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  Cassie glared at him. "What do you mean by that?"

  "You know. 'Don't turn your back on your Sioux blood, Will.' Hanging up my goddamn medicine bundle in L.A. so it stared me in the face every time I passed it by."

  "You pulled it off the wall," Cassie said. "How was I supposed to know any better?" She poked at a rock with her toe. "Besides," she said smugly, "I was right. Look at how much you've changed since you've come back to Pine Ridge--it's obvious that the only person who gives a damn about your being half white is you."

  Will pulled himself to his feet, staring right at Cassie. "What I want to know is how comeI'm not allowed to turn my back on my history, but you don't have to play by the same rules?"

  Cassie took a step backward. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  Will grabbed her shoulders. "You do. You know what he's done to you before, you know he's going to do it again." His mouth twisted. "I couldn't escape the past, no matter how hard I tried. Neither can Alex, and neither can you."

  Cassie knew the advice she'd given Will served her own situation just as well. There was, really, nothing you could use as a blueprint for your life, except your past. There was no starting over. There was only picking up the pieces someone had left behind.

  "That," Cassie said, her voice breaking, "is exactly why I have to go back."

  AFTER CASSIE SPENT THE EARLY MORNING SAYING GOODBYE TO CYrus and Dorothea, Will drove her and Connor into town to meet Alex. Connor had been fussy in the car, and Cassie handed him to Will, knowing that Alex was watching from across the street and grateful that Connor's cries had offered her an excuse to do so. After all that Will had selflessly given her and Connor, she could not go without letting him hold the baby a last time.

  They had come to a fragile peace. Cassie fiddled with the drawer of the glove compartment, pretending to check inside for anything that might be hers. Across the seat, Will was rubbing his hand across Connor's frail back. "Well," Cassie said brightly. "You'll write and tell me where you wind up?"

  Will glanced up at her. "I said I would."

  Cassie nodded. "Yes, you did." She reached out her arms, and Will placed the baby in them, their hands brushing each other. Then she looked out the front window of the pickup, trying to commit to memory the flagpole in front of the school, the hot red dirt caked into the tires of the truck, the tilt of Will's hat on his forehead. "I'm going to miss this place," she said.

  Will laughed. "Give yourself ten minutes," he said. "It's real easy to forget."

  Cassie looped her hand through the straps of Connor's diaper bag. "Well then, I'm going to miss you."

  "Now that," Will said, grinning, "will take longer than ten minutes."

  Cassie lurched across the seat, throwing her free arm around Will's neck. Will hugged her back, taking away the soft grass scent of her hair, the smooth curve of her bare shoulder, the timbre of her voice. Connor lay pressed between their chests, like the shared heart of Siamese twins.

  It was Alex who pulled them apart. Cassie heard his deep voice through her open window, where he'd come to stand. "Sorry," he said. "But I don't want to miss that flight."

  Will released her. He stared at Alex, nodded. He touched the baby's dewy cheek.

  "Thank you," Alex said graciously. He lifted the baby from Cassie's arms through the window, as if he knew that was the sure way she would follow. "I appreciate your taking care of my family."

  My family. Will narrowed his eyes. He didn't trust himself to say anything.

  Alex settled Connor on his shoulder, then looked at Will again. "I know you," he said simply.

  Will smiled broadly. "I broke up a fight of yours once. I was with the LAPD."

  "Well," Cassie said between them, and Will turned to her. Always the peacemaker.

  She didn't say anything, but she didn't get out of the truck right away, either. Instead they slipped into that comfortable zone where there didn't have to be words. They caught each other's eyes.I love you , Will thought.

  I know, Cassie answered. But while he was still savoring that smallest triumph, she slid from the truck and walked right out of his life.

  WHEN THE RIVERSES' SCHEDULED PLANE TOOK OFF FROM RAPID CITY, Will was more drunk than he'd ever been. He planned to be unconscious by the time Cassie landed in L.A. with her husband and her son.

  He cursed himself for ever picking Cassie up from that goddamn cemetery. He cursed himself for quitting the LAPD, where he would have been able to keep an eye on her. The way things stood now, she was dead to him. Or as good as dead.

  It was this thought that got his mind turning. There was a common practice among the People, the giveaway, that came on the anniversary of a relative's death. The grieving family showed their respect for the dead person by making gifts and saving up staple foods and offering them as presents to as many people as possible. Will vaguely remembered the year that his own father had died, how his grandparents had saved up to make a good showing that proved how much they had cared for their son.

  He remembered that when his father died, Joseph Stands in Sun had told him about ghost owning, the ultimate giveaway ceremony which had transpired in the days of the buffalo. For a family that lost a child, not only would food and skins and utensils be saved up over the year. In addition, the couple would give to other members of the tribe their own horses, their very tipi, even the clothes off their backs, all as a tribute to someone well loved. "You give till it hurts," Joseph had said.

  Wild-eyed, Will began to rummage through the back of his truck, finding little of value except for an old shotgun and a sheepskin jacket that had belonged to his father. He drove through town like a madman, stopping at Bernie Collier's, a neighbor he had never liked. He banged on the door until it swung open under his pounding.

  "Will," Bernie said carefully, taking in Will's unkempt hair and the untucked edges of his shirt.

  "I got something for you, Bernie," Will said, thrusting the shotgun into his hands. "No strings attached."

  He turned on his heel before Bernie could call after him, jumped into the truck and sped toward the Laughing Dogs' house.

  Linda Laughing Dog frowned when she saw him, and waved her hand in front of her face, trying to ward off the smell of whiskey. "Come on in, Will," she said. "Let me get you some coffee."

  "No coffee," Will said. "I'm here to give you something." He held up the sheepskin jacket. "Think how many kids will go through the winters in this," he said. "It's yours. Do what you want with it."

  Rydell Two Fists adamantly refused to take his truck, and Will sat down on the stump in front of his log cabin and bawled like an infant before he figured out what he could do with the keys. He went around back to the old knotty pine where Rydell and Marjorie kept their mutt tied up, and threaded the key ring through the dog's collar without even waking it.

  Giveaway worked; he was coming to see that. He ran through the back woods to Joseph Stands in Sun's lodge, feeling lighter than he had in months. He stripped off his coat as he ran. He left his hat on a clothesline, his boots in front of the cabin of a stranger. He gave his shirt to a little girl who was dragging a bucket of water back up to her parents' home.

  By the time he reached Joseph's lodge, he was wearing only his jeans and his underwear, and he was shivering from the cold. He obviously hadn't drunk enough, he thought, if he could still judge the temperature and if he was too embarrassed to knock on the door and give the medicine man the last of his clothes. Instead, he stripped down to his bare skin, folding his jeans and his shorts and leaving them in a neat pile in front of Joseph's door.

  He began to run wherever his legs would go. As he stepped on thistles and pinecones his feet began to bleed; still he kept running. He was an animal. He was primitive. He could not think and he could not feel. He came to a high butte that he did not recognize, and there he threw back his head and cried in pain.

  He had only one more thing to give away, something that he knew was worthless, but something all the same. Will yelled the