Rainsinger (21 page)

She also knew there was sorrow ahead, but for now, he was here. For now, he was hers. She lifted her chin and kissed him back, then gave him a wicked grin. “I still won’t let you win at basketball.”

He laughed. “We’ll see, honey. We’ll see.”

* * *

True to her promise, Giselle emerged a few hours later with a subdued Joleen, whose face had been dutifully scrubbed, her hair combed. She had traded the halter for a simple, baggy T-shirt and her glasses were back in place. She still wore the tight jean shorts, but as she came outside where Winona was watering the newly planted yuccas, she said, “I really don’t have any other shorts.”

Giselle said, “Where’s Daniel?”

“Out front, doing something to the truck.” When the girl bounced off in that direction, Winona turned her attention fully on Joleen. “You’re growing like a weed,” she said. “Maybe we can find some inexpensive shorts in town somewhere.”

“Not Goodwill?”

Winona smiled. “I don’t think that’s necessary. We’ll just look, okay?”

Joleen nodded. She came up to Winona and put her arms around her, laying her head on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Winona,” she whispered. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Winona thought wryly it was nothing turning twenty wouldn’t cure. “Apology accepted, but we need to talk.”

Joleen heaved a sigh and straightened. “Fine,” she said, and lifted one hand to the small of her back. “I think I need to take a walk. I’ve had a stomachache for two days.”

“All right, let’s do that. Let me tell Daniel what we’re doing. I think he’d like to go to town and check the mail. Do you want to ride in with him to get your hair cut?”

“Not really. Giselle has to go home in a couple of days. Maybe she’d like some time by herself with him.”

The maturity of the insight touched Winona, and she felt a swell of hope. Maybe things would even out now, and all Winona would have to manage were the usual ups and downs of a normal teenager.

Not that there was anything particularly normal about teenagers. Who could be normal with those waves of hormones changing tide every ten seconds? Winona had had a taste of that the past few weeks, and she sympathized.

It wasn’t until she’d let Daniel know what was going on, then headed back through the house, that Winona realized what was right under her nose. Coming through the back door, she called Percival and the three of them walked toward the orchard. When they reached the ancient tree, the mother tree, she sat down in the grass. “Joleen, I want to talk about a couple of things, but first, I have to ask you a personal question.”

“What could be that personal? You’re my sister.”

“Have you started your periods yet?”

“Oh, that.” Joleen slumped against the tree, her skinny knees akimbo. “No.” She plucked a long stem of grass, and reconsidered. “Well, sort of, just before, uh, well, just before you came home.”

Just before the accident,
Winona silently amended. To give Joleen plenty of room, she looked at the tree, way, way up to the topmost branches, waving dully in a hot breeze. Briefly, she wondered if it would ever rain.

“The stress might have disrupted your body’s natural rhythm, but it just might have been the way things were for you.”

Joleen squirmed, obviously uncomfortable. “I hate talking about this stuff.”

“I know. It’s personal and I don’t want to intrude, but—” she took a breath and plunged forward quickly “—I noticed you rubbing your back, and you said your stomach hurts, and maybe it’s time again. Everything you need is in my room. Don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Okay.”

The word was wavery and Winona looked at her, surprised to see sudden tears fill Joleen’s eyes.

“Why do things have to change?” the girl asked plaintively.

Winona moved closer and put a hand on Joleen’s lower arm, lightly. “It’s the only thing you can count on, sweetie. Things will always change.”

“I hate it.” She wiped her nose and looked up. “You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?”

“That’s very personal, Joleen,” she said. “I don’t like to talk about that part of my life with anyone.”

“Do you love him?”

Her heart jumped. “Yes.”

“Are you going to marry him?”

Slowly Winona shook her head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“It just doesn’t always work out that way, Joleen. Not everyone is like Mom and Dad.” She moved the tips of her fingers restlessly over the topmost edge of the grass below her. “But it’s probably time you understood that I’m a grown woman and there are going to be men in my life.”

Joleen gazed at her steadily. “I think you should fight for him. Like in
Grease.”

Winona laughed. “Life isn’t the movies.”

“I’m serious! You should see the way he looks at you when he doesn’t know anybody is watching.”

“How?”

