“Before I could scramble to my feet, Noreen was already beside me on the blanket, grabbing my hand and putting it between her legs.” Rain bit her lip, and this time she looked away. “The feel of her made my head reel and threw me off balance enough that Noreen could push me over and straddle me. She moved my hand onto her breast and slid down my body. She panted, rocking herself there, while squeezing my breast with one hand and putting the other between my legs.”
“All right, stop,” Bett said, sitting up abruptly. “So this is the one? The other woman that you never want to talk about?”
“No!” Rain said, with absolute conviction. “I didn’t—I got almost nothing from what she did, other than to know that I wanted more than just a woman on top of me.” She touched Bett’s arm gently. “I wanted what I’ve only found with you. A life of love.” She lowered her head. “Even though it’s so much more than I deserve.”
“Why do you say that? Because some predatory woman took advantage of you?”
“No. Because of what happened next.” She raised the water glass but didn’t drink. “I pushed her off me and turned back toward the house. My mouth went dry when I saw the first Blue Norther of winter was darkening the horizon, barreling in from the distant mountains. I didn’t look back at Noreen, only told her to get her clothes on and hurry, because there was a storm coming. She whined that we would make it before the weather got there. Then she added that the little girl was probably still asleep.”
A splash of water hit the coffee table and Bett saw Rain’s hand was shaking. She took the glass and set it down, but Rain didn’t seem to notice.
“My blood ran cold. ‘What little girl?’ I demanded, though in my heart I already knew.
“‘That Daisy girl,’ Noreen told me. ‘She didn’t feel like going to church either. For real, I guess.’ She grinned flirtatiously, but the look on my face must have made her go on. ‘Anyway, she was sleeping when I came to find you. I’m sure she’s fine.’
“I ran all the way to the house and looked in every room, calling for Daisy, but there was no answer. I saddled Sage, supposing Daisy might need to ride if she wasn’t feeling well. Noreen arrived, wrapped in my blanket. I walked over to her and told her to wait there and to ring the dinner bell if Daisy came back. She nodded and I started away before thinking of something else. I pulled my knife and showed it to Noreen, whose eyes went wide. I told her, ‘If you tell anyone—anyone ever—about what happened between us, I’ll cut your throat. Understand?’ I waited until Noreen nodded again before I grabbed the blanket off her, wanting Daisy to have it when I found her, and left.
“I rode in widening arcs on the side of the Murphy spread opposite the pond, calling Daisy’s name over and over, but the incoming wind seemed to blow my voice away.” Rain heard her own voice catch as she described her urgent search. “When Hugh Murphy found me on his plow horse, I was already soaked. He gave me an extra jacket from the house and yelled at me other over the wind, directing me to search north, toward the road.”
She’d ridden Sage back and forth, calling over and over despite being unable to hear her own voice. Her worry increased when the pounding rain begun turning to snow, the wind blowing it in icy curtains. Rain shivered again though the room was warm. “I tried to think where Daisy would go if she was sick, if she was scared, if she was alone? A story I had told Daisy, not long after her arrival on the farm, came to my mind. It was just some fanciful tale like the ones I used to tell Nikki, this one about the girl who escaped from some trouble by growing wings and flying away. I’d pointed to a rocky outcropping about five miles west of the house and told Daisy that the girl had used that place to jump into the sky. Daisy had spent the next several minutes flapping around the corral until her mother had scolded her, saying, ‘Daisy, you know that’s just a story. Now, stop it.’ Daisy had obeyed, but her expression was so sad that I winked at her, causing her smile to reappear.
“When I faced Sage into the storm, he clearly thought I was crazy, but he went. I strained to hear Daisy’s cries as I squinted to see through the rising pitch of the storm. About two miles later, Sage suddenly shied. I was focusing so hard on trying to see what was in front of me that I almost fell. I jumped down, trying to retrace our tracks.” Rain rose and moved to the fire, keeping her back to Bett. “I dimly saw a dark bundle, a silent lump. It was Daisy.”
Once she’d gotten herself and the girl’s inert form back onto Sage, she’d let go of the reins, knowing he would find the way. Opening her jacket, she tried to warm Daisy with what little heat there was in her own body, but the girl was like ice, and Rain wasn’t even sure if she was breathing. Rain rubbed Daisy’s hands and face, wrapping the blanket around her to keep her close as Sage began to run toward his warm stall and food. She wanted to sing to Daisy, to sing the only song she really knew, the one her mother had taught her, but it seemed she was only wailing instead.
