Free The Spirit Woman by Margaret Coel Page A

happened to us. All those years apart when we should’ve been a family. Kids growing up with your folks instead of with us, going off to Los Angeles, away from their own people. Whole family’s scattered, just because you wanted to go down to Denver and become a—” He stopped.
    â€œWhat, Ben? A white woman?” Vicky pushed her plate away. She was no longer hungry. She had never wanted to leave the reservation, had never dreamed that one day she would find the courage to walk away.
    â€œLester’s not a bad sort,” Ben went on.
    â€œHe’s going to kill her.” Vicky could feel her heart thumping against her ribs. She hated the man across from her at that moment for making her violate her own rules, a part of herself.
    â€œYou’re exaggerating.” He bit off a chunk of bread and began chewing it. A second passed, another. “He hits her once in a while.” He raised both hands. “I’m not saying it’s right. He shouldn’t do that. But he’s a good man, and they’ve got three kids. He’s going to counseling. You could talk to Alva, tell her not to make the same mistake you made.”
    Vicky pushed herself to her feet, fighting to catch the breath stuck in her throat like a sharp bone she could neither swallow nor spit up. “You’re saying the divorce was my fault?”
    â€œI would’ve never left you.” Ben threw his napkin onto the half-empty plate and stood up.
    â€œYou ran around on me. You got drunk and slapped me and pushed me down. You hit me with your fists.”
    â€œDo we have to keep going over this?”
    â€œWe’ve never gone over it. It’s still between us.”
    â€œWell, I’ve spent the last two months trying to make things right. The kids’ll never move back, Vicky, until they’ve got a family again. We should be setting a wedding date, not going on about the past. What do you want me to say? I’m sorry. I’ve said it a thousand times. I was drunk when I hit you.”
    â€œDoes that make it okay? Should I forgive you?”
    â€œYou should forget.”
    â€œThe way you have.”
    Ben brought one fist down hard on the table, rattling the fork against the plate. Vicky flinched and stepped back, her heart pounding in her ears.
    â€œWe both have to forget and move on,” he said. His breath came in short gasps, his chest rising and falling in a rapid rhythm beneath the denim shirt. He tightened his lips into a thin line and stared at the sliding-glass doors a moment. Bringing his eyes back, he said, “I’m trying, Vicky. I want us to be a family again, the way we used to be.”
    â€œSometimes, Ben,” Vicky began, reaching for the words, struggling against the tremor in her voice, “I think it’s too late, too much has happened between us. Sometimes I think there’s nothing else for us.”
    â€œNo, Vicky. Don’t say that.” He walked around the table and took her hand. Then he ran his fingers along her arm, across her shoulder, and under her chin, turning her face toward him. In the warmth of his body close to hers, the memories started to blur, melting into a half-forgotten longing and the sharp pain of her own loneliness.
    â€œWe belong together,” he said, “and don’t you ever forget it.”

10
    T he Bingo Palace sat back from the highway, a low, white structure with the look of a truncated shopping mall. The violet shadows of late afternoon spread over the parking lot that wrapped around the building. Father John slowed between rows of pickups and twenty-year-old sedans. He found a vacant space and got out, taking a minute to work the kinks out of his legs.
    He’d spent the morning showing Father Kevin around the mission, giving him a tour through the files: the programs and classes, the meeting schedule. He’d also handed him the financial records—a long list of bills to be paid that