A Certain Kind of Hero (19 page)

“See, the old way, we didn't have judges. We had people who were a little older, a little wiser, who tried to mediate disputes. And the old way, if something happened that made it impossible for parents to raise a child—say, some kind of trouble—”

“I could see if somebody died or got killed,” Peter said bitterly.

“Well, there's all kinds of bad trouble, son. Anyway, something happened, like, okay, maybe the baby's mother died.”

“Yeah, but she didn't die until way later,” the boy reminded him.

“I'm talking about an example here.” Judge Half's reproach was followed by a pregnant pause, a silencing look. “If the baby's mother died, then it would have been a natural thing for a man to give his son to his married brother to raise, it being pretty hard for a man to raise a baby alone. Now, none of this probably would've been kept a big secret. In fact, the old way, a child's uncles were like his father, too. And his aunties were like his mother. No questions, no problems.”

He shrugged, backed off on the romanticism and opted for honesty. “Well, that's not true. People are people, and they bicker and complain and make problems for themselves, but they work it out if they can. Maybe sooner, maybe later, but they do the best they can.

“And that's what we're gonna do here. We're gonna work this out. You've got people here who love you. You're probably a little mad at 'em right now, so I just wanted to point that out. I heard a lot of good things you had going amongst you when you all first came in and sat down. Things were a little strained, but everybody's been willing, deep down.”

The judge wagged a finger. “So you go ahead and be mad, but don't be too hard on these people, son. They're all family.
Your
family.”

“That's easy for
you
to say, Judge.”

“You think my job's easy?” He snorted. “Maybe I'll turn it over to you one day.”

“Don't bet on it.” Peter scowled briefly at Gideon, then at the judge. “Do I have to stay with
him?
”

“Where do you want to stay?” the judge asked.

“He can stay with me.” Arlen, too, glanced at Gideon. But there was no judgment in his eyes, and he spoke kindly. “We'll make a sweat tomorrow night. Maybe you'd wanna come.”

“You think you're gonna make me get into some little tent with
him
and—”

Arlen rose from his chair slowly, his old knees cracking into place. “No one is ever forced into a sweat. You can try it out first with me if you want to. If you don't, that's up to you.”

Raina was shell-shocked. Her heart hammered wildly, her pulse rang in her ears, but her senses were as dull as mud. She wasn't sure she had form or substance. Maybe she'd become invisible. When she turned to her attorney, she was surprised to find she still had a voice. “Isn't
anything
up to
me?
”

“Well, the state's jurisdiction is limited where the child is an enrolled tribal member, but I intend to pursue some research along several possible lines.” Metz scanned his notes. “Maybe there's some kind of a damage suit here against somebody. I mean, mental, emotional—”

“Damage suit?” The words sounded absurd. Dazed, Raina shook her head. “I want my son.”

“Well, we don't have a ruling yet, but I'm just trying to get one jump ahead—”

Tell him to jump off a bridge,
Gideon thought, his heart breaking as he stood there, angrily watching her seek out an ally other than himself.

“I want to know exactly where I stand,” she said.

“In my opinion—” Metz edged her toward the door “—no matter what those blood tests show, your prospects are rather dismal. Except, as I said, if we can find an angle for a civil suit.”

“Thank you.” Miraculously the starch had returned to Raina's voice. “You've been no help whatsoever, but thank you for making the drive up here, Jeff.”

She finally turned to Gideon. “I want to talk to you.”

He was glad
somebody
did.

S
he waited until they were alone, and then she didn't know where to start. Let
him
start, she decided. The ball was in his court. Unbeknownst to her, it had actually been there all along. So let him finally put it into play. Let him put forth some combination of words that didn't add up to craziness. She was all ears, which was appropriate. It surely made her look as foolish as she felt.

But they went to his house, ate his ham-and-cheese sandwiches, drank his coffee and sat on his porch, all without speaking more than a dozen words.

So it was up to her, and she went right to the sore spot. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“That I was Peter's biological father?” His voice was quietly strained, as though he had to pull it back through the sieve of his memories. “I didn't see how it would do anybody any good. I figured somewhere down the road, when Peter was older—after he'd gotten to know me a little better—I'd
tell him about some of my past mistakes.” He stared into the mug of coffee he held cradled in both hands. “And I'd tell him how he was the only good thing that ever came of those mistakes.”

“What I'm asking you is…” She waited until he looked up. “Why didn't you tell
me?
”

“God, Raina. Tell
you?
” He glanced at the plank ceiling, shaking his head over a mirthless chuckle. “When do you think would have been the best time?”

“In the very beginning.”

“Jared figured total anonymity was the best way to go.”

“He did, did he? Except that
he
knew, so I don't see how the term
total
applies.”

“Jared agreed to be Peter's father. That made me his uncle. The more people who knew otherwise, the harder it would have been to keep it that cut-and-dried.” Gideon offered a wistful, self-conscious smile. “I knew I'd done wrong. I wanted to find a way to make it right, and I went to Jared. We were just trying to keep it simple, I guess.”

