could to help them. She even took her services on the road, making rounds on the reservation once a week, driving from one home to the next long into the evening, visiting with patients, examining them, caring.
Usually she loved making house calls because they gave her a chance to reconnect with her heritage and memories of long-ago summers. But as she left the Hip Hop Café behind and headed for Janet Crow’s house on the far east side of the reservation, all she could think about was Gavin Nighthawk. There had to be something she could do to help him.
Troubled, she thought she hid it well. Taking Janet’s blood pressure as the older woman chattered about her new granddaughter, Summer smiled and nodded and made the appropriate responses. But Janet was shrewder than she’d given her credit for. The older woman waited until Summer had listened to her heart and pulled the stethoscope from her ears before she arched a brow at her and said, “All right, missy, what’s wrong?”
“Well, your blood pressure’s higher than I’d like, but—”
“No, not with me,” she cut in with an impatient wave of her hand. “I’m an old woman—it’s my time in life to fall apart. I’m talking about you, girl. What’s wrong with you? What are you brooding about?”
“I’m not brooding,” Summer began, only to swallow the rest of her words when Janet gave her a hard look with brown eyes that were as sharp as a hawk’s. She might be seventy-five and not as healthy as she could be, but she had earned her place as a tribal elder. She didn’t miss much.
“All right,” Summer sighed, knowing when she was beaten. “It’s the trial, okay?”
Janet didn’t have to ask which one. “His days of freedom are numbered,” she said flatly. “I hope he’s wise enough to enjoy them while he can.”
“So you think he’ll be convicted?”
Janet’s shrug was uncaring. “It makes no difference to me.”
“But he was born and raised here on the reservation!” Summer protested, stunned by her attitude. “He’s Cheyenne. Don’t you think the tribe owes him some kind of loyalty?”
“Why? Where was his loyalty when he moved into the white man’s world?” she countered swiftly, resentment glittering in her eyes. “He grew up on the land of his ancestors, spent his boyhood running free among his people. But we were never good enough for him. Even as a boy, he made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with his Native American heritage.”
Summer winced. “It was the poverty he hated, Janet. The lack of hope.”
She disagreed. “It was the white man’s way he admired, the white man’s world of money and success and fair skin that he wanted, and as soon as he was old enough, that’s what he went after. He doesn’t care about us. Why should we care about him?”
She had a point, one that Summer couldn’t, regrettably, argue with. It was common knowledge that Gavin’s parents had raised him to want a life different from the one found on the reservation. And while there was nothing wrong with encouraging him to be ambitious, they’d gone too far. He’d never been content with who and what he was, and the end result was that he was a man who fit neither in the white man’s world he sought nor the Native American heritage to which he was born.
And Summer found that incredibly sad. She walked with ease in both worlds and was accepted everywhere she went. She couldn’t imagine what life must be like for Gavin, and her heart ached for him. He’d rejected his own people and didn’t have a clue what he’d given up.
“He made some mistakes,” she acknowledged. “Some big ones. But I can’t say that I wouldn’t have made the same ones if I’d been raised the way he was.”
“You would have never turned your back on us the way he has,” Janet said indignantly, her dark eyes flashing. “You’re not that way.”
“I might have been if Aunt Celeste and Aunt Yvette had only cared about money. So don’t judge Gavin too harshly,” she cautioned. “None of us know how we would have turned out given the same circumstances. And think about this. If we turn our back on him when he’s in the worst trouble of his life, what does that say about us?”
Put that way, there was little the old woman could say. “You are wise beyond your years,” she replied with a grimace of a smile. “I will try to remember the disservice his parents did him and not judge him too harshly, but I doubt that the rest of our people will do the same. It galls many of them that he hasn’t even offered to help you at your clinic. The work you do there is just as important as what he does at the hospital, and you could use his help.”
“He’s got enough on his plate right now without worrying about whether I could use an extra pair of hands at the clinic,” she said dryly. “Anyway, I’m handling things just fine. Opening the clinic was one of the best things I ever did.”
“You’re working too hard.”
Summer grinned. “It’s not work when you love what you’re doing.”
“It is when that’s all you do,” she argued sagely. “There’s more to life than taking care of sick people. You’re a pretty young woman. When was the last time you went out to dinner with a nice, good-looking man? Every girl needs some romance to make her heart sing.”
Summer couldn’t help but smile fondly. Janet was just like all the other tribal elders—they all felt, because they cared about her, that they had a right to dabble in her love life. Or her lack of one, she ruefully added. Not that she was looking for a man. Her work was all that she needed, the only thing she wanted, but no one could seem to understand that.
“I appreciate the concern, Janet, but I don’t have time for romance.”
“You would if you didn’t work so much. Or take on other people’s problems—like Gavin Nighthawk’s. You are going to help him, aren’t you?”
Put on the spot, she couldn’t deny it. “If the opportunity presents itself. My conscience won’t let me do anything else.”
Not surprised, Janet sighed heavily as Summer began to repack her medical bag. “I knew you would. You always did worry about other people more than you worried about yourself. Your mother would be proud of you.”
The unexpected words of praise brought the sudden sharp sting of tears to Summer’s eyes. “Thank you,” she said huskily. “I like to think she would be.”
“Just watch yourself, okay? You’re such a tender-hearted soul and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“By Gavin?” she said, surprised. “For heaven’s sake, Janet, we’re barely friends. The only reason I’m going to help him is because I can’t stand by and let an innocent man go to prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”
“Just remember that that ‘innocent’ man likes blond white women. Don’t let him break your heart.”
Summer promised her she had no intention of letting him or any other man do any such thing, but on the way back to her clinic, she almost laughed at the very idea of Gavin looking at her as anything but another doctor. Granted, there was a connection between them that she couldn’t explain, but there wasn’t anything the least bit romantic about it. They just came from the same background.
That
