by Lois Greiman
Glen chuckled, Maynard snorted, and Vura, fiercely grateful for the distraction, slipped into her Chevy and drove away.
Once out of sight, however, she pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot and sat. Just sat, letting the day drain away from her. She wasn’t going to cry. That would be stupid. Almost as stupid as it was to get hurt. Carefully tugging up her sleeve, she stared at the injury. The shingles had struck her forearm at an oblique angle, leaving a bruise that blushed puce and olive and a spectacular shade of violet. She shook her head. It was probably more practical to take another hit of ibuprofen than to burst into tears, but before she could do so, her phone rang, startling her. She longed to ignore it, to wallow in self-pity, but that was just another luxury she couldn’t afford.
She pulled the cell from her pocket, saw the call was from her father, and felt a familiar bite of worry tear at her.
“Is everything all right?” The words spurted from her lips.
There was a momentary pause during which she held her breath.
“With Lily? Yeah, everything’s fine.” His tone implied that he hadn’t considered things could be otherwise … also a lovely luxury. “But what’s going on with you?”
She glanced at her arm. If she looked closely, she could just discern an intriguing shade of russet. But how had he learned of her injury?
“Glen called,” her father said. “Are you okay?”
“Glen called you?” She scowled. Geez, it was as if she were back in high school, being tattled on by her lab partner. Sometimes girls’ hair just caught on fire, okay?
“Said you had an accident with some shingles.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Glen doesn’t call about nothing, Bravura. You seen a doctor yet?”
She laughed out loud. It sounded a little maniacal to her own ears. “Holy cow, Dad, it’s just a scratch. I’ve gotten worse opening mail,” she said, and dropped four Advil into her slightly unsteady palm.
“Then you should be more careful with your letter opener. I want you to go to the emergency room.”
“That’ll cost—”
“I’ll pay for it.”
She rested her head against the cushion behind her, letting fatigue course through her like river water. “I’m okay. Really. I just want to see Lily. How’s she doing?”
He sighed. She could imagine him settling his hips against the counter they had installed together when she was twelve. “She’s already asleep.”
“At …” She checked the clock on her dash … 9:17, on a Saturday night. She’d been lucky he’d been able to babysit in a pinch … again. “Oh …” Guilt again, familiar but unloved. “I guess it’s later than I realized.”
“In more ways than one.”
“What?”
“Listen, if you’re not going to see the doctor, then go home and get some sleep.”
She yearned for the comfort of Lily’s presence, but her father’s house was a half-hour drive while her own humble abode would take her less than fifteen minutes. “I guess I’ll do that.”
“I’ll bring her out first thing in the morning.”
“You don’t need to. I can come pick her up.”
“I’ll bring her. Just get some rest,” he ordered and hung up.
She stared at the cell in her hand. This was for the best, she told herself. She was tired. Exhausted, really. And who wouldn’t be? It had been an awful day, starting poorly and not ending much better. She stared at the ceiling of her truck, replaying the scene with the gosling, with Tonk, with Dane. She should go home and hash things out with her husband, she thought, and physically winced at the idea. But Quinton Murrell hadn’t raised her to be a coward.
Lifting her phone again, she dialed Dane’s number.
Voice mail came on in a moment.
“Yeah, y’ got Dane. I’m busy right now.” A guitar riff filled the air. “But leave a number. I’ll buzz y’ right back.” The guitar again. “Or not.”
The message was eerily reminiscent of high school. As if the years since had never happened. As if they had never grown up, conceived a child, gotten married. Clicking the End button, Vura pursed her lips and stared at the dash. The digital clock stared back. Dad was right, she should go home. Get some sleep.
But guilt was battery-acid bitter. And Tonk’s house was even closer than her own.
Chapter 28
Tonkiaishawien sat back and studied the canvas. Acrylics weren’t his most successful medium. His gifts lay more in clay, in the rich, centering texture of earth where he could bury his hands, could immerse his soul. But the image on canvas was taking shape. The brushstrokes had a bold life to them, the pallet was pleasing. In short, it wasn’t horrible.
