Reason To Believe (8 page)

"You know what
really
takes the swelling away?"

She smiled as he loosened the button on her jeans and pulled her shirt free. "What?"

"A nice, pink, boneless..." He smiled in response to her smile as he touched her through the single layer of cup-shaped cotton. "What's this?"

"Underwire."

"I said
boneless
breast of—" he pinched the hook and eye apart, then replaced the wiry cup with his warm palm "—mmmm, woman." And he fondled her, then hungrily suckled her until she groaned his name.

"You like that, too, huh?"

Oh, yes.
"Is it helping your eye?"

"You wouldn't believe how much."

"Then I like it, too." So much, she could hardly breathe. He smiled, pleased with himself, watching the signs of rapture spread over her face as he slipped his pleasure-making fingers past the no-contest barrier of her panties.

"How about this? How does this feel, Clara?" He didn't have to ask. He knew exactly where and how to touch her. A quick, deep shot of liquid fire made her shiver. "That good?"

"Mmmm-hmmm."

He moved her hand from his waist to the rigid bulge in his jeans. "Then be fair, darlin'," he whispered. "Touch me, too."

She returned his favor, caressing him the way he'd taught her to, but this was to be the time they couldn't make do with touching.

"I really need you, Clara. Please don't turn me away tonight."

"Ben, we can't take... the chance of..."

"I'll be careful. I promise." He brushed scant kisses over her lips and cheeks, probing her portal with gentle fingers and eager penis, desperately trying to make her ready. "Tell me you want me, Clara."

"I do." There it was. And there he was. And there they were, coming together. "Oh... Ben... yes..."

It was a forever vow for Clara.

For Ben, it was the consummate conquest. She belonged to him now. He was her first, and he decided, then and there, that he would be her only man. Ever. He told her how beautiful she looked in the starlight, how much he loved her, how much he would always love her.

She believed every word. She kissed his sore eye and called him her tiger.

"'... burning bright, in the forest of the night,'" she quoted as she licked his bruised knuckles with a pointed tongue.

"No forest out here, honey, but I'll find you one if that's what you want."

His words made the stars in the South Dakota sky burn brighter. Oh, yes, indeed, he had the power. In her ears, his promises were more lyrical than any other man's poetry.

"Just tell me what you want, Clara. Anything. I'll find it, buy it, steal it, whatever it takes to make you happy."

"You make me happy," she told him. "You're all I want."

"You got it, baby." He smoothed her hair back and traced her eyebrow with a reverent forefinger. "Comes the time when I'm not enough—"

"Never," she said, and she took his face in her hands and kissed that silly notion right off his lips. "That time will never come."

Remembering in the solitude of their bedroom—yes,
theirs,
she couldn't help but think of it that way—made her cry for the loss of something. Innocence, she told herself. All she'd lost was her innocence, and good riddance. For an intelligent woman, it had taken her too damn long to wise up.

They were all in the car before Clara gave the first thought to where she was sitting and why Ben had his hand out. She'd automatically headed for the passenger's side and let him take the wheel. He had turned the keys over to her in the same manner more than a few times when he'd been drinking, but otherwise, Ben had always been the driver. He knew cars inside and out. He couldn't stand to ride in a car with someone else driving. Clara didn't like to drive, so it had always worked out well.

Until now. There was an awkward moment, a wordless power struggle. But they were already in the car, she told herself as she turned the keys over to him.

No one had spoken much this morning. Clara had said quiet good-mornings and made a perfunctory inquiry as to whether Ben had slept well.

"Sleeping is one thing I do better than most people." He'd handed her a cup of the coffee he had made—just like old times—before she'd gotten up. "Even better than you," he'd added softly. "Your eyes always give you away, Clara-bow."

She had glared at him—snapped her eyes, as he used to say. Words generally made the better darts for Clara, but
kiss off was
hard for a woman to say effectively when she had puffy eyes.

She'd noticed that Anna was treading lightly this morning on the delicate balance between physical misery and mental elation. Her father had stayed, and she wasn't about to upset any apple carts if she could possibly help it. She offered no excuses, asked no questions, invited no lies.

Clara was half expecting Ben to impart some words of warning or wisdom to his daughter, but all he'd acknowledged so far was sympathy for her aching head. "Nothing to do but ride it out," he'd said with a sad smile. "Wish I could do it for you, Annie girl, but I'm afraid you're on your own."

It galled Clara to think that if
she
had made a remark like that, Anna would have offered some bitter retort instead of the wan smile she'd given her father. But Clara realized that coming from her, it wouldn't have sounded the same. It wouldn't have carried the same meaning. Ben was speaking from experience.

Under any other circumstances, Ben would have considered probation officer Margaret Turnbull to be a reasonably attractive woman. Her blazer and slacks suited her stocky stature, and she had a nice, soft hairstyle, manicured nails, friendly handshake—all qualities he thought pleasant. But her office was down the hall from the room where he'd been booked for driving under the influence, and unless his nose was playing tricks on him, she smelled of fingerprinting ink.

"We meet at last, Mr. Pipestone," Officer Turnbull declared. With an expansive gesture she offered chairs all around.

"I should have come sooner." He wasn't sure what she'd been told, so he glanced Clara's way for some hint. None seemed forthcoming. "I'm stayin' down in McLaughlin now, so it's hard for me to—"

"No problem; I understand. But it is good to meet you. It is definitely in Anna's best interest to have everyone in the family involved with her program." Ms. Turnbull led the way in the taking of seats. "We don't always get that kind of cooperation, but we do try."

