is terribly awkward for you. But it’s kind of strange for me, too, you know.”
He turned around, met her eyes again and slowly nodded. A thin layer of tension seemed to leave the room.
“My grandfather lived to be ninety-six,” she told him, “and he just died a few years ago. I loved him dearly, but I was the only one left to take care of him near the end, and I didn’t always know what to do with him.”
Michael ran a nervous hand through his thick mane. “Grand Feather’s not senile,” he declared almost defensively. “I know it looks that way, but he’s still sharp as a tack. He’s stubborn and determined, but he’s not losing a grip on reality. At least, not on his reality. It’s just that his reality is probably different from yours.”
Again his dark eyes met hers, imploring Renata to understand what he didn’t seem to be able to say. She wanted him to go on, to share his feelings, for reasons that went beyond the need to satisfy her curiosity or ease her conscience after their spat. But she knew he was still ravenous and exhausted...and nearly proud enough to leave his pancakes uneaten and go.
“Why don’t you sit down and tell me about it while we eat?” she suggested. Renata wasn’t a breakfast person, but she saw no need to mention that to Michael. Grabbing a plate from the cupboard, she filled it with pancakes. “I’m pretty hungry myself,” she lied.
It was hard to say whether it was Michael’s hunger or Renata’s offer to join him that finally did the trick, but he did move back toward the table, where he waited behind his chair until Renata sat down. Only after she took a bite of pancake did he take a forkful from his stack. She tried not to watch him eat, certain that he was holding himself back. Deliberately she kept quiet until he’d consumed three pancakes and she’d discreetly refilled his plate. Mercifully, a companionable silence seemed to fill the room.
Despite her request to have him share the details of his grandfather’s reality, Michael didn’t mention the old man again. Instead he asked, “So where do you live when you don’t live here?”
If Renata had believed he was really interested in her, she would have been pleased by the question. Under the circumstances, she was reasonably certain that he was merely trying to be polite.
“I live in Milwaukee,” she answered simply. “How about you?”
“Sugar Creek.”
He made no effort to expand on the terse answer, so Renata asked another question. “Does your grandfather live with you?”
Michael exhaled sharply and shook his head. “No, unfortunately. I have begged him and begged him, but he won’t leave Wisconsin Dells. He won’t even let me buy him a nicer place. Even a little trailer would be an improvement.”
“Does he live alone?”
“For all intents and purposes. I have an uncle who owns some land nearby. He checks on him every night.”
Renata got the picture. Near the end her own grandfather had been too stubborn to live with anybody, either. She’d had to arrange for a year’s leave from the university—while she pretended to her grandfather that she’d dropped out of school—so she could come home and take care of him. Knowing all the hours of worry that Michael surely had to put up with, all the trips back and forth, she said kindly, “But when he’s in trouble, you’re the one they call?”
He looked surprised at her deduction.
“It’s obvious that you two are very close.”
Renata was rewarded with another smile—tentative, but beguiling nonetheless.
“He raised me after my grandmother died. He felt he’d failed to teach my father the old ways, so he tried to pass them on to me. That’s the only reason I know—” he gestured with his head toward the front lawn “—a few words of Winnebago. Enough to fake my way through a couple of old ceremonies.”
Renata was quite certain that he knew far more than “a few words of Winnebago” and “a couple of old ceremonies.” His Winnebago conversation with his grandfather had sounded quite fluent, and though he’d stumbled a few times with the chanting, she’d gotten the impression that he’d been struggling to remember something he’d known very well at one time. It took no genius to deduce that his Indian roots made him uncomfortable, and not just because his grandfather had made a scene.
The kitchen became suddenly silent when the old man padded through the doorway, his eyes not on Renata but on Michael. She didn’t know if he’d heard Michael’s last words. If he had, they had surely hurt him.
He was wearing a pair of her grandfather’s jeans, which were far too big and far too long. He’d rolled up the hems several inches in a way that almost made him look like a clown. He’d disdained the heavy jacket, but he was wearing three wool shirts. His hair, soaking wet, had been carefully rebraided. One soggy feather hung from his head.
The old man whispered something in Winnebago, then stood absolutely still. Michael turned around, gazed at him for a moment, then said in English, “This young lady has offered us her hospitality and it would be rude to refuse it. It would also be rude to exclude her from our conversation. If you’re not ready to break your fast, come sit down and join us anyway. We can’t leave until the policeman comes back.”
The old man looked affronted at the quiet reprimand, but he did not move toward the table. He glanced briefly at Renata and said in quavery but perfect English, “I am sorry for the trouble. I am grateful for the clothes. I will wait on the porch until my grandson is done eating.”
Shame colored Michael’s sharp, handsome features as the old man left the room.
* * *
IT WAS NEARLY NOON when Michael helped his grandfather out of Lieutenant Brick Bauer’s black-and-white cruiser at the police station, where Michael had left his car. As he shook Brick’s hand, he said quietly, “Thank you again for helping me search last night. And assure the young lady that I’ll return the clothes just as soon as I can.”
Brick waved a negligent hand. “I’m just glad we found your grandfather in one piece, Michael. I’ll give Renata your message, but don’t worry about the clothes. She’s not likely to need them till the next time a soaking-wet stranger shows up on her doorstep.”
Michael managed a smile before he slipped into his BMW, but his face was stony by the time his grandfather joined him inside. Forcing the old one to speak English to Renata had demonstrated a measure of filial disrespect, but it had been unavoidable. Tongue-lashing the old man would wait until the white people were out of earshot.
“I have never been so frightened in my life, Grand Feather,” Michael snapped in English. “And once I found you, I was ashamed and angry. I spent a whole night looking for you with a policeman. We must have made three dozen phone calls. We knocked on doors of strangers and got them out of their beds! And then—” he sucked in a breath, finding it was hard to tackle the worst thing “—you forced that white woman to take us in. To feed us, to get us warm, to give us clothes! And then you treated her with contempt!”
His grandfather looked gray, utterly fatigued. “I was too tired to speak English to a woman whose people stole our land.”
“You were rude to a decent person who could have had you arrested for trespassing! You got me so upset that I was rude, too!” Michael knew that was
