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  But for Cassie it had been instinct. She had re-created the reservation as a sort of neutral ground, a place where safety was guaranteed. She wasn't willing to let her image be threatened.

  These days Will was never around--Cassie felt she saw him even less now that he'd moved back temporarily to Pine Ridge. He spent a great deal of time with Joseph Stands in Sun, and he wouldn't tell Cassie anything, except that he was finally learning the ways of the People.

  Cyrus and Dorothea and everyone else were busy getting ready for thewacipi , the big powwow held at the start of August. With some of the other elders, Cyrus went out looking for the forked cottonwood tree that would be used for a pole during the Sun Dance. Dorothea spent all her free time canning blackberry preserves and gentian root tonics, which she planned to trade at the festivities for the intricate shawls and rough woven rugs that others had crafted. When she had finished packing a large carton with her wares, she told Cassie she was going to Marjorie Two Fists's lodge to do quilling and beading, and asked Cassie to come to take her mind off her troubles.

  So Cassie sat for the third afternoon in a row with a group of old women, feeling less and less adequate as she ruined the beadwork on bracelets and jackets and moccasins. Dorothea laid aside the pouch she'd been embroidering and picked up the edge of Rosalynn's quilt. "This will make a good trade," she said. "That's the best part of the weekend."

  "Oh, I don't know," Marjorie said. "Even if I'm too old to dance, I like seeing the young ones in their costumes. I like listening to the drums. So loud."

  Dorothea laughed. "Maybe if Cassie stands close enough to the music the baby will come early."

  It was the last thing Cassie wanted to happen. She didn't know anything about infants; she hadn't considered the actual facts about this one, like diapering and burping and nursing. She was thinking of the baby more as the means to an end, but there was something about that end--the finality of it--that she didn't really want to see.

  The door swung open, and there, framed by the light summer rain, was Will. Without realizing what she was doing, Cassie stood up, letting the moccasin she'd been working on fall to the floor so that beads scattered and rolled into the cracks of the smooth pine boards. "Oh," she gasped, bending down as best she could to collect what had fallen.

  "I know, I know," Marjorie murmured. "You'resorry ."

  "Afternoon, ladies," Will said, grinning. "How's it coming?"

  Dorothea shrugged. "It'll be done when it's done," she said.

  Will smiled; that fairly summed up his philosophy of life. He looked at Cassie. "I thought you might want to take a walk or something."

  Marjorie stood up and took the beads from Cassie's palm. "That's a great idea," she said. "Take her before she destroys anything else."

  Dorothea looked from her grandson to Cassie and then back again. "She's in a mood," Dorothea warned. "Maybeyou can snap her out of it."

  That was exactly what Will had planned to do. He imagined Cassie should be in high spirits these days, knowing that soon she'd be a good thirty pounds lighter, but she seemed to slip further and further away by the minute. Almost as if, Will admitted, she was already making the break.

  He had one chance, and it was coming. The day of the big powwow, he would make her understand. But in the meantime, it couldn't hurt to try to make her smile. "What do you say?" he pressed.

  Cassie peered over his shoulder at the open doorway. "It's raining," she said.

  She shifted her weight to her other foot. She had wanted to see Will for days now; she was restless; she should be jumping at the chance to leave this dreary little tea party--what was her problem? "We'll get wet," she said. "We can't go for a walk."

  Will's eyes began to shine. "Okay," he said. "We'll do something else." Suddenly he was standing in the circle of women, trying awkwardly to fit his arms around Cassie's bulk. He started to hum and whirled Cassie around in an offbeat two-step, crushing moccasins and knitting bags under the heels of his cowboy boots. Rosalynn, delighted, began to sing in a high sweet soprano.

  Cassie's face turned bright red. With no sense of balance, she found herself clinging to Will's shoulders for support. She barely saw Marjorie stand up, grinning, to move her chair out of the way as Will steered them toward the open door.

  Dorothea, Marjorie, and Rosalynn stood eagerly pressed against the streaked windows, watching the couple and clapping, remembering days long ago when they had whispered beneath a blanket with a lover; or had shaken the package of their future, trying to see inside; had maybe even danced in the rain. Cassie listened to the rich, woven sound of the old women's laughter, a different kind of music entirely, which seemed as fresh as the giggles of young, courted girls.

  She stared into Will's eyes as they crossed the threshold into the storm. Splashing through puddles, she could feel herself stepping on his feet, feel the baby in her rolling slow, feel the rain cool against her cheeks. It washed everything away. For a lovely, sodden moment, Cassie truly believed that it could stay like this.

  HALFWAY BETWEEN MARJORIE TWO FISTS'S HOUSE AND HER OWN home, Dorothea sat down to think about the ways that history repeated itself. It wasn't that she was tired, or that the bag that contained her beadwork had suddenly grown too heavy. It was that all of a sudden the spirit of Anne, her late daughter-in-law, had been walking beside her, and the frost of her breath on Dorothea's neck made it impossible to go any farther.

  Zachary, Dorothea's only child, had fallen in love with the white schoolteacher thirty-six years earlier, and although she had never wanted to hurt her own son, Dorothea had done everything in her power to stop the attraction. She had left the appropriate roots and dried flowers under Zachary's mattress; she had prayed to the spirits; she had even consulted Joseph Stands in Sun. But this was meant to be. In fact, the day that Anne left Pine Ridge to distance herself from Zachary, the day that Zachary saddled a horse and rode miles to find her, Dorothea had been standing only yards away, watching the whole thing and shaking her head.

  Dorothea would never have admitted it at the time, but Anne became her obsession. When it was clear that Zachary was going to marry her come hell or high water, Dorothea told him not to expect her as a wedding guest. But she made a point of watching the woman who would be her daughter much more closely. She stood outside the classroom of the school where Anne taught and familiarized herself with the lifts and valleys of her voice. She followed her into the general store and kept track of the items Anne bought: talcum powder, ginger drops, blue eyeshadow. She went to the government offices and memorized her credentials, her blood type, her Social Security number.

  Three days before the wedding Anne had fallen asleep beneath a cottonwood outside Dorothea's house while waiting for Zachary. Dorothea had silently knelt beside her and touched the incredibly translucent skin of her cheek. Mesmerized, she crouched for nearly ten minutes, committing to mind the map of pale veins that crossed the white line of Anne's throat.

  "What are you doing here?" Anne asked in English when she woke up.

  "I might ask you the same thing," Dorothea said, speaking Lakota.

  Anne struggled to a sitting position, aware that 'Waiting for Zack' was not the answer to the question Dorothea was really asking. "I love him just as much as you do," Anne said quietly.

  "That," Dorothea answered, "could be the problem."

  She stood, ready to make her way back into her house, but she was stopped by Anne's voice. "I'd like you to come to the wedding," Anne called out, in Lakota.

  Dorothea immediately switched to English. "I won't set foot in a white man's church," she said.

  "Still," Anne said, almost casually, "I'll see you there."

  Dorothea whirled around. "And how do you know this?"

  Anne smiled. "Because nothing could keep you away."

  The day of the wedding, Cyrus had begged Dorothea to reconsider, if only for Zack's sake, but Dorothea remained in her housecoat, sitting on the worn brown couch. The minute he left, however, she dressed and wa