Navajo's Woman Read Online Free PDF

shortcomings, his failure to live up to the expectations of all who had known and admired him.
    Ed laid his hand on Joe's shoulder, but looked at his wife. "Take the children into the kitchen and prepare our lunch." The moment Kate scurried Joey andSummer through the house and disappeared into the kitchen, Ed tightened his hold on Joe. "We are all veryworried .Kate and I. Doli and Andi. We are concerned about Eddie and
    Russ. They are both only sixteen. Young men now, but in many ways still boys.Boys who need our help."
    Joe realized that Ed had just chastised him in his own kind, subtle way. "That's why I came home.To help Eddie.And to help Russ, too. I figure I owe it to Russell to do what I can for his son."
    Ed patted Joe on the back. "You are a good man."
    Joe shrugged. "I'm not so sure about that. Nobody around here thought I was much of a hero five years ago, did they."
    "When Russell died, feelings were running high among family and friends," Ed told him. "You did not give any-one a chance to recover from the shock, before you ran away."
    Yeah, he'd run, all right.As far and as fast as he could. Back in the good old days, when he'd been a policeman, he had respected himself and enjoyed the admiration of others. He had prided himself on being a good Navajo and a good man. But for the past five years he had ques-tioned himself, every choice, every decision he'd made. He had thought he was doing the right thing when he exposed Russell's duplicity. The man had been his cap-tain, his friend, a father figure to him since he'd been a teenager. And at the same time Russell Lapahie had been a man torn between duty and family loyalty, between up-holding the law and breaking the commandments he had revered all his life.
    And Joe had faced his own moment of truth. He had done the legally correct thing. But had he been wrong to expose Russell's crime? Damn the man for having put him in such a position. A part of him could not forgive Russell for having placed him in such a no-win situation. And another part would never forgivehimself .
    "Go. Speak with Andi." Ed squeezed Joe's shoulder,then released his gentle hold and joined his wife in the kitchen.
    Joe didn't move for several minutes. Everything within him balked at the suggestion. He couldn't talk to Andi, couldn't make her see reason. He'd been in her presence only a few minutes, and already she had put words into his mouth, immediately assuming the worst about him.
    How would it be possible for the two of them to act like normal, rational people when they distrusted each other so vehemently? The past lay between them, an old wound reopened, or perhaps never truly healed. He sus-pected that Andi had no more come to terms with Rus-sell's death than he had. Five years and fifteen-hundred miles apart—and yet they shared a grief that would for-ever bind them, and just as surely keep them apart.
    Shaded by the branches of a pair of scraggly pinyon pines, Andi breathed deeply, drawing huge gulps of Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    air into her lungs as she struggled to regain control of her emotions. She had known this would happen and yet she'd been given little choice but to come here today and meet Joe again after all these years. He had no more than opened his mouth before he'd practically accused Russ of being a murderer. Oh, he hadn't come right out and put his feelings into words, not exactly. But his meaning had been clear. He thought the worst of her brother, just as he had of her father.
    If Doli were capable of dealing with this horrendous situation, Andi might be spared seeing Joe again, spending time with him. But Doli was an emotionally and physi-cally fragile woman, even more so since her husband's death. Her stepmother had held her hand last night and pleaded with her to help Russ.
    "You will find him," Doli had said. "And prove that he is an innocent boy."
    From the moment she learned what had happened with Russ and