend of Rio’s.”

  “I know who you are.”

  The younger woman glanced toward Maria. From her hesitation, it appeared she was waiting for her to say more. When nothing else was forthcoming, she stepped forward herself.

  “I’m Rio’s sister,” she said, introducing herself as Shana Holt. “This is Dusty, our brother.” She waited until the big man gave Eve a tight nod. “I’m afraid your arrival has caught us unprepared.”

  Though the woman made it sound as if some courtesy had been left unattended, Eve felt certain that the preparation she’d referred to was as much mental as anything else. Knowing that, knowing, too, that she’d put them on the spot, she directed her apology to them all.

  “I’
m sorry for the intrusion, but I was afraid that if I called ahead, you wouldn’t see me. All I want,” she continued, certain from Maria Redtree’s starched stance that she was right, “is to talk to you. Not for me, but for Rio and Molly.”

  Maria glanced toward the car and the road. “You are alone?”

  “My daughter is with me.”

  That didn’t appear to be what the woman had meant. “My son is not coming with you?”

  “He doesn’t know I’m here.”

  The older woman paused, something like disappointment, or grudging curiosity, causing her brow to pinch.

  Shana’s curiosity took a different course. “Molly is your daughter?”

  “Our daughter. Rio’s and mine.” Eve nodded toward the car herself. Only the top of Molly’s head was visible over the dash. “We haven’t told her he’s her father yet, but we’re going to tonight. Molly asked him if he could be her pretend daddy, so he figured there was no need to wait any longer.” She hesitated, thinking how much more sense this had made before she’d said it out loud. “May we talk, or is this really a bad time?”

  No time would have been good. Eve was definitely left with that impression during the long moments of silence that passed between Shana and her mother. Finally, looking as if the two women had just engaged in a battle of wills, Maria looked to her son.

  “What do you think?” she asked the man, as if she expected him to know exactly what had taken place.

  “That you should listen to your daughter. Blood is blood.”

  “I’ll put on tea,” Shana announced, and pulled open the screen.

  It opened with the arthritic groan of hinges in need of oil, and closed with a bang.

  Apparently, that meant she could stay. It meant that Shana and Dusty thought she should stay, anyway.

  It also seemed to mean that Dusty could now leave. Something for which he appeared quite grateful. From the cautious once-over he’d given her, he seemed to view Eve’s presence with a skepticism that was only a shade less promising than his sister’s forbearance. He did not, however, appear to see her as a threat. “I’ve got to get back to work,” he said to his mother. “You don’t need me for this.”

  He skimmed one last glance over the slender five feet of blond, blue-eyed potential trouble he’d apparently been called to attend to, then gave her a nod. “Eve Stuart,” he said, his eyes avoiding hers, “I trust we will meet again.”

  With that, Rio’s older brother headed to the pickup truck parked at the end of the mobile home, casting a quick glance toward the child reading her book in the little red car as he passed it on the way.

  Left alone with Rio’s mother, Eve offered her a faltering smile.

  Maria didn’t return it. But then, she wasn’t looking at her, either. Her focus was on the car, too.

  The door had opened and Molly was getting out.

  Eve’s protective instincts shot to the surface. Meeting her daughter a few feet from where Maria remained rooted by her door, she whispered, “I told you to stay in the car.” She didn’t want Molly exposed to the woman’s disapproval. It was difficult enough facing it herself. “Why didn’t you listen?”

  Innocent blue eyes blinked back at her. “’Cause I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “I will show her where it is.”

  At the sound of Maria’s voice, Eve turned around, hugging the little girl to her side as if she were prepared to block her with her own body if need be.

  “Thank you,” she returned, but Molly didn’t seem inclined to move at the moment.

  With her arm wrapped around her mother’s hip, the little girl smiled up at the stranger quietly watching her. When the woman didn’t smile back, Molly focused on the intricate and colorful designs beaded into the leather circle around her neck.

  Innocent of the tension skittering in the air, her little face immediately brightened. “I know what that means,” she said, ungluing herself from her mother to point at the amulet. “That’s a simple of the people!”

  The woman’s dark and uncomprehending eyes narrowed on the child. Eve didn’t understand what Molly was talking about, either, but now was not the time to figure out what she meant. Or so she was thinking when she folded her hand over her daughter’s to remind her that it wasn’t polite to point.

  “A symbol?” Maria suggested, obviously accustomed to interpreting children.

  Molly nodded vigorously. “Uh-huh. The three blue circles. Men have them on their chest and women get them right here.” She pointed to the middle of her forehead. A second later her angelic little face screwed up in a frown. “I forgot what the feather is. But I got one over my bed.”