“You could have told me.”

“Jared thought—”

“Jared thought, Jared thought, Jared thought.” She'd fallen back on the same crutch enough times herself, but she wasn't about to let him borrow it. Not now. “As the judge rightly pointed out, Jared is dead.
You
could have told me.”

“I thought about it once or twice, but, hell, as little contact as we've had?” He avoided her eyes. “What would be the point? After all this time, it seemed like it would create more problems we didn't need.”

She wanted to shake him and shout right in his ear.
We've had some pretty big contact in the last few days, Gideon. Am I the only one who's noticed?

But, of course, she didn't. Instead, she calmly quizzed
him about things that touched her only indirectly. It seemed important to make him turn over everything that had been hidden from her, as though her knowing every detail might somehow undo the damage.

“Why did you give him… I mean, why didn't you and Tomasina—”

“See, that's why.” His rigid hand leveled a curt karate chop on her questions. “That's why I didn't want to tell you. Because then you'd start asking why, and none of the reasons are gonna sound very good to you. It's all over and done with. The whys don't matter anymore. What mattered then and what matters now is that Peter got a good home out of the deal.”

“What about his mother?”

“What about…?” His eyes filled with a tenderness that transformed the tone of his voice. “What about her?”

“Did you love her?”

“Did I love…Tomasina?”

The intensity in his eyes turned hers away.

“I'm sorry,” she muttered. “I shouldn't have asked you that.”

“Why? What answer did you hope to hear? That I did?” He paused, and her heartbeat stalled in the interim. “Or that I didn't?”

“It's none of my business.”

Then why was she asking? And why was she still waiting for an answer,
the
answer?

And why did he feel a need to tell her in the bluntest way possible?

“We had sex, and I got her pregnant.” He looked her straight in the eye, daring her to judge him more harshly than he judged himself. “That was what was between us. Neither one of us liked the idea of getting married—at least, not to each other. She didn't want a baby, didn't want an abortion,
didn't especially like the idea of giving him up for adoption until after Jared talked to her. But ol' Jared was always pretty persuasive.”

“Did he support her financially?”

“I supported her, mostly. We lived together in St. Paul for six months, which was why I was surprised to learn that Arlen knew anything about it. I didn't think she talked to him much. Hell, she didn't talk to
me
much.”

“Didn't Arlen even know that you were the man she was seeing?”

“You never knew any more about that woman than she wanted you to know. Especially how she felt about anything. She never let anything show.” He gave a dry laugh. “I guess
I
should talk, you know, thinking back on what I was like in those days. But, anyway, she said it was none of her father's damn business.”

“But she told him she was pregnant.”

“Yeah, I guess she did. And that was the kicker, wasn't it?” He sipped his coffee, offering her a sheepish glance over the rim of his cup. Then he shrugged. “Surprised the hell out of me. Maybe it was her way of thumbing her nose at the ol' man. She liked to let people know that she was gonna live her life exactly the way she damn well pleased.

“But at least she kept her word,” he allowed. “She said she'd carry the baby to term if I'd help her get away from home. She'd always wanted to live in the Cities. And, hell, she took to city life like a pigeon. But me, I hated it. I worked a lot of different jobs—construction, assembly lines, fast food. Tommy took some classes, played bingo, did pretty much whatever she wanted.”

It was the first time he'd used a nickname for the woman with whom he'd conceived a child. He'd schooled himself to manage his memories carefully, and the only other person
who had heard the story was an uninvolved counselor. Now, here he was, telling the whole damn thing to Raina. Raina
was
involved. She was practically sitting on the edge of her chair, and the look in her eyes—her intense, vicarious involvement in the whole sordid mess—was killing him.

“Except party,” he noted quickly, grasping for any uplifting straw he might offer. “We agreed on that much. We stayed out of the bars while she was pregnant. Hell of a long six months, but…” He turned to look out the window. His voice drifted as the memories turned from bad to worse. “After Peter was born, she split. And I told myself I was nursing a big heartache. Aching for what, I didn't know, but it served as a nice, slick slide to the edge of nowhere. I ended up in detox.”

“Which was not an alcohol treatment center,” Raina recalled.

“No. It's a place where—” A place her experience wouldn't allow her to imagine, which was just fine, because he didn't want her be able to imagine what it had been like for him there. Four days in hell had convinced him he wasn't going any lower. “It was a place where they were putting too many Indians. Later on, I was part of the group of community activists and Native leaders that got the Health and Human Services Department to take a look at what was going on there. We forced them to shut the place down.”

Her eyes brightened. “I remember. It was in the news. But I didn't know you were part of—”

“There were quite a few of us,” he said, minimizing his contribution with a dismissive gesture. “But that came a whole lot later. After I dried out, I asked Jared to help get me into a treatment center. He did. And I'm grateful to him for that.”

