No Ordinary Hero

And maybe it was time for her to pull at least one foot out of her self-imposed rut. She wasn’t opposed to healing—she just didn’t seem to have time for it. Maybe she needed to make time, for the sakes of both her daughter and herself.

“What can I do to help?” Mike asked as he entered the kitchen.

“Have a seat and keep me company.” She looked over her shoulder at him and said frankly, “I’ve turned myself into a hermit. It would be good for me to start practicing my social skills again.”

He smiled as he pulled out a chair at the small table and sat. “I probably could use some of the same myself.”

“I doubt it. You deal with people all day long. I deal with wood, plaster, paint and noxious chemicals. They don’t talk back.”

A chuckle escaped him. “You picked quite a profession.”

“I enjoy it. I like working with my hands and solving the problems that go along with restoring a house.”

He was silent a moment, then asked carefully, “Why’d you turn into a hermit?”

She faced him then, folding her arms and leaning back against the counter. “Truth or social quip?”

“I vastly prefer the truth to social ice skating.”

At that she felt a smile tip up the corners of her mouth. A smile she hadn’t expected. “Truth it is, then. My husband was killed in the accident that paralyzed Colleen. You know what they say about once burned, twice shy? I seem to have applied that lesson to everything except Colleen.”

“I can definitely see how that might happen. I have a similar story, but I’ll leave that for another time.”

She could see his barriers snap into place, and her curiosity itched. But okay, she was willing to observe his boundaries. She expected the same courtesy for herself.

“Fair enough,” she agreed and turned back to the counter. But she couldn’t help wondering what his story was. “I hope you like salad.”

“Any way it’s made.”

“Good.” Because that was all she had planned tonight, a green salad with some leftover grilled chicken breast and a choice of bottled dressings. Her time was so limited these days that she stuck with basics, the quicker and easier the better, her only nod being to the healthfulness of what she prepared.

As she was standing at the counter slicing tomatoes, a bang sounded through the house.

She whirled around, her heart accelerating, and found Mike looking upward. “Door slamming,” he said. “Do you have windows open or a fan on?”

“Not right now. I didn’t open anything when I came home.”

He rose. “Stay here. I’ll go look.”

“Like hell,” she answered. She’d been using her chef’s knife to slice, and she seated it more firmly in her grip. A weapon.

He didn’t argue with her as she followed him. For that she gave him points.

“Sounded like it was from upstairs,” he remarked quietly.

“It did,” she agreed. In the hallway it was easy to see at a glance that all the doors stood wide open, the way they’d been left. Mike glanced at her, acknowledging that he’d noticed, too.

And then he started up the stairs, stepping to the outside of the risers so as not to make noise. She followed his example.

But at the top of the stairs, they could see all the doors were open, just as they’d been left.

He spoke. “Could something in the attic have made that sound?”

“There’s nothing up there. Not so much as a box.”

They both stood for a minute, listening, but no other sound disturbed the utter silence of the house.

“It must have come from outside.” But even as Del spoke the dismissal, she knew she was lying to herself. That noise had come from inside, not from without. And there was no mistaking the sound of one of these solid oak doors slamming.

“Well,” said Mike slowly, apparently agreeing with her thought if not her words, “if one of those doors slammed open it would have been hard enough to leave some evidence.”

Del watched as he checked in every room. She didn’t need to look for herself because she knew exactly what the sound was, and it wasn’t a door opening. As often as she had the windows open and fans going, she absolutely knew how these doors sounded when they slammed shut, and it wasn’t the same as when they got caught on a gust and were pushed open. Not the same at all.

Mike returned in only a few moments. “Let me check the attic,” he said.

She looked at him, realizing he wasn’t criticizing her, understanding that he was genuinely concerned someone other than the two of them might be inside the house. Heck, the back of her own neck was prickling with that suspicion.

But surely if someone were in the house, they would have discovered it on their walk-through. Unless, as Mike apparently feared, someone was in the attic.

