Along the path where the strawberry grows, in the winter of seventy four, Ben Windstar stepped into the Great Beyond, his body laid to rest—not beneath the sacred homelands of the Cherokee—but on the Oklahoma reservation forced upon his people in the time of The Trail of Tears.

The following spring, Ben’s widow, Jenny’s aunt, Winona, returned to her ancestral homelands, where she resided in a modest cabin on the shores of Indian Lake in the Hamlet of Tall Elk not far from where she came into the world and spent her early years.

Above the cabin door was carved the Deer clan totem. And upon the door there hung a wreath of grapevine, woodland herbs and flowers—a Creation by Jenny, assembled for Winona’s welcoming celebration.

And it came to pass as if predestined, Winona Tall Tree Windstar, daughter of a great chief, descended from the great clan mother Singing Water was selected by the women, Mother of the Deer clan. To all who knew her she proclaimed, “In the homelands of my people, my spirit is at peace.” This Mother of the Deer clan would dedicate her boundless energies and diplomatic skills to the enrichment of her clan, her tribe and nation. Hard lessons learned among resilient, resourceful Cherokee would prove to be a source of wisdom within capricious, though rebounding from its deepest roots, a Seneca/Iroquois way of life.

According to tradition, Clan Mothers will fulfill one most sacred mission: preparing a successor.

What lay ahead would be speculation on the glorious mid-June morning when Gramps had business in the city of Pittsburgh and Aunt Winona came along to spend the day with Jenny and Daniel. Daniel was on school vacation, and Austin was in town. A morning’s work completed, Gramps and Austin came along in time for lunch—a picnic under bright skies, held on lush grounds thriving now from Jenny’s tending.

With an easy grace, Jenny accepted the gifts Aunt Winona offered: flat bread and preserves; a Dream catcher—beaded and feathered by Aunt Winona’s hand, secured by Daniel’s—swung from the back porch molding facing the western sky. The sacred hoop, it was believed, served to ward off evil spirits, keep away bad dreams, while pleasant dreams were free to enter. A replica, smaller in scale, made for Daniel’s tree house—the rustic saltbox perched in the boughs of a maple at the far side of the lot, where Daniel and his friends did boy things and on occasion spent the night.

Though Austin viewed dream catchers with carefully concealed suspicion, his manner with Aunt Winona was unusually respectful. Given the reasons for their conflicts over the course of their marriage, and especially the past three years, he’d view Aunt Winona as a threat. In Austin’s mind, anything related to the lake, or the clan seemed threatening, growing more so as the months passed.

His attitude concerned her; his displeasure gave her pause; she couldn’t let it take her from the path. A path that straddled two worlds, separate and apart, she sought to bring together.

Robin had reported that Dr. Layton and his clinic were held in high regard within the medical community. The doctors there had boasted “a high percentage of success in cases of similar complexity”—their words for the history she and Austin had presented. As candidates for treatment, they’d made it through preliminary screenings.

At first, Austin viewed the process as if it were a test that they must ace. He made a pained expression, but voiced no complaint about the monthly schedules: red zones, green zones marked out on a calendar they kept sequestered in their bedroom. As the months slipped by, a routine they’d found restrictive, if not impossible to keep. Intercourse in a forbidden zone became a well-kept a secret.

Jenny had become the focus of the doctors’ probing, testing, questions. The hormones they injected caused her morning sickness, bleeding, mood swings from euphoria to despair—and tears too close to the surface. A fertile woman’s hormones swirling in a barren woman’s body. When would the torment end, she wondered? And when it did, what lay ahead?

The first year, Austin had been hopeful; and she dared hope. As each new page was turned, the nagging doubt she suffered in the deepest chambers of her soul—from him—she kept secret.

In the meantime, she and Daniel enjoyed a unique experience: Austin was at home all but a few days out of the month when he had to travel. And each new month the calendar that hung in the kitchen filled with meetings, games, appointments and commitments.

Daniel had joined a scout troop and a soccer team, where Austin helped out with coaching. On the golf course, Daniel had become his father’s caddie, and his student, learning the game his father loved the way Austin had been taught the game’s time-honored traditions, forging a stronger bond. Jenny stepped aside, enjoyed a welcome respite from the awesome responsibility of raising a boy, too fast, becoming a man.

