Read Online Winter's Child by Margaret Coel - Free Book Online

the headlights snapping on, the truck roaring down. What is it you learned that you had to die for?
    â€œVicky?” Annie stood in the doorway. “Are you all right?”
    She was not all right; she was thinking, but she tried for a reassuring smile.
    â€œRick Masterson wants you to call him.” Annie walked over and placed the message on the desk.
    She had turned back when Vicky said, “See if you can reach Clint Hopkins’s secretary and set up a time when we can meet at Clint’s office. The sooner, the better.”

7
    Shannon O’Malley was like her mother, kicking up white clouds as she came down the alley, the same air of confidence and assurance Father John remembered in Eileen, as if she would soon make the world turn her way. He went to meet her. “You’re early,” he said, falling in beside her. She was tall beside him, filled with energy, sunlight shimmering in her reddish hair. Elena wouldn’t serve lunch for ten minutes. This could be the first time, he realized, that he was on time for a meal. “All settled in?”
    â€œDoesn’t take long to unpack a backpack.” She glanced up at him. “Can’t wait to transcribe my notes and start writing.” She tossed her head about. “You didn’t tell me about the buffalo herd on the other side of the fence.”
    Ah, the buffalo. The rancher next to the mission had raised buffalo for decades. Quiet animals, grazing in the pasture in the summer and fall, nibbling on bales of hay the rancher tossed out. If youstood close enough to the fence, you could sometimes hear a buffalo snorting, but most of the time he forgot the herd was there. “What did you think?”
    â€œI landed in the Wild West. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday could show up at any minute. Any gunfights lately?”
    â€œNot lately.” You never knew. You never knew. “Did you see the church?”
    She stopped walking and turned toward the white stucco church across the alley. “Looks interesting.”
    â€œCome on, we’ll have a look.”
    â€œDo we have time?”
    â€œIt’s a small church.” Father John ushered her up the frosty concrete steps that sparkled in the sun. Opening the heavy oak door, he nodded her into the vestibule. It was chilly inside. The furnace he had adjusted this morning and the sun splashing through the stained glass windows were not enough to banish last night’s frigid temperatures.
    Shannon started down the center aisle, taking in the windows on one side, then the other. “The geometric symbols are Arapaho,” he said, staying with her. “Horizontal lines for the roads we must travel. Rectangles for the buffalo that give their lives so the people could live. Tipis for the people and the villages.” Dozens of different symbols; he was still learning the meanings.
    Shannon nodded and walked over to the small tipi the women had made from tanned deerskins, the finest skins. Geometric symbols painted in red, blue, black, and yellow, decorated the outside. “The tabernacle,” he said.
    â€œAnd that’s the altar?” She nodded toward the large drum next to the tabernacle, then twirled about, taking it all in again, before she began walking back down the aisle. “It’s beautiful,” she said when they were outside. “Like a church in a fairy tale.”
    â€œFairy tale?” He walked her across Circle Drive, over the hardened ridges of tire tracks, and through the snow-mounded field, following the footprints he and the bishop had left that morning.
    â€œWhere Cinderella marries Prince Charming. Nice, if you believe in fairy tales.”
    â€œAnd you don’t?”
    â€œCome on, Uncle John.” She stopped in her tracks and was looking up at him. “No one in my generation believes in fairy tales. Ever after just doesn’t happen. It never did, really. Your generation was the last to cling to that belief.