God, the idea made her skin crawl. She waited with forced patience as Mike pulled down the overhead ladder to the attic and climbed up. She heard him flip the switch which turned on three bulbs that hung from the rafters from one end of the attic to another. He reappeared only a minute later.

“Nobody could hide up there unless they’re six inches tall.”

“I know.” And somehow that only made this worse.

Noises for no reason? She’d lived in this house for over two months now, and she knew its sounds as intimately as she knew her own heartbeat. That had been the sound of an oak door slamming. Hard. And in the usual way, they wouldn’t do that even with the windows open and the fans blowing, even with a relatively strong breeze in the house.

Inevitably, she thought about the sounds Colleen had been hearing and tried to put it together. But it made no sense.

Mike closed the attic trapdoor and looked at her, his gaze trailing down to the knife she held. “Loaded for bear?” he asked lightly.

A faint flush stung her cheeks. “Stupid, huh?”

He shook his head. “I was just thinking that you look like you could take on the whole damn world. That’s a compliment.”

“Thanks.” But now she felt foolish. She’d investigated odd sounds many times in her life, but never before had she felt compelled to carry a knife on the hunt. “Major overreaction.”

“Not really. Not when you consider that Colleen has been complaining of noises. That’d raise my action-alert level, too.”

He really was a very nice man. Her embarrassment seeped away and she turned for the stairs. “Let’s go get that salad.”

He also turned out to be a comfortable companion. She felt no pressure to talk as she finished the salad and served them at the table. She often spent large chunks of her time inside her own head, busy with her hands, and most of the time she preferred it that way. There was a soothing rhythm in her work, and it left her feeling content at day’s end.

Someone who could share that silence while seeming to remain comfortable was unusual indeed.

“I don’t spend much time on cooking,” she said apologetically as she put the last bottle of dressing on the table. “Healthy foods are the best I can do, as quickly as possible. Oh! I have some frozen garlic bread, if you’d like some.”

“This is fine.” He smiled and gestured her to sit with him. “I don’t cook much at all myself. A fresh salad is a treat.”

She returned his smile and motioned him to serve himself first. “With Colleen I probably keep a better eye on things than I would otherwise.”

“Understandable. I think the animals in my kennel have a far better diet than I do. When I get sick of bottles, cans and frozen foods, I go to Maude’s.”

“Maude’s is one of my guilty pleasures, too. I’m surprised I haven’t seen you there.”

“I don’t go often.” Something in his tone suggested there was a reason for that, and she wondered but didn’t say anything. She didn’t know him well enough to ask any personal questions.

She paused just as she poked her fork into a bit of tomato, as the sound of the slamming door sounded once again, this time in her head. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “I don’t think I can hold a normal conversation right now.”

He put his own fork down and looked attentively at her. “The noise we heard?”

“That and the noises Colleen is hearing. Yesterday I was wondering if she was imagining them, and not knowing what was worse—her imagining them or the sounds being real when I couldn’t find the source.” She tightened her lips. “I didn’t imagine that slam.”

“Hardly. I heard it, too, remember?”

She hesitated, then said, “Colleen has been through hell. So much so that I keep waiting for her to shatter in some way. I mean, to lose your dad and be paralyzed all at once, at her age …” She trailed off as her throat tightened. Finally she found her voice gain. “Except for the first month or so, she’s been an amazing trouper.”

“I get that impression. So you were wondering if her hearing things was the shattering you feared?”

“It crossed my mind. Awful of me even to think that.”

“No, I think it was reasonable to wonder. Look, I doctor animals, but I’ve seen them with post-traumatic stress reactions, too. With some of them, they seem fine at first, and then one day they start acting out somehow. Your fear was entirely reasonable. But apparently that’s not what’s going on.”

“Apparently not. And now I’ve got to wonder what caused that sound. Maybe we misinterpreted something else.”

“That’s possible.” He pushed back from the table. “Tell you what. I’m going to go through the house and slam doors. You holler out when you hear the one that sounds like what we heard.”

