Picture Perfect

  Cassie glared at him. "What do you mean by that?"

  "You know. 'Don't turn your back on your Sioux blood, Will.' Hanging up my goddamn medicine bundle in L.A. so it stared me in the face every time I passed it by."

  "You pulled it off the wall," Cassie said. "How was I supposed to know any better?" She poked at a rock with her toe. "Besides," she said smugly, "I was right. Look at how much you've changed since you've come back to Pine Ridge--it's obvious that the only person who gives a damn about your being half white is you."

  Will pulled himself to his feet, staring right at Cassie. "What I want to know is how comeI'm not allowed to turn my back on my history, but you don't have to play by the same rules?"

  Cassie took a step backward. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  Will grabbed her shoulders. "You do. You know what he's done to you before, you know he's going to do it again." His mouth twisted. "I couldn't escape the past, no matter how hard I tried. Neither can Alex, and neither can you."

  Cassie knew the advice she'd given Will served her own situation just as well. There was, really, nothing you could use as a blueprint for your life, except your past. There was no starting over. There was only picking up the pieces someone had left behind.

  "That," Cassie said, her voice breaking, "is exactly why I have to go back."

  AFTER CASSIE SPENT THE EARLY MORNING SAYING GOODBYE TO CYrus and Dorothea, Will drove her and Connor into town to meet Alex. Connor had been fussy in the car, and Cassie handed him to Will, knowing that Alex was watching from across the street and grateful that Connor's cries had offered her an excuse to do so. After all that Will had selflessly given her and Connor, she could not go without letting him hold the baby a last time.

  They had come to a fragile peace. Cassie fiddled with the drawer of the glove compartment, pretending to check inside for anything that might be hers. Across the seat, Will was rubbing his hand across Connor's frail back. "Well," Cassie said brightly. "You'll write and tell me where you wind up?"

  Will glanced up at her. "I said I would."

  Cassie nodded. "Yes, you did." She reached out her arms, and Will placed the baby in them, their hands brushing each other. Then she looked out the front window of the pickup, trying to commit to memory the flagpole in front of the school, the hot red dirt caked into the tires of the truck, the tilt of Will's hat on his forehead. "I'm going to miss this place," she said.

  Will laughed. "Give yourself ten minutes," he said. "It's real easy to forget."

  Cassie looped her hand through the straps of Connor's diaper bag. "Well then, I'm going to miss you."

  "Now that," Will said, grinning, "will take longer than ten minutes."

  Cassie lurched across the seat, throwing her free arm around Will's neck. Will hugged her back, taking away the soft grass scent of her hair, the smooth curve of her bare shoulder, the timbre of her voice. Connor lay pressed between their chests, like the shared heart of Siamese twins.

  It was Alex who pulled them apart. Cassie heard his deep voice through her open window, where he'd come to stand. "Sorry," he said. "But I don't want to miss that flight."

  Will released her. He stared at Alex, nodded. He touched the baby's dewy cheek.

  "Thank you," Alex said graciously. He lifted the baby from Cassie's arms through the window, as if he knew that was the sure way she would follow. "I appreciate your taking care of my family."

  My family. Will narrowed his eyes. He didn't trust himself to say anything.

  Alex settled Connor on his shoulder, then looked at Will again. "I know you," he said simply.

  Will smiled broadly. "I broke up a fight of yours once. I was with the LAPD."

  "Well," Cassie said between them, and Will turned to her. Always the peacemaker.

  She didn't say anything, but she didn't get out of the truck right away, either. Instead they slipped into that comfortable zone where there didn't have to be words. They caught each other's eyes.I love you , Will thought.

  I know, Cassie answered. But while he was still savoring that smallest triumph, she slid from the truck and walked right out of his life.

  WHEN THE RIVERSES' SCHEDULED PLANE TOOK OFF FROM RAPID CITY, Will was more drunk than he'd ever been. He planned to be unconscious by the time Cassie landed in L.A. with her husband and her son.

  He cursed himself for ever picking Cassie up from that goddamn cemetery. He cursed himself for quitting the LAPD, where he would have been able to keep an eye on her. The way things stood now, she was dead to him. Or as good as dead.