Joleen pursed her lips, gazing off into the distance. “Like Humphrey Bogart looks at Ingrid Bergman at the end of
Casablanca.
Like he wants so much to keep her with him, but he can’t.”

All of a sudden she whipped off her hat and her glasses, and shook her head to loosen her hair. “Like this,” she said. Her face went suddenly expressionless. And then she raised her eyes and stared at a daisy, and written in all that blankness, swimming in her limpid eyes, was an expression of the most heart-wrenching, denied longing Winona had ever seen.

For a moment, Winona was so stunned at the ability of her thirteen-year-old sister to express such an emotion that she couldn’t think. When Joleen broke character with an immodest lift of her eyebrows, Winona gaped. “Joleen, you’re so good. I can’t believe you.”

“I’ve been practicing that one. He’s so obvious it’s almost embarrassing.” She inclined her head. “But do you see what I mean, Winona? He loves you. I know it, but if you don’t fight, he won’t ever know.”

Winona frowned, then laughed. “Who are you?” she said, teasing. “Is this the same girl who made such a fuss back there in the kitchen?”

Joleen blushed a deep, fiery red and lowered her head.

“It’s okay,” Winona said. “I’m only teasing you. I know you have a crush on him, and I’m not going to patronize you by saying it doesn’t matter. I know it does.”

“I’m so embarrassed. I can’t believe I said those mean things.”

“It’s okay.” Winona stood up. “You ready?”

“Yeah.”

“One more thing,” Winona said, leaning into the arms of the mother tree, as if to draw strength from it. “This is important. I don’t know what you think and I don’t want to know. My love life is off-limits to you, but I’ll say this one time.”

Joleen leaned forward.

Winona swallowed, rubbed the tree with her palm. “Sex has to be precious. You don’t go looking for it by showing too much of your body or painting your face to hide who you are. You’ll bring men to you that way, but they won’t be the right ones. Value yourself, and you’ll find a man to value who you are, too.”

“You sound just like Dad,” Joleen said quietly.

“He was a pretty smart guy.”

Slyly Joleen said, “He also said you should never have sex unless you were married.”

“I know.” That was the kicker, wasn’t it? Had Winona betrayed herself by sleeping with Daniel? Was what they’d done wrong? She nudged the carefully wrapped, brand-new memories of the night and found no guilt in the package. There had been no betrayal, nothing cheap about the way they had touched each other.

She looked at her sister. “This isn’t easy.”

“But was Dad right or wrong?”

“Waiting until you’re married is the best thing you can do for yourself, just because sex is so deep and important and sacred.” She paused, gathered words carefully from a basket loaded with landmines. “I’m almost thirty years old, Joleen. All I’m going to say is that sometimes adults make decisions that don’t fit a narrow pattern.”

“So,” she said, grinning. “Just exactly how old is adult?”

Winona laughed. “Don’t push it, kiddo. Once you’re an adult you can’t ever be a kid again.”

Joleen looked suddenly sober. “I know,” she said. “I know.”

W
hen Daniel returned with Giselle to the ranch, he was tired and more than a little off kilter. A new bank of clouds had moved in, but they clung to their weight of moisture, making the unseasonable heat seem even more stifling. The blazing white of the southwestern sunlight arced off the sidewalks in dry waves, like the desiccating blast from a forced-air furnace.

As if in reflection, everywhere they had stopped, people seemed subdued, faces closed tight, few words exchanged. He stopped in the post office to check the box for the ranch and found four advertising circulars, three letters for Winona and an official-looking envelope from the corporation for which he’d done the latest organization. Frowning, he tore it open and scanned it, swearing under his breath.

“I heard that,” Giselle said, examining the Wanted posters behind glass on the wall.

“Sorry,” he said automatically, and rubbed his forehead. The liaison he’d been working with had examined the program, and thought they needed further adjustments to make it work. Daniel wondered why he hadn’t called. Not a good sign.

Tucking the letter back into its envelope, Daniel picked up the letters for Winona. Businessy-looking things. One return address was that of a major greenhouse in Albuquerque, and he felt a queer, sick tightening in his gut.

He ignored it.

“Come on, honey,” he said to Giselle. “Let’s get back, all right?”

“Sure.”

