Concerned now more for him than for herself, she took his hand and pressed it to her waist. She was dimly aware of how unwise the gesture was, but she could no more stop herself than she could tell her lungs to cease breathing. This man was the other half of her son’s existence.
Still a vital part of her life.
“I do know how frustrating this is,” she told him gently. “But, Cord, you found his trail and where he spent last night.”
“Yes.”
“Then think about that, not what you still have to do.”
“I can’t help it.”
No one had ever heard that raw and uncensored tone from him. She was certain of it. She accepted his honesty both as a gift for her alone and as proof of how much this search had taken out of him. “Tell me what you’re thinking now. Please.”
He tensed and then released the tension in a long, deep sigh. She felt the hand she held move and accepted it when he laced his fingers through hers. The sun was nearly done with its work for the day and the moon hadn’t come out yet. She thought of their son having to look up at the sky alone, with the universe surrounding him, and then tore her mind free. She couldn’t help Matt tonight, couldn’t do anything more than send him a silent message of love. His father was here and maybe Cord needed her as much as she needed him. Had he ever before? Had she ever asked herself the question? “I have to know what’s going on inside you,” she begged. “I know I keep asking you for that, but, please…”
For a long time he simply stared at her in the deepening gloom. Then he turned his attention to their intertwined fingers. He lifted her hand toward him and touched his mouth to her knuckles.
“You really want to know what I’m thinking?”
“Yes.” She kept her eyes off their hands, breathed, tried to think.
For the second time in a matter of seconds, he kissed her wind-chapped knuckle. A jolt filled with equal sparks of ice and heat raced through her. She breathed again; it didn’t help.
“You saw my silence as a barrier?” he asked.
Incapable of speech, she nodded.
“I wish you’d told me before,” he said.
“I wish I’d known how to, gently, without carving a wedge between us. Cord, please.”
His mouth worked; she all but tasted his effort. “I’m comfortable not saying much,” he told her. “It’s what I grew up with, what I was taught.” Still holding on to her, he shifted position until he was sitting cross-legged, so close that their knees touched. “You know that.”
“Yes, I do. But, Cord, so many times I didn’t know what to do with your silence. I needed you to talk to me. I still need that. Try-that’s all I’m asking.”
He began by telling her about the first time he saw his grandfather. He’d been six or seven, living hand to mouth with his mother, when they went to visit this strange old man who lived all by himself in a cabin without electricity or running water.
“I could hardly wait to leave,” he admitted. “He kept looking at me without so much as acknowledging my presence. I barely understood anything he said. Later, my mother told me Gray Cloud spent so much time by himself that he didn’t know how to carry on a conversation. She understood him, at least a little, because he’d passed in and out of her childhood, but she had to work at it. And she told me that sometimes she didn’t like what he said.”
“What did he say?”
Cord released her hand, shrugged off his backpack and helped her out of hers. Only when he was done and they were back to sitting with their knees touching did he go on.
“I think he was critical of the way she lived,” he said. “Because she wasn’t interested in the old ways.”
“A generation gap.”
“That and other things. He and my grandmother were divorced when my mother was very young. I don’t know what went wrong between them-he never said.”
“No. I imagine he didn’t.”
“I’m sure my grandmother’s family didn’t want him around. It hurt him deeply not to be in touch with his child-maybe that’s why he had so little to do with people. I don’t think he knew what to do with his grown daughter. I remember the criticism in her voice when she told me he didn’t understand that the world was changing and she couldn’t live in a hut and spend most of her time in the wilderness.”
“But you did. And it worked for you.” Her body belonged to her again, but she didn’t trust it to remain that way. She wanted their time together to go on forever.
“Yes, it did. Once, not long before Gray Cloud died, I asked him why he took me in after my dad split and my mom died. He said it was in my eyes-that mine were the same as his.”
“Yes, I think they were.”
“Do you? I don’t know whether he had legal custody of me-I don’t think that kind of thing concerned him. He said I had to go to school because that’s what every other child was doing, but he had little use for the institution. He never once let anyone tell him how I should be raised. People, like principals and social workers, tried-he ignored them. He never told me why he’d changed his life for me, shared it with me-just that there was something in my eyes.”
She became aware of the way her heart was beating. It seemed to work in fits and starts, sometimes strong, sometimes weak, always making its presence known. Hurting and yet singing at the same time. She’d gone beyond tears simply because Cord had said more to her tonight than he ever had before. “He never told you he loved you, did he?”
“No.”
Cord’s simple word seemed to echo in the now-solid night. Mindless of the danger, she took his hand and once again held it to her middle. She
“Hurt?”
“Surely you wanted to hear words of affection from him. You had a right, the right of every child.”
“I knew. It was in the way he treated me, the things he taught me. What we shared.”
Tonight it sounded precious. “What did you share?”
“Things. So many things. Listening together. Sitting in the mountains, melting into them, watching nature go about its life. We did that together.”
Shivering, she fought for words. “But a child needs to hear certain words from the people in his life. You tell Matt you love him. You know what he needs.”
“I learned from you.”
She went hot; ice touched fire again. Tears raged inside her but she fought them.
He leaned forward slightly and increased the pressure of knee against knee. “It came so naturally to you. Nursing Matt. Holding and rocking him in that comfortable old rocking chair you bought. Singing to him. Showing him that it was wonderful to smile. I’d watch the two of you, the way he studied your face as if it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. Then he’d smile and you’d show him how to make it bigger.”
She shivered, fought a sob. “What about love, Cord?”
He hesitated, as if leery of entrusting her with too much of himself, but she held on with hand and heat and heart, desperate to keep the suddenly precious channel between them open.
“What you said to him. And to me. Actions as much as words.” He took a deep breath and she could tell that he was looking around at his surroundings. Then he stared at her again and she was glad it was only the two of them.
“There was no way you could stop yourself from expressing what was in your heart,” he said. “That love boiled up inside you and spilled over to engulf Matt. And, for a while, me.”
A sob again slashed through her. She fought it, only barely aware of her fingers boring into his flesh. “Cord?” The word came out a whimper. When she tried again, it sounded the same. “Cord? Why didn’t you say this to me