He snorted at the thought. Great. That’s just what he had been striving for all these years … not horrible. Lifting his brush, he prepared to try to find that perfect balance between playfulness and confidence in his subject’s laughing-water eyes, but the doorbell interrupted his work.
He winced. Sometimes he was a flirt. He knew that. In the past he had been more than happy to reap the benefits that might accompany any well-accepted flirtations, but lately … He scowled. Perhaps he could pretend he wasn’t home, hide inside like a shy hermit.
Mutt cocked his head, raised his one good ear.
Across the room, Princess growled a warning at such outrageous behavior.
The doorbell rang again. Tonk groaned in silence, realizing the truth; he was two days late on the rent … again. The fact that he now had ample funds generated by the success of the images he had crafted of Sydney Wellesley’s famous mustang—a success that surprised him more than anyone—he still had trouble paying his bills on time. Mariam Pretty on Top, his AA sponsor and self-proclaimed therapist, thought his dysfunction might stem from the fact that he still believed he deserved to fail. Cousin Riley thought it more likely that he was simply a dumb ass.
Rising to his feet, Tonk wiped his hands on the rag left nearby and turned down his stereo. Kids these days fiddled with iPods and MP3s, but they didn’t know what they were missing when they eschewed the liquid warmth of a metal needle on vinyl.
Skirting a painted war drum commissioned by a lady in Connecticut who was certain she had Native roots, though they had yet to be unearthed, he grabbed his undelivered check from the kitchen counter and made his way to the door. Mutt padded along behind.
“I’m sorry—” he began and stopped cold at the sight of Bravura Lambert. For a second his heart bumped madly, and then it seemed to stop, to lie dormant in the stillness of his chest like a cold lump of clay that refused to be finessed. But he tightened his hand on the door handle and remembered to breathe.
She skipped her gaze to the check in his hand and grinned a little, a sassy saloon girl slash of humor on that freckled girl-next-door face. “You paying me now?” she asked.
He stared at her, mind oddly blank, body dumb as a post.
She motioned toward the check, then slipped a thumb in the hammer hook of her overalls. She was outrageously cute, hideously gorgeous, impossibly real. “To stay out of your life, maybe?”
He scowled and wondered dismally where the hell his glib tongue had run off to. Holy crap, he’d be happy to speak at all. But she was too close, too genuine and honest and earthy. Yet behind her living-water eyes she looked worn out, scrubbed bare.
“I thought you were someone else.” They were the only words he could manage for a moment. He cleared his throat. “Honey Halverson.”
Mutt edged forward to nudge her hand with his motley nose. “Hey, good-looking,” she said, and scratched him behind his tattered ear before lifting her gaze back to Tonk’s. “Do you have to pay all the women in your life?”
“She’s my landlady.”
“Of course she is,” she said.
He stared at her.
“I …” She glanced at the toes of her work boots, scratched the dog again. “Sorry. I was just kidding.” She looked left, exhaled softly, and shuffled her fe
et. “Could I come in, maybe?”
Panic washed through him like a wild tide. “Here?”
She raised her brows and watched him as if he was nuts. Which, come to think of it, had a fair probability of being the case. “Well, yeah, if you’ve got a minute.”
A thousand excuses galloped through his mind. The best one was the lateness of the hour. But it had not yet reached ten o’clock, and the idea that he couldn’t manage to stay up later than a kindergartener might make him seem like something of a pansy. He stepped back reluctantly, and she moved inside with that bold sashay that was hers alone.
He closed the door. They stared at each other. She tapped a finger on the pant leg of her overalls. They stared some more. She glanced around. “Is that …” She raised her brows, left dimple making a brief appearance. “Is that disco music?”
“What?” The question ripped him from his Bravura-induced trance. Making a quick about-face, he goose-stepped to his stereo and clicked it into silence.
