Born in the Valley

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “It’s horrible, isn’t it, to discover that faith can always be broken?” Martha asked quietly as they drove through streets that had been home to both of them most of their lives.

  “Yeah.”

  A horrible lesson to learn when he was trying to have faith in a woman he didn’t even recognize anymore.

  ONE OF BONNIE’S TEACHERS, Aubrey Winston, the most recent addition to Little Spirits staff, quit her job on Monday. She was young, new in town and, after the last fire, too nervous to stay at the day care.

  Sorry to lose an employee, especially for that reason, Bonnie nevertheless took over as the second teacher in the one-year-olds’ class until she could hire a replacement. She’d forgotten what it was like to spend so many hours virtually alone with people who were still too young to talk.

  To add to the stress, Keith had been more distant than ever since she’d interrupted him and Martha on Monday, and she hadn’t had the chance to have it out with him. In the classroom all day, she’d had to stay late each evening to take care of management details.

  On Thursday afternoon, three days after the fire, when Becca Parsons came in to volunteer, Bonnie thankfully gave her Aubrey’s position for the rest of the day, grabbed her purse and left the building.

  She had no plans. No destination in mind. Other than a sojourn for peace and regrouping. But she wasn’t really surprised, either, when she ended up at the building that housed the new MUTV studio.

  She went in the back way—not that she was expecting to happen upon anything unexpected.

  Alan Rafkin, Keith’s long-time technical engineer, came out of a door ahead of her.

  “Hey, Alan.” Bonnie smiled.

  “Bonnie! Good to see you.” Then he frowned. “You’re not at Little Spirits. There isn’t any more trouble, is there?”

  “Just playing hooky for an hour,” Bonnie replied, grinning.

  Alan, a sixty-five-year-old bachelor, had never needed the day care’s services, but it didn’t surprise Bonnie that he knew about her troubles.

  “Keith’s in the studio,” Alan told her.

  “Thanks.” Bonnie smiled again, shoving her keys in the back pocket of her black designer jeans as he headed off in the opposite direction.

  She followed the twists and turns down hallways and around corners, remembering the day the previous September when she and Keith and a group of students had made the trek a hundred times or more, helping with moving in.

  She’d passed Keith in the hall that many times, too. It didn’t seem to matter what she’d said that weekend, she’d made him laugh. As though she were the wittiest woman alive.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d made Keith laugh.

  Was that because she’d lost her wit? Or he his sense of humor?

  He was alone, sitting at the computer used to update the bulletin board that ran on MUTV during every half-hour commercial break. One of his full-time employees, Camilla White, usually sat there.

  Keith’s hair, always a little long, needed a trim. Something Bonnie usually did for him. He was wearing the tan jeans she loved and a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms.

  Bonnie’s stomach quivered. God, he looked good.

  Sometimes it was hard to believe he was hers. Who’d ever have thought that plump Bonnie Richards, nurturer extraordinaire, the girl dumped by the high-school quarterback, would end up with the greatest-looking guy in town?

  And who’d have guessed she’d screw it up?

  “Where’s Camille?”

  “Sick.” He spun around. “Bonnie! Is everything okay?”

  The immediate crease in his brow, the shadowing of his eyes on seeing her, made her wish she hadn’t come.

  “Everything’s fine,” she said, fidgeting with the hem of her collared T-shirt as she came closer, sat sideways in the chair next to him.

  All week there’d been one thing on her mind. More than the most recent fire at Little Spirits, more than her loss of an employee and possible clients, or Grandma Nielson and her friends, or even her own dissatisfactions, what had been bothering her was the cozy scene between Keith and Martha. The scene she’d interrupted.

  “I had a chance to slip away and thought I’d see if you could get free for an hour.”

  He studied her for several seconds before saying, “Okay.”

  “You can leave?”

  His attention reverted to the computer screen with its blinking cursor. And then he checked his watch.

  “I guess,” he said hesitantly. In the old days, he’d always been eager for their trysts. Had told her they were the most important part of his days.

  But then, it had been a long time since she’d offered. Maybe he’d forgotten.

  They walked out to the football field and beyond, until they were forging a path through undeveloped desert.

  “I had another letter from Mike Diamond this morning.”

  “I thought your mail doesn’t come until noon.” He was walking far enough away that their fingers didn’t even brush.

  “It came by overnight express.”

  She glanced over at her husband’s bent head. Just how intimate were he and Martha Moore? Was her discovery of the two of them prompting this withdrawal?

  “He’s raising my rent. Adding the cost-of-living increases he hasn’t charged in the past five years.”

  “Can he do that?”

  “I think so.”

  “How much will it be?”

  She told him. Watching their feet step on the hard dusty ground, one foot and then another. In unison.

