Where the Lost Wander_ A Novel - Amy Harmon Page 0,127
has removed her leggings, and her doeskin dress is hiked up around her thighs. She is washing blood from her pale legs.
“Naomi?” I’ve startled her, and she jerks upright, slipping on the rocks and landing on her bottom in the creek. She stays down, her dress bunched around her, her hands in her lap and her legs splayed.
“Naomi?” I don’t want to laugh, and I’m not sure she’s okay.
She looks up at me and tries to smile. A smile, eye contact. We’ve come that far at least. “I didn’t hear you. I tried to go a ways from camp so . . . so I could wash.”
I walk toward her, halting at the water’s edge.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Yes.” She nods. Her eyes are bright, but she’s not crying. “I’m bleeding. Finally. I was afraid.”
I don’t understand.
And then . . . I do. The realization weakens my legs and steals my breath.
“I was bleeding when we reached Sheep Rock. I haven’t bled since.”
“And we haven’t been together since.” My voice is as hollow as I feel.
“No. We haven’t,” she whispers. “I’ve been . . . waiting. I needed to know. To be sure.”
“Âka’a,” I whisper, sickened. Angry. I sit down beside her in the water, not caring that it is cold or wet or that I am fully clothed.
“But I’m bleeding now,” Naomi says, falsely chipper. “And that is good.”
I’m afraid to speak, so I nod, looping my arms around my bent knees, trying to control the rage that has nowhere to go.
We sit that way for a while, side by side, numbing ourselves in the shadowed creek. I don’t know how to fix what has been broken or ease a pain beyond my understanding.
“I didn’t fight, John,” she blurts, releasing the words in a rushed confession.
I wait, not breathing.
“I didn’t fight,” she says again, stronger. Louder, like she’s making herself face them. “I was afraid Magwich would trade me to another tribe, and I would never see my brother again. So I didn’t fight.”
I don’t touch her. Not for comfort or support. She’s not done.
“I didn’t fight.” Her voice shakes, and her eyes have filled and flooded over, but I hear anger, and I’m glad. “It hurt. And I wanted to scream. I wanted to run and keep on running. But I didn’t. I took it.” She takes a ragged breath. “I didn’t want it. I didn’t ask for it, and I’m not lesser for it. I know that.” She nods, reaffirming her words. “But I didn’t . . . fight, and that’s what I can’t get over.”
“You fought,” I say.
“No. I didn’t.” She shakes her head, adamant, and swipes at her angry tears with the back of her hand.
“There are many ways to fight, Naomi Lowry.”
My use of her name lifts her chin, and she looks at me, really looks at me, and she is listening.
“You were fighting for your brother. You were fighting for Wolfe. For your life. It would have been easier to scratch and kick and bite. Believe me, I know. I spent the first fifteen years of my life fighting everything and everyone. But . . . endurance . . . is a whole different kind of battle. It’s a hell of a lot harder. Don’t ever say you didn’t fight, because that’s never been true. Not one day of your whole life. You fought, Naomi. You’re still fighting.”
There are tears on her cheeks and tears on her lips, but she leans forward and presses them to mine. I taste salt and sadness, but I also taste hope. It is a kiss of gratitude, brief and sweet, and then she pulls away again.
“That is not the way I want to be kissed,” I say, hoping I’m not overplaying my hand.
She laughs, throwing her head back, and for a moment I see her, my Naomi, the one who barters with Black Paint and does her laundry in a deluge and tells me point-blank how she likes to be kissed.
“No?” she says, not missing a beat. “How do you want to be kissed?”
“Like you’ve been thinking about it from the moment we met.”
She laughs again, but there are tears in her throat, and it sounds more like a sob. She touches my lips with the tips of her fingers, her hand cold and wet from the water, but she does not kiss me again.
“I love you, Two Feet,” she says.
“And I love you, Naomi May Lowry.”
NAOMI
They spotted buffalo this morning, and the fervor in the camp was manic. The