“‘Y.M.C.A.’?” she asked, and made a C shape with her arms above her head.
He should have been playing his Native Spirit mix tape. Or Celtic Nights or Pipes in the Wind, but the truth was, he loved disco. And there was no accounting for love. “Did you want something, Bravura?” he asked. “Or did you just come by to …” He stopped, breath catching in his throat. Her impromptu Village People dance had displaced a sleeve enough to allow a glimpse of her left arm. “What happened?”
“What? Oh!” She flushed a little. “It’s just a … I had a little accident. It’s nothing.”
Rage roared through him, almost blinding in its intensity. But he clenched his fists, bottled his anger, and practiced the hell out of step eleven. “How many other accidents has he caused?”
“What?”
He inhaled deeply, one cautious, cleansing breath, then exhaled just as carefully, but the rage was still there, white-hot, though contained now, shaped. “If you need help …” He paused for a second. “Monetary or—”
“Wait!” She took a quick step back, shook her head and laughed out loud, but the sound lacked the raucous, all-in quality that had called to him from the moment he’d first heard it. “You think Dane did this?”
He said nothing.
“My husband would never hurt …” She paused for just an instant, perhaps remembering the crude way he had spoken to her earlier in the day. “He’d never hurt me. Not physically.”
He watched the words form on her lips, heard the sincerity in her tone, but weren’t there women’s shelters around the globe filled with just that sort of heartfelt earnestness?
“Who, then?” he asked.
She stared at him a second longer. One dark brow moved into a slant.
“If you actually think I’d let someone use me as a punching bag, you’re more deluded than I thought, Tonkiaishawien.” She said the words with just enough sass to make him believe. A modicum of tension slipped from his shoulders.
“Why are you here, Bravura?”
She sobered, shuffled her feet. The sass slipped a notch toward uncertainty. “I, ummm …” She glanced toward the window as if longing to be elsewhere. “I came to apologize.”
He held his breath, certain he had heard her wrong.
“We treated you poorly this morning.”
Yet he had been the only one to throw a punch.
“Dane isn’t usually the jealous sort.”
And wasn’t that a strange truth? If she were his, he would be exactly that. Jealous of every moment they were apart, of every person who shared her life. And holy crap on a cracker, who needed that kind of crazy? “What type is he … usually?” he asked.
She nodded as if in concession to unspoken truths. “These past few years have been hard on him.”
“And for you?”
“What?”
“How have they been for you?”
“Well, I …” She looked surprised, as if she had never quite considered it. “I have Lily.”
“And he does not?”
A rogue flare of anger sparked in her eyes, but she blew out her breath and shook her head once. “I just came by to say I’m sorry that he accused you of …” For a moment she didn’t seem quite capable of forcing out the words. “Of being in love with me. I know you were just being kind.”
He managed a nod and one step toward the door, though he wasn’t sure how. “I accept your apology,” he said. “But it is late and I have an early day tomorrow.”
She pursed plump-berry lips. “He had no right to accuse you of anything.”
“I am glad that you realize this,” he said, and put his hand on the doorknob.
“I know that you’re not …” She breathed out, a long, smooth exhalation that made her chest rise and fall beneath her faded-plaid shirt. The skin above the collar was as smooth and creamy as kaolin. “… that you’re not in love with me.”
“Good.” He turned the knob.
“Well, I guess …” She searched for words. As she did so, her gaze strayed slightly and fell with a jolt on Princess’s take-your-best-shot expression. “Is that a …” She paused as if not wanting to make some awful blunder. “Is that a cat?”
“Ai.” He didn’t glance toward the animal. “I believe it is.”
“What’s its… his… name?”
“Princess.”
Her lips formed a little O of surprise. Perhaps it was because the cat looked a little more like some scientific experiment gone horribly wrong than like any type of royalty. “What happened to its … her … tail?”