“We got back to the house, and I carried Daisy up the steps. As Hugh took her, I could hear Iris screaming for her daughter. I walked Sage to the barn and was trying to make my hands pick up his brush when Noreen came in. She sent me inside, promising to feed and water my good pony. I could barely put one foot in front of the other as I moved toward the house.”
She passed through the kitchen, where there was some kind of soup in a pot, and walked on toward Daisy’s bedroom. Iris was trying to give her child some water as she lay covered over with blankets. Rain could never forget Iris’s eerily calm voice when she turned and said, “Thank you for bringing my little girl back to me, Faith.”
Bett moved to the fireside also, standing near but not letting their bodies touch. Rain didn’t look at her. “I must have been swaying slightly, because Hugh brought in a chair from the other room where he had taken Rose. My skin began stinging all over, but all I cared about was listening to Daisy’s shallow breathing. Hugh brought some soup but I didn’t want it. He pressed me, and I think I had three swallows before he left and I set the bowl aside.”
“Time swam past until I heard the clock strike one. Iris had fallen asleep on the bed beside her daughter. When Daisy coughed a little, I got to my feet and went over to her, putting my hand on the top of her head. Her fever was very high. She looked up at me and spoke, her voice so tiny that I had to bend very close to hear it. Daisy said, ‘I wanted to fly away.’”
Rain slumped, putting her face in her hands as if trying to block out the scene. “Just after the clock struck two, she did.”
* * *
Bett didn’t know what to do as Rain finally straightened, fixing her gaze on something far away. Finally, unaware of the tears running down her face, she said, “At the next chime of the clock, Iris awoke and began screaming. I’m not sure exactly when she stopped, because the sound was in my head for days. The wind let up after daylight, though it was still snowing. Hugh had carried Iris to their room and a doctor came and gave her a drug to help her sleep.” Rain’s voice was hollow. “I’d settled on the floor by Daisy’s side of the bed, rocking as I sang her my mother’s song. When the doctor came in to see me, I drew my knife and told him to go away. It wasn’t until I heard the sound echoing in the quiet room that I realized I’d spoken in Lakota. It didn’t seem to matter, because he did leave. I heard him telling Hugh I had frostbite, probably second degree. He said there would be blistering and pain but it would heal eventually. He left some salve.
“Sometime later, my song had ended and my arms were limp by my sides. I could barely hold my head up. I was…empty. I couldn’t see very well but then I heard my name in a hoarse whisper. Noreen crept a few steps into the room, her eyes on my knife. ‘Faith, I know you hate me and I know I’m damned forever and I deserve all of that, but you’ve got to let me get her ready, Faith. We’ve got to put her in the ground before it freezes solid. For the love of God, Faith, please.’
“I couldn’t answer.” Rain’s head turned slowly toward Bett. “You said earlier that you hated her. I had moved beyond hate, beyond loathing or detesting her. I was in a place I’d never been where I had no words because nothing could express how I felt. I was as stiff and cold as…” Rain swallowed hard. “As death itself. After a few seconds of silence, Noreen went out and came back with Hugh. He pried my knife out of my fingers, and together they got me into Noreen’s room. My eyes were open, but no images were registering. Hugh put some of the doctor’s medicine on the black patches on my hands and face. He left me with some water.”
Rain ran her sleeve over her face and worked to make her tone impassive. “I missed Daisy’s funeral. Noreen came in afterward and talked to me for a while, even though I had finally closed my eyes. She told me Iris cried hysterically when Hugh stepped up and threw dirt on the little coffin. He caught her at the edge of the grave as she ran to join her daughter. The next morning, I felt someone putting medicine on my face. It was Iris.
“‘Oh, my little girl is finally waking up, I see,’ she said. My throat was too dry and swollen to make a sound, but I shook my head. Iris said I should put on my nightie, as she held up one of Daisy’s sleeping gowns. Hugh came in and took Iris out of the room. He came back after a while and held a glass to my lips. I almost spit up, coughing, but was finally able to swallow some.”
She remembered the sound of Hugh’s voice, heavy with sorrow. “‘My wife is in a bad way, Faith,’ he told me. ‘She’s got it in her mind that you are Daisy. I’m going to take her to a special doctor, but I’ll wait until you are better.’ He took out his pocket knife. ’I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to cut those boots off you. We need to see the condition of your feet.’”
