Rider on Fire & When You Call My Name. Sharon Sala
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your path. They are the ones who have brought you to this place.”
“What are you talking about? Who are these Old Ones you keep talking about?”
Franklin waved her question away as he took her by the hand.
“Forgive me, but I just had to touch you. You are so beautiful. My heart is full of joy.”
“Look,” Sonora said. “I appreciate your kindness, but how can you be certain that—”
“Come into my house. I’ll prove it to you,” Franklin said, and then turned and strode to the porch and up the steps without waiting to see if she was behind him.
Sonora glared at Adam. “I’m not falling for all this ghost and spirit crap.”
“Suit yourself,” he said. “But consider this…how else did you come to be in this place?”
She flashed on the hallucinations and dreams she’d been having and glared even harder.
“My boss told me to get lost for a while. That’s how. I’ve got one man already on my back trying to kill me. So if you’re in mind of doing anything similar, you need to get in line.”
Adam froze. His voice deepened as his eyes went cold. “You are in danger?”
“Oh, Lord… I don’t know…. Yes, probably. At least enough that my boss told me to leave Phoenix.”
“Come, come,” Franklin called from the doorway. “You must see to believe.”
Sonora gave Adam one last warning glance. “Just don’t mess with me, okay?”
Adam didn’t answer.
Sonora exhaled angrily, took her gun out of the compartment and put it in the back waistband of her pants, beneath her leather vest, then stomped into the house.
“So what do you have to show me?” Sonora said.
Franklin handed her a photo that he’d taken from the mantel over the fireplace.
Sonora eyed it casually, then stifled a gasp.
“Who is she?” she asked, pointing at the woman in the photo.
“My mother, and he is my father. It was taken on their wedding day.”
“Good Lord,” Sonora whispered, then carried it to a table in the hall and the mirror that hung above it.
She kept looking from the photo to her face and then back again until Adam took it from her hands and held it up beside her. Were it not for old-fashioned hair and clothing, and the man in the picture, she would have sworn the picture was of her.
“I look like her,” Sonora said, and then bit her lip to keep from weeping. In all of her twenty-nine years, she’d never had the luxury of saying that before.
Franklin walked up behind her. Adam stepped back. Now Sonora was seeing herself, and Franklin Blue Cat, and seeing the similarities in their features. Her emotions were out of control. They went from jubilation, knowing she’d found a family, to hurt and anger that he’d never come looking for her. She wanted to cry, and settled for anger.
“Why?” she muttered.
“Why what?” Franklin asked.
“Why am I just learning you existed?”
Franklin took her by the hand. “Please, may we sit down? I’m not feeling very well.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked as he led her to a sofa.
Franklin shrugged. “I have leukemia and the medicines have quit working. I am dying.”
Sonora reeled from the news. She’d known he wasn’t well, and had even had the thought that he was dying, but to hear her suspicions were actually true made her sick to her stomach. This wasn’t fair. She’d spent her entire life alone. Why would she be reunited with her only living family only to have him snatched away? How cruel was this?
“I’m so sorry,” she mumbled, and bit her lip to keep from wailing.
Franklin nodded. “Such is life,” he said, then brushed the topic aside. “Did your mother ever mention my name?”
Sonora smiled bitterly. “My mother, as you put it, dumped me on the doorstep of a Texas orphanage when I was less than a day old. I was named by a priest and a nun and dumped in a baby bed with two other babies. My earliest memory is of sitting in the corner of the bed and bawling because one of the bigger kids had taken my bottle and drank my milk.”
Franklin reeled as if he’d been slapped. “You’re not serious?”
She laughed to keep from crying. “Oh, but I am. She didn’t want me and that’s okay. I can take care of myself.”
Franklin shook his head as tears unashamedly ran down his face. When she would have moved away, he took her hands, then held them fast against his chest.
“No. No. That is never okay. I am sorrier than I can tell you, but it’s not okay. I didn’t know until a few weeks ago that you might even exist. That’s when I asked Adam for help.”
Sonora shook her head. “That’s what I still don’t get. How did you come to believe you had a child? Who told you?”
“I had a dream,” he said. “I have it often. It’s always of your mother, whom I loved more than life. It’s a repeat of our last day together, and how sad I am that she’s moving away, even though I begged her to stay. Only this time the dream was different and it made me believe that your mother’s spirit was trying to tell me to search for you.”
“You’re serious.”
“Very.”
Sonora pointed to Adam. “So, where does he come in?”
“He’s the healer for our tribe. I am full-blood Kiowa. I have no brothers or sisters, and after your mother left, I never had another woman. I am the last of my people, or at least I was, until Adam sent for you.”
“Both of you keep saying that, but I don’t understand. How did he send for me when he didn’t even know if I existed?”
“I made medicine,” Adam said. “I told the Old Ones what Franklin wanted. They are the ones who looked for you. They are the ones who found you. They are the ones who have given you your dreams that led you to us.”
“Oh…oh, whatever,” Sonora muttered. “I can’t deal with all that hocus-pocus right now.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Franklin said. “All that matters is that you are here.”
Outside, there was a quick flash of lightning.
“It is going to rain. Will you stay?” Franklin asked. “I have many rooms in this house and yet I live in it all alone. I would welcome your company for as long as you can be here.”
She thought about the danger her presence might cause, and then decided there was no way on earth that Miguel Garcia would ever find her here. Besides, she wasn’t just curious, she ached to know this man who was claiming her. She wanted to know everything there was to know about the people whose blood ran through her veins.
“Yes, I’ll stay, and thank you,” she said. “I’ll just go get my bag off the Harley.”
“I’ll get it,” Adam said, “but then I must be going. I have animals to feed before dark.”
He hurried outside, untied the bag from the back of the Harley and carried it into the house where Franklin was waiting.
“How can I ever thank you?” Franklin said, and then threw his arms around Adam and hugged him fiercely.
“It’s the Old Ones you must thank,” Adam said, then added, “Call if you need me.”
Sonora was standing behind an easy chair, watching