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“No,” he said gently, his hands working around behind my back. “I’m the one who pretended he didn’t want a relationship to begin with.”

I glared at him, although my heart wasn’t in it.

“I am sorry about that,” he said, tilting his head up, lower lip protruding just a little bit. I knew exactly what he was doing—trying to distract me by getting me to kiss him. He knew it would work.

I wasn’t interested in resisting, so I bent and pulled at that pouting lower lip with my teeth, sucking and nipping until I felt Elliot’s fingers tighten against my sides and heard a soft rumble in the back of his throat.

I deepened the kiss, chasing his tongue with mine, drawing a deeper moan from him until he pulled away.

“God, fuck, Seth.”

I couldn’t help the soft laugh. “I’m not sure how to interpret that,” I told him.

“Shut up,” came the answer, just before he reached up and took my face in both hands, pulling me back into a searing kiss. I let him, perhaps too far—I put weight on my left leg, then staggered into him.

Elliot’s arms wrapped around me. “Shit—sorry, baby. You okay?”

I grimaced. “Stupid knee.”

“We could take this out of the bathroom,” he suggested.

I sighed. “I—I want you to come back with me,” I whispered. “To the hotel. Back home.” I leaned into his strength, feeling his strong arms wrapping around me.

“Me, too, baby,” he breathed against my cheek. “Me, too.”

Hart and Raj were somewhere else—Raj’s room, maybe—leaving Sassafras and I alone in our new hotel room.

Sassafras was sitting and watching me attempt to do about a dozen different things and fail to do all of them.

Watching TV turned into channel surfing for about ten minutes before I shut it off.

Trying to go through emails lasted only twice as long before I gave up on that, too.

Checking social media bored me in five, and trying to focus on the readings for my CFI—Certified Fire Investigation—training was quite possibly counter-productive.

I sat on the edge of the bed, searching the room for something, anything, to distract myself.

I supposed I could inventory the tools in my grandfather’s tool box. A year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to get much more complicated than identifying a hammer or a crowbar. Now I knew a lot more. And it would give me an excuse to send Elliot pictures of tools.

I hobbled over to where the tool box was sitting on the floor and picked it up, then set it down again.

It was filthy, which wasn’t surprising given that it had been in storage in a barn full of goats.

I grabbed one of the extra towels from the bathroom, making a mental note to leave a nice tip for the cleaners when I finally managed to check out of this stupid hotel.

That wasn’t fair. The hotel itself wasn’t stupid. I just hated everything associated with this whole shitty trip, including the hotel, the actually-really-good-coffee place, and every single place we’d eaten, even though most of those were good, too.

I set the towel on the bed, then went back and retrieved the tool box, setting it on top of the towel. I opened up the top, starting with the little tray at the top. Awls, chisels, a couple of screwdrivers—both philips and flathead. A rasp, what looked like tin snips.

Underneath, there was a small hacksaw, a hand drill—the kind with a crank handle—and some larger chisels that wouldn’t have fit in the little trays on the top. A hammer, a ball peen hammer, a piece of oil cloth that looked like it had a piece of paper behind or inside it.

A piece of paper that looked a lot newer than the oilcloth or any of the dusty, dirty tools.

I reached into the box and pulled out the folded cloth, unwrapping it to find a folded piece of lined paper, yellow, like the kind you’d pull off a legal pad.

I immediately recognized my mother’s handwriting, my heart in my throat.

What did I want it to say? Did I want it to be a letter telling me she’d always loved me? An apology for what Noah and I had been through? Some sort of explanation about why she’d decided to marry our father and join the Community?

It wasn’t any of those.

Seth, it began.

I don’t know if you will ever read this. If you do, I will probably have left this mortal flesh behind.

If I died by violence, then I must give you a warning.

Be careful, my darling boy, my only son.

I do not know if you were blessed when your sister fell ill. I know you both survived, if you did. I hope you were blessed. I hope you have the strength to become strong, like your father. Stronger than your father.

When Rachael, your younger sister, first fell sick, I would sit with her in her room, rocking in the rocking chair over that one loose board that always creaks.

And I would tell her how if she could only survive, if she could only pray to God and purify her soul, she would become greater, she would undergo the Divine Transformation and become strong.

Strong enough to show her father that she was worthy of more than he believed.

But she wasn’t strong enough.

I told your sister about you. Told her that if anything ever were to happen to me, that she should try to find you.

I am sorry she never had the chance.

I failed her as I failed you and Nora.

Perhaps you can succeed where I did not, my only son, if you have been blessed.

I looked at the note, almost as confused by it as I had been by the will she had left. Why did she feel like she had to tell me all this? Especially knowing that she’d written it after Rachael’s death.

And, more strangely, why would she have told Rachael to find me ? And why tell me that now?

I wanted to talk to Noah—to ask him what he thought, both about why our mother had told our little sister about us—or about me , at any rate—and why she’d then chosen to tell me.

Noah had known her better than I had—not because I felt any closer to our father, but because Noah had been encouraged to spend time with Momma, to learn how to be a wife and mother.

Maybe he would have some insight that might provide some sort of explanation.

But I couldn’t talk to Noah.

Can you talk?

Give me a few.

I’ll call you.

I was rereading the note for the third time when my phone began to buzz.

“What’s going on?” Elliot asked before I even had a chance to say hello . “Are you okay?”

I explained the note—what it said, where I’d found it. “I don’t know why she would tell me any of this,” I finished.

Elliot was quiet for a moment. “I didn’t know her,” he said slowly, clearly thinking. “But maybe she’s trying to tell you something. A coded message.”

“Why would she need a coded message?” I asked. “She’s writing to me—in a tool box she left to me.”

“What if your father had found it?” he asked.

I blinked. What if he had? “I—I don’t know,” I admitted.

It made me think.

If my mother had wanted to leave me a message that my father wouldn’t be able to understand, how would she have done it?

“Why not leave it with Humbolt, then?” I asked.

Elliot let out a thoughtful hum. “Maybe she didn’t trust him? He wasn’t part of the Community, so maybe that made her nervous.”

“Maybe,” I allowed. “But wouldn’t that make her more likely to trust him?”

“Maybe not,” he replied. “I don’t understand the Community, and I don’t like the comparison, at all , but there are a lot of Nation members who won’t trust white outsiders, even if those outsiders want to help.”

I was about to protest that this was different, but Elliot continued.

“There’s a lot of domestic violence on the Reservation,” he said, his voice serious. “And addiction. The one feeds the other. But even when women and children are in danger from their own families, they won’t go to the white man for help, even if there is a genuine desire to actually help.”

I thought about that, about the number of times I’d encountered victims of domestic violence—those who were still alive—who refused help from the police or social workers who were on site to help.

Supposedly, anyway.

I’m not so na?ve that I think that every cop or even social worker actually meant well. Living with Elliot reminded me of that every time I saw the scar on his throat.

I might work with the police, but I knew that they were sometimes as much the problem as the solution.

“If it is a coded message,” I said aloud. “What is she trying to tell me?”

“No fucking clue,” he told me. “But I’ll try to help you figure it out.”