She turned to Bett, suddenly desperate for her to understand. “The idea of destroying the boots the sweet shopkeeper’s wife had sold me was intolerable, as if losing them would sever my last link to the world of goodness and leave me adrift in bitter darkness. Hugh didn’t know why I gestured no and struggled to sit up. He tried to reassure me that he wouldn’t cut me, but that wasn’t what I feared. I pushed one foot against the other, and eventually one boot came off. He helped me remove them both. My feet were raw and swollen, but there was no infection.”
A few minutes later, Noreen had come to the door with some bandages and ointment and a bowl of soup on a tray. She looked haggard and worn, like she’d aged ten years. She noted Rain’s knife on the dresser by the window and came into the room.
“Noreen treated my feet without a word, only asking ’Can you feed yourself, then?’ when the job was done. I nodded. Noreen opened her mouth like she was going to say something else, but I shook my head and closed my eyes. She left me alone.”
Rain caught some motion from the corner of her eye and saw Bett wiping at her face. She needed to find a place to stop, a place from which Bett could make her decision about their future. She squared her shoulders and continued. “A week later, my feet had healed to the point that I could stand and walk a little. My face and hands looked terrible, and I was still very weak. I took meals in Noreen’s room because whenever Iris saw me, she called me Daisy and tried to fuss over me. I had not yet spoken.
“Hugh came in one evening to tell me he was leaving in the morning to take Iris to Omaha. Noreen was going too, he added nervously, to stay with some other relatives in the city. He asked me if I was all right to stay by myself for a little while, and I nodded. After a moment, he asked if he should send over the doctor to see about my throat. I shook my head.
“That next day as we stood at the foot of the porch, Hugh told me to use whatever I needed. I could hear in his voice that he wasn’t coming back. I had barely been out of bed and hadn’t braided my hair since Daisy had died. As Hugh was helping Iris into the car, Noreen came over to me and whispered, ‘Me saying I’m sorry probably wouldn’t mean a thing to you, Faith. And I don’t blame you.’ Tears welled in her eyes, perhaps the only real emotion I’d ever seen from her. ‘But if I thought there was ever a chance you could forgive me, I could stand all the terrible tortures I’ll be facing in hell.’
“I took out my knife and Noreen squeezed her eyes shut. I grabbed some of the hair that was hanging in front of my face, cut off a piece, and handed it to her. As I turned to walk back toward the house, I cut off three more sections of my hair, dropping them to the ground.” Rain ran her hands up her face and into the hair that fell across her forehead. “After my mother died, the last thing I remember before my father took us off the reservation was many of her friends cutting their hair. So from my childhood, I’ve known that to be a sign of mourning among my people. And ever since Daisy, I’ve worn my hair this way. The rest grows, but I cut these bangs as a mark of grieving, lamenting what I did, and sorrow for what I didn’t do.”
Bett took in a shuddering breath and forced herself to hold back her tears, because she knew if she didn’t, Rain would feel bad about having told her all this. She wanted to ask a dozen questions. How long did you stay there alone? When did you get to South Dakota? What happened to the remaining Murphy family? But Rain looked exhausted and more distraught than Bett had ever seen. Her face was set in misery and her fists were clenched. Bett reached for Rain’s hands, working them open.
Rain’s eyes moved over her face briefly and then returned to the fire. “If you want me to leave, I will,” she said, her voice so full of sorrow that Bett’s heart seized.
“Why would I want that?” she asked, careful to keep her tone even, not wanting to hurt Rain any further.
“You must see me differently now,” Rain answered. “I committed a great wrong and a child died. A family was destroyed because of me.”
“You?” She couldn’t stop her voice from rising in disbelief. “You didn’t do anything wrong. All the bad that happened was that horrible Noreen woman’s fault.”
“It would be easy to believe that, and I did, for a while. But then I came to see that I was complicit in this tragedy as well.”
Bett was shaking her head in disbelief. “How?” When Rain didn’t reply, Bett cupped her hand under Rain’s chin, turning her face until their eyes met. “Tell me,” she insisted.
Rain’s jaw tightened. “That day—the day Daisy…died—I shouldn’t have let Noreen touch me. I should have gone straight to the house the minute I saw her. Even without knowing Daisy was there alone, I could have gotten away from Noreen if I had tried sooner, or tried harder. And I should never—I should never have told Daisy—that story…any of those stories. I knew she had a wonderful imagination. I just…I never thought that she—”
“Rain, listen to me,” Bett interrupted, grabbing her arms and shaking her gently. “You are strong and you have great powers of intuition, but you can’t know everything. You can’t see everything. You can’t control everything. Bad things happen and sometimes there is no good reason why. Maybe you feel you were being punished for what you felt with Noreen, but it’s time to let that go. You were young and she was offering you something you wanted to experience—something that felt good.”
