Mother To Be Read online

  Mother To Be

  CHERYL REAVIS

  SILHOUETTE

  To 'Grampy,' with love, from 'Grammy.'

  CHERYL REAVIS,

  award-winning short-story author and romance novelist who also writes under the name of Cinda Richards, describes herself as a late bloomer' who played in her first piano recital at the tender age of thirty. 'We had to line up by height – I was the third smallest kid.' she says. 'After that, there was no stopping me. I immediately gave myself permission to attempt my other heart's desire – to write.' Her Silhouette Special Edition® novel, A Crime of the Heart, reached millions of readers in Good Housekeeping magazine. A Crime of the Heart, One of Our Own and Patrick Gallagher's Widow have all won awards. A former public health nurse, Cheryl makes her home in North Carolina with her husband.

  Other novels by Cheryl Reavis

  Silhouette Special Edition

  A Crime of the Heart

  Patrick Gallagher's Widow

  One of Our Own

  Meggie's Baby

  Chapter One

  “This is a sad thing," the old woman said, her voice brittle with tears that had not yet been shed.

  Lillian Singer made no reply, recognizing the remark as a formal prelude to the reason why Katie Becenti had come to Santa Fe to see her. It was important to the old woman that Lillian understand that the trouble was serious, even before she heard the details. Not that Lillian hadn't already guessed as much. It was unlikely that Katie Becenti ever left the Navajo reservation, and the fact that Lillian's own mother had escorted her here could only mean that both women considered the situation to be dire.

  But Lillian asked no questions. She'd had relatives to teach her – her mother and grandmother, her aunts. She knew how to behave, regardless of her many years in the white man's world. And, regardless of her impatience, she conducted herself accordingly. She waited.

  Katie Becenti reached into the pocket of her flannel shirt and removed a small flat can. She painfully pried it apart with her arthritic fingers and took out the contents – one tightly folded twenty-dollar bill. Then she set the can aside and took the bill and carefully spread it out on the corner of Lillian's desk, trying and failing to press out the creases that had become permanent from having been in the can for so long. The money – a mere pittance compared to Lillian's usual attorney's fee – smelled faintly of mint snuff.

  "I can pay you," Katie said, pushing the money forward. "You go find him. You go talk to him."

  “Who?" Lillian asked, ignoring her good upbringing after all. She glanced at her mother, but Dolly Singer's expression was as impassive as the Becenti woman's and told her absolutely nothing.

  “My son, the policeman," Katie said.

  Lillian frowned and leaned back in her chair. She had expected a problem with some relative, but not this relative. Johnny Becenti was a captain in the Navajo Tribal Police force, and he was good enough at his job to have caused her more legal aggravation over the years than she cared to admit. She had always found him grimly intense, self-assured to the point of arrogance and completely uninterested in any point of view other than his own. They had had words more than once because of her criticism of tribal police procedure, and she had come to feel that it was her duty to annoy him whenever possible. Actually, she rather liked to annoy him, simply because he was so determined not to be annoyed. But in spite of their long adversarial relationship, it was hard for her to imagine him doing anything that would drive his mother to take up a snuff can that must contain her entire cash flow and come to Santa Fe.

  "I'm sorry. I don't understand," Lillian said, and the old woman sighed, an eloquent comment on this daughter of Dolly Singer's, who had obviously become too white to fathom her own people.

  "Please," Lillian said, stopping short of giving a sigh of her own. “Just tell me what this is about."

  "He won't come back," the old woman said. "He stayed up there at the homestead with the animals all winter. First, the snow piled up so high he couldn't get out. Now the snow is gone, but he stays there. I said he has been alone too long. I said it's because of her – the one who died. His sorrow was too strong and it let her chindi find him up there. Now he's not the same. He doesn't believe me. I am his mother and he tells me no. But he's changed. He's...no good now."

  "You've talked to him?" Lillian asked, ignoring the theory that he'd been harmed by his dead wife's ghost.

