Hawk’s Ridge was off his radar. Will was done with that place. Done! His dad’s old room was empty except for a bottle of Wild Turkey abandoned, with care, in the middle of the carpet. A small act of rebellion that had given Will real pleasure. The furniture was in storage; his mother’s knickknacks were in his trunk.
He glanced at the bottle of Bushmills on the passenger seat. Maybe Hannah would stop apologizing once he gave her the gift. Rosie had administered little more than a warning shot. Abused creature she may be, but there was nothing damaged about her canines. He’d felt them up close and personal. If Rosie had wanted to maul his sorry ass to pieces, she would have done so. And if Hannah wanted to invite him over to share the Bushmills, he’d accept. Within less than twenty-four hours, the tightness in his throat—a hybrid of heartburn and slow asphyxiation—had vanished.
Climbing out of the Prius, Will retrieved the mail. The sales flyer from some chichi lingerie boutique was unexpected, the flyer from Southern States Cooperative about birdseed wasn’t. What a relief to find zip addressed to Will Shepard. On the other hand, no one knew where he was. Even Ally didn’t have the full details. It was as if he was hiding. Maybe he was.
Poppy had to leave by five, and it was ten till. Perfect. He could give her the money with a passing hi and bye and avoid a second conversation littered with double entendre. This morning’s encounter had been awkward enough.
Putting Poppy on the Will Shepard payroll would’ve been ideal, but she’d demanded off-the-books cash. Will peered into his wallet. No cash, for real? He never ran out of cash. Ever. Growing up poor meant he always carried at least a hundred dollars in small bills. If nothing else, he kept twenty-five dollars in singles for the homeless guys and the buskers.
The details of everyday life had been sliding through the cracks. But not anymore. Now that Hannah had given him room to breathe, he was going to pull back and apply the problem-solving skills of climbing to the business of resettling his dad. Tackle a rock face without a strategy and you could drift onto hazardous rocks. Rush, and you could face calamity that proved fatal. And he had been rushing.
Will looked around, taking his time. The leaves couldn’t be far off their peak, and yet they shriveled and fell without a blaze of color. Only the dogwoods were putting on a display this year. Across the road, a large hand-painted sign dripping fake blood advertised a haunted forest—Two Nights Only! A scarecrow hung nearby like a decapitated body on the gallows. Its pumpkin head lay splattered on the ground.
The sound of tinkling glass came from his back jean pocket. Had his agent resorted to texting? Will yanked free his iPhone and stared at the screen.
“At powwow in Pleasant Grove,” he read aloud. “Home @ 6. Dad and Hey You. X”
Mail scattered to the ground. Somewhere a leaf blower whirred like an oversize dentist’s drill, a harsh, grating screech that made Will grind his teeth.
Why had he been so cavalier and handed over the care of his dad to strangers? Why had he trusted Hannah? She had no idea what she was getting into, none. He and his father had removed themselves from tribal life for good reason. And this wasn’t a family hoedown. It was a powwow. On tribal lands. Jesus.
As he bent down to pick up the mail, his left knuckle grazed gravel splattered with fallen dogwood berries—berries the color of fresh blood. He flexed his fingers, itching with the need to restrain someone. Itching with the need to restrain Hannah. And what the hell had happened to Poppy?
Jumping back into the Prius, he threw the mail aside and snatched at his seat belt.
The tightness in his throat returned. This was what happened when you reached out to others. You dropped your guard and they blindsided you with do-gooder intentions. Maybe that had been his dad’s philosophy all along with his mom: close ranks against other people’s interference. Will shook back his hair. God save him from the good intentions of others. In fact—the car squealed onto the road—God save him from others.
* * *
Stuck doing twenty miles per hour behind a peloton of cyclists pedaling frantically as they hogged the road, Will streamlined his irritation into a plan. Enough hiding out in a rented cottage with his brain-addled father, a pretty holistic vet and a motley bunch of dysfunctional dogs. He was done with this screwed-up version of happy families. And his dad had forfeited the right to call the shots the moment his delinquent behavior had hurled both of their lives into chaos.
Will passed the tribal sign to the right and pulled into the car park.
Weren’t the powwows normally in June? And why hold one all the way out here, on the tribal lands? The living village was closer to the interstate—a more logical location. Will was sixteen when the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation had held its first powwow on the old ghost field—before it became the site of the living village. Dancers cooling off in the Eno in buckskins, the crush of people, drums beating—the event had bewitched him with his first taste of family pride. But by the time construction of the village had been finished, and the Occaneechi had won state recognition as North Carolina’s eighth official Indian tribe, his mom had managed to poison even that part of his life.
