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

She moved toward it, touched it lightly, then picked it up. “I can’t believe this is wood. It looks real.”

Franklin smiled. It was praise of the highest kind. “Thank you. It would honor me if you would accept it as a gift.”

Sonora’s eyes widened. “Oh. I didn’t mean to suggest… I couldn’t possibly…”

Franklin put a hand on her shoulder. “Please. You’re my daughter. Of course you must have this.”

Sonora ran a thumb along one of the paws, tracing each tiny cut that gave the appearance of fine hair.

“This is magnificent,” she whispered.

“I call the piece Friends,” Franklin said.

“It’s perfect,” Sonora said, and then held it close as she looked up into his face—a face so like her own. “Today has been overwhelming,” she said. “There is so much I don’t understand—so much I don’t know how to explain. I’ve never had family of my own, so if I do something wrong, I beg your forgiveness ahead of time.”

“You can do no wrong,” Franklin said. “You’re the one who’s been wronged. I don’t understand how this happened, but if I’d known about you, I would have moved heaven and earth to bring you home.”

Threatened by overwhelming emotions, Sonora shuddered. “If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up.”

Franklin shook his head. “It is no dream. Now, I have one request to ask of you.”

“If I can. What do you need?”

“To hold my daughter.”

Sonora hesitated long enough to put down the sculpture, then turned and walked into his arms.

Franklin stifled a sob as she laid her cheek against his chest. For the first time since he’d received the news of his death sentence, he was angry all over again. This wasn’t fair. Why should they be reunited like this only to know it would soon come to an end?

* * *

It was almost dark by the time Adam got home. He finished his chores in the dark and then hurried inside, reaching shelter only moments before the heavens turned loose of the rain.

Wind blew. Thunder rumbled. Lightning flashed.

He ate a lonely meal and thought of the breakfast tomorrow, knowing that, for a short time, he would be with Sonora again.

He didn’t know what was going to happen between them, but he didn’t want the relationship to end before they had a chance to know one another.

He thought of Franklin, wondering how he was going to take finding a daughter and losing his life.

Rain blew against the kitchen window as he washed the dishes from his evening meal. Lightning flashed, momentarily revealing the wildly thrashing trees and limbs and the flow of rainfall funneling through the yard to the creek below his house.

Then another, more sinister thought reared its head.

Sonora had said she was in danger.

He feared she was understating the issue. The soldier in him wanted to take her to a place of safety and guard her against the world. But the healer in him knew there was another way.

His eyes narrowed as he dried his hands and moved from the kitchen to the medicine room.

He paused in the doorway, thinking of a stranger on Sonora’s trail, and then moved with purpose to the shelves. Without hesitation, he chose the items he needed, then carried them outside onto the porch. Sheltered from the rain, he lit a swatch of dried sweetgrass, then purified the air with the smoke.

He fell into the old language as easily as he breathed, turned to the north and began to chant, telling the Old Ones of the danger to one of their own, beseeching them to protect her when he could not. Then he repeated the request to the east, then the south and finally the west.

A wild crack of lightning hit the ground only yards away from his house. Adam staggered backward from the force of the strike. The scent of sulfur was heavy in the air. As he stood, the wind suddenly changed and blew rain up under the eaves of the porch and into Adam’s face.

He took it as a sign that they’d heard.

It was done.

Sonora spent the rest of the evening in a daze. It was difficult to wrap her mind around the fact that she not only had a father, but that she was actually in his house. While the premise was far-fetched and almost too good to be true, whatever doubts she might have had about being his daughter ended the moment she’d seen her grandmother’s picture.

Thinking about how she got here could make her crazy if she dwelled on it, so she didn’t. For a woman who’d spent all of her adult life dealing in truth and facts, accepting the notion of being guided by what amounted to ghosts seemed ridiculous. Still, however it had happened, she was grateful to be here.

And Franklin, who was normally shy and reticent toward strangers, was struggling to give her space. The last thing he wanted was to scare her off, but he felt a constant need to be with her. With his life span already limited, he was resentful that their time together was destined to be short.

So, while they wrestled to find comfort with each other, the thunderstorm that threatened earlier had come full force. Sonora and Franklin ate their evening meal with an accompaniment of thunder and lightning, then washed dishes with rain splattering against the windows. After that, Franklin had taken her on a tour of the house, only to have it interrupted by a power failure. Sonora had embarrassed herself by panicking when the lights had gone out. By the time Franklin found flashlights and lit a few candles, the power was on.

Now they sat in front of a television without paying any attention to the programming, trying to find points of connection between their separate lives.

Sonora was fascinated with his artistic skills and was going through a photo album that represented a complete set of his work once he’d turned a hobby into a profession. She was in awe of where he’d been, and the heads of states he’d met in faraway countries.

Franklin, on the other hand, was trying to hide his dismay at the profession his only child had chosen.

“So, when did you begin working with the DEA?” he asked.

Sonora turned a page in the album, then looked up.

“It seems like forever, but I guess it’s been about seven or eight years now. I had just turned twenty-one. I’m twenty-nine now. I’ll be thirty in September.”

Franklin’s nostrils flared. It was the only indication he gave of realizing there was another slot to be filled.

“Your birthday,” he said softly.

Sonora nodded, then stopped.

“Oh. Yes. Another gap in our knowledge of each other, which I can quickly fix. My birthday is September 12. I’m five feet ten inches tall in my bare feet. I wear a size ten in clothes, and I love chocolate.”

He tried to smile and hugged her, thankful that she was trying to make light of the vast gap between them, because the truth of it broke his heart.

“You are tall, like me,” he said. “Your mother, Leila, was a small woman, but she had a big laugh.” His smile faded. “It was the first thing I loved about her.” Then he shook his head. “But that’s for another time. I was born on June 4 in a storm cellar while a tornado blew away the house that was here. This is the one they built to replace it, so it is the only home I’ve ever known.”

Sonora nodded as she listened to him talk, but she wasn’t listening as intently as she should have been. Instead, she was marking the way his left eyebrow arched as he told something funny, noticing his slim hands and long fingers, hands of an artist. His skin was darker than hers, but not by much, and she suspected part of the washed-out color of his skin was due to his illness. She thought of seeing him unconscious on the floor and not knowing the connection between them, and how blessed she was to be sitting here now.