  Maria’s glance shot to Eve. “Who tells her of Inuna-ina? Our people?” she clarified.

  There was as much puzzlement as curiosity in the question. Clearly, the woman couldn’t imagine how Molly had come by such knowledge.

  “Rio,” Eve replied, then wondered why the woman looked as if she hadn’t expected that, either.

  The screen door screeched open again, drawing their attention to the woman carrying a small tray with two steaming mugs and a sugar bowl. The noise caught Eve’s and Molly’s attention, anyway. Maria’s attention had returned to the child.

  Shana set the tray on the toy-strewn table under the shade of the sprawling cottonwood. With the smile she had yet to manage for Eve, she walked over to Molly and crouched down in front of her. The moment Molly smiled back, Eve knew Shana’s heart was lost.

  “I’ll bet you’re Molly.” Dark eyes searched familiar features. “I’m your Auntie Shana. Nearly everyone is Auntie around here,” she added, giving Eve a glance that told her she remembered that the child hadn’t yet been told that Rio was her father. “I know where there are six other children who would love to share their swing set with you. Would you like me to get them?”

  “I need to take her inside first.” Maria extended her weathered hand to Molly, her voice gentler, though her features were still guarded. “And I think we need cookies.”

  The change in Maria’s manner was subtle, but it was enough for Molly to give the woman a heart-melting grin before climbed up the stairs after her.

  Shana pulled a white scrunchee from the pocket of her scrub shirt. “I had a feeling she’d change her mind once she saw her. I’ve seen this happen too many times to believe she’d be any different.” Turning from the door, she pulled her hair into a low ponytail and began looping it through the elasticized fabric. “A young girl is unmarried and pregnant and the grandparents swear they want nothing to do with the baby. They even threaten to disown their own child. I saw it in nursing school in the white community and I see it here in our clinic. All it takes is to put that baby in the grandparents’ arms. Ninety percent of the time, they turn to mush.”

  Though Eve would hardly interpret Maria’s attitude as “mush,” since Shana seemed to think her mother had softened, that was good enough for her. For now. “Had she told Rio she didn’t want anything to do with Molly?”

  “I don’t know what she said to my brother. All she said to us was that he’d come here and told her he had a child. You say you’ve come to talk about Rio and your daughter?”

  “What I really want to do is listen,” Eve explained, sensing more caution than unfriendliness in this woman. “If someone will talk to me, that is. I need to learn about him. For Molly. I didn’t know how else to do that without coming here.”

  “You speak as if you and my brother are not together.”

  “We’re not. Not exactly,” she amended. “I mean, we see each other and we’re… That’s an entirely different problem,” she concluded.

  Understanding lit the woman’s warm brown eyes. “I see. But if you’re talking to him, why come here to learn about him?”

  “Because getting Rio to talk about himself is like pulling teeth.”

  “Ah, yes. The infamous Native American male stoicism. What I wouldn’t give for the elders to teach that they can be strong without being silent.” He
r hair now neatly restrained at her nape, she glanced at her watch. From the way she winced, it was apparent she was late.

  “I have to get back to work.” She paused, seeming torn between two sets of conflicting duties. Or maybe it was loyalties. “The person you need to talk with is our mother. That is the proper way. I don’t know that she’ll tell you what you want to know. I don’t know if she’ll even talk to you at all after I leave. Still,” she added, “your coming here was a good thing.”

  There was enough reserve in the woman’s manner to let Eve know that while Shana thought her actions were commendable, the other woman hadn’t totally made up her mind about her. Eve could accept that. All she cared about was that Molly and Rio had an ally in his sister. For that, she was truly grateful.

  That gratitude faded back to anxiety the moment Rio’s straight-faced and dignified mother returned with Molly. Eve had no sooner removed a cookie crumb from her little girl’s face than Shana, telling Molly she’d show her where the other children were, took the child by the hand and headed to the house directly across the wide yard. Without knocking, she poked her head inside. Almost immediately, four exuberant, brown-haired children raced out into the yard. Another woman, this one wearing jeans and a football jersey, appeared in the doorway. Shorter and more rounded than Shana, she had a baby on her hip and a toddler tugging on her hand. After the briefest of conversations, the baby went into a playpen by the porch, the toddler climbed onto a tricycle, and Shana got into the minivan. With a honk of the horn and a wave, she drove out across the bridge covering the dry wash, a cloud of dust slowly settling behind her.

  Maria Redtree, standing still as the dry air, said nothing. She simply studied the child leaning over the playpen to see the baby. Her newest granddaughter had eyes the color of cornflowers, but other than that, there were too many similarities between her and the other children for her to ignore. From the way her features had softened, Eve suspected there were more similarities than she’d expected to find.