Vic continued to sip my beer. “You were about to die, and you needed help.”
I didn’t respond.
“Is it that hard to believe?” Cady swung around looking at me with those frank, gray eyes of hers and sat on the arm of my chair. “Or would you rather believe in ghosts?”
I brushed a glance at Vic and then at the Cheyenne Nation. “I believe that he was there.”
“There was no cave, there were no prints.”
“The wind could’ve blown…”
“No, there were spots where they would have still been there, but the only tracks everybody found were yours.” She turned to look at Vic and then Henry, who could’ve nodded but spared me that. Cady turned back and kissed my ear. “I don’t know why it is you’re dwelling on this-you’re home, and you’re safe.” Her eyes started to well. “I’m just so glad. It was horrible to get that phone message. I couldn’t hear a lot of the words, but I knew it was you.”
My own eyes filled a little, too. “I just wanted to talk to you, hear your voice.”
She sobbed a little and then stifled it with her serious look. “I think you should stop doing things like this. You’re no spring chicken, you know.”
I pushed my fingers through the torn bottom of my pocket and into the lining of the Gore-Tex jacket. I thought about the things Virgil had said but tried not to dwell on the prophecy of upcoming sadness. “I know.”
She smiled bravely, and I watched as all at once the tears sprang in her eyes and wet her face, her whole body swelling. “No more mountains.”
I punched my fingers down to the bottom seam of the jacket. “No.”
Vic joined in. “No more falling off cars.”
My fingers closed on something. “No.”
Henry’s turn. “No more getting shot.”
A circle trapped in the corner. “No.”
“Good.” She swallowed and sniffed. “Because I’ve got something important to tell you.”
My fingers closed on the metallic object in the lining of my jacket, and I thought about what Virgil had said about the horrors of the Inferno, that they were the horrors of the mind and the only ones we need truly fear. “You’re pregnant.”
Cady inhaled and looked at both Henry and Vic, and then they all stared at me with more than startled expressions.
“And it’s a girl.”
Cady swiped at the tears streaking her face, and I wanted to say something more to her, something fine. It seemed that on the tip of my tongue was something it had taken me more than a half-century to learn, something wise, beautiful, and brave. They were words that my daughter and granddaughter would especially need to know now, about everything that would hold Virgil’s other prophecies at bay.
I pulled Cady off the armrest and into my lap, holding her close. I gasped a little in my happiness of having both of them in my arms, and lost the words, unable to hear them in the rushing sound of our blood-all three of us.
I kept her on my lap with one hand and continued to twist the fingers of the other into my pocket. I fished the piece of jewelry out of the lining. Wolves circled the silver background in turquoise and coral, chasing each other around the enormous band. Angled sideways, I could read the inscription: ICHISSHE, SANDRA-BACHEEISAA VIRGIL.
“With love for my husband Virgil, Sandra.” I held the ring up where they could all see it and then turned it sideways so that I could look through it and focus on the platinum strip of dying light at the very top of Cloud Peak.