Her creations were in great demand. Now she must pick and choose which orders she would take. Creating calmed her, filled the empty place, though she dare not work on her creations or speak about her work when Austin was at home. A furtive silence, the price she paid. While in her work room one morning, she’d counted two soccer balls among the sports equipment in the basement storage. One, she surmised, must belong to a friend of Daniel’s who would, in time, remember where he’d left it. She said nothing about the extra ball, until the subject came up one evening at dinner.

“Mrs. Townsend gave it back,” Daniel explained.

They’d been settled in their house a short time, when Daniel’s soccer ball accidentally found its way over the wire fence, coming to rest beside Nellie Townsend’s back porch. She’d refused all pleas for its return.

“When was this?” Austin asked.

Daniel thought a moment, shrugged his shoulders. “One day she called me over to the fence and tossed it over.” He took a forkful of mashed potatoes into his mouth.

“Tossed it over!” Austin repeated. “Without a word?”

“She asked me,” Daniel responded, through the mashed potatoes, “Who was the Indian lady at our house.”

Jenny’s eyes went wide. With Nellie Townsend she’d tried to be a friendly neighbor, the older woman spurned her friendship. Mrs. Townsend had taken her complaints against Daniel’s tree house to the local authorities—a decidedly unfriendly thing to do.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Danny.” Austin waited until Daniel swallowed and took a sip of milk. “Now, run that by us again, will ya’?”

“She asked me who the Indian lady was.” Daniel took a breath and swallowed. “I said, she was our Aunt Winona from Indian Lake.

Jenny and Austin exchanged a look. They knew their closest neighbor watched the get-togethers in their yard from behind the curtains in her upstairs windows. Rich and Robin had spotted Nellie when they’d come over for a cookout. “The poor, old recluse needs to get a life,” Robin observed. Nellie had a grown son—an only child. According to local gossip: bad blood between Nellie and the son’s wife kept son away from mother.

Austin rested his fork on his empty dinner plate. “Did she mention the tree house?”

Daniel shook his head side to side. “She was nice ... sort of ... friendly.”

“Friendly!” Austin scoffed, his eyes shifting to his wife. “Any more citations from the zoning board?”

“Nothing more.” Nellie had told the local police that Daniel and his friends were spying on her from the tree house. A uniform paid them an official visit. And Nellie had petitioned the zoning board to have the tree house torn down.

Daniel finished chewing the last morsel of his roast beef. “Mrs. Townsend asked me,” he hesitated, his eyes shifting to his mother, “if Aunt Winona belonged to the Turtle clan.”

“Ohhh?” amazement Jenny couldn’t hold back.

“I told her, Aunt Winona was Mother of the Deer clan. ... Was that okay, Mom?” For approval, he looked to his mother.

“Yes, Daniel, that was okay.”

Austin focused a stern look on Jenny, then on his son. “Mrs. Townsend gave you back your soccer ball, asked about your Mom’s Aunt Winona and said nothing about the tree house?”

Thoughtful seconds passed before Daniel could answered. “Somebody said something about the reservation. ... I don’t remember what. ... May I be excused?”

Why would Nellie Townsend have an interest in the reservation, Jenny wondered?

Austin’s thoughts were elsewhere. Tapping his fingers on the table, he observed, “Sounds as if she’s coming to accept the tree house ... and us.”

They’d discussed Nellie’s petition. If the board saw things her way, they’d have to take the tree house down—a heart-wrenching turn of events. In the planning and construction, Austin, Rich and Stan had worked with the boys—fulfilling their own boyhood fantasies. No grown man could resist the lure of that tree house. Visitors would scramble up the ladder, swing open the trap door, climb inside. Their faces in the window taking on an oh-to-be-a-boy-again expression as they surveyed the valley below from a top-of-the-mountain lookout. The tree house held a special place in Daniel’s life.

Uncomfortable, Daniel was perched on the edge of his chair.

To Austin she said. “Daniel has homework to finish.”

“Right. You’re excused son.”

Daniel fled the dining room, bounding up the stairs two at a time. When his footsteps had faded, Austin commented, “What do you make of that?”

“I don’t know what to make of that.” He was concerned about the future of the tree house. Jenny questioned Nellie’s interest in Aunt Winona and the reservation. Seldom did outsiders know clan totems. Yet Nellie knew there was a Turtle clan on reservation.

“Well.” Stretching tall, Austin rose from his chair. “Sounds like the crabby, old troublemaker could be warming up to us.”

