Colton's Folly (Native American contemporary romance) (28 page)

“Eating over?” he asked. She nodded. “Have you seen a doctor yet?”

“No,” she responded, pleased at the steady, even tone of her voice.

“You should, especially since your first child was born with problems. You both should be watched closely.”

She never looked at him, but he saw her hand tremble. “This baby will be different.”

“You can’t know that.”

She turned to him finally. “I know.” Her hand rested confidently on her stomach, and her lips curved upward in a small smile.

She’s more beautiful than ever, he thought. The extra weight filled out her cheeks, making her seem younger than her years. Her hair had grown long and fell almost to her shoulders in soft, dark waves; her green eyes were clear and bright and serene. Sheathed by the soft buckskin, her breasts rose full and proud; beneath them, her belly protruded gently.

“That dress looks familiar.”

“Your mother gave it to me... with the moccasins.” Her eyes dropped to the knee-high footwear that rose beneath her hem. He nodded, remembering seeing his mother dressed just so when she carried Terry.

“You look good,” he remarked, meaning it.

“I feel good,” she responded. And I feel good, she thought, even with you standing there, looking so damned self-possessed and gorgeous.

“That’s fine,” he said, recapturing her attention, “but you should sign up with someone.”

“Any recommendations?”

“Maybe you should check in at County and put
yourself in the care of their O.B. man. No doubt you’ll deliver there.”

“No doubt,” she responded dryly.

He looked at her sharply, hearing the hint of mockery in her tone, but her face was bland. He walked to the sink to dump his coffee, and as he did so he got a whiff of her perfume and felt her warmth, though they never touched. As he looked up from rinsing his cup their eyes met with the familiar electricity. I want her as much as I ever did, he thought grimly. Will I never be safe from her?

He walked to the door and turned. “I know you have no reason to heed my advice, but do it anyway.” He left her, hoping his hasty retreat wasn’t too obvious.

* * *

Abby did take Cat’s advice, although the distance from the reservation to Crossroads was too great to please her. If labor began without warning, as it had with Sian, the hospital would be too far away to do her any good. Still, the monthly checkups were important, and the fee for the clinic reasonable. She kept her appointments with Dr. Carrera and followed the exercise and nutritional plan he designed for her.

The children displayed a sincere interest in her progress, so she devised a chart to keep track of all her vital statistics. Her pregnancy was converted into a semester project and included in the curriculum for science, biology and home economics. The students seemed pleased to be a part of things, and she herself blossomed under the care and attention of so many friends.

Gifts for the baby began coming in, some to the school, some to the Tallman house, causing Abby to wonder whether the paternity of her child was common knowledge. Not that it mattered. The presents all found their way to Abby’s bedroom, where she’d set up a nursery in one corner.

Sometimes before turning in she spent a few minutes dreaming and admiring the gifts. Her favorite was the cradle Cutter had carved from a hollowed-out section of tree trunk. Decorated with delicate carvings of animals and flowers, it could stand on its rockers or hang suspended from a frame Billy Zuniga had built. There was a blanket from Nellie, and an entire set of baby boy’s clothing from the “ladies.” When Abby laughingly questioned their choice she was told, “It’s a boy. You have the look.”

The most recent addition had come only that day, from Star Blanket. “This is a gift for the mother, not the child,” the old woman had said. It was a vase some two-feet high in mat black finish, embellished by the black glazed figures of two eagles soaring in tandem in four positions around the body of the piece. “They mate for life, just as you have,” Star Blanket had said.

Abby had sighed. “I think perhaps that’s true for only one of us.”

Star Blanket had shaken her head. “I’ve seen him. He is lonely and torn apart by conflict, and would share this child with you if he could.”

“He doesn’t love me, Star Blanket.”

“He is hiding from the truth, but he can’t escape it. It is only a matter of time.”

“I’m not sure I care anymore.”

The woman had smiled and touched her arm. “You do a little hiding yourself.”

A knock on Abby’s front door roused her from her thoughts, and from the warm comfort of her sofa and the fire blazing in the hearth. She peeked out the front window and groaned at the sight of the man standing on her porch. Still, she opened the door and smiled brightly. “Hi, Hank. What brings you here?”

He stepped inside, looked her up and down and then focused on her face. What had started as a scowl softened to a kindly expression of concern. “Motherhood agrees with you.”

“Thank you.” She took his arm. “Come warm yourself at the fire.”

“Your smile will do nicely, thank you.”

She tilted her head to one side. “I haven’t had a compliment that pretty in a long time. Thank you.”

Abby lowered herself to the sofa, and Hank stood watching her, his back to the fire. “Now I understand why all we’ve had from you is phone calls. You’ve been hiding from me.”

She looked down at her clasped hands. “I didn’t want a lecture.” Then, looking up, she added pointedly, “And I don’t want one now.”

He rose and paced from the sofa to the hearth. “Damn it all, anyway! What the hell’s gotten into that cousin of mine?” He looked at her again. “And you...you know better. How could you let it happen?”

Abby gave him an impish look and broke into a broad smile. “You don’t really want me to tell you, do you?”

He had no choice but to join her in laughter. “You know what I mean, Abby.”

“I wanted this child, Hank,” she explained, suddenly serious. “I’ll have it and raise it and love it. If things work out I’ll do that here, and he’ll be brought up among his own people and know who he is and where his roots are. Cat can be a part of that or not
--the choice is his.” She smiled again. “I needed him to make this baby, but I don’t need him to raise it.”

Hank returned the smile. “Then you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. Everyone has been just wonderful--supportive, generous and, above all, understanding and accepting. I’m not alone.”

