The Ghost Walker by Margaret Coel Page B

carried the plates to the table. A gauzy light floated across the alcove from the kitchen and living room. Ben planted himself at the end of the table, a puzzled expression on his face as if he weren’t certain which of the turns in the past had been the wrong one.
    Opening the top drawer in the buffet that stood against one wall, Vicky removed two place mats, two napkins, and a handful of knives and forks, which she arranged on the table. Then she returned to the kitchen and poured two mugs of coffee.
    “I just wanted you to know about the drinking,” Ben said as she delivered the coffee mugs and settled into the chair across from him. The drinking. The words reverberated inside her as if he had shouted them in a mountain canyon. It was true, he had only hit her when he was drinking. If there was anything she was grateful for, it was that he had never hit the children. He had trulyloved the children. Yet, that had been the hardest to accept—the fact that he had been able to control his rage around the kids, which meant his treatment of her had been deliberate. That was the Ben she must remember. Not the handsome and confident man across from her.
    “Please, Ben,” she said, scooting her fork under a clump of eggs. “What about Susan?”
    The Arapaho took a long draw from his mug before saying, “You know she’s back?” His black eyebrows rose upward, as if he suspected she did not know. “Susan came to see me last week. Drove all over the ranch lookin’ for me. I was out pitching hay for the cattle.”
    Vicky swallowed the eggs slowly, trying not to betray the emotions boiling within her. Her daughter—their daughter—had returned to Wind River Reservation and had not called her, had not come to her, but had gone to Ben. In Susan’s and Lucas’s eyes, she was the one who had broken up their home, had given them to her own parents to raise, had gone away to Denver to college and law school, had gotten the court order that kept their father away.
    “I guess she’s not mad at me,” Ben said, not in a hurtful way, but as if he’d read her mind.
    “When did Susan leave Los Angeles?” Vicky heard her own voice, disembodied, calm. She could feel her heart thumping.
    “Didn’t say. She’s here with some white man and a couple of his buddies. She wanted to know if they could rent our old place.” Finishing the last of the scrambled eggs, Ben rested his forearms on either side of the plate. “Nobody’s lived at Lean Bear’s ranch since you took the kids and left. I only stayed long enough to close up the place. But I keep an eye on it. It’s still in good shape. SoI told her, sure, but she didn’t have to pay me rent. She said her friends wanted to keep everything legal. So I said, okay, and the next day she came back with a certified check for six months’ rent.”
    As he talked on about how glad he was Susan had come back, how he’d never liked the kids living in L.A., how he believed families belonged together, the image of Lean Bear’s ranch flashed through Vicky’s mind. Ten miles up Sage Canyon in the foothills of the Wind River Mountains, it was the place Lean Bear had chosen for his family when the Arapahos came to the reservation a hundred years ago. Lean Bear was Ben’s great-grandfather, one of the leading men of the tribe. He had ridden with her great-grandfather, Chief Black Night. It had always seemed as if invisible threads, stretching into the Old Time, had woven her life to Ben’s long before either of them was born. It was to Lean Bear’s ranch he had brought her after they were married.
    “What are Susan’s plans?” Vicky took a sip of coffee, conscious that it had turned lukewarm.
    “She said they plan to start a business buying and selling Indian arts and crafts.”
    “In Sage Canyon? It’s so far away, so isolated,” Vicky stammered. Something about this didn’t make sense. She saw in Ben’s eyes that he had reached the same conclusion.
    “I’ve been askin’