“Maybe he’s turning over a new leaf.”
She gaped at me as if I’d lost my mind.
“Did you ask Jake if he’s seen him?” A couple of times since Dawson brought him here in cuffs, I’d seen Levi hanging out and helping Jake early in the morning.
“He’s not with Jake. Whenever Levi gets his mad on like this, he runs off. I don’t know where.”
You should. “Give him some time.”
“Time? I’ve hardly seen him since Daddy died. Acting all secretive. I think he’s sneaking off to meet a girl.”
Sue Anne’s pretty face swam into my mind’s eye. “Would that be so bad?”
“No. But why wouldn’t he tell me?”
“Why didn’t you tell him you were pregnant?”
Temper put color back in her cheeks. “You trying to turn my boy against me?”
I powered down my computer, using it as an excuse to gather my thoughts and smack a lid on my anger. When the screen blanked, I looked at her. “That’s what you think? I’m trying to turn Levi against you?”
Her lip wobbled. She nodded.
Instead of responding with a nicety, the devil on my shoulder jabbed the pitchfork in my tongue. What came out was, “Why would I have to turn him against you when you’ve been doing such a good job of it yourself?”
“That was mean,” she whispered through her tears.
A man metastasized beside her. “I agree.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Theo Murphy.”
Great. Mr. Wonderful. Mr. Fertile.
“Hope thought we should meet.”
I heaved myself off the couch and thrust out my hand. “Mercy Gunderson.” I studied him. Didn’t care if it made him uncomfortable. He epitomized the soft, intellectual type, who tried too hard to be hip. Square glasses centered on a pudgy face that would’ve been handsome a decade ago. Limp, dulled brown hair, thinning on top. He’d secured his shoulder-length hair in a leather tie at the base of his neck. A tan, V-necked tunic, probably made of hemp, hung off his slight frame like an antique flour sack. Stick-thin, hairy calves stuck out from the bottom of faded khaki cargo shorts. On his feet were ratty-fringed moccasins the color of bleached deerskin.
Wow. So not impressed.
I gestured to the kitchen. “We can talk in there.”
After he pulled out two kitchen chairs, he set his elbows on the table and smiled earnestly. “I imagine you have all sorts of questions.”
Yeah, like why the hell have you been lurking in the background? Probably not the best way to phrase it. “I do. First off, why the secrecy about your relationship?”
Theo gave Hope an indulgent look. “Your father was dying. I didn’t want to intrude on the time he had left with his family. And Hope didn’t want to cause him any more worry. Especially when you didn’t come home before he passed on.”
Bringing up my daughterly failing first thing? Zero brownie points for him.
“I can see where Dad would’ve been stressed about some stranger knocking up his daughter and then that guy not having the balls to face him.” Dammit. It just slipped out.
“Mercy!”
“It’s okay, Hope, your sister has a right to her concerns.” His shit-brown eyes never wavered from mine.
Maybe I was being too hard on him. “Let’s start over. Why don’t you tell me about yourself, Theo? Where you’re from, what you do for a living, all that jazz.”
“I’m from Oklahoma.”
“Are you Indian?”
He preened. “My great-grandfather was part Cherokee.”
I barely resisted rolling my eyes. A big joke on the rez was if everybody who claimed to have some Cherokee blood stood in a line, it’d stretch from reservation to reservation across the country, without a single red face in the crowd. “What did you do before you moved here?”
“For the past few years I worked in North Dakota doing research and studying the effects on the land and the culture of introducing buffalo back to their native habitat.”
“Research like returning a big chunk of the Midwest to a gigantic buffalo commons?”
“You’ve heard about it!”
Crap. The gleam in his eye meant one thing: I was in for a lecture if I showed my ignorance. Or interest. I was so screwed. When in doubt, pull a standard South Dakota trick and change the subject to the weather. “It must’ve been a big change, from humidity to the desert-dry conditions here.”
“Yes, but I missed teaching.”
“So that’s all you do? Teach summer school part-time at the community center?”
“Mercy!”
“I can provide for Hope and the baby, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”
Whoa. Testy. “And Levi?” I prompted. “You willing to provide for him?”
“Until he’s of age.”
A pall fell over the room.
“So tell me about you.” Theo smiled benignly. “What do you do in the army?”
“Heavy-equipment transportation.”
“A truck driver? Seen any combat situations?”
“A couple of close calls. We were out of range in the field outside of Beiji and majorly affected by a massive communication breakdown, which is a big reason I didn’t know about Dad.” That lie never got easier.
He nodded sympathetically and reached for Hope’s hand. “Well, you’re here now, if only temporarily. Hope has talked about the decision you two have to make and how much she’s going to miss this place.”
Hope’s mouth opened, ready to dispute him, but Sophie bustled in. Hope compressed her lips and looked at her hands.
Sophie’s gaze encompassed the empty table. “You didn’t get them coffee, Mercy?”
As far as I was concerned, company manners didn’t apply to my sister and her freeloading boyfriend.
“That’s okay, Sophie. We were just leaving. I’m dropping Hope off before I head out of town for a seminar in Rosebud.” Theo pushed to his feet. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again.”
For one scary second I was afraid he’d try to hug me. Instead, he helped Hope up. Whew. I probably would’ve punched him. Overgrown pothead. He was the pseudo-intellectual type who’d call marijuana peyote and pretend smoking it was a cultural thing when in actuality he just liked getting stoned.
Yeah, doubtful he and I were going to be best friends.
“-called again. You really should call them back, Mercy,” Sophie chided.
Everyone was looking at me. “What?”
“That pushy nurse from the VA. Second time this week. Said you never called her back.”
Was nothing around here private? How many people had Sophie told about my visits to the VA?
“VA? Is everything okay?” Theo asked.
My answering smile was pure plaster. “Fine. Just some routine tests while I’m stateside.”
He patted Hope’s stomach. “Plenty of doctor appointments coming up for us, aren’t there, blossom?”
Blossom? Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
They’d nearly reached the door when I remembered the real reason Hope barged in here. “Let me know when you hear from Levi, okay?”
If the hangdog expression on her face was any indication, she’d completely forgotten about him.
That’s when I started to worry.
By two I’d gone from edgy to freaked out. So acute was my bad gut feeling I considered contacting John-John to see if he’d had any more visions. I called Dawson and demanded he organize a search party-for a teenager who probably wasn’t missing, just brooding. Talk about paranoid. Dawson blew me off and assured me Levi would show up eventually.
To ease my mind, I decided to look for him. Yesterday Jake had chewed me out for using ranch vehicles whenever I pleased without letting him or anyone else know where I’d gone. With spotty cell-phone service out in the middle of nowhere, having equipment breakdown was a real concern. So it was standard procedure for everyone who worked on the ranch to leave instructions on where they’d gone, what vehicle they’d taken, what they were doing, and when they planned to return. I left Jake a detailed note before I hopped on an ATV.