No Ordinary Hero

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.”