Page 43 of The Lonely Road

I am not a woman who confuses attraction with love or sex with commitment. I’m discerning about who gets my time and my body, not because of any rule I’ve made for myself but because I’ve always understood that both are finite and worth treating accordingly.

“My gut says there’s something there that’s bigger than it deserves to be.” I lift a shoulder and let it drop. “Time will tell.”

She doesn’t press further. She knows I haven’t finished parsing it—parsing him.

That’s the thing about Sienna—she knows the difference between the thoughts I’m ready to say out loud and those still forming, and she leaves space for both.

“You could just have fun with him,” she suggests after a moment. “He’s passing through. You know going in that it has a deadline. There’s something freeing about that.”

I give a shrug that is meant to be careless but doesn’t quite land that way. “Maybe.”

She reads it correctly, says nothing, and refills my glass.

“Do you miss Aspen?” she asks later, after we’ve moved on and come back around the way long conversations do.

“I miss having a team,” I reply honestly. “Paralegals. A research assistant. Someone to hand the filing to. Here I do everything myself, light and heavy.”

I set my wine glass down on the coffee table—Daniel’s work, solid and careful. I have one, too. Like mine, this one bears the same carved paw pattern along the edge.

I run my thumb over it, the way I always do.

“But I don’t miss the work itself. Not anymore.”

“Do you feel guilty?” Sienna asks. “For the years you spent on the other side of it?”

I level her with a thoughtful stare. “What do you mean?”

“I know you, Taya. I know Auntie Delia always told you that you were meant to help people. And I know a part of you has always wondered whether you failed her by going to Aspen first.”

I am quiet for a moment. “I worried she thought less of me for it.”

Sienna sits forward. “She never…not once. None of us did.” She puts a hand on my arm. “We were proud of you. We still are. Wanting things, working for things—that doesn’t make you greedy. It makes you human.”

“You could have practiced outside the reservation,” I point out.

“I’m not you,” she says simply. “You had the courage to go out into the world and build something from nothing. I didn’t want that. I wanted this.” She looks around the room—the books, the drawings on the refrigerator, the life she and Daniel have here. “Neither of us is wrong.”

I tell her about Clara Whitman then. She listens the way she listens to patients—fully, without judgment, taking it all in before she speaks.

“So they offered her good money, and she said no.”

“A significant amount.” I drink some wine and taste the Tempranillo’s spice. “And I’ve negotiated deals like that before. I sat across from families like hers, and I told myself they were coming out ahead financially, so everyone won. I believed it.”

“And now?”

“Now, I understand that Clara Whitman’s fight isn’t about dollars—it’s about leaving something for her children to inherit. It’s about her husband’s family name, meaning something beyond this generation. She’s fighting for her way of life.” I exhale slowly. “So many of them are.”

Sienna smiles warmly. “And you feel a kinship with that. Because that’s what our people have been doing for a thousand years.”

“Yes.”

“Then stop carrying the guilt of Aspen with you.” She holds my gaze. “You were always you, Taya. In that glass building in a tailored suit, in Wildflower Canyon, and here in Ignacio. You were always this person. Big-hearted and ready to help anyone who needs it.”

I stay for dinner.

I put Cam to bed, which takes four stories and one extended negotiation about whether the sheriff’s badge can be worn to sleep. It can, we decide.

The boots cannot.