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Mav only released my hand long enough to hold onto the bag while he closed the trunk and then he grabbed it again. His grandfather had barely made it out of the house when Mav thrust the bag at him. The old man took the bag and then slowly removed the picture and studied it for a long time. I watched in stunned silence as his gaze connected with Mav’s just before he dropped the picture to the ground and then stepped past Mav to where the men were pulling the shipping container from the hearse. Mav’s grandfather began saying something in Lakota as he stood next to the container and placed his hand on it as he clutched the bag of possessions to his chest with his other arm.
“Let’s go,” Mav said harshly as he pulled on my hand. As we walked, I reached down and snagged the picture that had gotten stepped on at some point, but wasn’t damaged beyond that. Mav noticed me pick it up, but didn’t say anything. By the time we were back in the car, Mav’s grandfather was leading a processional towards the sweat lodges and the hearse had started the process of turning around.
“Are we coming back for the funeral?” I asked as Mav turned the car around.
“No,” he said. “I’m not allowed to attend.”
Sadly, the statement didn’t surprise me. “We could come back in a couple of days and visit her grave,” I offered.
“They won’t bury her.”
“What will they do?”
“While most present day Lakota bury their dead, my grandfather believes in following the traditions before the reservations were formed. They’ll build a scaffold in a tree and leave her body and possessions there.”
I shook my head because I couldn’t even find words to respond to that. Several minutes of silence passed as we drove out of town, but I found I couldn’t contain my need to know more about Mav’s former life. “Did…did you live in that house with all those people?” I asked.
Mav nodded. “Uncles, aunts, cousins…one big happy family,” Mav mocked, though there was nothing humorous about his expression.
“I’m sorry, Mav. I had no idea-”
“Doesn’t matter,” he bit out and I knew from his tone that he was done talking about it.
“Are we flying out tonight?”
“You are,” Mav said. “The pilots had to fly the plane to Rapid City to refuel, so we’ll meet them there.”
I barely heard the last part because I was still stuck on the first part of his sentence. “Wait, what do you mean? Aren’t you flying back to Seattle to get your motorcycle?”
“No.”
No, no, no!
It couldn’t be happening like this. I couldn’t be down to just a couple more hours with Mav. Pain flooded my chest and I tried to suck in a breath, but that only made the pain worse. “Stop the car,” I whispered since that was all I could manage to get out.
“What?”
“Stop the car!” I screamed, but it cost me precious oxygen and when Mav hit the brakes, I stumbled out of the car and immediately fell to my knees. And for the first time since I’d had my first panic attack when I was a teenager, I hoped like hell this one would actually kill me.
Chapter Twenty-One
Mav
I hadn’t even gotten the car in park before Eli opened the door and when I saw him fall to his knees, I fumbled with my own door. We were alone on the secluded stretch of road that ran north through the reservation. I had no idea where Ronan had hired the hearse from, but when we’d turned to head north out of town, they’d gone south.
“Eli,” I yelled as I hurried around the car. He was still on his knees and his face was stricken as he tried to draw in enough air to breathe. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was having an asthma attack that was truly constricting his ability to breathe, rather than a psychosomatic symptom of the extreme stress he was experiencing.
That I had brought on.
“Eli, baby, look at me,” I ordered as I pulled him to his feet and leaned him back against the car. I grabbed him by the face to hold his attention and didn’t miss the way his hands closed tightly around my wrists.
“I need you to slow your breathing, okay?”
Eli managed a nod.
“Breathe with me,” I said as I took in a breath, waited several seconds before taking another one. It took several tries for Eli to match my breathing, but when he did, the death grip he had on my wrists eased, and his flushed skin began to return to normal. It was a good five minutes before he was breathing normally.
“Okay?” I asked as I stroked his cheek with my finger. But instead of answering me, he pushed my hands from his face and stepped past me.
