Father and Child Reunion by Christine Flynn

Author:Christine Flynn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

In summer, the reservation where Rio grew up was a two-hour drive from Grand Springs. It could take twice as long in winter. Sometimes, if the wind blew hard enough and the snow got deep enough, the trip couldn’t be made at all. When the temperature dropped to freezing and the wind-driven snow obliterated everything but miles of low flats and barren hills, this stretch of land could be the most desolate place on earth. Now the land was rich with crops of wheat and sugar beets; the mountains beyond alive with grazing elk. But even the thought of all the summers he’d spent exploring this rugged and beautiful place couldn’t ease the tension knotting his insides.

The closer Rio got to the highway sign proclaiming entry onto tribal land, the more he wished the streaky white clouds overhead would gray up and dump about thirty inches of the icy white stuff. He could use the excuse to turn around. A person needed to be careful what he wished for, though. There were those who believed thought itself could make something happen. His mother was one of them.

Holding that thought at bay, he drove past clusters of old housing and new, a well-tended farm and another gone fallow. The wind was blowing cool when, fifteen miles in, he crossed a narrow bridge and pulled into the cluster of modest little houses and one large mobile home. The drop in temperature was an omen of his reception, Rio was sure.

The cries of “Uncle!” made him smile despite himself. After his initial three-year absence, he’d come home because his grandfather had taken ill. After that, he’d made it back three or four times a year, though he never stayed more than a day. The little ones remembered him, though. And he always remembered them—along with the other small children who showed up with his cherub-faced little nieces.

He was thinking how Molly would fit right in with this animated crowd of laughing, dark-haired children when a toddler on a Big Wheel came tearing across the patches of grass poking through the hard-packed dirt. Rio didn’t recognize the little boy, someone his mother was baby-sitting probably, but like the rest of the kids, he got a piece of the red licorice Rio doled out to the lot.

“Something is wrong.”

His mother’s voice came from behind him. Maria Redtree stood in the door of the long, gray-and-white trailer, wiping her hands on her apron, her dark eyes trained on her son. Her hair, drawn back in a single thick braid was still black as coal, though Rio could see hints of silver threading through it as he moved closer. Her body was rounding, but the years were settling well on her. Her bronze skin was smooth, with only a trace of the wrinkles she should have had, considering the grief he seemed to have given her.

“Why is something wrong?” he asked, breathing in the scents of fry bread and wild herbs when he hugged her.

She stepped back, shooing a brown puppy from behind her long tiered skirt.

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