  “Yes. All his relatives have talked to him. He says to leave him alone."

  "Mrs. Becenti, I think this is a family matter. It's not a legal problem. You should go to the Peacemaker Court. All of you should sit down together and talk about this."

  "He won't come to hear what the Peacemaker will say. I have thought about this a long time and I know what is the best thing. You go up there to the homestead and you talk to him. You tell him he needs a ceremony to get back his harmony. I can pay you to do this." She pushed the twenty-dollar bill closer.

  “Even if I did go, Mrs. Becenti, Johnny wouldn't listen to me. I am the last person who should talk to him. We've never gotten along. Not professionally and not personally."

  "That's why he'll listen," Katie Becenti said with an assurance born of much consideration. "When he sees I have sent you, he'll know how bad he's become. He'll know that he's forgotten how to behave."

  Lillian frowned again, not at all certain she wanted to be the most insufferable incentive his mother could devise. "Maybe he just needs more time. It hasn't been that long since – "

  She nearly said, since Mae died. It would have been a terrible breach of her Navajo upbringing to actually speak the name of Johnny Becenti's dead wife, and it only served to point out how tired she was. Her head hurt. She had been in court all day. She still had hours of work to do. And she had a dinner date she could not be late for.

  "Mrs. Becenti, I'm a lawyer. I talk for people when they have to go to court. I don't do this kind of thing."

  "My son would listen to you. You can help him. He would believe what you say. I am his mother. I know this."

  "I'm sorry, I can't. There must be somebody else who can go talk to him for you."

  "He says he can't be a policeman anymore," the old woman said.

  "Oh, I don't think he meant that."

  "I remember," Katie said. "In my mind I can see his face the day he heard there was a place for him at the police school. He studied all those books to know the things the policeman knows – late in the night when he was too tired from working the homestead – when he should have been sleeping, But he didn’t rest until he learned how to do the policeman’s work. It made him happy. It made him a man. I have no grandchildren. I have only my son. And what is he if he is not a policeman anymore? What is he?"

  What indeed? Lillian thought, but she said nothing.

  Katie looked at Dolly Singer, and as inept as Lillian might have become at the subtle art of Navajo nonverbal communication, she sensed immediately what Katie Becenti didn't say.

  Your daughter doesn't understand this.

  The three of them sat in silence. Lillian was perfectly aware that she was facing two very formidable representatives of the Navajo matriarchy. But she simply didn't have the time to do what Katie Becenti asked, even if she wanted to – which she didn't. Johnny Becenti was a proud man. The idea of accosting him at some lonely reservation homestead and lecturing him about his behavior did not appeal to her. Nothing about this situation appealed to her. As aloof and emotionally restrained as Johnny Becenti had always seemed. Lillian believed that he had loved his wife.

  Who was she to tell him he'd mourned long enough, even at the behest of his mother?

  It was disturbing, though, that he supposedly intended to give up his career. Johnny Becenti was the Navajo Tribal Police. She
would have been hard put to tell where the man began and the agency ended. It was also disturbing that she couldn't quite disregard one small truth. In spite of their professional differences, Johnny Becenti was one of the few men Lillian had ever met whose good opinion she would have liked to have. And, it was perhaps because she knew she didn't have it, that she went out of her way to provoke him. She knew only too well that she had done the unforgivable in his eyes. She had left the reservation and gone to live in the "white" world. She had refused to shoulder a personal responsibility for the welfare of the People, as he had done. Oh, she occasionally still participated in tribal matters on some level – usually at her mother's request – but Lillian had no doubt that Johnny believed she had willfully abandoned her own people. And he, he was the kind of man who had always been her worst fear – the decent and dedicated kind – who, if she had ever let her guard down, could have kept her from leaving the reservation life she had been so desperate to escape.