"You'll get it from me," Ben assured her. "You just tell me how."

She offered a perfunctory smile. "You're taking the first step right now."

"Yeah, well, I don't know what you've heard, but my wife and I..." Staring at his bootheel, he resisted the urge to try again for some clue from Clara. "Look, I haven't always been the best father, and I guess that's part of the reason my daughter's in trouble now. Mistakes have a way of—" he gave an open-handed gesture, groping for the right words "—sneakin' up on a guy in unexpected places, messing with the wrong people." He cast his daughter an apologetic look. "Annie's always been a good kid."

"Still is, right, Anna?" The woman's quick smile dipped to a frown. "Or Annie? Which do you prefer?"

"Most people call me 'Anna,' but my dad always calls me 'Annie.' So I answer to either one, if people say it right. I don't answer when they say it, like,
An-na Pipe? Pipestone?"
She feigned an exaggerated struggle over each syllable. "Like they think I just dropped in from another planet, and even though it looks simple enough, there must be some weird way to say it, so it goes with my face better."

"Your face isn't weird," Officer Turnbull said in all seriousness.

"No kidding," Anna aped.

"So... where do you want to start today, Anna?" Turnbull planted her elbows on the arms of her desk chair and steepled her fingers, preparing to be regaled by her charge. "Good news? Bad news?"

"My grandfather was in the news," Anna was surprisingly eager to report. "Yesterday's paper. Did you see it? About the Big Foot Memorial Ride? They have it, like, every year—or at least for the last couple of years—and my grandfather is the pipe carrier for the whole Sioux Nation. Right, Dad? The whole Sioux—"

Ben gave a curt nod, hoping Annie would take the hint and just tell the woman whatever was required.

"So, anyway, it's coming up again, and they interviewed my grandfather about it. He said some real good stuff."

"I'll have to dig out yesterday's paper," the officer said as she jotted a note on a legal pad. "Does your grandfather live... close by?"

"He lives out in the country, down on the rez. He's very traditional. Right, Dad?"

"Oh, yeah, he's traditional, all right."

"What does that mean? Does he..."

"He practices traditional Indian ways," Anna explained. "He speaks the language, tells a lot of good stories, does all the ceremonies and, you know, like..." A glance at her father elicited no encouragement. "Well, he's in charge of spiritual stuff. And he's my real grandfather."

"How interesting." Turnbull made another note, turned briefly to Clara—silently inviting her to jump in anytime—then to Anna again. "How's school going?"

"It's okay." Dead silence. Anna shrugged. "Okay, so the bad news is that I skipped two classes yesterday because I had to go home and look at the paper right away." She glanced at Clara, who tacitly took issue with her choice of words. "Well, what happened was, somebody asked me if the Pipestone guy that was in the newspaper was any relation to me. So I had to find out what they were talking about."

Turnbull bounced the eraser end of her pencil on the legal pad as she eyed Anna. "The school library doesn't get the newspaper?"

"I didn't have time to go to the library. And besides, I was scared it might be—" Anna slouched in her chair, slipping her father a furtive glance "—something bad."

"You couldn't have gotten more information from the person who mentioned the article?"

Anna shook her head.

"Anna, that's not a good reason to skip class," Officer Turnbull concluded.

"There are no good reasons for skipping class," Clara added quietly.

"I finished my work in Kraus's class, turned it in, and asked if I could go get a drink. He told me to sit down. I asked if I could go to the bathroom. He told me to sit down and be quiet. I asked him why he let Amy Trask go, and he gave me some bullshit about—" Anna threw up her hands in disgust. "I don't know what. So I just left."

Turnbull leaned back in her chair, contemplative, distant. "Why didn't you
ask
to go to the library?"

"If he's not gonna let me go to the bathroom, do you think he's gonna let me go look at the newspaper? Anyway, with guys like Kraus, it's always why, why, why. I don't see why they have to know everything. And Kraus hates my guts anyway, so why should I tell him anything?"

"Mr. Kraus called me at work," Clara volunteered. "I must say, I didn't appreciate his attitude. I didn't like the way he spoke to me. I found his... his suggestions to be totally inappropriate."

Her carefully controlled tone set off an alarm inside Ben's head. "What kind of suggestions?"

"Well, he—" Clara cast a quick glance Anna's way. "I really don't want to get into it now, but suffice it to say that I think Anna may have a point about... about her math teacher." She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward in her chair, looking Ms. Turnbull in the eye as though the probation officer and the teacher came from the same camp. "But I made it perfectly clear to him, as I have to Anna, that I don't condone rudeness, and that I expect my daughter to afford him due respect...
and
vice versa."

"He needed to be told this?" Ben asked, trying not to sound too menacing, not in Turnbull's office, anyway.

"We probably should have discussed this matter before we..." Resentment drew Clara's tone in tight. Dirty or not, this was laundry she was opposed, simply on principle, to airing. She gave a deep sigh. "Well, I guess Anna will know soon enough. I've asked that she be removed from Mr. Kraus's math class. The situation has become untenable, and I've come to realize that it isn't altogether Anna's fault. But that doesn't mean—"

"Ha, see?" Anna clapped gleefully, as though she'd beaten Clara's hand. "He even gave
you
some kinda bullshit on the phone, didn't he?"

Clara rolled her eyes heavenward. "Anna, please don't use that kind of language."

"I tried to tell you, but you wouldn't believe me about him. Nobody likes him. He's always got this miserable look on his face, like he ran out of Preparation H or something. He can't control the class, and if I just barely crack a joke or something, he's all over my case like the Gestapo."