Friday DIRE MOMENT_LET THE WIND BLOW THROUGH YOU

Life is never certain. Yesterday proved that for all of us.

What we take for granted can be suddenly snatched away from us without warning.

How do we respond?

With fear?

With anger?

With love and forgiveness?

My DIRE MOMENT post for Denise and Francine :
http://laussieswritingblog.blogspot.com/

My entry is an excerpt from my Kindle Single, LET THE WIND BLOW THROUGH YOU,
seen through the eyes of a disgraced Lakota psychologist back in his home town.

The woman he has loved all his life has become the feared donna of the crime family which controls the state. She has mastered all her enemies but one --

the disease that is now killing her. As she fights rival crime bosses sensing her weakness, can the psychologist save her from herself? And at what cost to himself?

(677 not 400 words_Give a man an inch, and he'll take a mile, right?)

Her eyes. I had tried to forget them my whole life. They were giving me a look that would have set driftwood on fire.

Luckily, I was more dense than driftwood. Yes, that was a joke. At my expense. Story of my life.

The dark quiet of her office seemed a shroud. “You’re a fraud.”

“You talking me being a red man in a white man's world or the Psychic Reader sign on my door?”

“Psychic? You don’t believe in the supernatural any more than I do.”

“My clients do. That’s all that counts.”

“You don’t remember, do you?”

I arched my right eyebrow in a question. Not exactly a lie. Just not the truth.

“First, you were in all my elective classes in high school. Then there you were in all my classes at the University of Houston. Harvard was the same story. Were you following me?”

“I was following the money.”

“Like all the other men in my life.”

“Not you. The scholarships.”

“But then you stayed in Boston. And I -- I had family obligations.”

She meant family in two ways. Blood. And crime. Yes, that was another joke. At everyone's expense.

The “family” she ruled dealt in both blood and crime. She just dealt it out with more elegance than had her father -- as she had for nearly a decade and a half.

Her face became a map of old hurts. “When we are young, we try for it all and so lose what is right before our eyes.”

Her wet eyes saw me again. “What all did you want, Mr. Winters?”

“Very little. Not to be alone. To be loved. To finally belong.”

Her lips curled. “And you did not get even that.”

“No. No, I didn’t.”

“Nor did I.”

I said, “You have to learn to let the wind blow through you.”

“What?”

“You can’t forget the consequences of your choices any more than you can stop feeling the wind blowing upon you.”

“Is this leading anywhere?”

“Depends upon your resolve.”

Her face hardened. “I have filled graveyards with my resolve.”

“If you learn to let the wind blow through you, you will take away its power to knock you down.”

Her eyes hollowed even more. “How do I do that?”

“If you let the memories of your mistakes blow through you without letting them catch on your anger or your pride, you will not feel them. You will learn from them.”

I smiled sad. “Perhaps you might even start down a new path toward a better tomorrow.”

Her voice became a husk. “Tomorrow? How many of those do I have left, psychic?”

She thrust out her palm. I had spent years counseling the dying. I knew the pallor to the skin, the shadow to the eyes. Victoria was just beginning to show the signs.

I couldn’t resist doing what I had dreamed of doing for years. I took her
hand gently. It trembled in my fingers. I traced the irony of her long, long
lifeline.

“Victoria, the doctors have already told you the answer to that question.”

She tried for a smile, almost making it. “But you have a better bedside manner.”

She gently pulled her hand away. “I am throwing a party at the Country Club tonight.”

Her smile flashed death-cold. “Repaying old debts.”

It became almost human as she said, “Luke, my car will pick you up at Eight O’ Clock sharp.”

Her eyebrow arched. “You do still have a decent tuxedo from your days as a respected Boston psychologist, don’t you?”

“I was never respected, only tolerated. The token Native American.”

“Yet you insisted on acting like some Frank Capra hero. I hear it finally did you in.”

I smiled sadder. Did me in? It had brought me back to the town of my birth to hold the hand of the woman I had loved all my life and could never have.

“I’ll be ready.”

Her eyes went to the shadows and within her fears. “Are any of us ever ready?”

“We Frank Capra heroes are.”
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Accompany Luke Winters into a night of revenge, death, madness, and a mystery revealed. Price of admission 99 cents.
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