“Oh.” She looked disappointed. “I thought he was saying … Never mind.”
“What? Tell me.”
“I thought he was saying he thought of me as family.”
Chaska smiled at her confusion. “Thatiswhat he means. Our family is more than our parents and brothers and sisters. It’s our cousins—somany cousins—and our aunties and uncles and the elders in our community. It’s our heroes and teachers. It’s all the people who make our lives good and strong. He’s bringing you into that circle. Think of it as him taking you under his wing.”
She smiled. “I like that.”
“What about Doug?”
“He seems like a good person. He’s been very kind to me. As for the rest—I can’t get my hopes up. If he’s not my father…”
He drew her closer, kissed her hair. “If he’s not your father, then we’ll keep searching for answers, starting with the woman he gifted with that medicine wheel.”
When Winona got home with Old Man and Doug, it was time to make dinner. Chaska put himself in charge of grilling the meat and left figuring out the rest of it to his sister. He fired up the grill and put on the steaks, his gaze on Naomi, who sat on the porch next to Doug, showing him her photographs and sketches.
“Your Naomi is quite the artist,” said Old Man in Lakota, coming up from behind him. “I saw that owl she drew. It looks just like the real one. Have you seen those pictures she took of hummingbirds? It’s like she froze them in the air. I did not know they had so many colors. They move too fast for me to see with these old eyes.”
“I have seen those photos.” Chaska brushed marinade over the steaks then set ears of corn Winona had given him to roast in the back. “I was with her when she took them.”
“I want to hear from you what happened that morning when you met her. Is what your sister tells me true? Did you dare Creator to bring a woman to you?”
Thanks, Winona.
He would get back at her one day.
“Not exactly.” Chaska told him how they’d been out for a hike with Shota and how Winona had been bugging him about getting together with someone. “I told her I would wait until the right woman came along.”
Old Man nodded. “Sensible.”
Yeah, well he wasn’t going to like this next part.
“Then I said that Creator could bring her into my life anytime.”
“How is that respectful—to ask something of Creator when you and I know you were just running your mouth?”
Chaska ignored that. “A moment later, Shota took off running through the forest. When we found him, he was sitting beside Naomi, who was badly hurt.”
Old Man gave a nod. “That’s what Winona told me. She believes Creator answered your foolish jest and led you to Naomi.”
“I didn’t believe that at first—or I didn’t want to believe it. I haven’t believed much of anything for a long time. But now, with all that has happened, I can’t see it any other way. She doesn’t know any of this. I haven’t told her yet.”
Naomi laughed at something Doug said, the two of them sitting in lawn chairs on the patio. The resemblance between them strongest when they were both smiling. Could they see it?
“So, when is the wedding? Will it be a Lakota ceremony? I hope so. That would make this old man happy.”
Chaska rolled his eyes. “You’re worse than Winona. We haven’t talked about getting married yet. She and I haven’t even known each other for two weeks. She’s had so much going on, so many things to cope with. Ten days ago, she was in the hospital. If she and I are meant to be together, everything will work out in time.”
Grandfather looked at him through eyes that seemed ancient, his wrinkled face splitting in a big grin. “Maybe you’re not so foolish after all.”
Old Man walked away chuckling to himself. “Hey, you got horseshoes? Let’s play some horseshoes.”
“This is Star Tall Grass, my wife. We met in law school and got married the next year. She is Miniconjou Lakota from the Cheyenne River Reservation.”
Naomi looked at the photograph of a smiling woman on Doug’s laptop screen. She had a pretty face and shoulder-length dark hair, her gaze soft as she looked toward the camera. “She’s lovely.”
“I guess it’s true that opposites attract because she was much more traditional than I was. I didn’t care about all the Indian stuff. I just wanted to be like everyone else. But she turned me around, showed me how special it was just to be Lakota.”