Born in the Valley

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “What do you mean, sort of?”

  “The feeling that life was passing me by went away, but I think part of me did, too. I was a wife, a mother. Somehow, though, I’d lost myself during those years.”

  “Is that when you went to work at the theater?”

  She shook her head. “I told you, I didn’t do anything. Todd did.”

  “What’d he do?” Keith hadn’t known Martha’s husband well. And what he did know, he sure as hell didn’t respect.

  “He left me. Which was a huge eye-opener.”

  “And that’s when you got the job at the theater?”

  Another shake of her head. “For a while after that, all I did was obsess about escape.”

  “From Shelter Valley?”

  “Yeah, and from life.”

  She looked down at her hands. “At first, I was just shocked, busy getting through every day, minute by minute. I don’t think I dared look far enough ahead to want anything. Or maybe I just wasn’t capable of feeling anything at all, including anticipation or hope for the future.”

  “The bastard should be shot.”

  She looked up. “Yeah, I went through that stage, too, spending hours imagining his painful death.”

  In another lifetime, Keith would have grabbed her hand. Squeezed. Held on. Just for the comfort of one human being connecting with another.

  But in this life he was a married man.

  “Then, about six months after he’d left town, the dust had settled and I looked at my life, at what I still had.”

  Martha grimaced. She grabbed the clipboard, held it to her stomach, wrapped her arms around it. “I was almost forty years old. With four self-sufficient kids who still needed me but were already setting out on lives of their own.”

  “And that’s when you got the job at the theater.”

  His gaze met Martha’s as he waited for her answer.

  She grinned. And he did, too.

  “Eventually,” she said. “I was already writing a script for Becca Parsons….”

  She told him about the Save the Youth program Becca Parsons had instituted a few years before and how her friend had invited her to participate. Keith already knew she’d studied theater and performance arts at Montford, but had left college to get married before she’d ever earned a degree. The next year, she’d directed Becca’s production, which had led to her job as theater project director.

  “And now you feel like you have a life,” Keith said when her words dwindled away.

  She nodded slowly. And he wished he understood.

  How did directing theater projects even begin to compare with motherhood? Men could direct projects and develop programs and manage any number of things—as could women—but they could never give birth. That belonged only to women, and surely it was the most significant act any human being could ever accomplish.

  “Thank you.” Clipboard to her chest, she smiled almost shyly.

  “For what?” Whoa, man, don’t even think about it. Martha might be attractive and intelligent and right here, focused on him. But he was a married man.

  “To begin with, for listening. I’m just now realizing how long it’s been since I’ve had the chance to really talk. You know—about the stuff that goes on inside even if you refuse to acknowledge it.”

  “I want to listen,” Keith said, telling the truth. “I wish I could do more to help.”

  “Well, that’s the second thing,” Martha said, sliding forward on the couch. “You hired me. With all the viewers we reach, you’re giving me the chance to make a difference in a much larger way than I ever thought I could.”

  She sat on the edge of the couch, turning to look at him.

  Keith held himself rigid. Without even trying to, he’d somehow managed to give Martha something that in six months of endless attempts he hadn’t been able to give his wife. A sense of satisfaction. Of hope.

  “I sure wish I could help you in return,” she said softly, her eyes so warm Keith felt oddly comforted. “You seem to be feeling a bit lost.”

  Todd Moore was not just a bastard. He was a fool.

  And after months of living on the precipice of impending disaster, Keith was tired.

  “Bonnie’s looking for more out of life than I can give her.”

  “Has she told you that?”

  “Well…sort of.”

  “She wants to leave you?” Martha sounded shocked. Horrified.

  He sat forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. “She says not, but I honestly don’t know anymore.”

  Martha leaned toward him. “What did she say?”

  Keith explained as well as he could, although he didn’t understand what he was saying.

