“So you married him.”
“I guess. I don’t really remember much.” She had a shadowy sense of a chapel. An officiant. Brody sliding a cheap ring they’d gotten somewhere onto her finger.
Saying the vow she thought she’d say to Daniel.
“I woke up the next morning and didn’t know where I was. I was still in my prom dress. Brody was gone. I thought I’d dreamed the whole thing, but there were too many details. I don’t think we even slept together.” Shame suffused her. “I think we fumbled around a little.” God, it was so tawdry, she couldn’t stand to think about it. “I think we both fell asleep.”
“He wasn’t there when you woke up?”
She shook her head. “Like he said, he took one look at me in the daylight, freaked out and split. He left nothing behind. I figured the wedding couldn’t be real.” She pushed away from him, and Walker let her go. Avery dried her eyes. “I hoped it wasn’t real. Years went by, and I never heard from him again. I let myself forget the whole thing.”
She let the whole grim affair sink in. “I… lost myself that day. I thought Daniel stole my pride, my self-worth. I thought Brody took whatever was left afterward. That wasn’t true, though, was it?” A sob escaped her. “They didn’t take anything; I gave all my self-worth away. And I’ve been giving it away ever since. I don’t know why I keep doing that.”
“You’ll stop now,” Walker said calmly. Avery felt as if he’d absorbed some of her pain and was using his strength and level-headedness to diffuse it, so it wouldn’t overwhelm her.
She let out a shaky breath. “You’re right. Now that I’ve seen the pattern, it’s so obvious, I won’t be able to do it anymore. I won’t let myself.”
“I’ve got something I need to say to you, too.”
Avery braced herself.
Could she take any more pain?
“There’s a reason I promised to marry Elizabeth.” Walker wondered how it was that people managed to tie themselves into knots given the least bit of string. He ached to go back in time, meet eighteen-year-old Avery and take her to the prom himself. He wished he could spare her every hardship.
Life wasn’t like that, though.
“You told me that reason,” Avery reminded him.
“I told you about Netta and Sue, but I never told you the rest of it. Why I felt I had to go along with what Elizabeth said that day. The reason behind the reason.”
Avery waited, wanting to give him the same attention he’d just given her.
“Before I was born, my father, Joe, was best friends with Netta’s son, Worth. Dad and Worth did everything together, and when Worth got a girlfriend, my dad did, too. Sounds like he did it mostly to keep up and be able to double date. They were barely eighteen when Worth and Tricia had a baby. I don’t know, maybe Dad knocked up my mom on purpose.” Walker shrugged. “I think he didn’t want to be left behind. Worth was the kind of guy who lit up a room when he walked into it. No matter who he met on the reservation, he had something to say to them. That’s what I was told,” he amended. “Never met him myself.”
Avery wanted to reach out to Walker, but she knew instinctively he needed space to be able to go on.
“An oil company came to the area looking to start a project. Outside the reservation but inside traditional Crow territory. It was a setup for trouble, and they knew it, so they came knocking, offering jobs, money, if we endorsed it.”
“How did that go over?” Avery asked.
He shrugged. “Some people were for it, some against, just like you’d expect. My dad and Worth were against it. My family has always put the health of our land and the waterways over profit, but you have to understand money can be hard to come by in Crow territory. Lots of temptation there.”
“What happened?”
“There was a protest. Worth and Dad went to it. So did Worth’s girlfriend, Tricia, but Dad and Mom had split up already a few weeks earlier, and he was feeling it. Worth’s girlfriend didn’t mind him hanging around usually, from the sound of things, but she didn’t want Dad tagging along that day. The protest was off the reservation. She and Worth left the baby behind. Netta once told me those two were talking about getting married around that time. She was all for it, of course, and she took the baby for the day, wanting to give them some time to themselves. Anyway, I think Worth and Tricia believed in the cause, but I get the feeling it was supposed to be a bit of a getaway for them, too. Only problem was Worth didn’t have a car. Dad did. So he drove them. You’ve got to remember, they were all still kids, really, even if Tricia and Worth had a kid themselves.”
A pit was forming in Avery’s stomach. She already knew this wasn’t a story with a happy ending.
“There must have been an argument at the protest,” Walker went on, his gaze far off on the horizon. “Or maybe Tricia made it clear she didn’t want Dad around. I don’t know. They separated. Planned to meet up the next morning to drive home. Worth and Tricia got a motel room, spent the night. There was proof of that afterward. They checked out the next morning, went