“I do not know.” But his best guess was that in one of her former lives she had engaged in a dispute with a grizzly. Sometimes in the quiet of the night, Tonk still worried about that poor bear.
Vura nodded. Despite her aforementioned lack of affection for the species, she didn’t seem to be particularly repulsed by the animal’s awful features. Or at least she was unafraid, which was more than he could say for most. “How about her ears?” The left one was missing a fair-sized notch. The right one was simply missing.
Mutt whined. Vura stroked him distractedly.
“Perhaps she did not wish to make the dog feel unattractive.”
“So they’re friends?”
He let his gaze stray to the cat finally. “Do demons make friends?”
She laughed, stopping his heart. “Look at you, taking in strays, creating beauty …” She paused, giving his system time to jolt back to life. “Underneath all your irritating ways, you might be a pretty nice guy, Tonkiaishawien.”
“Do not count on it.”
Their eyes met in a velvet clash, but she jerked her gaze away and swept it across the room.
Tonk held his breath, dreading, fearing, and knowing, instantaneously, when the horrible truth dawned on her.
Chapter 29
Vura remained exactly where she was, not quite able to move, to think, to draw a normal breath. But she finally, through terrible force of will, managed to blink.
The painting propped on the nearby easel, however, remained the same … an Indian maiden so real she all but galloped from the canvas. Dressed in buckskin and beads, she sat astride a painted mare. The leather of her moccasins looked so authentic, it seemed she could feel the rough suede against her fingertips. The glass beads were just a little faded, a little imperfect, as if they had been worn in wind and sun. The horse, though wildly beautiful, was rugged and scarred. A mustang that had survived life on the open plains. An animal so genuine and tangible, it was as if you could smell her earthy aroma, could feel the heat of her breath upon your cheek. But it was not Tonk’s incredible skill that shocked Bravura Lambert.
What made her heart pulse to a shuddering halt was the fact that the maiden’s face was her own.
She hissed out a careful breath and turned her gaze toward Tonk, but in so doing, her attention snagged on a painted gourd. The face on that piece was barely visible, just a shadow of an image, really. A vague glimpse, and yet there was something about
it, something in the tilt of the lips, the hint of a dimple… something that she saw every day in the mirror.
“What …” The single word was as breathy as a prayer. Stumbling closer, she studied the gourd from another angle, but up close the similarities were only amplified. “I don’t …” She shook her head. “I thought you didn’t …” Her brain felt scrambled, oddly muffled. “You don’t like me.”
He stood very straight, very still, like the wooden Indian who stood guard outside the Wall Drug Store. “I do not know what you speak of, Bravura,” he said, voice cool, demeanor dismissive. “But it is late, so I suggest we—”
“What I’m …” She waved a stuttering hand toward the painting propped on the easel, then let it flutter toward the gourd. “I’m talking about this … this …” She glanced toward the disturbing canvas again. “I’m talking about me,” she breathed. “My image on your … art.”
For a moment the room was absolutely still and then he laughed.
“Bravura,” he said, and stepped away from the door. “I knew you to be illogical at times, but I did not realize the depths of your vanity.”
“The depths of … I …” She faltered and glanced at the painting again and in that instant it turned into nothing more shocking than an appealing piece of art boasting a proud mustang and a mildly attractive woman. “I’m sorry, I …” Embarrassment flooded her, washing through her system, burning her cheeks. She shook her head. “I guess I … I must be more tired than I realized,” she said, and nodded at the glaring truth of her words. “I just …” Turning robotically, she shambled toward the door. It wasn’t until she had almost reached it that she caught the chips of unlikely amber in the woman’s sky-blue eyes. She stopped, breath held as she stared into her own gaze.
In all the world, nothing stirred.
“Perhaps I should have asked your permission.” Tonk’s words were no more than the quiet rumble of distant thunder.
She turned toward him, moving erratically, like an uncertain top about to topple to the floor. “I don’t understand.”