He needed to get back to the city, back to deadlines, back to forcing himself to write—write faster, write better, write more. He had become a writer to forget, not to enjoy a lifestyle of bright, shiny things, but his success was the Siamese twin of Agent Dodds’s success. Every Dodds adventure upped Will’s personal stakes, gave him more to lose. And right now, he stood to lose a career ten years in the making. A career that funded two grown men plus a defunct college account.
Tomorrow he would start preparing for the reality of moving his dad to New York, even if that involved doping him with tranquilizers, strapping him into the Prius and making a getaway across state lines. Because really—Will slammed the car door and stomped across the field—enough was enough.
See Will run. All the way back to New York.
Drums. He slowed his pace. The beat of drums pounded up through the earth, through the flattened grass, through the soles of his Converse and into his calf muscles. The drums tugged at him, calling him to dance.
No. He wasn’t being pulled back to a life of poverty and mental illness, a life of being trapped between two worlds and not belonging to either. Not belonging to the tribe because he looked so all-white American. Not belonging at school because he wasn’t a jock: he was a writer. The small kid in kindergarten whose only friend was a girl; the high schooler with the crazy parent. The first-year college student with the white-trash mom who made a spectacle of herself at his last powwow, throwing it around like a whore.
She should have been watching from her lawn chair, tapping her foot, keeping company with all the other nonnative spectators. But his mom? Sit on the sidelines when she could have been kicking up her heels like a middle-aged Rockette? No, his mom had jumped up, burst into the circle of dancers and decided to strip.
Who would have blamed his dad for throwing her out after that? But the old man had calmly wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, and guided her, as if she were an invalid, back to the truck. His mom had fought to begin with, ensuring the Shepard family held center stage among the tourists out for an afternoon of entertainment: normal families who wanted to admire the costumes and the dancing, peruse the stalls and buy trinkets. Instead, they got to participate in the theater that was his nuclear family. But it wasn’t only strangers who’d witnessed her behavior—it was also a bunch of students Will had corralled into volunteering on the construction of the Occaneechi village. New friends from his new, untarnished college life.
That was the final blow, the one that made forgiveness impossible. His dad had chosen to stay with her; Will had chosen not to.
Memories stacked up here like unopened parcels marked Return to Sender: his mom ripping off her shirt; the bra—old, graying, since everything that started out white ended up gray in their house; her pale stomach and protruding ribs. Her diet was liquid by then and she was borderline anorexic. Maybe she was anorexic—something else that went undiagnosed.
They had to get away from this place before the old man confronted the same memory and recalled his wife acting like a pole dancer in a strip joint.
Legs shaking, Will pushed through the crowds gathered around the stalls, through the heavy smell of fried food and sage, through the master of ceremonies’s voice, the singing, the jingling of bells and the drumming. Always the drumming. Who’s your people, boy? Who’s your people?
“Willie! Is that you? It is! How’ve you been?” His father’s second cousin once removed tugged Will into a hug.
“Good, sir.” Lying really did improve with practice.
“Look at you! You gonna come dance? Your daddy, he’s been having a fine old time. He got to see my grandson, Little Wolf. He’s fourteen now. Reminds me of you the way he can dance! I’ll never forget our first powwow with you in your regalia. All the girls, they were fainting at the sight of you with that long blond hair. Cut your hair, I see. How old were you back then? Sixteen, seventeen?”
“About that, sir.” Will didn’t remember any girls except for the one he’d failed to impress.
“Your mama, she was something that day. Your mama, she was—”
Crazy. Will waited for him to say crazy.
“Such a beauty. Voice like honey.”
Seriously? That was what Uncle Stephen remembered about his mom, or was he going senile, too? Granted, the tribe’s first powwow was not the one where she’d flaunted her lap-dancing skills and her total disrespect for the ceremony. No, that had come three years later, but even so it was a memory to erase all others.
“Why didn’t you tell us you’d come home?”
The drums continued to echo through his skin, through his muscles, through his blood. Calling him to dance.
Uncle Stephen smiled the enigmatic smile he’d always had, the one that said, Boy, I know where you’re coming from. Then he brushed back his hair and pushed on his marine corps baseball cap. “I reckon it’s time for the Veterans’ Song. Your daddy, he’s over on the other side with the purtiest young lady I’ve seen in years. Can’t decide if he’s keeping his eye on the fry bread in the food trailer or on her. She your lady friend? Mighty fetchin’. Almost as fine as your mama.”
Could people not forget that he was related to his mother? He’d certainly tried hard enough.
“No, sir. She’s our landlady.”
“She have anywhere else to rent?” Uncle Stephen guffawed. “Don’t be a stranger, you hear me, Willie?”
“I hear you, sir.”
