12. Kai #2
When he died, he left the estate and most of what remained of his money to me.
My mother outlived him by a little over two years.
For those two years, she stayed in the house because I couldn’t imagine asking her to leave the first place she had ever truly felt safe.
After she died, I spent almost six months trying to decide what the hell to do with a property I didn’t need, didn’t want to live in and couldn’t bring myself to sell.
Eventually the answer became obvious — I turned it into the place she should have had years earlier. Not by myself, that part matters too.
Money has a dangerous way of convincing people they’re qualified to solve problems they barely understand.
I provided the property and funding. Women who actually worked in domestic-violence advocacy, several of them from Pine Ridge, built the program and attorneys handled the nonprofit.
People who understood security determined what needed to change about the house.
The official address disappeared from everything it could legally disappear from, and the huge front windows my mother once loved were altered so nobody outside could see who was living behind them.
The estate now houses women and children who need somewhere to go before they have a permanent answer.
The irony is not lost on me. Henry Whitmore took in one frightened woman and her fifteen-year-old son and, years later, his house continues doing the same thing.
I reach Pine Ridge shortly before ten. Sunday has already begun without me.
Cars sit outside the community building where I’m expected, children move between houses with the particular imperviousness to weather possessed exclusively by people under twelve, and two dogs are asleep beside a fence despite the wind carrying enough bite to make me zip my jacket higher.
I barely get off the motorcycle before someone calls my name.
It happens every damn time. Some people greet me like I never left and a hand lands against my shoulder before I have completely closed the door.
An older woman who knew my mother pulls me into a hug and tells me I’m too thin despite having said the same thing the month before, despite the fact that I’m not thin by any means.
One of the men helping unload boxes from the back of a pickup asks whether psychiatrists in Minneapolis are still charging people two hundred dollars to tell them their mothers ruined them.
“More than that,” I tell him and he laughs hard enough that the box nearly slips from his hands.
Then there are others who watch me differently.
I know those looks too. A few come from men I grew up with who never left, men who see the education, the practice in Minneapolis, the money Henry left behind and the way I speak now and decide the distance between us means I chose a side.
Sometimes they say it outloud, usually they don’t have to.
White man’s doctor, city Indian — I’ve heard variations of both.
Twenty years ago, they would have made me angry enough to fight about it.
Now I understand some of what sits underneath them.
I got out, a lot of people didn’t. Pretending that opportunity had nothing to do with that would be insulting.
I worked my fucking ass off, that was an undeniable fact, but I also had Henry.
I had money for school. I had somewhere quiet to study, reliable food in the refrigerator and an adult who expected me to become more than what the worst parts of my childhood suggested I would.
Not everyone gets a Henry Whitmore. That doesn’t make me less Lakota, though, and it certainly doesn’t mean I owe anybody an apology for surviving long enough to become useful.
I come back "home", I fund scholarships without putting my name on them. I help keep a behavioral-health outreach program operating when grants arrive late. I consult when people ask and shut the hell up when they know more than I do, which is often. I make sure the safe house outside Rapid City has money for beds, food, legal advocacy and whatever else the women running it tell me they need. I don’t come here to save anyone. I come because leaving was never supposed to mean abandoning the people who didn’t. My people.
The rest of the visit passes the way these Sundays usually do.
Meetings that are supposed to take twenty minutes become an hour because somebody remembers another issue halfway through.
I review numbers for the outreach program, speak with two people about funding for transportation into Rapid City for specialist appointments and spend longer than planned listening to an older man complain about every psychiatrist he has ever met before informing me that I am only marginally less irritating than the rest. High praise that makes me smirk because I genuinely have to agree with him.
By early afternoon, I’m back on the road toward Rapid City.
I stop at the estate before heading for the airport.
Even after all these years, part of my brain still expects the place to look the way it did when I was fifteen.
The long driveway remains. So do most of the trees Henry planted decades before we arrived, their branches arching above sections of the road where autumn leaves gather in deep rust-colored piles.
The main house itself is familiar from a distance, broad stone frontage, dark roof, the wraparound section of porch where my mother used to sit with coffee on Sunday mornings.
Up close, the differences are more than obvious.
There are cameras now, a security gate and privacy treatments over lower windows and locks Henry would have considered excessive, because he had the luxury of never understanding why someone might need them.
Renee, the program director, meets me near the side entrance with a folder tucked under one arm.
We walk the property while she updates me on repairs, staffing and a grant application that needs another signature.
There are residents inside, but I don’t ask who they are.
I never do unless there is a clinical reason someone specifically requests my involvement, and even then the boundaries are painfully clear.
This isn’t my practice, it isn’t even really my house anymore — that was the point.
Before I leave, I stand for a moment near the bottom of the staircase visible through the front hall.
A memory of my mother calling me down those stairs for dinner creeps in.
Henry standing in almost the same spot and asking why I believed arriving home three minutes before curfew was somehow evidence of excellent time management.
Now a child’s pink backpack is hooked over the newel post. I swallow around something that has no business tightening my throat after this many years.
Then I sign what Renee needs signed, tell her to call if the roof estimate becomes as ridiculous as she expects it will, and ride back toward the airport.
By the time I land in Minneapolis, Sunday evening has already settled over the city.
I stop at telling myself it’s to change but that is not the reason.
The black envelope still inside the desk is.
For several seconds, I stand with the drawer open and look at it.
I wrote the letter Friday night after spending most of the evening insisting I wouldn’t.
I don’t even write fucking letters but Henry did.
Said it was the lost art form of people actually taking the time to talk about the things that mattered.
And somehow Julia started to matter more than I was ready to admit.
The first words came too easily — Little Ember. The rest followed once I stopped trying to make it sound harmless. I look at it for a moment more. I could tear it up, I probably should. Instead, I slide it into the inside pocket of my leather jacket and close the drawer.
Mara’s house smells like roasted chicken and garlic when she opens the door forty minutes later.
“You’re late,” she says, although there is no irritation behind it. Her hair is piled loosely on top of her head, and she’s wearing sweatpants with one of Connor’s school T-shirts stretched across her torso for reasons I choose not to question.
“My flight landed less than an hour ago.”
“That sounds suspiciously like an excuse from somebody who owns a watch.”
“I brought wine.”
Her eyes dropped to the bottle in my hand. “Apology accepted.”
This is how Mara and I work. She steps aside and lets me in before raising her voice toward the living room.
“Connor, Kai’s here, and if you tackle him before he gets his shoes off, I’m selling you to strangers.”
A muffled protest comes from somewhere around the corner.
I remove my jacket and hang it over the chair near the door rather than on the coat rack, while shaking my head at the parental tactic of intimidation she chose. But then my mind skips back to the envelope inside the jacket that feels heavier than paper has any right to feel.
Mara notices me glancing at the jacket but, thankfully, interprets it as nothing more interesting than me being strange. “You okay?”
“Long day.” I shrug.
“How was Pine Ridge?”
I follow her toward the kitchen while she takes the wine from me. “About the same. The outreach program is doing better than last month, the transportation grant is still caught somewhere in administrative purgatory, and Raymond informed me that psychiatry remains mostly bullshit.”
Mara laughs as she opens a cabinet for glasses. “I like Raymond.”
“You’ve never met Raymond.”
“I respect his professional opinion.”
“You have a concerning relationship with disrespect.”
“Only when it’s directed at you.”