She nearly gaped at him, then felt almost embarrassed, though she wasn’t sure why. “I think I invited you to join me for dinner. You should finish eating first.”

A soft chuckle escaped him. “Salad will keep for five minutes, and I’m as curious as you are. Let me go slam some doors. You sing out if one of them sounds the same.”

In the doorway, he paused to look back. “Stand where you were before, if you don’t mind. That way we can be sure it was the same sound.”

“Okay.” She was actually glad to hop up and go stand by the counter, facing the same direction. She needed to solve this problem, the sooner the better. Then maybe she could put Colleen’s fears to rest and silence her own concerns.

Maybe.

She stood leaning against the counter, eyes closed, listening to slam after slam, first from downstairs, then from upstairs. The bangs moved through the house, but by the time Mike returned she was certain of one thing.

“None of them, huh?” he asked as he returned to the kitchen.

She pivoted to face him. “The sound was similar on the upstairs doors. But I noticed something else.”

“What?”

“The vibration passed through the whole house when you slammed them.”

His eyes widened a hair. “So we heard the sound, but there was no vibration. You’re right. I didn’t feel the door slam.”

“Nope.” And what had been a small worry blossomed into a big fear.

“This is not good,” he said.

She couldn’t have agreed more.

Chapter 3

“I don’t believe in hauntings,” she said as they washed up after the meal. Hunger had pretty much deserted them, and there was a lot of salad left. And haunting was the only other explanation her mind kept turning up for the sound of a door slamming when none had.

“No?” His question was neutral.

She looked at him as she handed him the last plate to dry and realized he wasn’t looking at her. “Do you?”

“I was raised in a different culture.”

She reached for a spare towel and dried her hands. “I’d like to hear about that if you don’t mind telling me.”

He shrugged one shoulder and put the dried plate in the cupboard with the rest. “I’m a man of science. I’m supposed to believe in the mechanistic view of life.”

“But you don’t?”

“Only insofar as it’s useful.”

Curious, she grabbed a couple of fresh coffee cups and filled them, putting them on the table before he could refuse and thus insist it was time to leave. She was well aware that she was taking a lot of his time, but she wasn’t ready to let him go. Couldn’t, if she were to be honest about it. Sitting in this house alone wondering about that noise was apt to keep her up all night.

He hesitated but didn’t argue. She made up her mind right then that one of these days she was going to get to the root of the way he hesitated about so many things. But not now. She had just asked enough of him for one night.

“I’m sorry I can’t offer you a more comfortable place to sit.”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “I’m a table-and-chair kind of person. My family held every gathering around a table.”

“Mine, too.” At least a point of connection.

As soon as she returned to her seat at the table, he joined her. “So what did you mean?” she prodded gently.

“I’m Cheyenne. I know, dirty word around here.”

“Not in this house,” she informed him firmly.

Again that half smile of his. “How’d you avoid it?”

“I was always weird.”

This time a real laugh escaped him. “Weird how?”

“Well, I got into a bit of trouble when I was six. I was in religious education class and when the teacher said Judas went to hell for betraying Christ, I asked how that could be possible, since God had planned it all and somebody had to do it.”

“Wow. How much trouble did you get into?”

“Only a little, actually. But that was my first starring role as the girl who asks off-the-wall questions.” She shook her head a bit. “My dad took me to the memorial of the Battle of Little Big Horn when I was about fourteen, and all I could think was that Custer was an idiot.”

That, too, surprised a laugh out of him. “How did your dad react to that?”

“He surprised me by saying it did look that way. When I got older I learned a word for Custer’s idiocy—hubris. The man was full of it. I mean, even ignoring that we were busy taking all the land away from you folks, and hunting you down like animals, Custer was an idiot. When I stood where the cavalry stood, and looked down that hill at where all the Cheyenne—I seem to remember it was mostly Cheyenne along with some other Sioux tribes—all I could think is what idiot with two hundred and forty-five soldiers attacks five thousand people?”

“The battle began long before that day.”

