“I’m here,” I whisper to her. I’m not sure if I’m telling her that I’m her mother to keep her calm, or if I’m telling her that I’m here, but it doesn’t matter. I am here, and I want to do whatever I can to ease this pain.
In slow blinks, she comes awake. She looks up at me and then around the room.
“Was I dreaming?” The words emerge hoarse and hesitant.
“Yeah.” I brush tears from her cheeks, that same spot in my chest going tight seeing her pain as when I witnessed her simple joy in the rain.
“I woke you up,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
I lie down beside her. She’s shaking, and I can’t tell if it’s a reaction from the dream, or the coolness of the room.
“Are you cold?” I pull away to get out of bed and adjust the temperature.
“No.” She grabs my arm under the sheet and huddles into me, her bare skin cool against mine. “Please just . . . hold me.” Her laugh comes shaky and thin. “You said no attachments, and here I am in your bed, clinging and crying and—”
“You know that’s not what I meant.” I tuck her into my side and kiss her hair.
I hesitate when she doesn’t respond, but just shivers against me.
“You remember your dream? You want to talk about it?”
An anxious breath is her only response. I’m about to move on, make sure she knows she doesn’t have to talk about it, but then she nods. I wait a few more beats while she grips my arm a little tighter.
“I’ve had the dream before. I’m always at the cliffs overlooking the valley where Cade laid the pipeline.”
When she mentions Cade, I’m not sure if she means my father or the company, but I know to her they’re one and the same.
“We’re all there.” Her short chuckle breezes over my skin. “Even your friend and mine, Mr. Paul.”
I chuckle a little, too, but I still hear her crying in her sleep, frantic and trapped in her unconsciousness, still feel her shivering against me, so her comment only goes so far to lighten the moment.
“My mom is there.” Her voice cracks and she pulls in a wispy breath. “She’s so beautiful. So alive. And then she’s not.”
“What happens?”
“When I look down again, the construction trucks are there and they dig up my mom’s body.”
I pull her closer, unable to wrap my arms around her tightly enough. “I’m so sorry.”
“It . . . there’s just no closure, you know? The cops were a joke when she disappeared. I mean, it’s so tough getting justice when our women go missing.”
“Why is that?”
“Sometimes it’s complicated because of where it happens. If it’s on a reservation, most Indian nations are so limited in criminal authority over non-Indians. Communication between local police and tribal sucks, and there’s bureaucratic breakdown. Mostly they simply don’t care as much, if you ask me. Whatever the reason, it’s tougher to protect Native women and to prosecute for them. The trail grew so cold with my mom’s case, we found nothing.”
“No one was ever arrested or even questioned?”
“No. They found her phone beside her car and traces of her . . .” She pauses to clear her throat. “Traces of her blood like maybe there had been a struggle, but nothing that could lead us anywhere.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s like when someone you love disappears like that, you don’t want to stop hoping. There’s no body. No certainty, so there’s this stubborn part of you that refuses to believe they’re gone. There will be some miracle. They’ve been abducted. They’ve been in someone’s basement for years and just when you’re about to give up hope, they’ll escape.” Her laugh is humorless and pained.
“But that is one in a million,” she continues. “In most cases, some monster just got away with it, and you’ll never have answers.”
I have no idea how to comfort her beyond holding her close, rubbing her arms, and shutting the hell up so she can say what she needs to say, letting her know I’m here and I’m listening. I want to know.
“My only solace—and this won’t make sense, I warn you of that now—was that at Christmas, we went to that clearing where I had my Sunrise Dance, where so many of our sacred ceremonies happened, where some of our heroes are buried. I laid her to rest there in the only way I knew how. I still go there every Christmas, even for just a few minutes. It’s like spending part of the holiday with her.”
She shakes her head, tucks a wild chunk of hair behind her ear.
“I know it seems morbid. It was a false peace, but it was the most I ever got. And then Warren Cade and that senator came in with their damn pipeline.”
Bitterness and hatred drip from her words, and it almost doesn’t even sound like my Nix—like the funny, brave, brilliant woman I’ve known for the last few days.
“One thing I can say is that protest, that pipeline gave me focus,” she says. “It’s shaped me. I know I’ll fight men like Warren Cade for the rest of my life, and I know I have to work the system to help people it doesn’t care about. That’s why I’ve been so careful about my next steps.”
“It’s too important to get it wrong,” I say, understanding for the first time the pivotal role the pipeline and my father have played in shaping the girl I’ve come to care so much about in such a short time.
“Exactly.” She tilts her head back and sets her eyes on my face. “I have to be intentional about everything. I can’t afford wrong steps, bad moves. It’s not for me. It’s for the people I want to help.”
I should have told her that first night who my father was. Who I am. Hell, I should have told them in the cell that day four years ago, but I didn’t see it serving any purpose. I know most people would love to be a Cade, but I can’t say I’ve been proud of that name or of my father in a long time. I’ve lived the last four years out from under the shadow of my family and all that comes with them. Hearing my father’s role in the dreams that torture Lennix, I can’t ruin this connection by telling her the truth yet. It’s all tangled up in her mind and heart—her mother’s disappearance, death, and the pipeline that ruined the sacred grounds where she laid her mother to rest. It’s a sticky, convoluted web and my father? He’s the spider.
“Let’s not talk about it anymore.” She snuggles closer, pressing her naked body into mine. “I’m better now.”
I’ll deal with the issue of my name later. Now I just want to fully embrace our last few days. We said at the end of the week we’d walk away, but I refuse to wreck the little time I have left with the truth.
I roll her onto her back and prop myself up on my elbows so I’m looking down at her. “The day after tomorrow, I have to go to London.”
“What?” Dismay and disappointment tint her voice and her face. “Why?”
“It’s a meeting for the Antarctica expedition. We have people on the team from all over the world. Those of us in easy travelling distance of London, like David and me, will go in person. Others will Skype in.”