wanted him to understand. “I got in the car and started driving. This is where I wound up. Of course, my folks were happy and for a while I let them spoil me. But-”
“But you don’t like it when someone tries to take care of you.”
He knew that about her. What else hadn’t the years erased? “No. I don’t.” She thought about rubbing warmth into her arms, but he might guess she felt uncomfortable in her body. She finally gripped her right elbow with her left hand. “I think, when I realized I couldn’t spend another night waiting for you to be there for me-to look at you and think of you as a stranger-nothing but home called to me.”
“Your childhood home, not the one we’d made.”
“We didn’t have a home. Not what I needed, thought I needed. Oh, Cord, I was so confused. Hurting. All I knew was, I would lose my mind if I didn’t do something. I knew I needed space around me. That apartment you felt penned up in, it got that way for me, too. I needed to smell pines and look at mountains and…and support Matt and myself doing something I loved. I needed to go on with life.”
“You’ve done well,” he said softly. “You’ve made a success of your business.”
She’d been concentrating on where his voice came from for so long that her mind filled in what her eyes couldn’t see in the dark. She knew he’d removed his boots and was walking around barefoot just like her. It wouldn’t take much for the wilderness to absorb him; if it did, would she ever find him again? “It’s been a lot of work, but then, I don’t have to tell you what it’s like to be self-employed. You know about the sacrifices, the uncertainty.”
“Yes.” His voice threatened to encircle her. She started to fight it, but that single word was so quickly followed by others that she remained off balance. “Only, when it’s something you truly want to do, or feel compelled to do, it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice, does it?”
“No. It doesn’t.”
“Matt’s proud of you.”
Warmth at Matt’s endorsement spread through her, followed by even more realization of how much communication took place between father and son. Maybe Matt even sensed his father’s presence tonight. She could at least hope. “He can see what I’m doing on a daily basis. A lot of kids can’t say that.”
“I know.”
She thought she understood what was behind Cord’s pensive tone, that he envied what she had. She nearly told him so, but everything they said to each other seemed so complex and she was worn out from trying to deal with her reaction to being here, alone, with him. She shifted her weight onto her right leg and began absently rubbing her hand up and down her arm. “I thought Matt might balk at having to help with the horses. A lot of his friends don’t have any real responsibilities and have a lot more free time. But I don’t think he minds. At least, he’s never said.”
“He doesn’t mind.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes,” Cord said softly. She thought he’d said something else but just then an owl let out with an indignant call that momentarily stopped all conversation.
“Maybe we’re disturbing him,” she ventured a few seconds later. “After all, he was here first.”
“He’s passing along information to other owls.”
“What kind of information? That there are intruders around?”
“Yes.”
“Then-Cord, if the owls are talking about Matt as well as us, would you know?”
“No. Not unless he was close.”
She knew she’d been grasping at straws when she asked her question. Still, his denial depressed her more than it should.
Unsure what to do with herself now, she made a move as if to turn back to her bed roll.
“Shannon?”
“Yes?”
“There’s something…”
“Something? What?” she prompted.
“We aren’t… there are-does… does it bother you that it’s just us looking for him? You haven’t said.”
That’s not what he’d started out to say. She knew that instinctively. But because she understood all too well the folly of pressing Cord to reveal something he didn’t want to, she told him she trusted his judgment in this. He was following Matt’s tracks. There wasn’t anything a hundred searchers could do that wasn’t being done by them.
But what she felt went deeper than practical considerations. It was somehow fitting that they were the ones intent on bringing their son back where he belonged. In this world of complex organizations, rules and regulations, sometimes parents simply needed to be the ones doing the job that instinct and love and commitment had prepared them for. “I want us to find him, for us to be the first people he sees when he realizes he’s no longer lost. A kind of bonding.”
“Bonding?”
“Yes. No matter what you and I are to each other, we created a child. Two children. That’s precious.”
When he didn’t say anything else and she couldn’t find a way around the emotion that clogged her entire being, she turned her attention to where she was going to spend the night. Although she stepped on a pinecone and felt a stab of pain in her instep, she managed to make her way back to her bed. She sat down, aware that her brain wasn’t nearly as tired as her body and that sleep might be hours away.
He’d left his shelter of darkness. She could hear him moving around. “Does it bother you, not having a fire?” he asked.
“If I thought Matt would see it, I’d have already set the woods afire. But you’re sure he’s far enough away that he couldn’t see one, aren’t you?”
“I’m sorry.”
The words were simple enough but there was nothing uncluttered in the emotion behind them. As if drawn to Cord by what was going on inside him, she got up and walked over to stand beside him. The moonlight had made its impact on his features. He was now a dark, brooding, silver-touched melody of shadow. She was unable to do more than guess at what was going on behind the dark center of his eyes, so she took her cue from what she knew about him.
He was lost deep in that place he went when she’d never been able to reach him. Too many times she’d asked for an explanation of what he was thinking about and had to settle for what little he’d been willing or able to give her. Tonight she wouldn’t try, not because she didn’t care but because for once she didn’t need words from him.
She’d simply stand beside him and share a little of herself. And she wouldn’t listen to her body’s restless hum. Somehow.
“I think, if I wasn’t doing what I am, I might want to be an astronomer,” she told him. She was grasping at the first thing to come to mind. “I don’t know what qualifications I’d have to bring to the job-probably a lot more schooling. But I love the idea of discovering some unknown moon, maybe a whole galaxy. I’d engage in lofty discussions with other scientists about whether there’s more intelligent life out there.”
“I hope there is.”
“Because maybe they’ve come up with some solutions we haven’t?”
“That’s part of it. And because I want to see if they have big heads and eyes and long, thin fingers.”
His attempt at humor made her smile. “What about you? Are you at all interested in doing anything else?”
“Archaeology.”
“You’re serious? You’d really like to dig in the dirt for signs of ancient life?”
“Yeah. I would.” He sounded pensive.
“Why?” she prompted. She’d had to push him so many times in the past that it came instinctively.
“Curiosity, I guess. Maybe I’m looking for my roots.”
Gray Cloud had been his only roots. “You never told me that.”
