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emphasized, “what happened that day was your fault.”
    He looked at her sharply with blue eyes that proved their lineage had allowed an interloper. “It was my fault. I was her husband, Mother. I should have seen it coming. I should have known.”
    The words might be different, but the conversationwas not new. They’d had it before. Many times in the past three years. It never got any better.
    â€œThe blood of the shamans runs through my veins,” Juanita reminded him. “And I did not know, did not see.” She leaned forward at the table, a new urgency in her voice as she pleaded with him. “Alma was an unhappy girl all of her life, Christian. We all saw that. We all knew that. How could we—how could you—have known that she would do such an awful thing?” she demanded.
    Awful thing.
    Words that could have been used to describe so many events. Somehow, they didn’t seem nearly adequate enough to apply to what had happened. Because what had happened that morning was beyond awful. Beyond anything he could have ever imagined.
    Afterward, every night for a full year he’d wake up in a pool of sweat, shaking, visualizing what he hadn’t been there to see. Alma, their six-month baby girl in her arms, walking out onto the train tracks, the very same tracks that had run by the reservation ever since he could remember.
    The same tracks where they’d foolishly played as children.
    Except that morning she hadn’t been playing.
    They were staying with his mother and Uncle Henry for a few days. He’d brought Alma and the baby with him on a working holiday, brought them so that his mother could visit with the baby. Alma had bid him goodbye as he’d gone to the clinic to work with Lukas. Both he and his brother returned as often as they could manage, to give back to the community where so many of their friends had remained.
    That last trip, Alma had asked to come with him. He’d thought nothing of the request, except that perhaps she was finally finding a place for herself in the life they were carving out together. He was hopeful that she finally had put the baggage from her past into a closet and permanently closed the door on it. Because he loved her so much and tried every day to make up for the childhood she’d endured. The shame she had suffered at her father’s hands.
    Alma had seemed happy enough to accompany them. Happy enough when he’d left that morning. He’d turned one last time to wave at her before climbing into the car. She was holding the baby in her arms. Picking up one of Dana’s tiny hands, she’d waved back.
    There’d been no hint of what was to come in her manner.
    Alma had waited until everyone was gone, his mother to the school, Uncle Henry to the gym he still ran, and then she’d taken their daughter and walked onto the train tracks. To wait for the nine-thirty train. Not to leave the reservation, but to leave life.
    A life she could no longer tolerate, according to the note she’d left in her wake. She hadn’t wanted her daughter to grow up without a mother, the way she had, so she had taken the baby with her.
    Lukas was the one who had broken the news to him. He remembered screaming, cursing and not much else. Except that there had been a burning sensation where his heart had been. For days afterward, he’d thought about following Alma, about making the same journey she had. Lukas kept him sedated and Lydia, hisbrother’s wife, kept vigil over him, making sure to keep him safe when the others weren’t around.
    His whole family loved him and rallied around him. Eventually, he saw the reason for continuing to live. His tribe needed him. His patients needed him and his family loved him. So he continued. That was all the life he’d once relished with such gusto had become to him, a continuance.
    He set up his practice and was affiliated with the same hospital that Lukas was. Blair