Free The Spirit Keeper by Melissa Luznicky Garrett

been about. This was what they had kept from me my entire life.
    “Melody began sneaking off the reservation with her best friend, Charlene. I was eleven or so, old enough to know that what she was doing was wrong. I caught her one night. I should have told someone then, but I didn’t. I loved Melody too much, and I didn’t want her to get in trouble. In some ways, I blame myself for everything that happened.”
    She moved to the vanity and began mindlessly rearranging my collection of antique perfume bottles and framed photographs, picking up the picture of my mother to have a closer look.
    “Charlene was a wild girl,” she said. “She was a few years older than your mother and already had an infant son at home and a husband she hardly paid any attention to at all. Mama and Papa were having a hard time with Melody, so she went to live with Charlene and her little family for a while.”
    Meg waved her hand in a dismissive gesture, jumping ahead in her thoughts.
    “It was late January and very cold,” she said. “Melody had gone for a walk in the woods. She liked to do that.
    “But an hour became a few and then many, and yet Melody still had not returned home. The entire tribe was frantic with worry. There must have been at least a few hundred people out looking for her. And then a storm blew in, one of the worst I can recall. It got so bad you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face. They had no choice but to call off the search and wait until the weather cleared.”
    “Obviously she made it back, or I wouldn’t be here.” I’d gotten so caught up in Meg’s story for a moment that I was actually worried about my mother’s fate that snowy night. But everything had turned out okay in the end.
    Meg tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and licked her lips. “By the following afternoon, the storm had cleared. And then Melody, by some miracle, showed up. She looked . . . I don’t know. Different. Her eyes were wild, and there was a flush to her cheeks that had nothing at all to do with the cold. She refused to talk about what had happened to her, or even where she’d been. Then some months later, it became all too obvious.”
    Meg met my eyes with an intensity that left no doubt as to what she was implying. “My mother was pregnant with me,” I said.
    Tears had begun to leak from the corners of Meg’s eyes. “She wouldn’t give us his name. She said she loved him and that she would never betray him. She only said that he hadn’t hurt her and that he loved her, too. They were going to be together one day. The three of you.
    “Then many months later a white wolf appeared on the reservation. It was just after twilight. No one had ever seen a wolf on Katori land before then, and they were all understandably frightened. We knew the legends, the stories that had been passed down from generation to generation. And yet, there was a sense of incredulity, as though some wondered if the curse could really be true.
    “There was one man, Victor Hunt, who wanted to kill the wolf. But your mother threw her body on the animal and screamed for no harm to come to it, that she loved him . Only then did we realize who your father was.”
    My heart seized in my chest, as though it had suddenly stopped beating. I shook my head—slowly at first, and then more adamantly. They’d told me little about my birth father; only that he’d abandoned my mother and me before I was born. But what Meg was saying now was so much worse. How could it be true? How could it even be possible?
    “No. You’re lying,” I said.
    But Meg went on as though I’d not spoken at all. “Victor shoved your mother away from the wolf, saying that she had allowed Evil into the tribe and deserved to be punished for it.
    “Things quickly got out of control. The wolf went after Victor and had him cornered, but then Victor’s wife, Aida, shot at the animal. Turns out it was a nothing more than a child’s BB gun she’d grabbed out of the