As Renata hurried outside, wet and shivering, she felt a flash of relief as she recognized the policeman getting out of the black-and-white cruiser. Brick Bauer wasn’t a close friend, but she was on good terms with him—or had been the last time they talked, a few years ago—and she knew she could count on him to be gentle with the old man.
“Hi, Brick!” she called out, pulling on a jacket to fight off the worst of the rain. “I heard you got married!”
Brick smiled back, both dimples deepening, looking a little bit embarrassed and terribly pleased. “It’s true, Renata. Married my boss. Finally found a woman who could keep me in line.”
It was during this brief exchange that Renata realized somebody else was bolting out of the car, somebody in a rumpled suit and loosened tie who was sprinting toward her so fast it was frightening. She only got a glimpse of him—young, dark, good-looking—before his gaze fell on the old Indian. He slammed to a stop, clutching the side-view mirror of her truck for support. The sight of his painful swallow filled Renata with a great ache for him. Love for the old man was written all over his face.
It was a magnificent face, the kind any artist would love to use as a centerpiece of a painting. But Renata knew at once that it wasn’t the artist in her that responded so keenly to this man’s barely veiled virility and passion. He was tall and lean, with dark brown eyes and thick lashes and a strong jaw. His bronze skin and handsome, angular features hinted strongly at some sort of Indian ancestry.
But Renata only had time to register his compelling good looks and his panic before Brick said softly, “Renata, this is Michael Youngthunder. We’ve spent the whole night looking for his grandfather.”
Brick was wasting his breath. Michael Youngthunder didn’t even see Renata; he certainly didn’t hear Brick or respond to his courteous introduction. Every nuance of his attention was directed toward the old man.
Under other circumstances, Renata would have resented being so totally ignored. But she had loved her own grandfather, and she understood the anguish in Michael’s bloodshot eyes. Even without Brick’s explanation, she could have guessed by his haggard demeanor that he’d been searching for the old man all night.
Instinctively, Renata stepped toward him and laid one hand on his arm. “He’s all right,” she said quickly, even though she knew Michael could see it for himself. “I found him about half an hour ago and begged him to come in. He won’t budge, but his voice isn’t getting any weaker.”
Michael’s well muscled arm was tensely knotted beneath Renata’s fingers, but a mighty sigh of relief escaped his invitingly full lips. For the first time he glanced at Renata, but even now she didn’t think he really saw her. Habit more than conscious thought seemed to prompt him to murmur, “I’m sorry for the intrusion. It may take me a few minutes to persuade him to come away.”
“Don’t worry about that,” she assured him. “Just let me know what I can do to help. I draped a rain slicker around his shoulders—” she gestured toward the yellow vinyl garment sprawled across the grass “—but he just let it fall to the ground.”
Again Michael’s beautiful mahogany eyes met hers. “Thank you,” he repeated in a choked voice.
When she felt the ripple of tension in his biceps, Renata realized belatedly that she was still holding on to him. Abruptly she let go. But Michael wasn’t paying any attention to Renata. His gaze was once again on the old man, who was still chanting. Not once had his eyes even flickered toward his grandson.
“I tried everything I could to make him come in and dry off,” Renata explained apologetically. “He acts as though he doesn’t see me. Doesn’t hear. I think he’s in some kind of a trance.”
“Trance?” Michael repeated, as though the single word alarmed him.
“Well, I don’t know what else to call it. It’s as though he’s gone somewhere that I can’t reach.”
Michael closed his eyes, shook his head, then whispered, “I’m not sure I can reach him, either.”
At that point Brick joined them, laid a hand on Michael’s shoulder and said, “This is like talking down a jumper, Michael. I’ll speak to him if you want me to. I would if you weren’t here.”
Quietly Michael said, “Thanks, Lieutenant, but this is something I have to do myself. If he doesn’t finish, he’ll find a way to come back here later. The best thing for me to do is to hurry him along a little.”
“Finish?” said Renata. “He sounds like he’s just repeating the same thing over and over again.”
This time Michael’s gaze focused on her face for a long, dark moment before he turned away. For some reason she could not fathom, Renata knew she’d disappointed him.
Hugging herself for warmth, she stood beside Brick and stared at Michael as he crossed the lawn to join his grandfather. They couldn’t have looked more different: young, old; business suit, Indian clothes; utterly contemporary, locked in another space and time. Still, there was a family resemblance, or at least a tribal one, in the coppery skin and straight, masculine nose. The old man’s hair was very long and braided, already thin and gray. Michael’s black hair was longer than average—thick and straight as it flowed over his broad shoulders—but it was such a magnificent mane that a proud display of it didn’t strike Renata as peculiar. In her arty crowd, lots of people cherished eccentricities in their appearance. None of her Milwaukee friends would have looked twice at Michael’s hair even if he’d worn it in feathered braids.
“I met Michael when Edward Wocheck came back to town and started talking about expanding Timberlake Lodge,” Brick explained sotto voce. “Old man Youngthunder’s got some idea that there’s a sacred burial ground around here. We drove through your property before but the ‘spirits’ didn’t speak to him.”
Renata was astounded. People were right when they said truth was sometimes stranger than fiction! The only burial ground nearby was the family plot out toward the barn, and nobody had been buried there in seventy or eighty years.
“So why do you think he came back here this morning?” she asked Brick.
“Edward’s having a ground-breaking ceremony for the new wing of Timberlake Lodge tomorrow. Last night Mr. Youngthunder heard it on the news.”
Michael was squatting in front of his grandfather now, meeting his eyes, but Renata found it odd that he still had not spoken. The old man was chanting again, and for some reason Michael’s head was nodding ever so slightly as though in time to the distinctive rhythm.
“Why doesn’t he say something to his grandfather?” Renata asked. “Aren’t they on good terms?”
“Very good terms. Winnebago terms. Don’t let the suit throw you. Michael still knows how to be an Indian when he has to, and I think he’s going to have to act Winnebago to get through to the old guy.”
Brick was right. A moment later the handsome man in the rumpled suit—a suit that looked as though it had fit him magnificently before his night in the police car—folded his long legs and sat down on the mud-soaked blanket in front of his grandfather. Then he held up both hands the way the old man was and started to chant right along with him.
Renata stared disbelievingly at Brick, then back at Michael again. She knew Michael loved the old man, so she wasn’t surprised that he was willing to do anything to get him to come inside. She might have been willing to sit in the mud herself, especially in her jeans. But Michael was wearing a suit! And he wasn’t just sitting there pleading with the old man. He was joining in the ritual, raising his hands, chanting the same syllables.
It took Renata a moment to realize the symbolism of that simple act. He wasn’t feigning understanding. He knew the chant. He knew the sounds, the words, the gestures! He knew why his grandfather had come to this place, knew what he was doing,