  It was this thought that got his mind turning. There was a common practice among the People, the giveaway, that came on the anniversary of a relative's death. The grieving family showed their respect for the dead person by making gifts and saving up staple foods and offering them as presents to as many people as possible. Will vaguely remembered the year that his own father had died, how his grandparents had saved up to make a good showing that proved how much they had cared for their son.

  He remembered that when his father died, Joseph Stands in Sun had told him about ghost owning, the ultimate giveaway ceremony which had transpired in the days of the buffalo. For a family that lost a child, not only would food and skins and utensils be saved up over the year. In addition, the couple would give to other members of the tribe their own horses, their very tipi, even the clothes off their backs, all as a tribute to someone well loved. "You give till it hurts," Joseph had said.

  Wild-eyed, Will began to rummage through the back of his truck, finding little of value except for an old shotgun and a sheepskin jacket that had belonged to his father. He drove through town like a madman, stopping at Bernie Collier's, a neighbor he had never liked. He banged on the door until it swung open under his pounding.

  "Will," Bernie said carefully, taking in Will's unkempt hair and the untucked edges of his shirt.

  "I got something for you, Bernie," Will said, thrusting the shotgun into his hands. "No strings attached."

  He turned on his heel before Bernie could call after him, jumped into the truck and sped toward the Laughing Dogs' house.

  Linda Laughing Dog frowned when she saw him, and waved her hand in front of her face, trying to ward off the smell of whiskey. "Come on in, Will," she said. "Let me get you some coffee."

  "No coffee," Will said. "I'm here to give you something." He held up the sheepskin jacket. "Think how many kids will go through the winters in this," he said. "It's yours. Do what you want with it."

  Rydell Two Fists adamantly refused to take his truck, and Will sat down on the stump in front of his log cabin and bawled like an infant before he figured out what he could do with the keys. He went around back to the old knotty pine where Rydell and Marjorie kept their mutt tied up, and threaded the key ring through the dog's collar without even waking it.

  Giveaway worked; he was coming to see that. He ran through the back woods to Joseph Stands in Sun's lodge, feeling lighter than he had in months. He stripped off his coat as he ran. He left his hat on a clothesline, his boots in front of the cabin of a stranger. He gave his shirt to a little girl who was dragging a bucket of water back up to her parents' home.

  By the time he reached Joseph's lodge, he was wearing only his jeans and his underwear, and he was shivering from the cold. He obviously hadn't drunk enough, he thought, if he could still judge the temperature and if he was too embarrassed to knock on the door and give the medicine man the last of his clothes. Instead, he stripped down to his bare skin, folding his jeans and his shorts and leaving them in a neat pile in front of Joseph's door.

  He began to run wherever his legs would go. As he stepped on thistles and pinecones his feet began to bleed; still he kept running. He was an animal. He was primitive. He could not think and he could not feel. He came to a high butte that he did not recognize, and there he threw back his head and cried in pain.

  He had only one more thing to give away, something that he knew was worthless, but something all the same. Will yelled the
words over and over in English and in Lakota, sobbing and scratching at his own skin when he needed to remember how much it hurt to be here when she was gone. "Imacu yo," he shouted to the spirits. "Take me!"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE reporters and photographers waiting at the security checkpoint at LAX were taking bets. "I still say he's gotten rid of her," a man from theNational Enquirer said. "As in six feet under."

  ThePeople reporter sniffed. "Then why go to all this trouble to announce their arrival in L.A.?"

  "You ask me," a cameraman said, "they're comin' back together, but she ain't gonna look too happy about it. I think he's paid her off. What's a couple million if it puts you at the top of the box office again?"

  An NBC entertainment reporter checked her lipstick for smears in the reflective lens of a camera. "Mark my words," she said emphatically. "Alex Rivers is a has-been." She turned to her colleagues, jostling each other like greyhounds at the gate as the loudspeaker announced the arrival of flight 658 from Denver. "There's nothing that man can do that will make women drool again. Fact is, no matter what the circumstances were, she left him, which only proves he's not the sex symbol we all thought."

