She glared and crossed her arms over her chest. “And how is that a bad thing?”
He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Not bad, Nizhoni, but perhaps a little self-serving.”
I watched in avid fascination as a pretty pink blush washed over her features and her lips curled. “Wanting my sister to have the life she dreams of is not self-serving.” She raised her chin in obvious affront.
“What’s Nizhoni mean?” Jasper asked, breaking up the tension wafting in the air around the fiery couple.
The question had Evie sighing and her body relaxing. “It’s Navajo for beautiful.” She scowled at Milo. His lips twitched in response.
I brought the conversation right back to her suggestion. “Do you think you could tell me more about opening up our own place and what that would entail?” It was a good idea. I had tons of money now and no idea what to do with it. Jasper had taken a huge leap of faith following me to Colorado. If we truly wanted to build a life here, what better way than to start out working on our dream. There wasn’t anything but fear stopping us.
“Well, Milo and I can certainly instruct you from a financial perspective. However, Camden is a business guru. It’s how he and Suda Kaye met back up some time ago. He runs a foundation that offers small-business owners financial assistance and mentorship. I’m certain he’d be happy to sit down with you and discuss your ideas once you and Jasper have had the time to work through your idea fully.”
“That would be so cool!” Jasper bounced in his outrageous Converse sneakers. They were startlingly bright yellow with black laces he added himself. I called them the “bumblebee” shoes. Today’s outfit was what he called surfer-skater chic: a formfitting pair of khaki shorts that hit just above his knees and a ribbed black tank under a Hawaiian shirt in various shades of orange, blue, black, white and khaki. He paired the entire look with a circular pair of yellow-tinted, John Lennon-style glasses that were not prescription—strictly for looks; he kept them on inside and outside. Around his neck he wore wooden tiki prayer beads with a teal tassel.
When he’d come down the stairs to go to the store with me this morning, I told him he looked like a rainbow threw up on him. He told me I needed to exchange my boring-ass green baby doll tee and faded thrift-store Levi’s for something that actually didn’t disappear into the background. After that comment I put on a pair of silver chandelier earrings with turquoise stones to match my favorite turquoise bangle and a pair of platform rhinestone-studded flip-flops to give myself a little oomph. He merely looked me up and down before sighing and shaking his head.
“I spoke with Suda Kaye before bed last night. She’s eager for us to come to her store. She works one or two Saturdays a month so she can’t leave, but she’s dying to see you in the flesh,” Evie noted.
I smiled and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m looking forward to seeing her store, Gypsy Soul. She said she named it after your mom.”
“Our mom,” Evie corrected, and I felt my cheeks heat.
“That’s something I need to get used to.”
Evie smiled. “And you will. Being here will definitely help.”
“I’m counting on it.” I stared into her clear blue eyes and watched as they warmed.
“You’ll have to make sure you wear that bracelet when we go to the reservation. My mother always likes seeing women wearing her jewelry,” Milo said while picking up his and Evie’s plates and taking them to the sink.
I stared down at the turquoise-and-silver hammered bangle bracelet I’ve worn forever. “What are you talking about?” I held up my wrist. “My dads gave this to me on my sixteenth birthday. It’s almost nine years old.”
Milo shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s far older than that and I’d know my mother’s artistry anywhere.”
“Your mother?”
Milo nodded and Evie leaned over the counter to inspect the piece.
“May I?” Milo gestured to the bracelet. I took it off and handed it to him.
He inspected the large oval turquoise stone on the front. On each side there were hammered lines of silver. One side had Free twisted in the metal as if it was sitting atop the bracket. The other side said Spirit. He then turned it over, looked at the inside and smiled.
With his nail he pointed at two letters on one side of the metal. “L.C. for Lani Chavis,” he said. On the other side he pointed to two more letters. “See those letters?”
I nodded.
“C.T. Catori Tahsuda. My mother must have made this piece long ago and given it to your mother.”
Evie gasped and put her hand over her mouth.
“Then how the hell did I get it?” My words came out in a flurry of frustration. My mother’s initials and Milo’s mother’s initials were engraved on the inside of a bracelet I’ve had for almost a decade?
“I do not know the answer to that question. I only know that our mothers were great friends as children and then went their separate ways later in life.”
Evie held up a hand. “Wait a minute!” She dashed out of the kitchen, her floor-length robe flying behind her like a crimson cape beckoning a raging bull to charge. I heard her feet pounding up the stairs and looked up at the ceiling.
Milo continued to inspect my bracelet. My mother’s bracelet.
But how?
I hadn’t come up with anything logical when Evie entered the room with a large photo album. She spun through the pages faster than I could take in any one thing. Then she pointed.
“Here!” she said triumphantly. “I knew I’d seen that design before. Look, Izzy.” She pointed to a five-by-seven of someone I suspected was my mother. I had only seen the one super-small picture of her that my papa had shared with me.
The woman in the image was stunning. A Native American princess if I’d ever seen one. My mother sat cross-legged in front of a brilliant fire pit, a woven blanket stretched out over what seemed to be a desert floor. A little blond-haired girl in a red dress sat in her lap. Next to her was an attractive, smiling Caucasian male with blond layered hair and remarkable blue eyes. My mother was staring up at the man like he hung the moon, her arms carefully locked around the child.
“That’s me.” Evie pointed. “I was maybe three years old then. Suda Kaye would have been one. Not sure where she was at that time.”
From the way the couple in the photo looked at one another, it was clear they were deeply in love. Except if that was the case, why did my mother seek out adventure and leave her daughter only to fall into bed with my papa Ian? And how could Adam forgive her for falling in love with my papa and having his child? So many unanswered questions.