  But there was nothing left to be said about this current matter, and all three women knew it. There was no point in prolonging the discussion. Katie Becenti painfully attempted to rise, finally taking Dolly's arm to get out of the chair. Lillian stood as well, but she didn't follow. The look Dolly cast over her shoulder as she helped Katie toward the door was enough to stop her. When Lillian was growing up, Dolly Singer had never had to raise her voice to make her point. She still didn't.

  "Mother – " Lillian began, but Dolly shook her head.

  "You do what you think is right," she said.

  "I...hope to get home soon," Lillian said, in spite of the fact that what she "hoped" and what she actually did in that regard rarely equated.

  "Yes," her mother answered, leading Katie Becenti out into the hallway. "Walk in beauty, daughter," she added in Navajo.

  Lillian stood with her arms folded. She still had the ton of work to do, and she still had the headache. No, actually the headache was worse. One would think that she would have gotten used to inspiring her mother's disappointment by now. She'd embarked on that path at a very early age. When she wouldn't learn how to weave. When she barely learned to cook and herd the sheep. When she refused to marry. But she was neither weaver nor cook nor shepherd, nor wife, and she'd known that about herself for as long as she could remember. She was a solver of problems. Not the mathematical kind. The human kind. The kind people ran headlong into just trying to live their lives. It didn't matter to her if their trouble was self-inflicted or not. It only mattered that she find a way to maneuver the law and the circumstances to fix it. Or at least make it better. Or at least help the person endure.

  She smiled slightly at the downward spiral of her lofty ideals. "Realism born of experience," she said aloud.

  Her smile faded. Her mother was disappointed. Katie Becenti was disappointed. And Johnny Becenti – who knew what he was?

  "I can't do everything," she said, still talking to herself. She rubbed the place on her forehead that hurt the worst. How many times had she come to Window Rock to represent one of the People just because her mother had asked? Plenty of times. Plenty.

  Yes, Lillian, but what have you done lately?

  She gave a sharp exhalation of breath and smothered the urge to swear because the twenty-dollar bill and the snuff can still lay forlornly on her desk. She picked them both up and put them inside a manila envelope. She wouldn't chase after Katie and her mother to return it. It would only give them false hope that she'd changed her mind. She would mail it to Window Rock – Dolly would see that it was returned to Johnny's mother.

  She looked around at hearing a soft knock. Her brother Lucas stood waiting in the open doorway. Her brother, who, like Johnny Becenti, was also a Navajo Tribal Policeman in Window Rock.

  "What are you – the second wave?" she asked without prelude.

  "I'm fine, thanks," he said, ignoring the remark. "Good of you to ask. My wife is fine, too. So are all the children. Or at least I think so. I haven't seen or heard from the Flagstaff nephew-by-marriage lately. Patrick is keeping to himself, for some reason. So how are you, Lillian? I have to ask, because I haven't seen or heard from you lately, either."

  "Lucas, I am not in the mood for this. And I'm busy."

  "So our mother tells me. But," he said with a shrug, "I'm here begging a favor anyway, so you might as well hear it."

  "I am not going to talk to Johnny Becenti."

  "I wish you would."

  "Why? You don't even like Becenti."

  "I respect him."

  "Then you go talk to him."

  "I can't."

  "Why?" she said again.

  "Because I can't."

  Lillian raised both eyebrows. She was in no mood for some inverted male logic regarding appropriate manly behavior, either.

  "He's my superior officer," Lucas said with a patience that annoyed her even more. "It's not my place to challenge him."

  "Oh, yes, like you've never done that before."

  "Whatever disagreements we've had were always part of the job. This is personal – private."

  "Lucas – " she began, but she didn't go on. She couldn't argue with the privacy issue, not when it was the same reason she herself had for not becoming involved. She finished putting the snuff can into the envelope.

  "So has he officially left the tribal police?"

  "No, not yet. He's on extended leave. But his mother is worried – you saw how worried she is. I think she's got good reason. I...owe him, Lillian, and I'm asking you to make some attempt to help repay my debt."

  She didn't say anything.

  “When have I ever asked you for a favor?" he said quietly.

