Page 114 of Bad Intentions

“Peachy,” I reply. “Did you talk to Rika yet?”

Josie glances at me, then Donna. “No, not yet.”

I’ve been in the hospital for a week. They wouldn’t let me go. Trust me, I tried to escape. Even tried to talk Donna into helping me get away from there.

“I ain’t your accomplice, K. Not in this one.” She laughed. “If anything, I’ll barricade the door or sleep on the floor, blocking it.”

So I stuck it out. But yesterday, they finally released me, so I had a talk with Josie. About the DNA. Hers. Rika’s.

She cried. She talked. She smiled. She cried more. She sat with me on the couch and looked through the old pictures of Alysha and Victoria. She asked questions about them, more than she’d ever done before, and I answered all of them. Good, bad—it’s all in our kids.

And then Josie brought her guitar and played for me. That’s when I cried. Old age does that, gets us soft in the heart.

“You should go talk to Rika,” Donna says, waving her away. “Go. Nothing for you here anymore. Your grandmother and I are doing a Sacred Burn tonight, then dinner, all of us. But this mope-fest”—she nods at the grave—“is over.”

Josie chuckles, limps off toward Rika, and the two of them walk toward the parked cars as Donna and I watch them.

“Rika tells me Josie is quite a star,” Donna says.

I nod. “That she is. Needs a kick in the butt now and then. But she’ll be fine.”

“Am I not invited to dinner?” the chief asks.

“You are always invited,” I say. “Stop by.”

“How is your back?” Donna asks him.

“It’s all right.”

I give him a suspicious glance over my shoulder. “What happened to your back?”

“Old bones, old moans.” He winks at me, then exchanges looks with Donna.

I bet.

“Got a good remedy for that.” Donna toasts at him in the air with her tumbler. “You come to dinner, Chief. And bring that homemade brew you make. Haven’t had that in…decades.”

We all smile.

I realize I’m looking forward to the dinner. Like the good old days.

63

JOSIE

Rika and I walk toward the cars with a mutual sense of relief. The feeling is not appropriate for the cemetery, but I don’t feel bad for the man we just buried.

Rika looks back over her shoulder. “Those three, huh? Thick as thieves.”

“That they are,” I say.

“You need help?” Rika surveys my foot as we walk.

“What, you are going to give me a piggyback ride or something?”

“Don’t push it, Boots. I was offering to carry your purse.”

She makes me smile, and this is a good time to talk about our father. Something we still haven’t done.