Jenny took her napkin from her lap; laid it on the table as she rose from her chair. “I wish you wouldn’t let Daniel hear you call her that,” she cautioned. “I want him to respect old people.”

He shot her a combative look and countered, “So do I.”

“She’s Mrs. Townsend to Daniel, until he’s old enough to call her Nellie.” Standing up to Austin in matters large and small had become a common thread running through their marriage. She kept her eyes fixed on his face, never sure of his reaction.

The strain between them became most severe while passing through the red zones; sexual tensions, she believed, for the moment, pushing from her thoughts deeper conflicts.

A long moment stretched between them, before Austin flashed an infectious grin. “Okay, okay, you win.”

Winning was not what she wanted. In his mind for him to win, she must lose. She wanted him to understand, respect her way of thinking. She kept her eyes fixed on his face. If only she could see into his soul. Austin had been capable of change, a change of heart. He wanted them to have another child; he’d make concessions to accomplish an objective. How far would he go to bridge the gap spreading wide between them? He did have his limits.

Tonight, that look was in his eyes. She felt a pleasant rush, the moment put on hold. Her eyes closed for an instant, opened on a dinner table in need of clearing—one of Daniel’s chores. “My ahhhh … assistant is doing his homework.”

Amused, Austin’s eyes swept the table. “Tall order,” he observed. “You think I can’t fill my son’s boots.”

Later that evening, she served home-grown blackberry cobbler and coffee—a glass of milk for Daniel—while they watched a favorite television program. When Daniel went off to bed, Austin changed the channel. Jenny went into the kitchen to get a head start on their breakfast preparations. They’d be up before the sun. He had an early flight—Chicago; his days away this month.

She set the kitchen table... puttered ... all the while within her anticipation hummed for the moment they would touch, surrender to the tension—forbidden though it was. Did forbidden make the yearning stronger? Life forces seek, and find a natural flow. Mellow strains of violins coming through the speakers Austin had installed—an album he played when he was feeling mellow. No, romantic.

“Remember this?” He stood in the doorway. “The Boss.”

The look of him, the timber of his voice, a ripple of excitement,” Mmm humm.” She wouldn’t have him go away with these tensions between them, aching as she did to feel his power. Her arms opened to him.

He stepped into the room, tripped the light switch. A cosmic force, like star bursts when they touched, a pull as strong as moon tide. Suspended at earth’s edge together, they swayed with the music. The haunting melody he hummed into her ear, a love song old as time.

“We’re not supposed to do this.” He knew restraint had come too late.

Lightheaded, she released a breath, with it, inhibition. “Ohhhh. It feels soooo right.”

He picked her up; they whirled. “To hell with the red zone.”

What was to come was meant to be, a secret kept.

Gleaning from one fruitful vine to the next, Jenny filled the willow baskets dangling from a sun-bronzed arm. Cucumber, zucchini—slender, luscious-green, firm to the touch. On top, she nestled rotund Big Boy, fleshy Early Girl tomatoes, sprigs of parsley, oregano, pungent rosemary; stems of golden, blossoming calendula adding brilliant color. Again this harvest, there would be plenty to share—a bounty neighbors and friends had come to expect from Jenny’s prolific gardens. Solace for a heart that ached. Though she was barren still, her gardens were productive. No escaping that reality.

Barren ... empty. Familiar twinges of pain, self-doubt coming with the hurtful word and one of its varied meanings—the one that applied to her. Jenny pulled in a calming breath from the fertile earth around her, sat back on her heels. Using the tail of her denim shirt, she wiped the sweat from her brow. Pushing away despair, she rose, took up the baskets and set them in the shade of the huge, old maple that held Daniel’s tree house—his refuge from the complications of a grown-up world approaching with ever shorter steps.

An old, enamel colander held Kentucky Wonders, green onion, leaf lettuce meant for an early dinner. Austin was away; Daniel shooting hoops out in the neighborhood. After supper, he would go off to a soccer meeting. She would haunt the house, and wait. Once again, a lurking sadness was about to crush her spirit.

A project, she thought, one of many competing for her attention. Creating something beautiful would chase away despair. And Daniel. The thought of him warmed her soul, a look of contentment crossed her face. Barren, but for him—a boy becoming a fine, young man. A gregarious young man.

Because of Daniel’s out-going nature, she and Austin had become aquatinted with all the families on the hill—a mix of young and old, ethnic groups, religions. White race all; good people mostly. Yet she’d picked up on the undertones the neighbors used defending an invisible though all-too real obstruction against a black invasion bursting from the inner city.