  “All I can say is, if she’s feeling this way, she needs to do something about it,” Martha answered after a minute, her expression serious. “That sense of emptiness doesn’t disappear, it just hides inside you where it can do all kinds of long-term damage.”

  She softened the truth with a squeeze of his hand.

  Keith didn’t know what to think, so he thought about that hand holding his, calmed by its warmth.

  Martha smiled at him. “Just hang in there, Keith. She’ll get through this. Bonnie’s a smart woman and she loves you. You need to have faith in that.”

  Meeting her eyes, Keith nodded. She was right. Bonnie, their marriage, their love, deserved his faith and more.

  They stood, eyes still locked, dropping hands slowly.

  And went home.

  AFTER HER CONFERENCE, the van was taking her back to Shelter Valley much too quickly. Bonnie wasn’t ready for the two days of exchanging ideas, learning, networking and absorbing new information to be over. Her adrenaline was flowing too fast for Shelter Valley’s pace.

  She hated that. Hated that she had to go back. Hated that her life in Shelter Valley couldn’t be what she needed it to be.

  And when she thought about her husband, waiting at home for her, and her baby girl looking forward to her return, she hated herself. How could she possibly not be satisfied with them?

  She’d been offered the chance at a directorship with a national program that set guidelines and provided funding for shelters and educational facilities for homeless kids. Several times during the past two days she’d been encouraged to apply for the position. Not only by people she met, but by the hiring committee itself—after they’d attended her “standing room only” workshop.

  She’d turned them down.

  And as the miles rushed past, she was mourning the loss of what might have been.

  “GRANDMA, YOU CANNOT possibly feed three people three meals a day in three different places!”

  “I’ll ask you to remember that I am the one with seniority here, young man,” Lonna said as she watched Keith install her new scanner the following Sunday. “Which makes me the boss.”

  The old woman was sitting in one of two floral upholstered armchairs in her living room. Bonnie sat in the other, her heart going out to her husband. And to the woman who was fighting for the right to live her life the way she wanted to. The way she’d chosen for herself.

  “I know you’re the boss,” Keith grumbled, lying on his back as he ran a cable behind the desk. “But that doesn’t mean you can ignore the dictates of time. Or your own physical boundaries.”

  “It means I make my own decisions and that’s that,” Grandma said, her face set.

  Keith sat up. “And I’m supposed to sit here and watch you kill yourself?”

  “And what’s the point, young man, of being alive if I can’t really live?”

  As she glanced back and forth between them, Bonnie’s smile was absent. Keith, giving up his Sunday to help his grandmother, presented such a wonderful picture to her as he sat there on the carpet, the jeans and polo shirt he’d changed into after church outlining his muscles and his slenderness, a look of pure frustration creasing his brow.

  She watched Grandma in her navy slacks and polka-dot blouse, her nylon-clad feet in navy pumps even in
the comfort of her own home. The stubborn set of her jaw and lips was at odds with the vulnerability in those sharp blue eyes.

  Keith lay back down, screwing the two sides of the cable plug into the back of the hard drive.

  “My friends and I have been watching out for each other since we were children,” Lonna said, her gaze boring into the bottom of Keith’s soft leather loafers. “Through broken toys, bad grades, dating, college graduation, broken marriages, babies, your grandfather’s death, the death of my son. We certainly aren’t going to stop now.”

  “I’m not asking you to stop caring, Grandma, or even to stop doing. I’m just asking you to realize that you are only one woman, and you’re seventy-six years old.” Keith’s muffled words were interspersed with an occasional grunt. “What’s going to happen to all of them when you collapse from overwork? When you fall and hurt yourself? Or have a stroke?”

  Bonnie saw what her husband did not—the brief flash of fear in the old woman’s eyes.

  “I’m going to go when it’s my time,” Lonna said, voice as strident as ever. “And when that happens, the good Lord will provide. Until then, I have to do everything I can for others.”

  Sitting up, Keith bumped his head on the desk. And didn’t swear, at least not out loud. Bonnie wanted badly to hug him.