  In the first-class lounge, Cassie finished diapering Connor. Alex sat across from her, one leg casually crossed over the other at the knee. He held a mug of coffee in his hands. "I'm going to have to learn how to do that," he said.

  Cassie glanced up at him. For the life of her, she couldn't picture Alex's hands doing something as mundane as diapering their son. "Nowthat ," she said, "would make a wonderful press conference."

  Shifting, Alex set down the mug. "You don't mind, do you?"

  He was talking about the reporters who were waiting like vultures to be tossed some carrion. Alex had warned her about the tip to the media when they were somewhere over the Rockies. And of course she'd said she understood--if it was indirectly her fault that Alex's popularity was suffering in Hollywood, it was her obligation to bolster his image as much as she could. Still, Cassie couldn't help but remember the first time she'd landed at LAX with Alex, nearly four years earlier, the first time she'd been given a taste of a life devoid of privacy. After so many months at Pine Ridge, it was a difficult adjustment to make.

  "I don't mind," Cassie said softly. She handed the baby to Alex. "I just wish Connor wasn't being used as a pawn."

  "I won't let the flashbulbs hit his eyes, and I won't let them ask too many questions. I promise." Alex grinned. "Think of it as his first screen test."

  The door to the private sitting area flew open, and the huge bulk of Michaela Snow filled the threshold. She gave Alex a brilliant smile and then turned to Cassie, raking her over from head to toe. "Good to see you again," she said coolly, and Cassie froze in the motion of putting the diaper wipes back into the carry-on bag.

  "Michaela," she said, tipping up her face with a genuinely warm smile.

  Michaela stared at her for a moment, long enough for Cassie to self-consciously consider her own shapeless brown shift and worn tennis shoes--a far cry from the fashion statement expected of Alex Rivers's wife. Michaela turned back to Alex. "You almost ready?"

  Cassie felt a chill make its way down her spine as she realized that Michaela's attitude was a preview of the reception she would receive in Los Angeles, where the majority of people she knew were Alex's friends and colleagues. In their eyes, Cassie had left Alex. In their eyes, she was the one at fault. They did not know the whole story, of course, but that was exactly where Cassie's hands were tied. If she defended her own actions by revealing the fact that Alex had beaten his wife, she would only send his reputation into another uproar. Even if she mentioned it in light of his vow to get professional help, she would still be hurting Alex, and that was the one thing she refused to do again.

  She glanced up at Alex, who mistook the look on her face for stage fright and tenderly drew her to her feet. "Surely the woman who gave birth alone in the middle of nowhere," he said softly, "won't be intimidated by a greedy bunch of reporters."

  "I wasn't alone," Cassie said defensively. She reached for Connor and began to strap him into his cradleboard.

  Alex turned to Michaela. "We'll meet you outside in ten minutes." As the publicist left, he turned to Cassie. "Why don't you let me carry that thing," he said gently, "and you can hold the baby."

  Cassie's eyes darted to the door Michaela had just exited. She protectively folded her arms over her chest. Was Alex ashamed of her dumpy, functional clothing? Of bringing his child into L.A. in a Sioux artifact? "Connor likes the cradleboard," Cassie said guardedly, clutching at what had become familiar.

  "Connor loves his mother," Alex said. He looked up at Cassie, his eyes pleading the words he hadn't said:And I want everyone to see him with you . He waited until Cassie nodded, and then let his breath out in a sigh. He was treading on eggshells, he knew that, but surely Cassie could see the importance of a crowd's first impression.

  Alex gathered up the rest of the bags and slung them over his shoulder. He paused at the door of the lounge to turn to Cassie. "Thank you," he said softly.

  "For what?"

  "For what you're about to do for me. For coming back."

  It was the undisguised emotion in his eyes that made Cassie put her fear aside. She took Alex's hand and drew a deep breath.

  THE ROWS OF BLACK DOTS SWAM BEFORE HER EYES, BUT EVEN AS THE throng of reporters continued to flash pictures and roll their videotapes, Cassie kept a smile pinned to her face and her eyes glued to Alex, as if she were falling in love with him all over again.

