Glacier County—mid-January
Carma wasn’t the only one in her family with special talents. There were legends stretching back for generations before the Blackfeet had been corralled on the reservation, stories of those in the White Elk line who could supposedly read minds…and the future.
Unfortunately, the gift didn’t extend to automobiles.
“Are you sure this thing isn’t going to leave me stranded on the side of the road?” Carma asked, casting a dubious look at the vehicle parked in front of her parents’ house.
“Never has before.” Her uncle Tony gave the buckskin-colored hood of his eighties-era van a fond pat. “Unless you get caught in a blizzard. It isn’t worth a shit in snow.”
Which didn’t matter to Tony since the powwows where he was a drum singer were held mostly in the summer. And with her intentionally flexible itinerary, Carma wouldn’t have to push on if the roads got bad. At the moment, they stood basking in the sunny side of Montana’s disposition, with temperatures in the sixties. It would inevitably turn bitter, though, probably just in time for calving season to start.
“I still think I should wait until at least the middle of April,” Carma told her mother.
“We’ll be fine.” Her mom gave one of Tony’s braids a tug. “This one’s a real-good night man, ’cuz he likes to sleep all day.”
He grinned. “Long as I got my ol’ gray mare. She can sniff out a newborn calf in the pitch-dark.”
“And you promised your grandmother,” Carma’s mother pointed out—again. “December might seem like a long way off, but your brother’s enlistment will be up before we know it.”
The best any of them had been able to do was make him promise to wait until the last possible moment to sign away another four years of his life to the U.S. Army. Give them a chance to find a better option. Eddie insisted that he had two families—this one and the military—and he didn’t want to be separated from both. Since he had no interest in being a rancher and there were no other jobs around home to suit him, the army kept winning.
While Eddie lost. More of the sparkle in his eyes. More of the laughter. Each time he came home from a deployment—and there had been so many Carma had lost count—she could feel the added weight of death and disillusion on his soul.
They all feared that eventually it would drag him under.
After his too-short, too-quiet visit while on leave over the holidays, Grandma White Elk had decided to take charge, sitting Carma down and shoving a check into her hand. “You take that and go find what it will take to keep Eddie safe.”
Forty thousand dollars? Carma gaped at her. “And I’m supposed to use this to do what?”
“I’ve been looking into programs for veterans who’re disabled or having mental issues. Lord knows with so many of our people serving, we need something for them right here. Plus, Bing sent me this.”
She dropped a copy of Amarillo Country magazine into Carma’s lap. The glossy cover was a photo of two soldiers in jeans and camo T-shirts, smiling on horseback. The woman was missing an arm from just above the elbow. The man had no visible injuries, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t deeply wounded.
Beside them, a handsome sixtysomething man had an arm thrown over a younger woman’s shoulders. The headline read Patterson Foundation’s Equine-Based Therapy Program Provides Much-Needed Therapy to Recovering Soldiers.
Everyone in the country who’d watched the news in the past decade knew former U.S. Senator and Texas billionaire Richard Patterson. Before abruptly leaving politics, he’d been the most likely conservative candidate for the next presidential election. He was also CEO of the family’s business empire, including one of the oldest and largest ranches in Texas where he kept an eye on their legendary Quarter Horse breeding program.
His daughter was not a public figure. Tori Patterson had chosen to keep a low profile, working as a physical therapist at a respected but hardly famous clinic in Amarillo. In fact, there was only one reason Carma recognized her on sight.
She was now Tori Patterson-Sanchez. Delon Sanchez’s wife. Gil’s sister-in-law.
Carma flipped to the feature article, intensely aware of her grandmother’s all-too-knowing scrutiny. Of course she’d heard that Carma had left the Stockman’s Bar with Gil back in November. Half a dozen friends and relatives had called to tattle before Carma crawled out of bed the next morning.
Grandma had not been pleased to hear why Carma had cut the encounter short. “You finally meet a man with potential, and you let Jolene ruin it?”
Carma could have argued that the potential was limited to an hour in a truck sleeper. Or she could have admitted that there was a good chance she would have chickened out anyway, after that kiss. It was like opening a box of what she thought were firecrackers and finding dynamite. This was not a man to play around with. Gil Sanchez had the power to rock her world.
But after Bing called on Christmas morning to share all their joyous news, Carma hadn’t been able to resist making contact. Just a text. A joke. He probably wouldn’t even answer.
Then he did, and it had started…something. The texts were random, infrequent, and never more than GIFs, memes, and emojis, as if they’d established the rules with that first exchange. She certainly couldn’t call them conversations. Maybe that was the point. Connection, but from a safe distance.
For Carma at least, it was easier to let the pictures speak for her.
She smoothed the pages of the magazine. Wow. The arena alone was stunning—two hundred feet wide, three hundred feet long, fully handicapped accessible. A state-of-the-art physical therapy clinic built right in; a mental health program in development. All provided without cost to anyone whose insurance didn’t cover their treatment.
