The rest of the evening passed in a whirl of people laughing and eating good, clean food, telling jokes in Lakota and telling them again in English and laughing at both. Madeline seemed most comfortable in the kitchen, helping Nelly cull the strawberries, so Rebel went back out to the bonfire alone, like he had something to prove. Some people smoked, some people drank, but he turned a blind eye to the bad parts and focused on the good. And the best of the good parts was that no one gave him any shit. In fact, several people mentioned that Albert had been expecting them a little sooner.
Maybe this wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever had, after all. In fact, it might turn out to be a perfectly okay one. Rebel came in from the fire to find Madeline in an earnest conversation with Tammy, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Mikey was hell-bent on tugging on each lovely curl.
A hammer hit him in the chest. She’d always seemed so formal, so stiff around the kids at the clinic, but now? Now she was helping Nelly with the prized berries and bouncing Mikey on her knee like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Anna had not wanted children. She’d been afraid of the disorder a baby would bring, both to her world and her body. And, at the time, Rebel had been on board with that. He didn’t want any more kids to grow up with the kind of confusion that kept Jesse locked between two different worlds, and he sure as hell hadn’t wanted any child of his to be nothing but a dirt-poor red man to the rest of the world.
Madeline looked up at him, her eyes bright.
It didn’t have to be that way, he realized. Jesse had let himself be stuck in the middle. And who the hell cared what the rest of the world thought?
And then she smiled at him, and the hammer hit him harder.
“Just the man I needed to see,” she said.
His gut clenched, which left him wide open for what she said next.
“How big is Jesse’s truck?”
Huh? “Standard bed,” he replied as he noticed that Tammy had a huge grin on her face. “Why? What did I miss?”
“I need someone with a truck to go with me to Rapid City. I’m going to buy some filing cabinets.”
He’d missed something, all right. No one had breathed a word of filing cabinets. “More than one?”
“Tara thinks it’ll take at least two,” she replied, and both sisters nodded. “If we had things in filing cabinets, I would have been able to pull Albert’s file before we left. I need filing cabinets and someone to organize them for me.”
“Dr. Mitchell,” Tammy said, her voice barely above a whisper, “I don’t know how to thank you.”
He’d definitely missed something. “For filing cabinets?”
All three women looked at him like he was a tree stump. “I’ve decided that I need filing cabinets,” Madeline said, her voice dropping well into teasing range. In front of other people. Maybe someone had gotten her a beer? “And it turns out that Tammy finished a year of a secretarial program at, where again?”
“Sinte Gliske,” Tammy replied, staring at her feet.
That’s right, Rebel remembered. Tammy had been following in Tara’s footsteps—their mother was a huge fan of higher education—and then she’d gotten pregnant and dropped out. And with an unfinished degree and a newborn, a paycheck had suddenly become out of reach.
Until Madeline showed up. Madeline, who seemed to understand about these things. Madeline, who was going to save the world, one person at a time. Starting with Tammy.
Hell, who was he kidding? Starting with him.
“And Lord knows I don’t have time to organize anything,” Tara said, shooting him the kind of look that demanded agreement.
Finally, he caught on. “So you’re going to test Tammy’s organizational skills?”
“On a trial basis,” Madeline added, smiling with genuine warmth. “It’s not like we couldn’t use a little more help.”
“She said I could bring in Mikey if Mom was too busy,” Tammy added, the embarrassment coloring her cheeks.
“Nelly can help,” Tara reassured her, a sisterly arm on her shoulder.
“That’s...” Well, hell. He didn’t have a word. And everyone could tell.
Tara rolled her eyes as Tammy blushed even harder. Madeline notched an eyebrow at him. “Assuming,” she said, the sarcasm dripping, “someone keeps paying his bills.”
His mouth opened to give her what-for—his bills? More like everyone else’s bills—but Nelly bounded into the room.
“Webel. Dr. Mitchell. Tȟunkášila Albert told me he wanted to talk to you. I think,” she added as she scratched her head. “Maybe he said...oh, shoot.”