  "I realize," Alex was saying coldly, "there's been a lot of conjecture about the disappearance of my wife." He looped his arm around her waist. "As you can see, she's quite alive, which rules out one distasteful theory about me. And as you can also see, she's been busy. Our son, Connor, was born on August eighteenth."

  The reporter from theEnquirer waved his pen in the air. "Is he yours?"

  Alex's jaw tightened. "I will not stoop to answer that," he said.

  "Then how come your wife ran away?" asked aVariety correspondent.

  "She didnot run away, Isent her away. We wanted to have a baby in peace, without the world watching over our shoulders." Alex's voice dropped dangerously low. "You people lie in wait like animals and make rumors fester until they take precedence over the truth. Did you ever think about the lives of the people you're ruining? Did you ever think about the kind of damage you're doing when, in order to guarantee privacy, you force someone to take their family away? My career already makes me a public figure.You don't have to." Alex took a step toward the silent group of reporters. "Before you go pleading the first amendment, think about the rest of us who are pleading the fifth."

  Alex turned to Cassie, who recovered from her shock at the quiet vehemence of his speech to give him a reassuring smile. She slipped her arm around his waist and they made their way down the hall, followed only by the sounds of distant, whirring cameras.

  Long after they were out of sight, the reporters stood huddled in a group, stunned and chastised. Instead of smashing cameras and pulling rolls of videotape as some stars were wont to do, Alex Rivers had managed to shame them subtly and thoroughly. It was obvious that Alex Rivers hadn't done anything to harm his wife. It was just as obvious that she was still crazy about him. And set in front of them was the proof--a beautiful little boy with the legacy of Alex Rivers's silver eyes.

  The reporter from NBC gestured to her cameraman and found a quiet place to film her comments. She pulled a compact out of her pocket and smoothed her hair, turning to a UPI representative beside her who was still furiously scribbling down notes. "I'll be damned," she said. "He's turned himself into a hero again. A hundred million people out there are going to see us as the big bad meddling media, while Alex Rivers and his nuclear family come off as crusaders just trying to be normal, everyday people."

  She shook her head, taking small comfort in the fact thatevery network was going to be swallowing some humble pie tha
t day, and raised her hand to signal readiness for the camera. She squared her shoulders. "Tonight at LAX, celebrity Alex Rivers revealed the answer to the mystery involving his wife's disappearance several months ago. In spite of overwhelming rumors circulated by the media that negatively affected his career in Hollywood, Rivers did not step forward with his wife's whereabouts, which, apparently, he'd known at all times. Cassandra Barrett Rivers returned to L.A. tonight on her husband's arm, bringing with her Alex Rivers's newborn son." Here the reporter paused meaningfully. "It is a sad fact that in today's world a star like Alex Rivers would have to endure a false scandal simply to guarantee his family's privacy," she said, carefully absolving herself from blame. "One can only hope that if little Connor Rivers decides to follow in his illustrious father's footsteps, things will be different. This is Marisa Thompson, NBC News."

  CASSIE STOOD IN FRONT OF THE BATHROOM MIRROR, RUNNING HER fingers over the green marble countertop and gold-plated sink fixtures. She couldn't help wondering what the point of that was. What had seemed luxurious before now seemed simply overdone.

  She stepped into the bedroom, turning up the volume of the portable monitor that hooked into Connor's new room. Cassie had been amazed: in the hours since he'd come for her, Alex had had one of the guest bedrooms wallpapered with fat cartoon sheep and tumbling cows, the edging of the sills and doors had been painted bright blue, and sky-colored curtains dotted with clouds fluttered in the windows. Connor was asleep in a whitewashed cradle.

  She listened to the even rhythm of her baby's breathing. She shouldn't have been surprised; Alex had always been able to do the impossible.

  It was quiet in the house; the staff had retired for the night. There had seemed to be fewer people, and those she'd recognized--like John, and Alex's secretary--were all distantly polite to her, acknowledging her position in the household, but no one was overly friendly. She kept waiting to hear a maid say, "It's nice to have you back," or for the chef to touch her arm and tell her he'd missed her, but these things did not happen, and Cassie realized that if she wanted to win everyone over again, the first friend she would have to make was Alex.