“This is amazing,” Carma said. “But I still don’t understand…”
Her grandmother tapped a photo of a soldier grinning as he sent his horse over a small jump. “This is what we need. If you went there and learned what they do, you could persuade Eddie to stay home and help start our own program.”
Carma gave a stupefied laugh. “We couldn’t do a fraction of this. The equipment alone…”
“I bet Eddie could build even better stuff. Maybe sell his designs to bring in more money.”
And immerse himself in the challenge, using his engineering skills that were not otherwise in high demand in ranch country. Oh yeah. This woman knew her grandson well. But Carma…
“I can’t just walk in there and demand to be hired.”
“Who better?” Grandma leaned back and folded her bony arms. “You’ve got schooling in counseling. You can handle horses, and these patients can’t be any harder than the idiot actors you’ve had to work with. Plus you can teach them trick roping. That’d be great therapy. And that’s not even counting the other.”
The other. Even Grandma had never found a name for what Carma was…and did. She’d failed miserably at fitting the mold of a traditional holy woman. Even the more progressive sects of the Blackfeet religion felt restrictive. Like having someone tell her how to breathe.
Carma never had been good with rules and rituals. She’d flunked out of Sunday school when the teachers got tired of her asking, “But why do you have to tell us how to talk to God? Can’t we just go outside and listen instead?”
Religion didn’t exactly agree with her version of spirituality.
A place like the Patterson Clinic would have a lot of rules. And the kind of people who weren’t likely to be open to her particular style of therapy.
“What about you and Grandpa?” she asked.
“His youngest sister is moving home from Missoula, now that she lost her husband. She needs family and all.” Her eyes softened as she squeezed Carma’s knee. “You’ve done your part for us. Lord knows you’ve wasted enough of your life on Jayden. And if the man of your dreams was anywhere around here, you would’ve met him by now.”
Carma’s eyes filled as she laid her hand over her grandmother’s papery fingers. “What if people like me don’t get to live happily ever after?”
“I won’t lie, Carmelita. This gift has never made life easier for those who bear it.” Her expression hardened. “But you will not go sour like Norma. You have to find your own happiness. Look at Bing. She barely hit Texas before she landed herself a good-lookin’ cowboy who thinks she painted the stars.”
Yay for Bing. After all she’d been through, she deserved it. But considering the age difference between the two cousins, if Carma followed Bing’s example she’d find her own soul mate in a couple of decades, give or take.
Grandma took both of her hands and forced Carma to meet her piercing gaze. “Promise me you’ll do this. For Eddie. And for yourself.”
There was no denying Grandma White Elk once her mind was set, something else that tended to run in the family. Carma smiled reluctantly. “Okay. I swear.”
“I’ll make sure you don’t dawdle.”
She was true to her word, damn her stubborn, congestive heart. A week later, in the middle of a rerun of Murder, She Wrote, she’d slumped over on the couch, as if she’d simply gone to sleep. Grandpa’s sister had moved in right after the funeral—and Carma was left with no choice but to get on with keeping her promise.
The purpose of her trip was twofold. Tony had connected her with his friends—healers and shamans across Montana and the Dakotas who were willing to share their knowledge and hopefully help Carma understand and develop her own unusual skills. She’d also made a list of equine-based therapy programs to visit along the way, learning everything she could before she reached the end of her winding trail—Bing’s new home in Earnest, Texas.
A thought that made Carma’s belly clutch every time. How would Gil react to her showing up out of the blue?
But she wouldn’t stay away for fear of what Gil would think. Besides being one of her favorite cousins, Bing was her connection to Tori and the Patterson Clinic. Carma had considered texting Gil about her visit, but advance notice felt like an expectation.
Get ready, Big Boy, here I come.
Besides, she didn’t know exactly when she’d arrive. The lack of a set schedule chafed at the part of her that insisted on straightening out every tangle—from a necklace chain to Jolene’s latest squabble with their mutual aunt Agnes—but the freedom to follow wherever the wind pushed and the sky beckoned made her heart swoop and dance like a starling on the breeze.
She caressed the wide strip of intricately painted beadwork that ran along the van’s hood and down the sides. She certainly wasn’t going to sneak across the country. And she wouldn’t lack in comfort. Behind the red-velour bucket seats, Tony had installed a fridge, gas stove, closet, drawers, and a queen-sized bed.
Everything Carma needed for her own personal voyage of discovery. Almost. She pulled the last piece out of her coat pocket and stashed it in the cubbyhole beside the radio. Then she tipped her head back and drank in her sky and her clouds. Let the breeze finger through her hair and caress her face as she sent up a silent goodbye.
And the wind whispered Be safe, friend, in a voice that only Carma could hear.