A select few knew her own or Daniel’s mixed-racial heritage. A harmless evasion she’d practiced in the white world even before her marriage and Daniel’s birth. Reticence was, she’d come to see, an effective means of self-protection. Though he hadn’t said as much, she believed her husband agreed. She had never been ashamed of the blood of the Iroquois. Proud she was. More recently she’d come to resent keeping that part of her hidden.

The colander brimming over, Jenny came up from her crouch in time to catch a cooling breeze. “Ahhhh.” Contentment would be short-lived, for on the same breeze came a cry that tweaked her nipples: the wail of a hungry infant—the Anderson’s baby boy kept on a rigid schedule by an over-zealous mother afraid of spoiling her newborn. “How foolish, and cruel,” Jenny sputtered, unable to flee the sound.

As an infant, Daniel was nursed when he cried, and cuddled. Daniel wasn’t spoiled. Her arms ached to cradle a newborn once again. If by some miracle ... Wishing served no purpose. The Anderson’s baby was theirs to rear; she dare not interfere.

More than two years had gone by since she and Austin had begun the program at the clinic. A year since Dr. Layton met them in his private office for a final consultation. With an air of professional detachment he’d informed them, no treatment yet devised could ensure that Jenny would conceive. Yet the door was left ajar. In the future, perhaps ... They’d heard a doctor’s parting words before: “It will happen when you least expect it.”

In Austin’s scheme of things, there were two kinds of people: winners, and losers. Success or failure, the way he measured outcomes. Because of her, they’d failed.

“Youuu whooooo! Hello there.”

With the back of her hand wiping tears away, Jenny came out of the garden—past noon, the sun in a western descent. “Good afternoon, Nellie. How are you?” she inquired of the white-haired, stocky, woman across a wire fence entwined with vigorous morning glory vines and trumpet flowers.

Nellie Townsend cradled a quart jar in sturdy arms protruding from a dark print Granny dress. “Still kickin’,” she responded, lifting one swollen foot, then the other, a jig she would go into when anyone asked how she was.

This feisty old lady—their closest and most senior neighbor—made Jenny laugh. From the day they met, there was something oddly familiar about Nellie. Jenny couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was. For her own reasons, Nellie kept a silence concerning Aunt Winona that Jenny honored.

After a contentious beginning, the older and wiser though often prickly widow had become a valued friend. Daniel mowed her lawn, pruned her hedges, shoveled her walk; ran errands for Nellie. She would always pay him small amounts. “For yur bank account,” she’d say, pushing folded bills into his pocket.” My late husband always said, ‘never give away yur labor.’ “

Jenny held up an index finger. “I have something for you.” Retrieving one of the baskets from under the tree, she held it out over the fence. “Fresh picked.”

Nellie’s deep, dark eyes lit up like a delighted child. “Ahhhh, I know what I’m havin’ fur supper.” In two arthritic hands, she held the quart jar out before she took the basket. “Some apple butter fur the men folk.” Nelly gave as good as she got; a tenet she lived by.

“Thank you so much. Ours is long gone.” In the fall the year before, they’d split a batch of apple butter. Daniel collected the wine saps from Nellie’s trees and helped her run them through the sieve. Austin had considered this lonely old lady a meddlesome nuisance, until he’d tasted Nellie’s apple butter, and molasses cookies, which reminded him of the farm and Grandma Kora’s down-home cooking.

About the same time, he discovered Nellie’s passion. Not only was she an avid fan—the players, “her boys”—but a keeper of the Pirates’ history from the beginnings of the franchise. “Phenomenal,” he determined, his head wagging side to side, after conferring with Nellie on some obscure event in the recent or distant past. She kept scrap books full of clippings to aid sometimes hazy recollections. With Nellie, these days, Jenny avoided baseball.

Roberto Clemente was dead. She couldn’t give her heart to another player. Protecting herself from further grief, she’d drawn that shell up tight.

On a hot, summer afternoon sipping iced tea in Robin’s porch swing, Robin ventured an opinion she based on her recent study in the psychology of human behavior: To Jenny, Roberto Clemente had become the reincarnation of her father—what Dan Carey could have been, accomplished, had he lived. From early childhood, Robin ventured, Jenny had idolized her father. When he was killed, she’d been too young to grieve. It could be she grieved another life cut short as if Roberto Clemente were pitch-hitting for Dan.