  “Grandma, I cannot allow—”

  “Hey,” Bonnie interrupted before their argument could erupt into a full-fledged fight. “I have an idea.”

  Two pairs of angry eyes turned her way.

  “I know there are a lot of stay-at-home moms in this town who’d be willing to do a meal a week. And probably more. Why don’t you organize them, Grandma? Put out requests, talk to Pastor Edwards and Becca Parsons…”

  “Bonnie, you’re talking about a lot of work,” Keith began.

  “…talk to your grandson who could put a public-service announcement on the newest local cable station,” Bonnie said, interrupting her husband a second time.

  “You might just have something there.” Lonna was sitting forward, her expression eager.

  “When I was at the conference in Phoenix this week, I sat next to a woman at lunch who’s the director of a women’s shelter. Her mother is ninety-one and still lives on her own, although she can’t cook anymore. This woman was telling me about the Meals on Wheels program they use. I’ve heard of it of course, but never really knew much about it. All the food is cooked in one place and then volunteer drivers take the meals around at specified times each day. With enough volunteers, which would be easy to come by in Shelter Valley, you could start our own version of Meals on Wheels.”

  “I only have three friends in need,” Grandma said, sitting forward, “but I’m sure there are more. You’re a smart young woman, Bonnie, and you’re right—Shelter Valley is long overdue for something like this. I’ll get started on it this afternoon. I can coordinate, get cooks, drivers….”

  Grandma had crossed over to her desk and was writing in a spiral notebook.

  “In Phoenix they run the program out of a hospital. The cooking’s all done in the kitchen there.”

  “We don’t have a hospital,” Lonna murmured, “but we don’t really need anything that big. And if our program grows, we can always use the church kitchen.”

  “We might even be able to work something out with the kitchen at Montford,” Bonnie said as the thought occurred to her. “I don’t know about weekends, but they’re certainly there from breakfast to dinnertime every day during the week.”

  Whatever way Grandma decided to work things out, the idea was a good one. Bonnie was so caught up in the possibilities, she forgot all about her husband still sitting on the floor by the computer. Until he stood up.

  He was frowning. Avoiding her eyes. He wanted Grandma to slow down, to stop taking on the care of all her friends. Not to run another program.

  With a sinking stomach, Bonnie wondered if she’d just given him one more thing to be angry about.

  “I wish you’d think about this some more, Grandma,” Keith said, closing his bag of cords and sundry other computer items. “Anyway, you can’t start this afternoon. We were planning on taking you home for dinner.” It was pretty well understood that dinner with them was the real reason Lonna had called him over in the first place. “Greg and Beth are already there with Katie and Ryan. They’re expecting you. You’re Ry’s only grandparent, too, you know.”

  Looking up from her pad, Grandma’s eyes softened perceptibly as she glanced from her grandson to his wife. “You’re sure I won’t be intruding on you young folks?”

  Every Sunday for almost seven years, and still she had to ask. “We’re positive.”

  “Well, then.” She set the pad down and picked up the purse that had been waiting on the edge of her desk. “I guess since we’ve been without a program for a hundred years, one more day won’t hurt. I already did breakfast this morning, and Grace’s daughter is in town today and said she’d see that everyone got dinner.”

  Lonna talked and planned all the way over to Bonnie’s house. Keith contributed nothing to the conversation.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHANE WAS LANDSCAPING the following evening when Bonnie walked outside with Beth and Ryan and Katie.

  “Are you sure you want her?” Bonnie asked, glancing at her little girl, a miniature of herself with those green eyes and riotous black curls, tightly clutching her aunt’s free hand.

  “You come,” Ryan said, settled on his mother’s hip, nodding down at Katie.

  “Yes, Ryan,” Katie said, looking up at her mother, her little brow puckered with worry at the thought that she might be denied a dinner of macaroni-and-cheese with her cousin.

