Sharon Sala - Rider on Fire & When You Call My Name - Rider on Fire / When You Call My Name

“So what do you have to show me?” Sonora said.

Franklin handed her a photo that he’d taken from the mantel over the fireplace.

Sonora eyed it casually, then stifled a gasp.

“Who is she?” she asked, pointing at the woman in the photo.

“My mother, and he is my father. It was taken on their wedding day.”

“Good Lord,” Sonora whispered, then carried it to a table in the hall and the mirror that hung above it.

She kept looking from the photo to her face and then back again until Adam took it from her hands and held it up beside her. Were it not for old-fashioned hair and clothing, and the man in the picture, she would have sworn the picture was of her.

“I look like her,” Sonora said, and then bit her lip to keep from weeping. In all of her twenty-nine years, she’d never had the luxury of saying that before.

Franklin walked up behind her. Adam stepped back. Now Sonora was seeing herself, and Franklin Blue Cat, and seeing the similarities in their features. Her emotions were out of control. They went from jubilation, knowing she’d found a family, to hurt and anger that he’d never come looking for her. She wanted to cry, and settled for anger.

“Why?” she muttered.

“Why what?” Franklin asked.

“Why am I just learning you existed?”

Franklin took her by the hand. “Please, may we sit down? I’m not feeling very well.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked as he led her to a sofa.

Franklin shrugged. “I have leukemia and the medicines have quit working. I am dying.”

Sonora reeled from the news. She’d known he wasn’t well, and had even had the thought that he was dying, but to hear her suspicions were actually true made her sick to her stomach. This wasn’t fair. She’d spent her entire life alone. Why would she be reunited with her only living family only to have him snatched away? How cruel was this?

“I’m so sorry,” she mumbled, and bit her lip to keep from wailing.

Franklin nodded. “Such is life,” he said, then brushed the topic aside. “Did your mother ever mention my name?”

Sonora smiled bitterly. “My mother, as you put it, dumped me on the doorstep of a Texas orphanage when I was less than a day old. I was named by a priest and a nun and dumped in a baby bed with two other babies. My earliest memory is of sitting in the corner of the bed and bawling because one of the bigger kids had taken my bottle and drank my milk.”

Franklin reeled as if he’d been slapped. “You’re not serious?”

She laughed to keep from crying. “Oh, but I am. She didn’t want me and that’s okay. I can take care of myself.”

Franklin shook his head as tears unashamedly ran down his face. When she would have moved away, he took her hands, then held them fast against his chest.

“No. No. That is never okay. I am sorrier than I can tell you, but it’s not okay. I didn’t know until a few weeks ago that you might even exist. That’s when I asked Adam for help.”

Sonora shook her head. “That’s what I still don’t get. How did you come to believe you had a child? Who told you?”

“I had a dream,” he said. “I have it often. It’s always of your mother, whom I loved more than life. It’s a repeat of our last day together, and how sad I am that she’s moving away, even though I begged her to stay. Only this time the dream was different and it made me believe that your mother’s spirit was trying to tell me to search for you.”

“You’re serious.”

“Very.”

Sonora pointed to Adam. “So, where does he come in?”

“He’s the healer for our tribe. I am full-blood Kiowa. I have no brothers or sisters, and after your mother left, I never had another woman. I am the last of my people, or at least I was, until Adam sent for you.”

“Both of you keep saying that, but I don’t understand. How did he send for me when he didn’t even know if I existed?”

“I made medicine,” Adam said. “I told the Old Ones what Franklin wanted. They are the ones who looked for you. They are the ones who found you. They are the ones who have given you your dreams that led you to us.”

“Oh…oh, whatever,” Sonora muttered. “I can’t deal with all that hocus-pocus right now.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Franklin said. “All that matters is that you are here.”

Outside, there was a quick flash of lightning.

“It is going to rain. Will you stay?” Franklin asked. “I have many rooms in this house and yet I live in it all alone. I would welcome your company for as long as you can be here.”

She thought about the danger her presence might cause, and then decided there was no way on earth that Miguel Garcia would ever find her here. Besides, she wasn’t just curious, she ached to know this man who was claiming her. She wanted to know everything there was to know about the people whose blood ran through her veins.

“Yes, I’ll stay, and thank you,” she said. “I’ll just go get my bag off the Harley.”

“I’ll get it,” Adam said, “but then I must be going. I have animals to feed before dark.”

He hurried outside, untied the bag from the back of the Harley and carried it into the house where Franklin was waiting.

“How can I ever thank you?” Franklin said, and then threw his arms around Adam and hugged him fiercely.

“It’s the Old Ones you must thank,” Adam said, then added, “Call if you need me.”

Sonora was standing behind an easy chair, watching the two men part company. She felt like the outsider she really was, and had a sudden urge to jump on her bike and leave before she became too involved to let go. Then Adam turned his attention to her.

“Franklin has my number. Call me if you need me.”

She made no comment, unwilling to admit that she didn’t want him to leave.

Adam refrained from looking at her again. It was difficult enough not to let what he was thinking show through. Somehow he didn’t think Franklin would thank him for lusting after his newfound daughter.

“Come tomorrow,” Franklin said. “I’ll make breakfast.”

Adam arched an eyebrow. Franklin’s fry bread was famous on the mountain.

“Fry bread, too?”

Franklin smiled. “Sure.”

“What’s fry bread?” Sonora asked.

Both men looked at her and then shook their heads.

“It won’t look good if word gets out that Franklin Blue Cat’s daughter has never had fry bread,” Adam said.

Franklin smiled. “You are right,” he said. “So…my first duty as a father will be to introduce her to it.”

Sonora caught herself smiling back. “Am I being the butt of a big joke?”

“Oh, no,” they said in unison. Then Adam added. “Your father often makes fry bread at the stomp dances.”

“Stomp dances?”

They looked at her and then smiled again.

“You have a lot to learn about your people,” Franklin said, then his smile went sideways. “I will teach you what I can with the time I have left.”

Sonora nodded, then looked away. “Maybe you could tell me where you want me to sleep. I would like to wash off some of the dust before we talk any more.”

“I’ll be going now,” Adam said. “See you for breakfast.”

Sonora picked up her bag as Franklin led the way down a hall.

“These rooms are cool and catch plenty of breeze. However, there is an air-conditioning unit if you wish to be cooler. The medicine I take makes me cold, so I don’t often use the main one in the house anymore.”

“This is beautiful,” Sonora said, overwhelmed by the subdued elegance. There were royal-blue sheers at the windows, as well as vertical blinds. A matching blue-and-gold tapestry covered a king-size bed and there was a large Navajo rug on the floor in front of it. But it was the carving of a small kitten that caught her eye. It was lying on its back with its feet up in the air, batting at a dragonfly that had landed on its nose.