At first, Robin’s conclusion seemed far-fetched, until Jenny considered that her cousin had recently completed the training to become a leader of Marriage Encounter. “What you’re saying has a grain of truth, I guess,” she conceded, prompting Robin to step across a well-established line.

And hadn’t Jenny done the same with Austin. He the handsome Prince Charming, chariot and all. “The Classic Cinderella Syndrome,” Robin proffered. “And,” she continued, oblivious to the crossing of her cousin’s boundaries, Jenny had made of him a hero, put Austin on a pedestal, only to discover he was all-too human.

There on Robin’s porch swing—in the past, safe haven—Jenny felt the earth quake under her small, secure world. A blinding blackness cut across her line of vision. Speechless, she gasped, too stunned to put raw feelings into words. How dare Robin use her marriage to prove a textbook theory? Violated, and incensed, Jenny leapt to her feet and fled.

“Wait!! Robin called out after her. “I didn’t mean ... Oh, damn it!”

Climbing the hill as fast as her legs would carry her, her heart throbbing, Jenny reached her house, collapsing on her bed where bitter tears flowed. Daniel’s footsteps on the walk sometime later, forced her to pull out of this funk.

That evening while all was quiet in her darkened parlor, Robin’s words came back to taunt her. Jenny was furious with Robin; so smug she was in her assumptions, yet she couldn’t ignore the ring of truth. Troubled thoughts, mixed emotions collided in her heart and mind. She dropped down in Austin’s chair—his imprint firmly fixed into the padded seat and headrest.

He’d stayed in town for a dinner meeting at the Petroleum Club. Seldom home these days, the men he’d trained had left the company to join a competitor’s stable. Corporate had decided not to train another man. “Bean Counters,” he’d sputtered when he told her the decision. Against his wishes, he’d be traveling again. She sympathized, but wondered. Was he running away from her, from failure, a situation he could not control? She couldn’t know his mind and heart. He kept them hidden from her, as she kept her true feelings hidden.

She had put him on a pedestal, idolized him, as a girl adores a father she loves and admires. A father she’d never met but whom she worshipped—too strong a word, or was it? Her father had been a hero in another time and place; her feelings for her husband more complex.

Under-facing all else, there was the war; a constant reminder of families suffering the finality of death in a far-away land. And for what? She couldn’t bear to think of Austin or Daniel in that sort of peril. She’d kept them close, protected. But Austin lived in a man’s world, and a boy needs the freedom to explore.

Authoritative, self-assured, qualities she admired in her husband. A tender, romantic side she treasured. He’d been good to her, good for her. Yet she knew he’d made mistakes; he’d trampled on her feelings, hurt her. For more than a decade, his word had ruled, and she’d accepted. Their marriage worked that way. Old habits, it seemed, impossible to break.

Since this last move, she’d made an effort to change the balance of power between them. Now she had to admit, those efforts had stalled. She pulled up her knees, wrapped her arms around—a childlike pose lasting only seconds. His chair was not a good fit. Jenny moved to the corner of the couch where she could curl up, think, without so close a presence of him.

Later in the week, Robin appeared at Jenny’s kitchen door. “Hello!” In her voice uncertainty as to how she would be greeted. “Do I dare come in?” she called out through the screen.

On guard, as though Robin were an intruder, Jenny turned from the sink where she’d been washing supper dishes. Robin must have known that Austin was in West Virginia. She’d be cordial to Robin, but maintain a boundary. “Come in, Robin.”

The screen door squealed, protesting, as Robin entered. Once inside, she came directly to the point. “I’m here to apologize,” she said, fittingly contrite. “I should know better.”

Jenny fixed her cousin with a wary stare. “Am I to be one of your case studies?”

Robin gripped the back of a kitchen chair, leaned toward her cousin “You know I wouldn’t betray a confidence.” Her eyes searched Jenny’s for a sign of forgiveness. Seeing none, she went on, “What I said to you was thoughtless, and cruel, and I’m sorry.”

Jenny struggled to control a flash of desperation. She’d come to accept that Robin had been on the right track. The truth hurt. Still, she’d been stripped naked by someone she trusted. The loss of dignity made her flush and turn away.

Kin, family, sister, Robin had been part of her life through calm and rough waters since they were girls together—a bond that couldn’t be replaced. Would trust that existed between them ever be the same? Swallowing her pride, Jenny turned back. “Stay a while, Robin. I’ll make a pot of tea.”