“I know.” She sighed. “It’s a sad and ugly story. And all the folks in these parts who talk as if you guys are still the enemy would be feeling a whole lot different if they’d been invaded. So no, we don’t share those feelings in this house. Memories are too damned long anyway.”

“Even among my people.”

“With more reason.”

“That’s debatable, too.”

She noticed he seemed to have relaxed, really relaxed for the first time since crossing her threshold. Well, considering the ill-considered bigotry a lot of people spouted, she could understand that. “So about how you were raised?”

“Many Native American people believe that all things are sentient, even the rocks. And many of us believe the spirit world exists right alongside us. And sometimes we get glimpses of that world.”

She bit her lip. “So you believe in hauntings?”

“Honestly? I’m not sure. I’m just not ready to dismiss anything out of hand. But I’m definitely willing to help you keep looking for the source of that sound. Because however I was raised, I’d still like to find a concrete explanation.”

She guessed she could deal with that. When she thought about it, what he was saying was really no different from what her religion taught: there was a spirit world, and afterlife. She just didn’t believe the two intersected. “So you’re not trying to tell me the house is haunted.”

“I’d hardly jump to that conclusion from a single sound.”

She sipped her coffee and regarded him thoughtfully. “You must feel sometimes as if you walk in two worlds.”

“Sometimes.”

She tried to read something in his expression, but this man gave away little he didn’t choose to. Still, she could imagine that straddling two different cultures probably carried difficulties she couldn’t begin to understand. And then there was bigotry. She’d heard enough talk in these parts to know that was still alive and well among some when it came to Native Americans.

“You probably could have chosen any place in the country to practice,” she said after a few moments. “Why did you come here?”

“Because it was near enough that I could get home to see my mother. At the time, she wasn’t in the best of health.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s life, isn’t it?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” She sighed and lifted her coffee mug in both hands. “I grew up here, but I almost didn’t come back.”

“No?”

“I met Don, my husband, in college, and he got a job in Denver. I followed after I graduated.” She smiled faintly. “I’d studied architectural engineering and was lucky enough to land a job with a firm in Denver. So we married, and Colleen came along, and the world was my oyster. Our oyster. After the accident, after Colleen recovered enough to need physical therapy only a few times a week, I realized I couldn’t bear to stay there any longer. It felt as if there was a reminder around every corner. So I ran back home.”

His nod was encouraging, his expression sympathetic. “Has it turned out well?”

“I’ve been able to move on, if that’s what you mean. I’m busy, I feel good most days about most things. Unfortunately, I studied architectural engineering and these days I wished I’d stayed longer and taking mechanical engineering, too. You know, wiring and plumbing. I have to hire people to do that work.”

“Expensive?”

“Of course.” She gave a rueful shrug. “The minute I start tearing out walls and putting in bathrooms, I have to bring everything up to code. And while I approve of building codes, it would be nice if I could do that work myself.”

“I suppose going back for training would be difficult now.”

“Now, yes. Maybe later on.” She sipped more coffee and looked at him over the mug. “What made you decide to become a veterinarian?”

“Animals.” His smile was beautiful. “From the time I was little I loved animals. They didn’t always get treated very well on the rez because we were poor. Lots of strays. You know, that was an odd contrast. Spiritually we think of animals as our brothers. But in reality …” He shrugged a shoulder. “When you’re having trouble feeding a kid, it’s hard to find food for a dog. So there were a lot of strays. Mostly dogs, some cats, but cats actually do better for themselves on their own. I started collecting them, much to my mother’s chagrin. And I found a low-paying job when I was eight, watching a neighbor’s sheep, and used the money to buy dog food. I put my first splint on a dog’s leg when I was ten because nobody could afford to take a stray to a vet and the only other alternative was to shoot it.”

“Did the splint work?”

“You bet. Mainly because I was lucky and it was a simple fracture.” He chuckled quietly. “But there was no stopping me after that. I learned a lot about caring for livestock from my elders. I read books. I scoured libraries and finally got really lucky.”

“How so?”

