The Kingmaker (All the King's Men Duet #1) - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,16

and the therapist doesn’t happen until around year eight.”

“You’ll have to let yourself feel again, Lennix. I see it, you know? That reserve you have with everyone. That guard that locks into place when you feel anyone you could care about getting too close.”

She’s right. Something inside me did flounder, fall when Mama never came home. That hurt is a dull ache I’m not sure will ever go away. Better not tempt fate to do that to me again. My father? Well, it’s too late to block him out. And if the Sunrise Dance hadn’t tied us together inextricably, the last eight years when Mena has surrogated for my mother time and time again would have. I have my best friends I made at college, Vivienne and Kimba, but that’s about it. Anyone beyond them stands outside a closed circle. I think again, as I do unreasonably often, of the man I only knew by his first name, Maxim. Something about him stormed through my defenses right away even though I was too young for anything with him.

“Lennix,” Mena says and snaps her fingers in my face. “You hear me talking to you, girl?”

“Sorry, Auntie.” I pass a hand over my eyes, blinking away the image of a young, handsome man who’d traveled far to protest with us. With my tribe, but ultimately, with me. He took a dog bite that was intended for me, and as I think of it, I don’t know if I ever properly thanked him. “I was daydreaming, I guess. What’d you say?”

“I said let’s do what we came here for, to clear your mind and set your heart.” She nods to the river.

The sun may be warm, but that river is freezing. It wouldn’t be the first time its rushing frigidity set me to rights and cleared my head.

“Let’s do it.” I stand and strip away my denim cut-off shorts and peel the tank top over my head to reveal my one-piece bathing suit.

Aunt Mena does the same until she wears only a black sports bra and boy-leg underwear. She was a little older than my mother, but they had been friends since they were girls. She’s still relatively young, barely over forty, and in great shape from the yoga she does outdoors every day. Makes me wonder what Mama would be like if she were still here.

“Ready?” Mena asks, brows raised.

“Ready.”

With careful steps, we make our way down the bank toward the river. We wade in until the water laps at our thighs, shockingly cold. Mena holds a tiny bag, which she tips over her hand until pollen, like powdery sunshine, spills into her palm. I’ll never forget the medicine man sprinkling me with sacred pollen from the cattails. I feel just as reverent as Mena dusts it over my face now. I close my eyes, letting it flutter over my cheeks and eyelashes as if each particle holds healing restorative power. And maybe it does.

“It’s not science or magic,” Mena whispers to me. “It is hope. It is faith that connecting with the land, with our land, will tell the universe, tell the Creator, that we have been blessed and are ready for what is ahead. Now, dip to wash it away. Not just the pollen, but all the things that cloud your mind and blur your vision.”

She points to the river. I hold a bracing breath against the cold I know waits for me and sink into the water. It closes over my head, insulates me for just a few seconds and I feel it all. I feel the loneliness, the fear, the uncertainty about my future. The river swallows me whole and then spews me out, making me gasp and swipe hair from my face.

“You feel more clear?” Mena asks, her tone and eyes searching my face, coated with droplets of water.

“I don’t know about clear,” I say, smiling and letting the sun kiss my face. “But I’m ready.”

6

Lennix

“So you made it?”

The concern threading my father’s voice kicks in my instinct to reassure him. He needs lots of reassuring. Ever since Mama disappeared, he worries constantly.

I get it. He’s a professor of Native American Studies. He knows the statistics. Four in five American Indian women have experienced violence, and more than one in two have experienced sexual violence. Even knowing the facts, he never expected them to hit so close to home. He and my mother never married, and didn’t always see eye to eye on how I should be