  “I really don’t mind.” Beth laughed. “I never should’ve told Ryan in front of Katie that I was making macaroni-and-cheese for dinner tonight, instead of Wednesday. I’m really sorry about this.”

  “No!” Bonnie assured her sister-in-law. “I’m happy to get some time to myself. I just feel bad for you, dealing with the two terrors on your own.”

  “Since we don’t have even one terror between us, I’ll be fine,” Beth was saying, lowering Ryan to the ground so he could climb into the back of his mother’s new Ford Taurus. “Besides, Greg’s working late and I get lonely in that house when it’s just Ry and me.”

  Shane was watching as she got Katie’s car seat from the van and loaded it into Beth’s car. She waved at him.

  Dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, he looked like something straight out of a celebrity magazine. Dark hair, rugged and gorgeous…

  “Hurry, Mama!” Katie jumped up and down on the pavement beside her.

  Beth helped her buckle the seat in. “Maybe you and Keith can have some time alone,” she said, sending her friend a warm smile.

  “Keith and Martha are ordering in dinner again and working late.” Bonnie related what she’d just heard from her husband when she’d called about Katie going home with Beth. “They’re trying to come up with enough programming ideas to fill fifty percent of their airtime and be ready for viewing within a year. In two years, they’re supposed to be at a hundred percent.”

  The kids were in their seats and demanding dinner, each egged on by the other so that the little voices were getting louder and shriller by the second, preventing any reply Beth might have made.

  “I’ll have Keith pick her up on his way home.” Bonnie raised her voice to be heard.

  Beth nodded and climbed behind the wheel, her composure unaffected by the children’s noise. A woman who’d lived through hell, but found her own piece of heaven.

  Bonnie felt tears in the back of her throat as she watched them drive away.

  THERE WAS REALLY no reason to hang around. Other than another letter from Mike Diamond to avoid, there was nothing pressing in the office. And no plans to make for Little Spirits, when she didn’t even know if there’d be a Little Spirits this time next year…

  “Hi, Bonnie.”

  Spinning on the asph
alt, Bonnie smiled at Shane. His interruptions always seemed to be perfectly timed.

  “Hi! How’s your day been?”

  “Good.” He leaned on the edge trimmer he’d just run around the perimeter of the property. “Now that I’ve learned my way around and I’ve got a routine, I finished everything on my list faster than I thought I would, but that’s okay. I just wrote a note to remind myself to schedule more things per day.”

  It was a long sentence for him. And with only a hint of the deliberateness with which he usually spoke, reminding Bonnie of the young man she’d loved so desperately in high school. A man with a plan.

  “Do you have to work a certain number of hours a day?” she asked, squinting into the setting sun. In spite of the balmy April day, she was starting to feel warm in her black stretch pants and short-sleeved sweater.

  “No.” Shane’s gaze met hers and then wandered away.

  “Oh. That’s good.” It was a lame reply but all she could think of. She sensed that he was no longer interested in discussing his schedule.

  “Why didn’t you leave?” he asked, nodding toward the drive Beth had just exited.

  “Katie wanted to go home with Ryan.”

  He continued to watch the road. “Annnd…you annnd…Keith can…have dinner…alone.” His speech was suddenly awkward, slow and a little slurred.

  His embarrassment was painful to watch.

  She shook her head, wishing there was a way to reach Shane, to tell him he was fine just as he was. That he still had a full life ahead of him.

  But she wasn’t completely sure that was true. The whole thing was so damned sad.

  “Keith’s working late.”

  “You’ll be alone for dinner.”

  Bonnie wondered if she could get Shane involved in sports, if he’d be able to handle the chaos of a Shelter Valley men’s baseball game.

  “I don’t mind. I can go for a longer jog,” she said, shrugging.

  “Will you eat dinner first?”

  Grinning, Bonnie patted Shane’s forearm. “I’ll grab a sandwich or something,” she assured him. “Don’t worry, I’ll eat.”