“A vet who came to the rez sometimes to look after cattle and sheep picked up on my interest and took me on as an assistant.”

“That’s great!” But she saw his face shadow and realized the unhappiness inherent in that story, as well as the pleasure of having an opportunity. A complex man, one who kept a lot close to the vest.

“Yes, it was. He gave me a load of books to read, he taught me, and he made sure I studied hard enough and well enough to get into college. A good man.”

“He sounds like it.”

“I was lucky to have a mentor, a great mentor. People like that can make more of a difference than they may ever realize. Unfortunately, he died before I graduated from veterinary school, but at least he knew I made it.”

“I’m sure he was proud.”

“Despite everything.”

She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but she realized his face had closed as suddenly as someone slamming a door. She bit back the words and sat there, feeling at sea, wondering if there was any direction with this man that didn’t lead to a closed door, or a hesitation, or the sense there was a lot he would never say.

Of course, that just made her even more curious, but she knew how to bide her time. She’d learned patience the hard way, with a daughter whose slow recovery demanded it.

A rumble of thunder drew her attention and she glanced toward the kitchen window, surprised to see the light had begun to turn a gray-green.

“That’ll upset the dogs in the kennel,” Mike remarked.

“Really?”

“About thirty percent of dogs are scared of storms. In a kennel, that thirty percent set off the rest.”

“Is it the noise?”

“There’s some debate about that. Some dogs seem to start responding way too early, as if they sense a change in the air pressure.”

“Amazing. Do you need to go to them?”

“No, that only reinforces the behavior. We all, me included, wish there was some way to comfort them, but there isn’t. They interpret the comfort as positive reinforcement, and it makes it worse. And right now we don’t have any dogs who freak out enough to require sedation. So the best thing to do is let it burn itself out.”

“That must be hard to do.”

“It is, I admit. I have to remind myself often enough that trying to soothe them will make it harder on them in the long run.” He gave a faint smile. “When it comes to animals, I’m a natural-born hugger.”

She returned his smile. “That’s a good thing. I like people who want to hug kids and animals. It’s the ones who don’t that concern me. So you can really leash-train a cat? I’m still trying to imagine that.”

“Oh, Colleen won’t be able to walk her, or anything like that. But she can be trained to accept leash limitations. By that I mean if she’s sitting on Colleen’s lap and decides she wants to run after a bird, she won’t throw a clawing, hissy cat fit because she can’t get any farther than six feet. She may glare her disapproval, but before long she’ll climb back on Colleen’s lap, and eventually she’ll stop trying to run after things outside.”

“I was raised with the notion that you can’t teach cats anything.”

He laughed quietly. “Cats do a good job of keeping it a secret. I had my last cat perfectly trained. I fed him when he wanted, played when he wanted, and … he never ever tried to get out the door after just a few attempts when I caught him and dragged him back in. He learned his limits. The same way he learned to stay out of the fridge when the door accidentally shut on him, catching him in the side.”

“Oh, my!”

“That only took one lesson.” His dark eyes danced. “One of the main differences between cats and dogs is that dogs are eager to please. More of a pack mentality. Cats … well, less so.”

Thunder rumbled again, this time louder. This time Mike glanced at the window, and Del noticed that the kitchen was definitely darker now.

He looked at her. “Are you going to be okay by yourself tonight?”

“Because of the noise, you mean? Of course I will. It’s just a noise. With my luck I’ll probably find out another wall stud just collapsed or something. I’ll be honest. I knew there was some rot in the place, but I didn’t expect it to be quite so extensive. And then down in the basement there’s this ridiculous brick wall that’s starting to crumble a bit.”

“A brick wall?”

“I know. Weird. I guess someone thought it would be attractive, like they started refinishing the basement and never got around to completing the job. But it’s just dark. The thing is, I keep wondering if, when I tear it out, I’m just going to find that there’s a big gaping hole in the concrete. That’s the way everything else in this house is going.” She gave a little shake of her head and a rueful smile. “At least the roof is solid.”

“Maybe you just need to bulldoze underneath.”