“But it didn’t make me feel good, Bett,” Rain said, almost desperately. “It only made me feel…”
As Rain searched for the words, Bett saw herself at Oxford, going wildly from woman to woman, trying to wipe the pain of her first love Emma’s rejection from her heart with meaningless sex. “Less empty?” she suggested.
Rain shrugged. “Yes, perhaps. For a few seconds anyway. And in those seconds, I let Daisy slip away.”
“You didn’t let her, Rain. She just did.” Bett tugged her hand again. “You must change the way you speak about this, Beloved. Instead of saying you killed a child, which is not true, you must see it as, ‘a child that I loved died.’”
“But—”
“Take yourself out of the picture for a minute,” Bett insisted. “Suppose you were never there, never met the family or Daisy. You went a different route to the reservation and had totally different experiences. All right?” Rain nodded. “Mr. Murphy had already gone to get Noreen, hadn’t he? Might she not stay home one Sunday and abandon a sick Daisy for her own selfish reasons, maybe to be with a young man or simply to pleasure herself at the pond, alone? Couldn’t Daisy have wandered off on her own, looking for some comfort? Maybe the only difference is that no one finds her in the storm, and she dies alone on the prairie, instead of in her own bed, surrounded by those who loved her.” Watching her lover’s fierce expression as she again blinked back tears, Bett knew she was trying to see if there could be truth in this version. She loved this about Rain—she never dismissed ideas out of hand without giving them their due. And truth was the bedrock on which she built her life. Bett pressed on. “And tell me this—would Daisy’s tragically short life be any better for not having known you? Without you, who would have shown her how to repair things, taught her to ride, listened to her, talked to her? Who would have loved her like you did?”
Rain put her face in her hands again. Bett leaned into her, whispering, “And believe this—I don’t want you to go, now or ever. I’m so, so sorry for the sadness and loss you experienced, but I love you for exactly who you are and I always will.”
It might have been exhaustion, or the varied emotions the memories had aroused that made her lover tremble, but Bett suspected there was more to it. “Let’s go to bed.” Rain rose wearily, hesitant to look at her directly. Once they were naked together, she wrapped her arms around Rain’s shoulders. “Is there more you need to tell me?”
Rain nodded and took another deep breath. “Yes, but forgive me, Bett. I cannot go on right now. I don’t know when—”
Bett put a finger on her lover’s lips, quieting her halting speech. “Later. Or never. Either way, you have my heart, And as long as I have yours, then nothing else matters.”
Rain buried her face in Bett’s neck. “How did you get to be this wonderful, so perfectly loving?”
Bett pulled Rain closer, not surprised her lover’s eyes were closing already. “You taught me.”
* * *
Bett was even less surprised that Rain was still sleeping when she got up the next morning, aware that extreme emotions exhausted her like nothing else. From the kitchen she called Kathleen Hartley, whispering her greeting. “We talked last night. It wasn’t what I thought. Well, no, not nothing, but a story from her past she was worried about telling me.”
She’d listened to Hartley’s encouragement the second night she’d stayed over, and now she pondered how it had happened that Kathleen did indeed make a wonderful friend. Happily, she sensed Kat was glad to have someone to talk to as well. “Yes, you were right. Thanks for listening to me go on and on.” Kathleen spoke for a minute and Bett added, “Oh yes, I saw that smile on your face at your lovely dinner. I’m glad for both of you. And your friendship means a lot to us as well.”
She hung up, thinking about the twists and turns of the past months, marveling at how being with Rain, a person whose spirituality was foreign and for the most part unknown to her, had strengthened her own beliefs in life, in love, and in things working out for the best.
* * *
On the day before Valentine’s Day, Bett prepared for their dinner in the formal dining room. Rain came home to find their places set for a candlelit meal. Bett was sitting with a glass of wine in her hand. She wasn’t tipsy, but her color was high.
“What’s the occasion?” Rain asked, amazed that a simple candle could make Bett’s face look even more beautiful.
“I have a surprise for you,” Bett answered. “Why don’t you get cleaned up?”
Rain changed her clothes and had just finished washing her face and hands when Bett slipped into the bathroom behind her. “Is this my surprise?” Rain asked delightedly, as Bett reached for the waistband of her jeans.
“No, there’s another. This is for me,” Bett answered in a tone Rain knew well. She positioned Rain with her back to the sink, and knelt in front of her. Rain braced her hands on the counter, and with Bett’s hands squeezing her hips and her tongue stroking irresistibly, it didn’t take too long.
