Hannah Alexander - Double Blind

Sheila squinted into the sun’s glare as she rounded a curve, and, for perhaps the tenth time today, questioned her decision. But after two long, painful years, dealing with the loss of her husband, and his betrayals, she felt she was at least finally making an effort to sort some sense out of the first part of her life—even if it meant returning to the scene of her childhood terrors to find answers to some difficult questions.

A movement far ahead on the right side of the road drew her gaze and broke her concentration. Whatever it was disappeared in the white glare of the sun. She fidgeted in her seat, stretching taut muscles, willing away the anxiety that had persisted throughout this trip. It was a frequent condition lately, something she couldn’t blame on the letter from the school, or even on her turbulent attraction to Preston.

Her digestion had started acting up about a week after Ryan’s death and the discovery of his unfaithfulness. Within three months, she’d lost so much weight she had to punch extra holes in her belt to hold up her jeans—a need she would have rejoiced about at any other time of her life.

Many mornings she’d awakened with a stiff neck and a headache from troubling dreams she couldn’t remember—at least not until the past few days.

The shock of Ryan’s death, and the gradual discovery of his affairs during their marriage had chipped away at her self-confidence and her faith in life. For the first year of widowhood, she’d often battled against a wavering faith in God.

Why her? After losing her mother at such a young age, why had she been forced to endure yet another tragic loss?

Dad had instilled strong Christian convictions within her. Sometimes she even questioned whether that set of standards was at the root of her troubles. Although Twin Mesas held many good memories for her, it was also where all her worst memories had been made—and it was a Christian school, where strict Christian values were taught and upheld.

Though Sheila had never renounced her faith entirely, she had rebelled against many of its strictures—most notably the one about believers marrying within their faith.

And look where it had landed her. Never again.

What hurt the most was that she had been the last to know about Ryan’s affairs. His final fling had been with the woman who was killed in the auto accident with him, Theresa Donohue, the fourth-grade math teacher whose classroom had been just down the hall from Ryan’s. But not one of Sheila’s friends had told her, though she’d discovered later that several of them had been aware of Ryan’s extramarital activities.

The movement on the desert, closer this time but still several hundred feet ahead, caught Sheila’s attention once again. The sun’s glare continued to blur the figure, but when she looked away she could see it dimly in her peripheral vision, the same way her nightmares caught her sometimes when she woke up in the mornings. The figure was too small to be a horse. A sheep, perhaps? Or a large dog?

She kept her attention on the road and allowed the approaching animal to develop along the side of her vision. It drew nearer, and she recognized the shape. A German shepherd.

Or a wolf.

She flexed her damp hands, wiping first one then the other on her jeans, blinking several times. It could have been anything but canine, and she’d be okay. But she’d rather see a nest of rattlesnakes in the middle of the road than the shape of a dog.

Suddenly, the animal disappeared, and a cloud of dust rose where it had been. She glanced that way, but saw nothing. Strange.

The steering wheel jerked in her hand. The right front tire of the Jeep sank into the soft shoulder of the road, and Sheila realized she’d allowed her focus to drift too far. She pulled the steering wheel to the left. A loud pop-thunk startled her.

She caught her breath, fighting the wheel, but the deep sand would not relinquish its hold. The Jeep coasted a hundred feet down the road and then came to a stop.

She’d blown a tire.

“Great driving, Metcalf,” she muttered to herself. “Now look what you’ve done.”

Glancing again across the broad slope of the desert horizon, she found herself wishing that a blown tire was her only problem.

Canaan York slowed his silver-blue Plymouth Voyager to ease the impact of a deep pothole that stretched across the dirt road. He scanned the broad plain of desert surrounding the solitary mountain of White Cone. Tanya Swift’s family lived about two hundred yards ahead. Their small frame home, painted clover-green with dark spruce shutters, was a mansion compared to the other houses in this section of the Navajo reservation.

When Canaan reached the house, he stopped, frowning. Maybe the little runaway hadn’t come back home.

A cloud of trailing dust rolled past the van and drifted in through the open windows, depositing a layer of grit over everything. Canaan blinked and tugged down on the bill of his baseball cap.

He glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure no dust streaked his face. He knew that, aside from the light tone of his skin, his long, somber face and dark brown hair and eyes identified him as Native American. Navajo. The People. But he was also well aware that the white half of his heritage continued to instill distrust in a few Navajo.

Unfortunately, Tanya’s family belonged to that few, depending on the circumstances. And now this had to happen. He could only hope Tom and Linda Swift had already left for their thrice-yearly tour of the Southwest to sell their crafts. If they were here, he would most likely get an earful on his inability to control the students at the school…one lecture among many he’d received from several sources since stepping into the breach two weeks ago and inheriting a job for which he’d never asked—nor trained.

He wondered, as he’d often done lately, why his grandfather had been so adamant that no one else at the school could do the job.

A movement caught his attention from a window beside the kitchen door. He studied the low-slung house for a moment. With an intuition developed over years of working with people, he knew Tanya was there. The empty driveway told him she was alone.

He climbed from the van and walked toward the house.

Twelve-year-old Tanya opened the door before he had a chance to knock. Her large, slanted, exotic eyes were filled with defiant apprehension.

“Hi, Canaan.” Her gaze darted past him. “You alone?”

He nodded. She reminded him of a half-grown lamb, inquisitive and always landing herself into trouble.

She relaxed visibly and stepped aside. “I know what you’re thinking, and I know what you’re going to say.”

He ducked slightly at the threshold, taking slow steps, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dimness of the unlit house.

“You’ve learned the art of mind reading on your long walk home?” he asked.

“You know I didn’t—”

“Walk all that way?” In the gloom, Canaan found a yellow-and-red-patterned kitchen chair and sank into it. “How often do I have to talk to you about hitchhiking?”

Tanya took two mincing steps toward him, the delicate lines of her young face sliding into a grin of mischief. “Who said I hitchhiked? Maybe I turned into Yenaldlooshi and raced the wind home.”

Canaan studied her expression to see if she was teasing. She wasn’t. He willed away the chill that slid over his skin. For a year, he had battled this superstition at the school, but it had persisted, even grown, the way a piñon sapling grew in the heat of the Arizona sun during a year of good rain. The children had recently begun to blame Navajo spirit entities for everything from unfinished homework to illness to lost track races.

He would have another talk with Betsy Two Horses. Giving her permission to teach a couple of informal classes on the ancient Navajo customs did not include filling the kids’ heads with terrifying myths.