Between Earth and Sky(93)

“You never really loved him. Just wanted to be one of us.”

The words stunned her. Time stilled. She felt the sun beat upon her neck, felt the dampness beneath her arms and across her palms, felt her heart ache. She had wanted to be one of them, desperately; had hated always being the outsider. But her love for was more than that, far more. “This has nothing to do with him.”

“No?”

Alma took another deep breath. Her fists trembled. “What do you know about the murder of Agent Andrews?”

“Nothing. I know nothing.”

“If you don’t help me, Asku will die. Is that what you want?”

Minowe’s expression wilted. She brushed past Alma toward the front of the house. “I told you, this doesn’t belong to you.”

“You think I want to be here?” Alma grabbed Minowe’s arm and spun her around. “To see you again?”

“Awas, then. Awas! Go back to your fancy house, with your fancy clothes, and your fancy lawyer husband.” She yanked her arm from Alma’s grasp and smiled a cruel, twisted smile. “Do you thinks of when you’re in his arms at night? Say his name in accident? No.” She stepped back and spit at the narrow patch of bald earth between them. “No, I bets you don’t even remember face.”

Alma didn’t blink, didn’t breathe. She let her purse fall to the ground and slapped Minowe across the face. “Don’t you speak of him! You have no right. Not after what you did.”

Minowe shuffled backward, cradling her cheek.

Alma looked down at her hand. Despite the leather cushion of her glove, her palm stung. Her limbs still twitched with anger, but the outline of her fingers, her silk handbag below in the dirt, all blurred with tears. “I did love him. And I do remember. His face. His voice. Everything.”





CHAPTER 38


Wisconsin, 1891



Alma took a parting glance around her room. Moonlight sliced through the gap in the curtains, illuminating the neatly made bed, bare vanity, and looming wardrobe. She thought back to the day her mother had moved her from the dormitory, separating her from the Indian girls, and how lonely the room had looked to her then. Two years later, it still felt lonely. She closed the door and crept down the hallway without looking back.

Two layers of stockings muffled her footsteps. Doubled-up petticoats ballooned her skirt. They simply would not fit in her crammed luggage. She’d struggled to close the brass clasps on her portmanteau suitcase and the seams of her carpetbag bulged. Both weighed more than the bulky sacks of flour Mrs. Simms stored in the cellar.

She was not going to chance another fall from the roof. She tiptoed down the stairs, boots slung over her shoulder, without eliciting a single creak or cry from the wood.

In the foyer she paused and glanced at the gilded hands of the grandfather clock. Five minutes before ten. She had little better than an hour to make it to the base of Grandfather’s Bluff. The bags would slow her pace, but she could make it.

She turned down the hallway leading toward the kitchen. The dark corridor lay still and empty. She had expected to see light coming from beneath the door of her father’s study. Most nights he stayed up late reading by the fire or shuffling through the piles of paperwork on his desk. Where was he tonight? She looked over her shoulder at the foyer and the cluster of rooms down the opposite hallway. Threads of moonlight filtered in through the foyer windows, otherwise all was dark.

Earlier that evening from inside her room, Alma had listened for all the familiar evening noises. She had heard the march of the Indians on the way to their beds, the sharp footfalls of Miss Wells performing her nightly inspection, the clink of glassware from across the hall as her mother sat before her vanity and daubed on her nightly regimen of lotions and perfumed beauty tonics.

Her father’s routine had its own telltale sounds: the whine of copper taps as he switched off the last of the wall sconces; slow, heavy footsteps; soft self-mutterings. None of this she heard. After straining her ears for over an hour, she could delay her departure no longer. Between the arduous task of picking through her belongings for only the most practical and important and the excitement that flapped inside her chest, she must have missed her father’s ascent to bed.

Another glance around the darkened first floor and she crept to the kitchen. waited for her by the back door.

“Minowe’s still mad?” Alma asked after glancing around the room.

nodded.

She drew in a deep breath to push down her sorrow. Air filled her lungs, but she still felt empty. “Tell her . . . never mind.”

The clock in the foyer sang out ten long chimes. She hugged , threw on her boots, and hurried through the back door before her tears had a chance to well.

“Goodbye, Azaadiins,” her friend whispered after her.

She raced across the yard to the cover of the woods. Amid the bramble and trees she turned back for one final look. The schoolhouse lay quiet and still, like a roosting owl. Even at night, the great edifice cast a shadow, swallowing the moon behind its boxy form. A darkened shape moved across the window in her father’s study. Alma blinked and the apparition vanished. Unspoken goodbyes weighed upon her tongue. She swallowed the bitter taste and hurried on.

A faintly worn game trail wound through the trees. She followed it for a short distance, then broke away and veered right at the gnarled oak stump. Insects sang and deer mice scurried through the underbrush. In the distance, a coyote pup howled. After a few minutes, the sound of lapping water broke through the nocturnal chatter and the trees parted for a small stream. From here, she would chase the flowing water all the way to the base of the bluffs.