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“Your mother only fainted, Ella,” Standing Elk said. Then, to Summer Breeze in Lakota, “We will take her to the healing tent, and you can see to her there.”
Summer Breeze nodded.
“Follow me, Robert Morgan.”
Morgan lifted his wife into his arms as if she weighed no more than a feather.
“Raven,” Standing Elk continued, “take Ella to my tipi. You go too, Bear. When I return with Morgan, we will speak.”
Raven nodded and looked at his beautiful wife. She wore a buckskin dress and her lovely hair hung in two braids. She had dressed for him, for his people, even though the wedding was her tradition.
At that moment, he had never loved her more.
His heart raced. Who was Bear, really? Was he Ella’s brother? And if he was, what would that do to his marriage to Ella? He could share Bear with Ella. Indeed, he’d share all that he had, all that he was, with Ella. But what of Ella’s parents? Of Ella herself? What blame might she cast upon him for keeping her from her brother al
l these years? He shook his head. He’d make her understand, somehow. He had to.
He smiled into her beautiful face—her eyes the color of violets at first bloom, her hair the hue of the soft dirt under his feet after a rain storm, her lips pretty and sweet as red currants.
He would not give her up.
* * *
“He wandered into our camp one day, starved and beaten. We called him Wandering Bear.”
Ella sat, mesmerized by the melodic, throaty sound of her father-in-law’s voice.
“Though I knew he was old enough to speak, he did not. Not for several weeks. Summer Breeze and her mother, Laughing Sun, may she rest in peace, nursed him back to health.”
Ella rested her gaze on Bear, the man who could be her brother by blood, and now by marriage. She had mistaken him for her father the night she’d nearly been raped. At the time, she’d blamed it on her muddled mind, but now, looking him over, the resemblance was uncanny. His height, his build, his hair and eye color. His facial characteristics—mostly her father, but her mother’s straight nose.
Ella’s fingers wandered to her face and she traced the straight line of her own nose. So like her mother’s.
So like Bear’s.
“In time, he spoke to Raven,” Standing Bear said. “Raven had seen ten winters at the time, and I had begun to teach him the white man’s tongue. When he and Bear began to communicate, they spoke to each other in their own languages, and each learned the other. Summer Breeze and I were amazed at how quickly they learned. Bear told Raven he had seen five winters. That he had run away from his family one night in Indian territory looking for arrowheads. Some bad white men caught him.”
“Dear God.”
The pain in her father’s voice lanced through Ella. What must it be like to lose a child? To wonder where he was? Who he was with? She trembled and hoped she never knew the answer to those questions.
“Dear God,” her father said again. “I hadn’t let him look for arrowheads. We had chores, and then we went to bed early that night because we needed to get an early start in the morning. Naomi was busy with Ella, and I”—he gulped—“was too busy to take my son to look for arrowheads.” He shook his head, his gaze resting on Bear, who had said nothing so far. “It can’t be.”
“Do you believe Bear is your son, Robert Morgan?”
Her father nodded. “I do.”
Ella shuddered. Her father’s eyes, amber and sunken, held years of sorrow, years of regret.
“Bear never told us his white man’s name.” Standing Elk cleared his throat. “Summer Breeze felt”—he hedged—“he had willed himself not to remember his former life. He had been badly mistreated by those who captured him.”
“Thank God Naomi isn’t here to hear this,” her father said.
Standing Elk turned to Bear. “Does this bring anything back to you? Do you remember your white man’s name?”
Ella fidgeted, nervous, waiting for Bear’s deep voice, but he didn’t speak.
Ella could remain silent no longer. She wasn’t one to sit idly by. She stood and went to the man who was her brother now, perhaps in more ways than one. She sat next to him.
