“I know how they must’ve felt,” I said.
She lifted her face to the star-strewn sky. “I’ve never been scared on Bonny. My father always said I was fearless, like my mother.”
She shifted on the log. Gazed off, past the grid of rocks, into the moss-draped woods.
“My father said my mother was the last of the Guale. It wasn’t true—she was as WASPy as they come, but she did have an affinity for Native Americans. And she felt like she was one of them. They both believed that we all get to decide who we are—inside. When I was seven, my mother heard about the American Indian Movement. And something that happened up in Custer, South Dakota. A white guy stabbed a Lakota man to death. They slapped the white guy on the wrist, let him out on a five-thousand-dollar bond. It was a joke. The guys from AIM and the Pine Ridge Reservation were going to go meet with the prosecutor and demand justice. Demand to finally be heard. My mother convinced my father that we should go and join the fight.”
She toed a chunk of charred wood.
“Even though all the AIM guys wanted to do was talk, the Custer police acted like it was a revolution. They wouldn’t let but a few of them into the courthouse. They set up roadblocks, stood guard in riot gear. Eventually, the talks broke down and the police got what they wanted . . . a riot. They set fire to the courthouse, the chamber of commerce. Couple of police cars.”
She laced her fingers. Studied them.
“My mother wasn’t doing anything wrong. But she got mouthy with a cop, and he didn’t appreciate it. She got shot. Three times. Two in the neck, one in the gut.”
My mouth opened, but no words came. Susan Doucette had said Vicky Kitchens was accidentally killed in the fire in Custer. Not gunned down in cold blood by a cop. But there was no reason to believe Susan knew more than Doro. No reason at all.
“I’m sorry, Doro,” I finally managed. “I’m so sorry.”
She folded her arms around her knees. “You know, when I was a child, my father told me that story many times, but it took me until I was a teenager to really understand the lesson in it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our enemies are all around us, ready to take what is ours. But you can’t let them. Once you’ve lost what belongs to you—your belief, your faith, your land—you’ve lost everything.”
The night had gone from a turgid gray to a velvety black. The jagged stone walls rose like teeth in a giant’s maw. Crows’ silhouettes dotted the trees. Doro’s eyes had locked onto me, like a missile radar beam.
“You never leave your land, Meg. Do you hear me? You never, ever leave.”
All of a sudden, behind Doro, between the darkening stone arches and walls, I saw the slightest hint of movement.
KITTEN
—FROM CHAPTER 20
The Guale way?
Fay couldn’t think what Kitten meant by that. The very next moment, her vision filled with strange spots—like bright, white-hot stars, sparking and popping all around her—as she felt an intense sensation of burning along her scalp.
Then she understood.
Ashley, Frances. Kitten. New York: Drake, Richards and Weems, 1976. Print.
Chapter Forty-Six
A soughing sound drifted out from the warren of crumbled mission half rooms, and we both jumped up. Doro held up the lantern to the arched opening. My entire body was trembling.
The mare clopped out of the dark. Long nose, arched neck, bur-tangled mane. Her ears twitched forward and back, and she whinnied. Doro laughed, then I joined in, a giddy harmony of relief that rose up and softened the night.
When our laughter finally drifted away, the only sound was the mare cropping at a patch of grass. Neither of us sat, though, and I noticed Doro put the lantern on a low wall along the edge of the courtyard. Its glow illuminated the line of trees flanking us, a spotlight trained on an empty stage.
Waiting for Billy to lurch in from the woods.
I strained to see the Jeep and Koa. I could just make him out in the blackness. He was still in the same position. He looked like he was sleeping.
“She still hasn’t accepted the foal.” Doro was running a hand down the mare’s sinewy neck.
“Will she ever?” I said.
Doro glanced at me. Her fingers traveled along the mare’s broad back. “Animals are funny about attachments. They’re not like us. They don’t mourn their losses.”
I glanced at the Jeep. At Koa. I was starting to think it had been a terrible idea to come out here. A spectacularly bad idea.
Her voice was low, musical, as she stroked the horse. “Meg?”
“What?” Every nerve ending in my body was firing.
“You trust me, don’t you? Isn’t that what you said, back at the middens?”
I opened my mouth, but couldn’t say anything. She was my mother, my real mother. But something inside me was still holding back. Hesitating around the fringes.
She went on rubbing the horse. “I trust you. You’re my daughter. Anything I’ve ever done was for you and Bonny Island. The things you’ve done have not been from such a pure place, have they? Sneaking around behind my back. Contacting Susan. Going to see Billy. Keeping secrets for Koa. Writing those lies about me in your book.”
I stared at her.
“But I understand, Meg, you didn’t know any better.” She smoothed the mare’s mane. “Mothers always understand.”
A beat of silence settled over us.
“Holding forth on motherhood, Kitten?” came a voice from the shadows.
The next instant, Frances stepped into the nimbus of watery lantern light. Her skin was glistening with sweat, the collar of her silk shirt torn loose. Her smudged eyes flicked over me for a brief moment, then went right back to Doro.
“It’s in such poor taste, don’t you think?” Frances said.
“Frances,” I said.
“You left,” Doro said.
Frances turned to me. “I never called Captain Mike. I drove to the dock, then walked back and hid near the house. Doro might think she’s the almighty ruler of Bonny Island and everybody on it, but she isn’t. She doesn’t understand that as long as there is breath in my body, I will do whatever it takes to protect you.”
My breath caught in my throat. Waves of pinpricks zoomed up and down my body, and my hands fisted by my sides.
Doro sauntered toward my mother. “How curious. How strange. You couldn’t care less about Meg for her whole life and then, the minute she comes down to Bonny Island, the minute she returns to me—presto!—you appear! A howling, growling mother bear.”
“You’re a liar, Doro,” Frances said in a low voice. “A liar and a murderer.”
“It’s too late, Frances,” Doro snapped. “She knows what really happened. She figured it all out on her own.”
Frances’s eyes slid to me.