She turned to nod at Wade. “I’m listening.”
He shook his head wryly. “Don’t give up easily, do you?” His eyes darkened, then glassed over as if he’d gone far away, to a place where she couldn’t go. “What was I like? I was a brat, Clarissa. Disobedient, willful, argumentative. All the things you were probably instructed not to do—” he raised one eyebrow, then continued when she nodded her understanding “—I did them. All of them. There wasn’t a younger kid I didn’t terrorize, a teacher I didn’t sass back, a rule I didn’t break.”
“Problem child,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. But he heard it and nodded, his face drawn.
“Worse.” He summed it up succinctly. “I’m sure you can’t possibly understand.”
Her lips smiled, but inside her heart ached. “Can’t I?” She remembered the times she’d cried herself to sleep, begging God to bring her parents back so they could be a family again, promising anything if He’d just stop punishing her.
Wade frowned as he watched her, his eyes inquisitive. “You couldn’t. You’ve had the perfect life.”
“Have I?” She pleated the fabric between her fingers, noting the glossy pink polish that Bri had applied just yesterday morning was now chipped. Sort of like her dream of blissful married life. Clarissa decided it was too ironic to dwell on. “Don’t get sidetracked so easily by what you see, Wade. Truth is sometimes hard to find.”
He inclined his head. “I guess. Anyway, it got worse when the fighting got worse. My parents couldn’t agree on what side to butter the bread. They sure couldn’t compromise on raising Kendra and me. Dad got fed up and pretty soon I figured out that if you were out of sight, you were out of mind. I made it a point to be out of his sight as much as possible.”
The wealth of understatement in those words drew tears to Clarissa’s eyes. She wanted to say so many things, to comfort Wade, tell him she understood. But more than anything, she wanted him to continue talking. She made herself be satisfied with touching his arm as she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t turn her way, but his head jerked in acknowledgment.
“My mother, bless her, never gave up on me even though I disappointed her so many times. She wanted me to have all the things she’d missed and to her, that meant living on the reservation, learning about my heritage.” He grimaced. “All I could see was that being an Indian and loving a white man had made her life a misery. She didn’t fit into his world, and he sure didn’t fit into hers. I fit into neither. I was determined to get as far away from there as I could, to find something better.”
“So that’s when you ran away?” Clarissa laid her head on the back of her chair, her fingers light on the bunch of muscles that clenched and unclenched as he spoke.
“Yes, I ran away, but I thought I was running to something. I just couldn’t figure out how to find it. When I was seventeen, I finally ran far enough that I ran into someone who showed me there was more to life, if I was willing to take it. His name was Ralph Peterson and he was an artist, a good one. He picked me up when I was hitchhiking, took me in and kind of adopted me for the two weeks I was gone. He showed me the places he’d sketched, real and dreams, places he could draw on a piece of paper. Places so wonderful they took your mind off your problems. He had a house full of pictures—buildings and places around the world. I was hooked on those cathedrals, castles, temples.”
“So you decided to become an artist?”
“Not really. I just got more and more curious about the process of how you got a building from a picture. When the police brought me home, I spent every spare moment I could find at the library. I read about Frank Lloyd Wright, I studied the styles and I started to sketch.” He made a face. “You can imagine how that went over—a macho male sitting around drawing! I got into a few fights over it.”
“I’d like to see your drawings sometime,” she whispered, aching for the almost-man who’d searched so hard to find himself. “You have a real talent with building things, so I’m sure that’s where it came from.”
“Thank you.” He paused a moment as if reflecting, then his face hardened. “I was awful to Kendra. I was so focused on what I wanted, what I had to have, that I couldn’t see that she was upset by the parents, too. She needed someone to talk to, but I wasn’t there for her.”
“Wade, your parents had that responsibility. Not you. You were a child. You should have had the freedom to dream.”
He shook his head, his mouth tightening into a bitter line. “She was my sister and I was so selfish I wouldn’t even let her use my stuff.” He puffed out a scornful half laugh. “I’d decided, you see, that I was going to make myself into somebody the world had to notice, that people were going to sit up and pay attention to Wade Featherhawk. I was too good for the reservation, too smart for my mother’s plans and too old to bother with Kendra. As soon as I could, I took off and got a job, construction. I learned as I went how to do a good job. Kendra and Mom seemed okay then and I’d work away summers. Then Mom died.”
Clarissa nodded. She knew this part. “And you had Kendra.”
“Yeah, I had Kendra. There wasn’t anybody else. My dad had disappeared and the folks who wanted her were bad news. It was up to me, and I hated being the one dumped on.” He swallowed, his voice choked but insistent. “You had to know Kendra to understand how loving she was. It tears at me even now when the kids look at me in a special way and I see her. She didn’t care if I was rich or famous or not. She loved me. All the time. No matter what.”
“I guess that’s what sisters do.” Clarissa let the silence stretch between them as he remembered his sister’s joy.
“She was such a happy kid. Always chattering a mile a minute. I loved her so much. But I didn’t dare take her with me to the sites. We lived in bunkhouses a lot of the time. She was young and gorgeous, and the men I worked with weren’t the type for her to be around.”
Clarissa could tell from the hard chiseled lines his face had fallen into just what kind of men he’d worked with and was fiercely proud of the way he’d protected his sister.
“I tried to take care of her as best I could, but I had to leave and find work whenever we ran out of money. She’d stay with some friends.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “She’d throw her arms around me when I got back and hug so hard my ribs ached.”
“She loved you.” Clarissa felt the sting of tears for that young girl burn in her chest.
Wade looked up. “Actually, you remind me of her sometimes. She wouldn’t take no for an answer, either. She was soft but so stubborn.” His eyes glinted reproof.
Clarissa grinned. “You have to stand up for something or you’ll fall for anything,” she teased.
He nodded slowly. “She should have stood up to me,” he muttered.
Clarissa wanted to ask why but he began speaking again.
“The building industry went into a slump right after I finished high school, and I couldn’t find work. I didn’t know what to do. I only had sixty-five dollars when I came home. I was scared stiff to tell her I’d have to leave again so soon. And I was fed up with grubbing along, just barely managing.” His fingers fisted until the knuckles grew white.
As Clarissa watched, he slowly straightened each finger, his jaw hard with the discipline of stifling his frustration. “She was so young and so innocent, I couldn’t imagine her leaving the reservation, getting a job. Then I had a better idea. Why didn’t she marry Roy? He’d been chasing her for years, she’d be eighteen in a couple of weeks. Everything would be wonderful.” He smiled but there was no joy in his face. “Or that’s