Her thinking goes back to Aurora, to her husband. They’ve always had a rule: Never go to bed mad. There should be a corollary, she thinks: Never separate for a long trip with anger still between you.

In the seat opposite, Edgar Little Bear, not a young man, closes his purblind eyes and lays his head back to rest. Next to him, No Day, slender and with a fondness for turquoise and silver, opens a dog-eared paperback and begins to read. In the seats directly ahead of Jo and LeDuc, Washington and Tall Grass continue a discussion begun the night before, comparing the merits of the casinos on the Vegas strip to those on Fremont Street. Jo pulls a folder from the briefcase at her feet and opens it on her lap.

LeDuc says, “Hell, if we’re not prepared now, we never will be.”

“It helps me relax,” she tells him.

He smiles. “Whatever.” And like his old contemporary Edgar Little Bear, he lays his head back and closes his eyes.

They’re all part of a committee tasked with drafting recommendations for oversight of Indian gaming casinos, recommendations they’re scheduled to present at the annual conference of the National Congress of American Indians. Her mind isn’t at all on the documents in her hands. She keeps returning to the argument the day before, to her final exchange with Cork just before she boarded the flight.

“Look, I promise I won’t make any decisions until you’re home and we can talk,” he’d said.

“Not true,” she’d replied. “Your mind’s already made up.”

“Oh? You can read my mind now?”

She’d used the blue needles of her eyes to respond.

“For Christ sake, Jo, I haven’t even talked to Marsha yet.”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t know what you want.”

“Well, I sure as hell know what you want.”