Page 39 of The Lonely Road

The lawn is honest about it being early spring.

I go inside, using my key. Luna, my cousin, is not home as she’s visiting friends in Denver. I am sad to miss her.

The house smells like Wíitsin, even now, after three years—her hand cream, the cedar in the linen closet, and what’s just her and just home.

I put my overnight bag in Wíitsin’s room, which is now mine, and hang the garment bag with my suit for Monday morning in the closet that still holds some of her clothes I couldn’t part with.

Luna has taken the second bedroom, which used to be mine.

I check the time—an hour until I need to be at the council offices for tomorrow’s prep meeting. So, I go into the kitchen and make coffee in my grandmother’s old Moka pot. She never wanted a machine, preferring the old ways—the authentic ones, as she saw it.

I sit at the kitchen table with my mug and let the quiet settle.

My phone buzzes.

Sienna: You here? Someone is asking about you.

Me: Cam?

Sienna: Who else? I’m done at two. Come for lunch?

Me: Yes.

I head to the tribal offices and step into the conference room to find Auntie Carol already on her feet, and I’m engulfed in a hug before I’ve fully cleared the doorway.

“Oh, but it’s good to see you.” She holds me like she’s checking that I’m still in one piece.

I kiss her cheek when she lets me go. “You keep getting more beautiful, Auntie.”

She flushes, waves me off, and then pulls a Tupperware from her bag, hands it over with the satisfaction of someone who has been waiting to do exactly this.

I don’t squeal—I try not to squeal—but I do hug her again.

Blue corn sugar cookies.

My grandmother’s recipe, or close enough to it—made with fine blue corn masa harina, which turns the dough a deep, striking violet. Auntie Carol adds juniper ash the way Wíitsin always did, for a nutty, toasted edge that tastes like home when you’ve been away long enough to miss it properly.

Elder Nokoni arrives a few minutes later, takes one look at the container in my hands, and raises an eyebrow. “Where’s mine?”

“People with diabetes don’t get cookies,” Auntie replies without looking up from her papers.

He waves a dismissive hand and pulls me into a hug instead. “Thank you for coming.”

“It’s my pleasure.” I mean it completely.

This is what Wíitsin always hoped I’d find my way back to—not that she ever begrudged me Aspen, never once made me feel small for wanting more or wanting different. She understood the hunger of it. She just always knew that eventually the work I was born for would call louder than the one I was chasing.

Two more elders arrive, and there are more hugs, more questions about how Wildflower Canyon is treating me, more good-natured insistence that I should simply move back to Ignacio, where I belong.

I laugh and deflect and feel myself settle.

The word tribe isn’t a category for me—it’s a structure.

It’s what holds me together on the darkest days.

It’s what celebrates me on the brightest.

It’s an extension of family—close, but not quite right. Family you’re given. Tribe is what holds you.