All The Way

Kiki dropped Vicky’s elbow to turn back to the TV herself. Liv pushed between them to see. On the screen, Hunter bent over at the waist, in obvious pain. He did it slowly, as though the earth had suddenly produced an exorbitant amount of gravity and was tugging him down even as he fought it tooth and nail.

Liv felt light-headed. The announcers’ voices sounded anxious.

“Sit down,” Kiki said to her harshly. “You’re white as a ghost.”

“I’m fine. Vicky, go…do something.”

Kiki started angling the girl toward the door again. “Come on. I just made a new recipe for cranberry muffins. I need you to tell me what you think.”

“But I want to see what happens to this guy,” Vicky argued.

“We can watch on the television downstairs in the kitchen.”

Liv knew that Kiki would never allow the TV to go on downstairs until long after this coverage was over. She offered no resistance when the two went out, Kiki closing the door again smartly behind her.

Liv went back to the sofa and sat, fumbling blindly behind her with one hand to make sure the furniture was still there. Then she reached for the remote control and hit up the volume. She’d once seen his car do somersaults down the backstretch, nose to tail, nose to tail, and he’d walked away as steady as a rock. He would be fine.

“They don’t seem to be heading for the infield care center,” one of the announcers said as an ambulance loaded Hunter and drove off. “Looks like they’ll be taking him directly to a hospital.”

“What does this do to his chances tomorrow, Hal?”

“I’d say they’re minimal at this point, Bud.”

He’d driven once with a broken wrist, Liv remembered, taping it for extra support, his jaw set visibly against the pain every time the camera caught him. He’d be in that race tomorrow.

There was another knock on her door. Kiki entered with a tray holding a decanter of brandy and two snifters.

“Where’s Vicky?” Liv asked, startled.

“I gave her two of the muffins and sent her out to harass Bourne.”

The retired cowboy ran their riding operation. “He’ll take the muffins and send her right back again if he’s busy.”

“Not if he wants to see another of my muffins in this lifetime.”

Liv almost smiled.

“Here. You need this.” Kiki poured the snifters and handed her one, then she gestured at the television with her own. “So what’s the latest? Did he live?”

“They took him to the hospital.”

Kiki nodded. “He’s too mean to die.”

Liv jerked up from her slouch against the cushions. “He’s not mean. He’s just…” She trailed off at Kiki’s expression. “What? Why are you looking at me that way?”

Kiki settled on the sofa beside her. “You’ve got to get over this. You were fine before you made that trip back east.”

Liv took a good swallow of brandy without answering. It burned going down.

“You’re the strongest woman I know.”

Liv jolted a little. “Me? Get off it.”

“I just don’t tell you very often because I hate being overshadowed by you.”

Liv could only laugh at that, though her voice was hoarse. Kiki was beautiful—tiny, barely five foot tall—with classic Native American looks. She was a dynamo. Liv generally felt pale, clumsy and befuddled beside her. They’d been friends since even before Hunter had entered the picture, from the first moment Liv had set foot on the Navajo reservation.

Kiki got up to move. Like Hunter, she was always moving.

“You made your decision when you cut him loose,” she said. “You never looked back—at least not that any of us could tell. You married Johnny and when that didn’t work out, we left Flag and came here to Jerome. We established the inn from a ram-shackle building that nobody else wanted but that you saw the potential in. You’ve built a life for your daughter. She’s happy, healthy, smart.”

“She lives with a bunch of strangers trooping through her home several times a week.”

“That’s your phobia, not hers. Don’t foist it off on her, Liv.”

Liv winced.

“You’re the one who was always hung up on the traditional nuclear-home thing. You were the one intent on grabbing back everything you lost when your family’s car went over that cliff and you were sent to the Res. So what if Vicky has a mother, a doting aunt and a lot of guests from all over the country instead of a mother, a father and a sibling or two? What does it matter if she’s thriving?”

Liv found that she couldn’t answer.

“My point is, you’ve got a lot to be proud of. So be proud of it. Don’t let Hunter Hawk-Cole rock your foundations again just because you made one mistake.”

“Which mistake are we speaking of here?” Liv asked dryly.

“Dover.”

“Ah, that one. And it was Millsboro.”

Kiki waved her hand, telling her what she thought of that particular split hair. “Don’t let him drag you down the way you were in those days after he left.”

“You just said I never looked back.”

“But your eyes didn’t see what they were looking at straight ahead, either.” Kiki put her snifter back on the tray and picked the tray up. “On that note, I’m going back to the kitchen. If you want to keep wallowing in angst, you’re going to have to do it on your own.”

Liv nodded absently, her gaze swerving to the television again. They were showing highlights of Hunter’s career on the screen now, while crews cleaned up the track from his crash. Liv watched and tunneled back in time, helplessly and without much resistance.

It was so blasted hot and she had one lamb to go. Without a sheep pen, it was almost impossible to catch the little critter. But her grandmother—the old woman she’d called Ama in the respectful Navajo tradition of “mother”—had stubbornly refused to touch any of the life insurance money her parents had left to make improvements to her land.

Ama had died in her sleep eleven months ago. By hook or by crook, Liv had managed to keep the authorities at the school from finding out. Ama’s clanswomen had signed her report cards and they had showed up at mandatory events in Dinny’s stead. Liv would graduate in six more days. It was over. Her exile here was done, and there was nothing to leave behind. Even Kiki would be moving to Flagstaff with her to begin college there late in August.

When she turned eighteen next month, she could collect the life insurance money. Everything would be fine.

It scared her spitless.

Why was she suddenly frightened now that the time had come? She’d planned her escape from the first moment her heels had touched down on this arid, forsaken soil. It had taken Social Services and attorneys several days to sort out that she had only one living relative, her mother’s mother, an old Navajo woman on a high-country reservation. From the time she’d been delivered into Ama’s care, Liv had dreamed of the time when she could go again, back to the city where she belonged.

But she’d been on the reservation for almost six years now, and she worried that she had forgotten how to act in real, conventional society. If she ate in a restaurant, would she even remember which fork to use? She heard Hunter’s truck at the same moment the terrifying thought slid through her mind again, taunting her.