The drumbeat grew stronger, and the smell of sage was thicker now, making Will’s head swirl. A white hawk screeched and dipped down into the middle of the dance circle. Color and sound swirled. The bells on the Head Lady’s dress jingled. Her long black hair was braided to her waist, just as his mom’s had been. His mom’s hair was dirty blond, same as his, but she always wore it braided. She had no family history of her own, so she’d co-opted his dad’s. Stolen it and wrecked it.
Half of him screamed to leave; half of him—the half he’d long denied—pleaded to stay. And nowhere could he see Hannah or his dad. How hard could it be to find a tall man with a shock of white hair pulled back in a leather thong?
“Willie!” His dad spotted him first. “You got our text, then?”
His dad was with Poppy. Where was Hannah?
Poppy walked toward him with a broad smile. She didn’t even have the decency to blush. “I’m teaching your dad to text,” she said.
“I’m amazed he can see anything as small as a phone keyboard since he isn’t wearing his glasses again.”
“Oh, Hannah lent him her reading glasses,” Poppy said.
“I thought you had to be home by five-thirty.”
“Plans change.” Poppy gave Will a blatant once-over.
“And where’s Hannah, other than avoiding my wrath?”
Poppy laughed. Yeah, he had that effect on people when he tried out anger. Like an invisible member of the chorus line, he wasn’t cut out for front-row emotions.
“Let me get this right—you’re pissed because we’re giving you a break and enjoying an afternoon out with your dad? And by the way, this was my idea. Not Hannah’s.”
“Really.” Will crossed his arms. He always felt emboldened when he protected his chest. “You should have asked.”
He’d been right about Poppy. She was as irresponsible as Cass.
“It’s fine, Will. Look at your dad. He’s having fun.”
She had no idea. No idea.
His dad wandered toward the circle, his feet tapping through a straight dance. “Dad—”
“And he’s been remembering things, about your mama.”
No. Poppy was not going to talk about his mother. His mom was off-limits except to people who had their own memories of her.
“Suppose he’d had an accident,” Will said. “Dad! We’re leaving!”
“You don’t think Hannah and I could manage one sweet, old guy with mashed-up memories?”
“Suppose he’d had a bad accident?” Okay, so now he just sounded stupid.
“Jeez, do you take everything so seriously, Mr. Bestselling Author? Is that how you approach life, by playing suppose-bad-shit-happens? Each day is a gift. Open the box.” She widened her eyes, offering an invitation. “Enjoy what’s inside.”
“If I wanted advice, I’d hire a therapist.”
“Dancing’s cheaper.” Poppy reached for him. “Wanna try?”
Will jerked back and slammed sideways into someone, into Hannah. She stumbled and grabbed his shoulder; he ground down with his left leg to stop them from toppling. He knew better. As a climber he knew not to hang on to the bitter end. He knew when to let go, and yet here he was, hanging on to the beautiful woman who was straddling his leg. His thigh was buried in her crotch, and he had grabbed her hip. Somehow, in that bungled move, he had pinned Hannah’s body against his. He inhaled lavender and vanilla, and his breathing slowed to the steady heartbeat of drums. His arm moved up to curve around the dip of her waist. To pull her closer.
A thought, pure and simple: he didn’t want to let go.
The shoulder of her T-shirt had tugged down to expose part of the tattoo. Grow up in the South, and any idiot could recognize wild wisteria. What was more intriguing was that she had chosen to mark her body with the symbol of love lost and the ability to endure.
“Beautiful ink,” he said, and looked up into eyes that met his at the exact same level.
Unharnessed energy traveled between them, and he shivered. Or was the smell of sage making him light-headed? Air roared in his ears as if he were listening to a rogue wave through a conch shell.
No. How long since he’d touched a woman? No. He was getting hard. Could she feel him? They were pressed up against each other. Surely she could feel him.
But she didn’t flinch and neither did he. His pulse raced into overdrive as if he’d been shot with a defibrillator. He wanted to rip off her T-shirt and press the warmth of her body into his skin. He wanted to hold her knee-to-knee, thigh-to-thigh, chest-to-chest, while the outside world stormed. He wanted her in his bed.
And yet she was so not his type. She wasn’t crazy and she wasn’t under twenty-five. Hard to tell how old Hannah was, but probably around his age, which would put her biological clock in overdrive.
Their foreheads weren’t touching, but they were close enough that he sensed the pressure of her face against his. And once again, the rhythm of his body slowed.
He dipped closer and forced himself to speak. “Why are you here?”
“To have fun,” Hannah said.
“I’m not having fun.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have come.”
She broke free, and Will felt a spark of loss.
Then the moment shattered.