“If it makes you feel any better, I was thinking about asking you out on a date.”
Her head rose, and the dark gold of her eyes again shone, the lengthy canine tooth exposed like an ivory warning flare. “A what?”
I could feel my courage heading for the hills. “That’s what we used to call it back in the old days—dating.”
“Really? ”
“Yep.” I’m pretty sure my face was taking on a little color, but I braved it through and went back to pick up the trash from the counter. “What do they call it now? ”
The half-smile smirk stalled there like a cat playing with a mouse as she looked up at me. “Sport fucking.”
I lingered beside her for a moment and then glanced at the big Indian before heading out. It just seemed like our timing was never right. She waited till I was halfway down the hall before calling after me. “You sure you go? Me love you loooooooooong time....”
8
I took Cady with me to make the sixty-six-mile loop over to Sheridan after we’d worked out in the morning. We were just passing Lake DeSmet along I-90 with Dog seated between us. She had her sandals kicked off and her legs folded up on the seat the way she always did.
I noticed she’d dressed for Michael’s arrival later that day in a bright turquoise broomstick skirt and a black-sequined, cap-sleeved T-shirt. She was wearing a stylish straw cowboy hat with a leather strap adorned with conchos and lots of feathers on top of her auburn hair. Her earrings matched her skirt. Biker/cowgirl haute couture. She glanced up at me and continued to pet Dog. “Don’t make fun of my hat.”
“I haven’t said a word.”
“You were thinking about it.”
I set the cruise control and settled back in my seat. “It’s a very nice hat.”
“Don’t.”
I glanced at her. “What?”
“You were going to try and be funny.” She took a deep breath and looked out her window and back down the Piney Creek valley.
This is the point where as a father you’re supposed to say something—the right thing—and I wondered what that might be. She was obviously nervous about Michael’s arrival, and it was my duty to assuage some of the anxiety. “You look great.”
Her head dropped, and I waited. “I’m wearing the hat because of the scar.”
“Oh, honey . . .”
“I just thought at first . . .” She was silent for a moment, but it wasn’t because there was nothing to say. “My hair is too short; I haven’t gotten enough sun. . . .”
“You look great, honest.” I passed an eighteen-wheel truck and steered back in our lane. “It means a lot to you, this visit?”
She reached out and adjusted the air-conditioning vent, then readjusted it back to the same position. “Yes.”
There was something I’d been meaning to talk with her about, and this was the closest to an opening I’d gotten. I’d decided that as a parent I would adopt a relationship with my little redheaded, large-eyed daughter that was based on an unrelenting truth, and it had become the only language we both understood. “Well, this’ll be a good opportunity for the two of you to spend some time really getting to know each other even if it’s just a couple of days.”
I was hoping it sounded better to her than it did to me.
“What’s that supposed to mean? ”
It hadn’t.
“I just think it’ll be a good visit; before, you had these roles—he was a police officer and you were a victim. . . .” I glanced over and then quickly returned my eyes to the road. “It was a hospital and then it’s been phone calls. I just think this’ll be a good opportunity for the two of you to be in a more natural setting and really get to know each other.”
“That’s the second time you’ve used the word ‘really,’ meaning we don’t know each other now? ”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Really? ”
It seemed to me her mind was rapidly getting better. I tried my last hope, the authoritarian patrician voice of reason. “Cady . . . ”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
We drove the next twenty minutes in silence as I took the second Sheridan exit, turned off Main, and made the gradual ascent to the Veterans Administration. The VA had taken over Fort Mackenzie, and it was in a gorgeous spot on a plateau just north of town with vast, feathering cottonwoods and solid, redbrick buildings. We passed the unmanned guard shack and the rows of conifers stretching shadows across the pavement, and she decided to talk to me again. “So how come I never met this Quincy Morton guy?”
“He was before your time.”
“More stuff that happened before I was born?” She glanced around as I wound my way through the fortlike buildings. “So, you had a hard time after the war?”
I thought about it. “I don’t know if I’d call it a hard time.... It was a confusing time, and I was looking for some answers. Quincy wrote me and said he was transferring to Sheridan from Detroit.”
She watched me. “Did Mom help?”
“Yes, but she wasn’t in Vietnam, and I think I needed somebody who had been.”
“What about Bear?”
I shrugged. “He wasn’t around.”
I could feel those composed, gray eyes on the side of my face. “It doesn’t seem to have affected you.”