Silver Sight (Completed)

Chapter 3

Cooper doesn't sleep that night. He doesn't attempt to make love to Carol. The two barely talk. An invisible wall has gone up between them. Both of them know it's the ghost in his memories standing between them now. Cooper should feel guilty but he can't find it in him. And Carol is just plain angry.

By morning Carol awakes to an empty bed. No note. No explanation. When she asks his father at the breakfast buffet he just shrugs and says: "that's Cooper." Except this isn't like the Cooper she knows. This is a stranger to her. And she wants her Cooper back.

Cooper is across town. He's in their rented car. Parked outside of a house he hasn't set foot in since the incident. He doesn't want to go in. But he needs to. He needs answers. And the person in that house would know. She always knew.

The door opens and the door is darkened by a familiar face even if it has aged. She stares at him in a red flannel shirt and a pair of black jeans. She's always dressed like a young lumberjack so he's not surprised. He's surprised when she waves at him, beckoning him in.

He puts the car in park and walks with a slowness not attributed to his limp.

"Cooper Booth as I live and breathe," she says as he gets close. She opens her up her arms and envelopes him in a warm hug.

She's shrunk in her old age, or maybe he used to be smaller.

"Hey Grandma Tala," he whispers, awkwardly hugging her back.

She was the town's healer. The one with the herbs and healing stones. She believed in the old gods and ghosts and the spirit animals meant to lead you to divine purposes. She was a tribe elder. No one argued with her. Nothing was worse than her rage, well, except maybe her disappointment.

Cooper couldn't bring himself to call her anything other then what he had been calling her his whole life. Even if he didn't deserve to use that accolade anymore.

"Well don't just stand there on my stoop. You come right in honey," she says. It's an order that Cooper knows better to ignore. He shuffles in behind her, peeling off his runners, the only shoes that he could get on that morning. She ushers him to the couch and fairly pushes him down onto it.

She disappears into the kitchen. The house looks the same, save for a few new decorations. It still smells of incense and cinnamon cookies. There is an abundance of pictures that he can't bring himself to look at, so he stares at the coffee table in front of him.

"Aaron told me you were back," she says from the kitchen. "Told me about your accident too. I've got a salve that will fix you right up, believe me."

He did believe her. "You don't call him Chief Alo either?" he asks.

Behind him Grandma Tala laughs. She comes back with a mug of tea and a plate of her famous cookies. She hands both to him. "I helped birthed and practically raised that boy. He could become Gitche Manitou himself, I'd still call him Aaron."

She sat down in a reclining chair close to him, forcing him to pivot to maintain eye contact. His eyes falling on a picture just behind her head. A seven year old, with braided pigtails and a missing tooth holding onto a silver and grey husky mix puppy. He had been there the day that picture had been taken. He remembered sitting on the back steps as Grandma Tala took the picture. Munching on a cinnamon cookies as he was now.

"You're not here to talk about him though, are you? Why don't you tell me the real reason why you've come here?" Grandma Tala's voice cuts through the memory that has gripped him. He forces his eyes back to the woman in front of him and smiles wryly.