“Do you need connections to get into treatment?”

“Depends.” He smiled indulgently. “You need a health insurance card, a bank account, a social worker…
something.
I had a brother who was embarrassed to be related to me.” He anticipated her objections and waved them away with an easy smile. “Anyway, I met this old guy who was working as a janitor there. He'd been a tribal councilman for his band. He'd also been through the program. I'd never thought about getting into politics, but I sure liked ol' Everett. I learned a lot from him. And I actually talked to him, told him things I never told anyone else.”

He remembered telling Everett about Raina and about Peter. Everett had suggested that Gideon trusted his brother with what he loved most because somewhere along the line he'd decided he couldn't trust himself. He'd always thought it a strange observation, since he knew damn well he'd resented Jared, and for no good reason. Jared had always done everything right, for God's sake. Where was the crime in that?

“Everett must have been almost like a father to you,” she said. “I've never heard much about your father. Not from Jared, and not from you.”

Gideon shrugged. “My ol' man never had the time of day for us. But Everett told me that he'd missed out with his own kids, too. He said that's what drunks usually do.” And when the time had come, Gideon told himself, he had done the same. Like father, like son.

Damn,
it had been so much easier being an uncle.

“I knew Jared would make a good father. I knew you'd be the best mother a kid could—” Elbows braced on his knees, he spread his hands wide. “When do you think I should have told you, Raina?”

“I guess it doesn't matter now. I can see how it became more difficult, the more time that passed and the more distant we became.”

“You were always the one who sent the Christmas cards
with all your family news and the school pictures.” He thanked her now with a wistful smile. “God, he's growing up so fast.”

She glanced away, then swallowed hard. He could see her putting words together in her head and gathering the courage to say them. Her breast quivered with her next long, deep breath.

She looked him in the eye. “Are you going to take him from me, Gideon?”

“No.” He shook his head. “No, I can't—”

“You don't want him, and I can't have him—is that—”

“Don't want him!” The accusation drove him to his feet. “You think I don't want—” Old memories and new emotions swirled around them as she stood up to him. He grabbed her shoulders. “I want, Raina. I've wanted—” he closed his eyes and savored a quick, deep dose of her delicate scent “—so bad sometimes I could hardly…” He dropped his hands to his sides and turned away. “That's what happens when you stop anesthetizing yourself. The feelings catch up to you.” And speaking of bad, God help him, he had it bad.

“Peter has feelings, too.”

“Once he cools off, you're the one he'll talk feelings with. You're his mother.” He glanced at her quickly, then away. “And obviously he'll still see Jared as his father.”

“My parental rights have been stripped away. Abruptly. Unexpectedly.” She grabbed his arm and made him look at her.
“Unfairly,”
she insisted, as though she thought she would get an argument out of him on that score.

When she didn't, she sighed. “And the most frustrating part is that I can't do anything about it. Peter's always been able to count on me.” Her grip on his arm tightened for a moment, then fell away. The vigor in her voice withered. “I feel powerless, and I hate it.”

“You've already taken steps. You've said you're willing to move back up here.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and stood for a moment like a diver mentally setting himself up to spring. “You know, there's an obvious solution to this,” he said finally.

“What?”

Their eyes met, hers guileless, his guarded. “We could get married.”

“Married?”

She said it as though she were unfamiliar with the concept. He felt like a guy who had somehow managed to get clobbered by the ton of bricks he had just dropped. It wasn't easy to shove the damn things off, but with a cavalier shrug he gave it a try. “Why not?”

“Surely,” she said, sounding a little dazed herself, “the real question is
why?
”

“Because…”
I want you to be my wife
probably wouldn't cut it. “Because I want to marry my son's mother. Isn't that a good enough reason?”

She glared at him. “It may well be that the last person Peter wants his mother to marry is his father.”

“Well, it's not up to him. We're his…” When he realized he'd placed his hand on his chest, he smiled ruefully and included her with an openhanded gesture. “We're the adults. It's up to us.”

“This is absolutely ridiculous.” She backed away, as though his outstretched hand threatened her somehow. “No, this is
outrageous.
I can't…. We stayed together out there in a beautiful, beautiful…and we…” She waved her hand vaguely toward the outdoors, and her voice suddenly teetered on a hurt-filled pitch. The misty glimmer in her eyes accused him of some cryptic crime. “But you didn't even…because
it meant absolutely nothing. Nothing but…but what you said about…”

She made a cutoff gesture with two very shaky hands. “I have to go now.”

Still stinging, he was a little slow on the uptake, but the sound of her heels on the wood floor incited his whoa-there reflex. He caught up to her before she got to the front door.

“Raina—” Now that he had her by the arm, he didn't know what to say. She'd called his proposal absurd, but she was hardly laughing.

“No. Don't touch me, Gideon.” She shook him off and plowed her fingers through her hair, squaring herself up for a revised, more composed exit. “I guess I need to cool off, too. Peter and I both. We don't understand—”