  “When? How about when your wife, Sloan, needed somebody to navigate her through the Navajo legal system? She wasn't even your wife then – for all I knew she was just another bored, rich white woman you had the hots for – like that other one, the anthropologist. But I came anyway, didn't I? I did the best I could for her. And then there was your youngest nephew-by-marriage, Will. You do remember when he got arrested for bootlegging whiskey on the rez?"

  "That wasn't exactly his fault. He was trying to get Eddie Nez to teach him to be a medicine man. And he was going through that thing of not knowing if he wanted to be Navajo or white."

  “Yes, well, I still had to drive all the way to Window Rock to get him out of jail. And what about your niece-by-marriage, Meggie?"

  “Meggie's never been arrested in her life – well, except for the time when she and Jack inadvertently stole a horse. But she was only nine, and we managed to get that straightened out without you, I think you can cut her some slack on that one. You know Meggie won't even tear the tags off pillows."

  “Don't be cute, Lucas. I'm talking about her husband – about Jack and his little run in with those people from California – "

  “They were trying to take away Meggie's baby, Lillian."

  “That's not the point. The point is I did what you needed, each and every time – "

  "Okay!" he said, holding up his hand to stop her from cataloging any more good deeds.

  "Johnny Becenti wouldn't listen to me," she insisted. "And I can't for the life of me understand why you and our mother and his mother think he would."

  "Because he's always valued your opinion," Lucas said.

  "I'm not sure you and I are talking about the same Johnny Becenti," she said, but her exasperation abated somewhat. It was true that her brother owed the man. There had been a time in Lucas's life – before he married Sloan Baron – when he'd been foolish enough to become involved with another white woman whose only intent had been to annoy her wealthy parents with yet another unsuitable sexual liaison and to have a titillating topic of conversation at her pretentious academic cocktail parties. But Lucas had truly loved her, and she had been oblivious to that fact. So much so, that when she'd found herself pregnant with Lucas's child, she'd simply disappeared. No explanation. No words of farewell. No announcement or negotiation of her plans regarding their unborn baby.<
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  Lucas had been devastated, and he'd abruptly become the “worthless Indian" she must have thought he was to have treated him so. It was the uncompromising Johnny Becenti who had intervened, who had refused to let Lucas throw away his life and his career on alcohol and feeling sorry for himself. It was Johnny Becenti who had forced Lucas to find his harmony again. If Becenti hadn't done it, there was no telling where Lucas would be now. Certainly not a respected tribal policeman. Certainly not the now sober husband of Sloan Baron and the much-loved second father to Sloan's orphaned niece and nephews. It didn't escape Lillian that Lucas might be dead now if not for Johnny Becenti, or that it might be their mother, Dolly, offering her snuff-can money to someone to try to talk some sense into him.

  "Think about it, will you?" Lucas said.

  "I don't have to think about it. I'm not going to do it."

  Lucas looked at her gravely for a moment, then gave a quiet sigh. "There's nothing more to say, then, is there?"

  "Nothing," she agreed.

  "So how are you?" he asked, harking back to his earlier question.

  "I'm fine. I'm busy," she said pointedly. "You and the big state legislator – you're still together?"

  "Yes, Lucas," Lillian said pointedly. "He's going to take me to dinner tonight if I can ever get out of here."

  "Dinner. But he's not going to marry you."

  "That, my dear brother, is none of your business."

  "When a man loves a woman, Lillian, he wants to marry her."

  "Did it ever occur to you that I might be the one who doesn't want to get married?"

  “'No," he said, teasing now. "Never."

  "Oh, get out of here, will you?" she said, shooing him away. "Go home, say hello to Sloan and the family for me.

  "They'd rather you said hello in person."

  "Window Rock gets on my nerves."

  "So you've said," Lucas said. "Lillian, can't you do this one – "

  "No!" she said. "I can't." She looked at him and then at her watch. When she looked back at him, he was waiting, giving her one last chance to change her mind.