The Return of Cord Navarro

She felt both frozen and newly alive as if she’d glimpsed sunlight in the depth of a forest. “There have been times when that boulder feels larger than me.”

“Tell me, please,” she whispered when he fell silent. Please let me into that private world of yours.

“You don’t want to hear this.”

“Yes, I do. Cord, if I once made you believe I needed you to play the macho role, I’m sorry. It was dumb and immature. I shouldn’t have said what I just did. I think I know what you’re getting at-searches that seemed like they would never end, the fear you wouldn’t get to someone in time.”

“That wasn’t the worst.”

This time she couldn’t make a single sound.

“Maybe all new fathers feel the same way-I don’t know.”

“How…how did you feel?”

“Scared.”

“Scared? You?”

“Shannon, I was only eighteen when you got pregnant-when I got you pregnant. The day after you told me, I walked into the forest.” His voice trailed away, leaving her feeling as if she was alone in the dark, alone and waiting for him to rejoin her. She felt surrounded by night. “I remember thinking a thousand things, having a thousand fears,” he whispered.

“Being in the forest…” she said because she had to say something, “did that help?”

“Not for a long time. I couldn’t find the answers inside myself. Finally I asked Gray Cloud’s spirit how I was going to put food in my baby’s mouth, whether…whether I was what you needed. He didn’t answer. I learned, the hard way.”

Oh, Cord. “I wish you’d told me,” she whispered. It might have made a difference. Brought us closer.

“I didn’t know how.”

And I didn’t know how to listen. For a moment she fought the need to walk away from this conversation, the peeling away of too many self-imposed layers.

Then she stood and walked barefoot over to where she knew he was. The night had served them well, she thought as she knelt beside him. Unable to see each other, they’d said things they probably wouldn’t have if they’d had to look into each other’s eyes. Now she’d made a lie of the darkness by coming to him. Heat, enough to wash through her body, nearly distracted her, but she held on.

“If you’d confided in me…”

“You were the one having the baby. You had enough on your mind.”

“But if we’d both known what was going on inside the other, maybe it would have made a difference.”

She didn’t so much as sense him move. Still, his hands now covered hers and she felt less alone. “I’d like to believe it would have,” he said.

Despite the pain that accompanied his word and her inability to turn it into anything else, she now had a deeper understanding of Cord’s heart and mind than she’d ever had. Scared. Her wonderfully brave and masculine lover, scared. She tried to think back to when they’d faced the consequences of their too young, too innocent lovemaking, but the present-his hands engulfing hers-blocked that out.

“We can’t change what happened,” she made herself say. “I know that. But…”

He sighed; the gesture lifted his chest and shoulders, lifted her hands. She gripped with the tips of her fingers and pulled even more of his heat into her. “But-” She took a breath and went on. “We’ve done a lot of growing up, become wiser. At least, I hope we have.”

With hands and body, he pulled her around until their shoulders were pressed together. Her heart pounded; she spoke through the sound. “I owe you an apology.”

“You owe me?”

“I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about what I put you through in the beginning. The way I pressured you to take that horrible, well-paid, dead-end factory job so we would have a roof over our heads. If I’d truly understood you, I never would have done that. Of all the things for you to have to do, being in a windowless room surrounded by machinery had to be the worst.”

“I offered. You didn’t force me.”

He’d taken control of her hands. Now he pulled them near to but not touching his chest. She didn’t move away; she couldn’t remember how to move. Talking was almost more than she could concentrate on. “Maybe not in so many words, but I remember yelling at you that I wasn’t going to spend my life working at minimum wage, and even if you didn’t care about an education, I was convinced I had to get one. I wanted to prove to my parents that we were old enough to handle our own lives. I was going to go to college, without their help. When I think of the pressure-”

“You never once yelled, Shannon.”

He was confusing her. Or maybe the truth was, their tentative contact was what had her off balance. It didn’t matter, she told herself. Not the tangled and twisted words they’d spoken years ago, nor why she couldn’t think tonight. She’d come to this isolated place with its night melody of song to look for their son. She hadn’t expected to find the man she once loved.

Stripped of everything except raw emotion, she would admit that in some ways she still loved Cord Navarro.

Pulling free, she staggered away from him. She expected-wanted-him to call her back so she could tell him that it was dangerous for them to talk about the past when it should be left buried. But he didn’t, and now she wanted to throw his silence back at him. Wanted him anywhere but here with her. She knew her night would be filled with memories of their daughter’s death and his inability to cry, to feel, to share and understand.

Matt propped himself against a tree and tried to pull his jeans up so he could see his knees but his pant legs were too tight. He probably should stand and take his jeans off, but it seemed like too much of an effort.

What had gotten into Pawnee? Sure, it had been pretty steep back there, but it wasn’t as if it was the first time they’d climbed. There was a lot of shale; maybe it had felt slippery under Pawnee’s feet and that’s what had set him to bucking. Maybe Pawnee had heard something he hadn’t.

Bucking. He’d done that all right, so quick and unexpected that Matt had been flying through the air before he knew what was happening. If he hadn’t been wearing his backpack, his balance might have been better.

What did it matter? Pawnee had run away and he’d landed on his hands and knees and for a few minutes had been so shook up that he hadn’t understood what had happened. Thank heavens he’d been wearing his pack. Otherwise he’d have nothing to eat tonight, not even a bed roll.

He licked the corner of his mouth but there wasn’t so much as a taste left of the soggy granola bars he’d had for dinner. Reaching out, he tried to snag his pack to see what else might be in there, but he couldn’t reach it without having to move and his knees were already stiff and getting stiffer. Besides, he had to quit eating like a pig.

Sighing, he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the yapping coyotes, but no matter how hard he tried, it didn’t work. This was his second night out and he was nowhere near the top of Copper. In fact, he wasn’t at all sure-

But he would be in the morning. All he had to do was find a tall enough tree to climb or scramble up a boulder and then he could figure out where he was and where he needed to go.

You’ve been saying that all day. So far you haven’t-

You think it’s so darn easy, you try making sense of all these trees and rocks and hills and valleys and-

Stop it! All right, just stop it!

Feeling exhausted by the argument, he opened his eyes and tried to make out the man in the moon. He thought he saw his grinning face, not that it really mattered. What did matter was getting enough sleep that he could get to the top of the stupid mountain and back down tomorrow before his mom started looking for him.

“Is this what you usually do when you’re out on a search?”

Cord looked up from the lazy arcs and circles he was drawing in the dirt with a stick. Shannon had been