Free The Lost Bird by Margaret Coel

Call me later.”
    Vicky laid a hand on the other woman’s arm. “Can you get a name?”
    Aunt Rose drew in a long breath, then lowered her eyes to the receiver. “Guess somebody seen Sonny Red Wolf’s truck on Thunder Lane,” she said. “You hear about that?”
    A burst of television laughter spilled through the kitchen. Vicky held her breath.
    “Yeah, that’s right.” Aunt Rose glanced up. “LucyTravise? Don’t know as I know her. She live out there? I see. Near the big bend on Thunder Lane.”
    Vicky dug through her bag hanging from the back of the chair and pulled out a pen and notebook. She flipped to a clear page and wrote:
Lucy Travise. Big bend. Thunder Lane.
    The minute Aunt Rose hung up, Vicky picked up the receiver. It was still warm and moist. She punched in Gianelli’s number. An answering machine interrupted the rings. “You have reached the local offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Leave your name and number . . .”
    “I’ve got something,” Vicky said when the machine voice stopped. Hurriedly she gave the information: the name, the location of the house—a lifeline for John O’Malley. Her whole being surged with hope.
    “You oughta be thinkin’ about Ben,” Aunt Rose said as she replaced the receiver.
    “Ben!” Vicky swung around. Struggling for a calm tone, she said, “Ben and I have been divorced thirteen years.”
    “He still loves you.”
    “That can’t be true.”
    “He was your husband.”
    “That was a long time ago,” she managed.
    “You think Ben’s still drinking, but you’re wrong,” Aunt Rose persisted. “I see his mom over at the senior citizens’ center on Thursdays. Rayleen says Ben helps her out all the time, now she’s been sick. He’s a good son. Sober as the day he come into the world. Hasn’t had a drink since the drunk he went on last winter, Rayleen says. After you turned him down again.”
    Vicky glanced toward the doorway to the living room: the TV sounds of brakes squealing, men shouting.Was it always her fault? Her fault when Ben had gotten drunk and hit her?
    Bringing her gaze back to Aunt Rose, she said, “Ben and I are no longer married. I’ve made a different life.”
    “Some life, longin’ for a priest.”
    Vicky closed her eyes a moment against the sharp sting of the words. There was no response to the truth. Slowly she got to her feet, lifted her bag, and started through the living room, aware of the soft padding of footsteps behind her. At the door she remembered Sharon David. The earlier part of the day, her own work, she realized, had been swept from her mind.
    She turned toward the woman behind her. “Something else, Aunt. A woman came to see me today.” She paused. She did not want to mention the woman’s name. She did not want the news flashed over the moccasin telegraph. “The woman seems to think she was adopted from this reservation in 1964.”
    “We don’t let our babies get adopted out of the tribe,” Aunt Rose said.
    “I told her that. But maybe there was a girl who thought she had nowhere to turn. Did you hear of anyone like that back then?”
    In the pale white light of the television, Vicky saw the other woman’s expression change as she clicked back the years, searching her memory. She shook her head. “No girl would’ve done that. Not then. Not with all those babies dying. We was goin’ to funerals and prayin’ over those little caskets every few weeks. It was terrible, losin’ the future generation all because of bad water.”
    A thin memory stirred in Vicky’s mind: her mother boiling pans of water on the stove—the only water she was allowed to drink or use to brush her teeth orwash her face. “What was wrong with the water?”
    “There was lots of talk.” Aunt Rose shrugged. “Health-department people comin’ on the res and givin’ opinions. Said those old gold mines in the mountains was poisoning the water. You ask me, it was that uranium processing mill that used to be on the