He didn’t talk much on the way back, conscious of a thick tension in the back of his neck. He’d been fine until they’d left the ranch and wandered out into the real world. Fine about last night, thinking of it with pleasure, happily anticipating tonight.

But as he’d stirred sugar into a glass of iced tea over lunch, he’d had an acute, aching wish to have Winona with him, right then. The longing had been so intense it felt like a physical wound. He wanted her in his arms, close to his heart, where he could smell her hair and put his hands on her skin, and feel the giving softness of her long, lush frame against him.

It scared him. Not the longing, but the shape of it. It wasn’t sex that he wanted exactly, not the way he had wanted it before. Now it was both more and less. He wanted her naked in his bed, next to his nakedness, because they’d be alone together without restraint.

Sitting beside him in the truck, Giselle noisily sucked the last of her pop through a straw, and he slammed back into the present.

She caught his gaze and said, “Sorry.”

“Did I frown? I didn’t mean to.”

“You did.” She regarded him for a moment. “Are you going to marry Winona?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” he snapped. “Why do kids always want to marry everybody off? Some people don’t ever get married.”

Giselle gazed at him steadily from her calm, beautiful face, the face that was so much like Jessie’s—and conversely—so much like Luke’s.

“Most people do.” She looked out the window. “It sure made my mom a lot happier.”

He couldn’t deny that. “Yep. It did. But I’m not your mom.”

“Does that mean you aren’t going to marry Winona?”

“I’m not making plans to marry anybody at the moment,” he said, and scowled at her.

Only then did he catch the mischief dancing in her eyes. “Why not?” she asked.

“Because,” he said with a reluctant grin, turning into the long drive to the ranch, “I’m a grouchy old bachelor and wouldn’t be a good husband.”

“Got the grouchy part right,” she said. He poked her skinny side, tickling her. “Grouchy, huh?”

She giggled and grabbed his fingers, pretending she was going to bite them. “Very grouchy.”

With a smile, he took her hand. “I don’t need some wife to boss me around.”

“Winona wouldn’t boss you, Uncle. And she loves you. I can tell.”

He pulled up in front of the house and turned off the engine, but didn’t get out. He looked out over the roof of the neat little adobe farmhouse at the darkening sky, hearing the truth of Giselle’s words ring through him.
She loves you.

“Yeah,” he said with a sigh, “I think you’re right.” But he didn’t want to be loved. Not like that. Worse, he didn’t want to love back. His whole chest felt the pressure of that thought, and he rubbed absently at his breastbone, trying to catch his breath.

Life was an uncertain, unreliable thing—a point made all too clearly by what had happened to Joleen. One minute she was driving along with her parents, having a normal teenagerish argument. The next her parents were gone. Luke’s father came to mind again, that broken old man who’d come back to the reservation after his beloved wife had passed on.

Even his mother had loved and lost, loved and lost, over and over again.

No. Better the orderly bachelorhood he’d mapped out for himself, with his bulletin boards and work and the occasional visit from Luke and Jessie and their brood to give him a taste of real life. So much better.

Giselle sat next to him in the truck, unmoving. He looked at her. “Sorry I snapped at you. I appreciate your concern, but I’m just not husband material, okay?”

Her dark, almond-shaped eyes grew very, very sad. “Don’t you ever want some babies of your own?”

A quick vision of a child flashed through his imagination—a child he and Winona had made, a strapping, strong child with the blood of many nations running through him. The pressure in his chest trebled, and he coughed, trying to dislodge it. “Let’s go inside,” he said, and even in his own ears, his voice was gravelly.

The house had the cool quiet of no one home. Daniel dropped the mail on the kitchen table and, without even realizing what he was doing, went to the back door to look for Winona and Joleen. He saw a flash of color in the orchard, and then Joleen came around the house, one of her rabbits in her hands.

“Hi!” she said. “I thought I heard you guys.”

“You want to go up to the bluffs?” Giselle said.

“Let me put Peter back in the hutch,” Joleen replied. “Will you tell Winona, Daniel? She’s down in the orchard.”

He nodded. Maybe this was best. He’d tell her they couldn’t do this, that it was wrong of him to have let last night happen. They had two months of summer ahead—somehow they had to get some kind of understanding between them.