the altar, a little time to spare as the menfolk answered Henry’s questions and got themselves together. “You look marvelous.”
“Thank you; you look pretty spiffy yourself.”
“Spiffy, huh?”
She hugged my arm. “Yeah.”
“I seem to recall that as one of your mother’s words.”
“It was.” She hugged my arm tighter, and we both took a deep breath. “I wish she was here.”
“Me too.” I cleared my throat and remembered the ring. “Um, I’ve got something to give you.”
She glanced at me, a trace of annoyance in her voice. “Now?”
“Well, yep. Here in a couple of minutes, it’ll be too late.” I placed my fingers around the ring on my little finger and pulled. There was a slight panic when it felt as if I might not be able to get it over the knuckle, but, after the second try, it came free.
I handed it to my daughter.
She took it, staring at the smallish diamond surrounded by two chips, one on either side of the antique setting.
“It belonged to your great-great-grandmother. I gave it to your mother as an engagement ring when we got married, but she made me take it back for you when she… when…” I took another breath, knowing our time was running out. “Toward the end.”
She looked up at me through the wayward strands of strawberry blonde, her eyes shining.
“She wanted you to have it.”
She swallowed and slipped the ring onto the same finger as the engagement ring that Michael had given her, the dichotomy between the sizes of the two stones almost laughable.
“In 1863 that was a big diamond.”
She laughed and cut the circulation off in my arm. “It’s all going to be all right.” Her clear, gray eyes came up to mine. “Right?”
“Right.”
Henry Standing Bear gestured toward the small Longmire family, the fringe under the arm of his outstretched sleeve swaying with the light breeze. We started down the aisle and toward the waiting Morettis. For a second, I was reminded of something a friend had said, something on the mountain, something ominous-but I pushed that from my mind and looked up to see that the two birds I’d noticed were crows circling right above the meadow, the primaries of their wing tips spread like fingers as they rode the thermals that lifted them into the cloudless sky.
Maybe it was an omen, but I decided to take it as a good one. I’d heard that crows mate for life and are known to raise their young for as long as five years.
Sometimes you don’t get that long.
I thought about Audrey Plain Feather and how her life hadn’t turned out the way she’d hoped-maybe nobody’s did.
My wife Martha’s hadn’t. Mine hadn’t. Even Henry’s hadn’t.
Maybe Cady’s would.
It’s hopes like this that you cling to at major turning points in your life and, more important, the lives of your children. You keep going, and you hope for the best, and sometimes, maybe not very often, your hopes come true.
I took the luxury of watching the crows playing tag above our heads for a moment more, the graceful arc of their patterns intertwining in figure eights of infinity. That was probably our job here, to keep going and to do it with as much artistry and beauty as our hearts could bear.
Henry was talking to me when I lowered my face.
I hadn’t caught what he’d said, and it wouldn’t have made any difference if I had, because I wouldn’t have understood it, but I looked down at the young woman on my arm, all my dreams and hopes bundled together in one achingly beautiful woman.
I turned to my friend and the world, and the words poured from me like a fervent prayer. “ E-hestana Na-he- stonahanotse.”
