“I know,” I told him. “I don’t even want to think about it. But somehow, knowing how patient they’ve been about waiting for the correct time to arrive, for me to grow up and be ready…well, in an odd way it actually helps. I’m not going to let them down…or us, either.”
His fingers tightened on my thigh, squeezing slightly. Then we went over a jarring bump, and he returned his hand to the steering wheel.
As I watched him, something struck me. “But you want to know what’s really strange?”
“Beyond what’s already happened?” he asked, mouth curling a bit.
“Yeah, beyond all that.” I mentally ran through the conversations with my father, both the one he and I shared in private, and what we’d discussed at Lawrence’s house. “In that whole time, my father didn’t ask one question about Marie. Not about where she was, or what she was doing. Doesn’t that seem a bit odd?”
Connor shrugged. “Maybe he wasn’t sure how you would react to that kind of question, so he decided to leave it alone for now.”
Possibly, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to it than that.
15
Spirit Walk
I realized when we were halfway home that neither my father nor Lawrence had asked for our phone numbers, or offered theirs. Maybe they didn’t have phones. Crazy as that sounded to me, I’d noticed that I had basically zero cell reception out at the house, and it didn’t seem to me as if they were doing well enough financially to afford a satellite phone. I asked Connor about it, and he told me quite a few people on the reservation used CB radios to keep in touch, since they were cheap and reliable.
So, even if I’d wanted to change my mind about going back out there on Tuesday, there wasn’t any way to back out politely. And actually, there wasn’t as much work to be done at the new house as my brain had manufactured. By the time Monday evening rolled around, we were fairly settled. I almost wished we weren’t, because at least unpacking the kitchen and the bedroom stuff meant I was occupied with figuring out where things should go, and therefore not brooding over what this training with Lawrence might entail.
I was relieved to see that by Tuesday it had cooled down a bit, which meant the temperature might not be past the century mark out at the compound where my father lived. We headed out after lunch, Connor bringing the iPad with him, since he’d gotten the distinct impression he was going to be doing a lot of sitting around while Lawrence worked with me. Of course there was no Internet out there, but you didn’t need connectivity to read a book or play a game locally.
I was wearing the ring my father had given me, proudly displacing the much plainer turquoise piece I’d bought back in high school. On my other hand glittered Connor’s diamond. Looking at them, I thought of how they represented both my past and my future.
And I was going to make damn sure that future extended farther than just another year.
Both Lawrence and my father came out to greet us this time, the two of them looking about the same as when we’d first met them, although today my father’s shirt was a sand color that almost matched the house, the front streaked with rusty stains that I guessed were from the jeweler’s rouge he used to polish his sterling silver pieces. They guided us back to Lawrence’s house, where we all sat down once more.
“It is simpler than you might think,” he told me after my father had once again brought us water. “All of us have a stillness at our center, but most have forgotten how to find it. Once you locate it, always remember what it feels like, since that calm, that quiet, is what grounds you to who you are, where you have come from. It is easy to get lost in the otherworld if you don’t remember to hold on to yourself.”
“Are we — are we traveling to the otherworld today?” I asked, wishing my voice didn’t sound so tight, so frightened.
Chuckling, he shook his head. “No, I will not ask that of you on your first day. Now it is only about meditation. You are afraid, but there is nothing to fear. You, Angela, know more than most people that this world is one of many, and passing from it is nothing more than walking from one room to another. For now, think on these words:
“May it be beautiful
before me.
May it be beautiful
behind me.
May it be beautiful
All around me.
In beauty
It is finished;
In beauty
It is finished.”
He fell silent, watching me. Then he asked, “Do you understand?”
I wasn’t sure I did, not really. But then I thought of the green line of the cottonwoods along the line of the Verde River, and the way the pale golden grass waved in the summertime. I thought of the cool dark shapes of the pines surrounding Flagstaff, and the glint of snow on the San Francisco Peaks, and the way the lightning would flash against bruise-colored clouds in monsoon season. The warmth in Connor’s eyes, and the bright gilded fall of Sydney’s hair. Everything around me was beautiful, if I just stopped to truly look at it. That beauty was complete and perfect, and the thing that would anchor me here, in this life.