Abby walked him to the door, received his kiss on her forehead and watched him make his way to his waiting four- by-four. A smile was on her face, but inside she was hurting. Why couldn’t Cat be as open and as loving as the rest of his family?

Because winter was slow in coming, representatives from various reservations in the area decided to meet to discuss voting strategy for the next year’s elections. Cat headed for Standing Rock, a half day’s ride to the east, hoping to get some heavy thinking done on the way there and back. The other delegates simply hoped to complete the two-day conference and get back to their reservations before the first heavy snowfall, which was long overdue.

He frequently caught himself woolgathering during the meeting. Only by applying an extra effort of will was he able to keep his mind on the business that had brought him.

Late on the second day, after the body of the meeting was over, the delegates sat around the oval table, catching up on the latest happenings.

“I hear you have a new teacher,” remarked Dan Black, the delegate from Pine Ridge. “They say she’s doing a good job. That so?”

Cat wasn’t surprised that others knew about Abby. The tribal grapevine was nothing if not efficient. “Yeah, she’s okay. I had my doubts at first, but it’s working out.”

“One of your people?” someone asked.

He shook his head. “White woman, from the East. But she seems to know what we need.”

The conversation moved on to other subjects, and it was dark by the time the meeting broke up and everyone got under way. Cat began the drive home, his mind moving relentlessly back to Abby.

One thing was certain: he loved her. He wanted her, and only her. That she still loved him was a source of wonder to him and, he knew, had more to do with her understanding and enormous capacity for forgiveness than anything else. It was more than he deserved. And what did she deserve if not a commitment from him? He thought about what that familiar word meant. He’d lived with it all his life. His commitment to his people had affected almost his every thought, every action. What would happen to that commitment if he married her? Would marriage be an act of disloyalty toward his people, a betrayal of the promise he’d made to his uncle?

There was no doubt that she cared about the people of Twin Buttes; she had proved herself, and they had recognized that and shown their appreciation of her dedication. She’d done her job so well that her reputation had already begun to travel beyond their own small community.

So why was he hanging back? Why did he still refuse to accept what was so clear to everyone else? Could this be a holdover from the days when he had looked upon his mixed heritage with hatred and shame? When he still feared that the white man in him would betray the red, and therefore had to be denied, even destroyed? Had he made her pay the price for his self-hatred?

If that was so, then how much longer would she have to continue paying for feelings that no longer existed? Feelings that she had been swept away like dead grass? Somehow she had brought him back to the way things had been before ... before his father had died, before the war and its terrors, before all the empty, lonely nights.

She had made him remember the good in men like his father. And through her hard work and patient giving of herself, she had shown him what he should have known from the beginning: that the measure of a man, or a woman, lies not in ancestry, but in actions and the purpose to which a life is dedicated. But he had refused to see, and when he had chosen instead to put her out of his life, she had accepted his decision. She had continued to love him while giving him the thing he’d said he wanted
--freedom. Even then, when he’d come to her, she had been there for him every time.

Suddenly he saw it all clearly for the first time...so clearly that he winced. All the years of rejection and bitterness had blinded him to the fact that, despite everything, with her he had achieved the acceptance he’d sought elsewhere and failed to find.

It was late, and he was tired. He saw the lights of a roadside bar and pulled in. The sound of a jukebox mingled with laughter and talk greeted him as he opened the door, stepped into the smoky, blue-lit interior and walked to the bar. He slid onto a high stool and ordered a beer, then went back to his thoughts. Now she carried his child. He found himself picturing a sturdy, healthy baby with black hair and dark eyes. Or would they be blue-green, like Abby’s? Either way, he--or she--would be more white than red, part of two different worlds, but perhaps wholly welcome in neither.

How the hell can I leave my child alone in the world, knowing what he’ll have to go through?
He asked himself. Yet how can I prepare him for people, on the reservation and off, who will torment him, demean him and test him beyond endurance, until he finds himself barely able to justify his existence, even to himself? What can I give him to make him strong enough to withstand the hatred, the intolerance, the hypocrisy? How much self-respect can I instill in him? How much courage and motivation?

And what if I have a son who rejects my people, as I did my father’s? It could happen. What then? He lit a cigarette and took a long drag. I don’t know what then, he thought as he exhaled. But between us Abby and I could figure out something. Or learn to accept, as my mother did.

That would be the hardest thing for him to do, he realized, but not impossible. Not after what Abby had taught him about acceptance and understanding and love. Maybe they could work it out. And maybe they wouldn’t have to. With a mother like Abby, maybe there wouldn’t be any need.

Suddenly he needed to get back. He threw down some money and left without finishing his beer.

It had snowed for three days, a slow, steady, relentless storm that first dusted, then buried, then smothered the land until nothing stirred in a world of vast, silent whiteness. Abby had canceled classes midway through the second day so the children could stay close to their homes.

Suffering from a fierce case of cabin fever, she went out on the third day, but the snow was deep, hip-high in some places, and moving through it was heavy work. Afraid for the baby, she retraced her steps and returned to the shelter of her house, draping her wet clothes over the shower rod to drip-dry. The next afternoon the storm ended, and by the following morning everyone was out clearing the roads. Once that chore was completed, the men trekked out to the Buttes to check on their cattle. The herd seemed fine, but the snow was three-feet deep, and cattle just didn’t have the sense to dig beneath it. Ahead lay the task of bringing feed out to them.

Bales of hay were loaded on sleds and hauled out to the animals, an all-day job, even with all hands working. The men returned home at night, exhausted, and preoccupied with the problem of providing more feed and obtaining the money to pay for it.