The candles had almost burned down by the time they got back to the table. At Rain’s place was a large envelope.
“Open it,” Bett said, sitting on Rain’s lap. The document looked very official and the language was very complex. Rain finally saw the word “divorce” and looked at Bett. “It’s final,” Bett said quietly. “It’s over.”
Rain held her tightly. “So you are free now.”
“Yes,” Bett said. “Free to be yours.” Rain’s heart soared at the words, but she could sense there was something wrong.
Rain suggested they finish dinner in bed, desperate to dispel the distance in Bett’s eyes. She wasn’t even sure about the source of Bett’s mood, but she didn’t want to ask until she had made her smile. She took Bett’s blouse off and put a little pile of the spaghetti noodles on her belly. Bett’s eyes got big when Rain picked up a spoonful of sauce.
“You’re not really going to–” she started.
“Don’t move,” Rain cautioned, spoon poised.
Bett started to giggle as the warm sauce dribbled onto her stomach and, as Rain began to lower her mouth very slowly, Bett couldn’t help trying to wiggle away. Rain straddled her and began nibbling, spreading the sauce and noodles more widely around Bett’s torso. Soon Bett was laughing hard as she squirmed and Rain’s face was a mess.
“I had no idea you were such a sloppy eater,” Bett panted when about a third of the spaghetti was gone.
“Well, you’re a very shifty plate,” Rain explained.
“I suppose you could do better?” Bett challenged.
Just as Rain removed her T-shirt, Bett quickly pulled her close, squashing the food between them. Rain’s reaction at the feel of cooling spaghetti made Bett start laughing again. Rain let Bett roll them over so she was on top.
“Now what?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” Bett answered, “but I bet there’s going to be a big mess, no matter what.”
Rain pretended to give this some consideration. “I think you are right as usual, but we could try to make the mess on the floor and not on the bed.”
“‘Lay on, Macduff,’” Bett answered, and Rain grabbed Bett tightly and rolled them off the bed and onto the floor. She had calculated that Bett would land on top of her, but she hadn’t taken the slipperiness of the pasta into account. Bett ended up face down beside her, laughing again, and then one laugh turned into a sob.
Rain sat up and waited. In a moment, Bett sat up too, taking in a shaky breath. She was facing away from Rain. “I never really thought of myself as married, and now I’m divorced.”
“Is that bad?” Rain asked.
“I don’t like the sound of it. I don’t like the feel of it. It doesn’t feel like me.”
“What do you feel like?”
There was a long pause. Then, in a small voice, Bett said, “I feel like spaghetti.”
Rain couldn’t help chuckling. “I bet we both look like spaghetti.” Bett tried not to, but when she turned and looked at Rain’s face—still covered in sauce—she had to laugh again too.
Rain got them into her shower, saying, “If my dog was here, all that mess would be cleaned up by the time we got out.”
Bett was surprised. “You had a dog?”
Rain told her about Hunter while she soaped and rinsed them both. Bett especially loved the part where Hunter gave her away to Miss Warren, which Rain demonstrated by shaking the shower curtain as Hunter’s tail had shaken the bushes. Rain stopped the story there, not wanting to talk about the dog’s mournful howls as she left him tied at the cabin so he wouldn’t try to follow her to South Dakota. Her face showed some sadness, though, and Bett put her arms around Rain’s neck.
“Oh, Rain, it’s not fair. I want to be married to you! I want to hear all of your stories and tell you all of mine and make new ones together. When people ask me, I want to tell them that I am now really and truly married, very happily married, to the love of my life.”
Rain reached around Bett and turned off the water. “Then that’s what we will do, my Beloved.”
“We can’t, Rain. It’s not allowed.”
“When you join with me on the reservation it will be the same as being married,” Rain said solemnly.
“It will?” Bett moved a little closer.
“To me and to my people, yes.”
Bett moved even closer and looked into Rain’s eyes. “Do you still want to join with me?”
“Yes, Bett. More than ever.”
“Even though I’m a divorcee?”
“I have been waiting for this moment to ask you again. But as usual, you are too quick for me.” Rain moved out of the shower and grabbed one of Bett’s big bath towels. She draped it across her back, holding the ends out. “One of the ways of courtship I know is that a woman waits outside her tipi wrapped in a blanket. When the man she wants to marry comes by, she opens the blanket to invite him in. If he steps inside the circle she makes, it means he agrees to her proposal.”
Bett stepped into Rain’s arms, encircled by the warmth there. “Oh, yes,” she said, more joyously certain of her future than ever before. “I do.”