Vella Munn - The Return of Cord Navarro

She didn’t feel strong enough for Cord’s words. Self-control might last no longer than a single breath. Still, held there by the reality of Summer’s picture, she was incapable of moving. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard Cord say what he had about their daughter. The day Summer died, he’d placed his hand on the incubator and mouthed words about the spirit world and Gray Cloud being there to show her the way.

When she and Cord had finished saying their goodbyes to Summer and walked out of the neonatal room, he’d put his arm around her and held her against his hard side. He’d said something, words that rumbled and jumbled, words she couldn’t hold on to. She remembered burying her face in his chest and crying until her head pounded and she thought she might die. Maybe he’d gone on talking. Maybe he’d fallen silent.

It didn’t matter. She hadn’t wanted to hear that Gray Cloud was caring for Summer when her own empty arms ached.

Cord should have known that.

Her husband’s arms should have been strong enough to hold back the world.

Instead, two days after the funeral, Cord had gotten a call from the state police in Nevada. He was needed to find an older man who’d wandered away from his fellow campers and was lost somewhere in the stark wilderness around Virginia City. If Cord didn’t get there as soon as possible, the man might not survive.

Damn him and his all-consuming career! He’d had that to give his life direction. That and his faith that Gray Cloud would take care of Summer.

What she had was the echo of his stiff goodbye and a nursery with no baby to fill it. How could she possibly study for tests that no longer mattered, be what Matt needed in the way of a mother, think of things to say to Cord when he called?

She hadn’t asked him to stay and mourn with her. If he didn’t understand that she needed him more than they did the money to pay off Summer’s medical bills-

Her bare foot hit a rock and she barely righted herself in time. Biting down on the inside of her mouth, she vowed to think of nothing except finding Matt. But Cord was only a few feet away, his back to her, giving her a view of the pocket where he kept his picture of Summer.

Until this morning she hadn’t known he’d taken one.

Maybe, if he’d told her about it and they’d stood together and studied their daughter’s features-maybe…

Cord could hear Shannon breathing. It was a whisper sound, a message he understood but didn’t know what to do with. It was possible she was now thinking about Matt and had to fight down her fears, but maybe her mind was still on what they’d said, or almost said, to each other a few minutes ago.

She’d said he should have cried with her when Summer died, making it sound like an accusation. Now he wished he’d been able to make her understand that, because of his grandfather’s wisdom and teachings, he’d found a peace that transcended grief.

But her grief frightened him, took him back to his sixteenth year. His tears had come the day Gray Cloud wrapped an ancestral doe skin over his frail shoulders and stepped out of the cabin they lived in. It was in Gray Cloud’s eyes; he was going away. Going home.

For a night and a day Cord had sat inside the cabin, tears staining his cheeks. Then, when he couldn’t cry anymore, he followed his grandfather’s tracks into the wilderness. The old man had died curled under the blanket that had been handed down through generations of Utes. He took the blanket because it was now his, buried his grandfather in that peaceful place, and cried again.

Now, suddenly, he stopped, body wire-tight, listening. It took him a moment to sort out what had caught his attention. A deer was hidden maybe thirty feet away. He signaled to let Shannon know. After a few more seconds he sensed the deer moving away, and went about getting ready for the day.

Summer lived here. He wondered if Shannon would ever know that, or why he’d given their daughter an Indian name. If the time had been right, if she’d ever indicated she wanted to hear this-if he’d known how to say the words-he’d have told her about where he’d gone the night after Summer died. He’d heard his daughter calling to him and left his sleeping wife, stepped into the night, and gone looking for her.

Because they’d come back here to be near Shannon’s parents for the birth, he’d wound up at a small, clear pool of water fed by spring runoff. It was near this spot that he’d buried Gray Cloud and where he’d spent the night telling his daughter how much he loved her and that her great-grandfather would always been there to take care of her.

When he’d taken Summer’s picture in the hard – smelling, too bright hospital, he’d wanted to explode from unspent tears.

Beside the pool, watched by an owl, talking to two people he loved, he’d lost his grief and found serenity.

But he hadn’t been able to guide Shannon to his peace and now they were trapped together in the wilderness with nothing in common except the boy who’d been over this ground yesterday but could be anywhere now.

He needed to find Matt, for himself, and for Shannon.

Because Matt had come across a deer trail and was following it, Cord and Shannon were able to make easy progress. Still, about an hour after they left camp, Cord called a halt because he wanted to see how well her pack fit. She turned her back to him and stood passively while he adjusted the shoulder straps. He would have believed she felt nothing, cared nothing for his touch, except that her fingers were tightly clenched.

Lightly clamping his hands over her shoulders, he turned her toward him. “It’s going to be a long time before we overtake him,” he said. “I want you to know that.”

“I do know. And it doesn’t matter.”

Although he should get started again, he continued to face her. She stood slightly below him on the hill with the sky draped around her, looking smaller than she usually did. She’d run a brush through her hair before rebraiding it and washed up as best she could, her simple chores reminding him of the femininity that simmered-waited-beneath her practical clothes.

“What’s going on inside you?” she asked abruptly. “What do you feel? What do you think about when you’re trying to find a sign, any sign, that Matt came this way?”

“I don’t feel, Shannon.” It was a lie, but a necessary one. If he opened so much as a crack to his emotions this morning, she might step boldly inside-might expose herself to too much.

“I feel sorry for you. Sorry and…I don’t know. Damn it, I don’t know!”

“I don’t know what more you want me to say.”

“I’m sure you don’t. I think, finally, I understand that. It’s just-maybe I still want different what can’t be different. I wish to God I didn’t. It would be easier for me, maybe easier for both of us.”

“What do you want changed?”

She stared at him as if she had never expected to hear that question from him. Answering her gaze, he looked as deeply into her as he could, but he couldn’t reach far enough. If he’d ever once touched her heart, it had been a lifetime ago.

“For us to be able to go back again, to be wiser, honest,” she whispered. “Oh, Cord. It should all be behind us, shouldn’t it? Okay, I guess I’ll always regret that you and I…when we should have clung to each other, shared as we’d never shared before – it didn’t happen.”

No. It hadn’t. Summer’s death had changed something inside Shannon and he’d never truly understood what that was. She’d pulled away from him, buried herself. He’d had no idea how to reach her. “You never gave us a chance.”

She blinked, looked off balance. Wounded. “/ never-You had no idea I might not be there when you came home that last time? That I couldn’t stand mourning our daughter alone, that I needed you…”