  At least there was something about them that still was.

  “There’ll be less profit of course, but you can afford it.”

  If she wanted to.

  “I have a feeling this is just the beginning,” she said, her mind only half on the conversation. “He’s going to make my life hell until I go.”

  “Eventually he’ll lose that offer and need you to stay.”

  She’d thought of that, but wondered how desperate Diamond would get first.

  “He offered to pay me twice that if I leave now.”

  Keith nodded. “A relocation fee.”

  “He’s coming in next week.”

  Her husband’s head shot around. It was one of the few times he’d looked her in the eye all week. “You agreed to the terms?”

  “No. He’s coming for an inspection.”

  “What?”

  “The lease allows it. He’s just never done it before.”

  “You think he’s going to be looking for things to give you a hard time about?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Probably.”

  Hands in his pockets, Keith stopped, faced her.

  “Why did you come here?”

  “You’ve been so distant all week…” She needed to rail at him. But she couldn’t. As far as she knew, he’d done nothing wrong.

  “Just preoccupied.”

  She could leave it at that. The part of her spinning out of control begged her to leave it at that.

  “You want to talk about it?” she asked, instead.

  Bonnie hardly breathed, waiting for his reply. Prepared to hear what a paragon of virtue and good works Martha was or—maybe worse—to be told that her husband no longer wanted to share his troubles with his wife. She crossed her arms behind her, squeezing her hands together.

  When it finally came, the reply was nothing she could have dreamed up. Ever. It was that ludicrous.

  Pastor Edwards and Emily Baker?

  “There’s no way,” she said with complete certainty. “You must’ve seen wrong.”

  “I stood there and watched her button her blouse, Bonnie.”

  “So maybe she hurt herself, needed a Band-Aid, just had surgery. Something.” As farfetched and nonsensical as her reply was, Bonnie spoke with complete sincerity.

  “Her bra was still hanging behind her.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BONNIE SANK onto a bould
er, chin to her chest, and peered sideways at her husband.

  “Has the whole world gone mad?” she whispered.

  “It’s sure seems that way lately.”

  She remembered the day not so long ago that she’d gone to see the pastor. Emily Baker had been out in the hall, waiting to go in after her. But according to Keith, they’d claimed that they hadn’t been alone together. Nothing was making sense.

  For the first time in years, Bonnie ached for her mother’s arms around her, enclosing her in a world where some things were solid and sure.

  “If you can’t trust your preacher, who can you trust?” she muttered.

  Apparently Keith didn’t have any answers, either. He sat down beside her. “Bon? Is there someone else?”

  “What?” Turning her head, she stared at him. What on earth was he talking about? “You mean, with me?”

  He nodded.

  “As in a man?”

  “Yeah.”

  Mouth open, she just kept staring. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Rubbing a hand through his hair, he sighed. “I know you wouldn’t be seeing anyone, but it does occur to me that there might be someone you…have feelings for.”

  The idea was almost as preposterous as Pastor Edwards and Mrs. Baker.

  Was Keith projecting his own desires onto her?

  “I love you.” She wanted no doubt about that.

  “Good people don’t ask to fall in love at inappropriate times, but sometimes it happens, anyway,” he said. “We can’t always govern our hearts.”

  Oh, God. Her face felt hot. And then cold.

  “I work with toddlers all day,” she reminded him. “Where on earth would I find a man to ruin my life over?”

  He, on the other hand, worked with a lovely and competent assistant….

  “A father, maybe.”

  “Whatever else I might be unsure of,” she told him emphatically, “I’ve never had a moment’s doubt about my love for you. Why would I struggle so hard to be content with my life here if not for you?”

  Elbows on his knees, his gaze was focused in front of them as he nodded.

  She didn’t want to ask. But had to know.

  “This is really about you, isn’t it.” Never in a million lifetimes would she have thought they’d be having this conversation.

  “Uh-uh.” He shook his head. But didn’t meet her eyes.

  “I saw you with her, Keith. I saw the look in your eyes.”

  A look she’d believed was reserved for her. And she wasn’t going to cry, dammit.

  “You’re talking about Martha?”

  “Is there anyone else?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But there is her?” She sounded like a nagging, insecure wife.

  “Not in the way you mean.”

  It was time to let this drop. To trust her husband.

  “So you can honestly tell me you feel nothing for her? At least, nothing more than you feel for any of your other co-workers?”

  He paused.

  The dust smeared before her eyes, becoming one big pool of beige. Her stomach churned.

  And then he turned to her, his gaze accusing. “What is it with you, Bonnie? I’m not allowed to have friends? You’ve never been this way before.”

  He was right. To a point. She’d never been jealous because he’d never given her reason to be.

  “I just don’t want you spending time alone with her,” she said. “Look what happened to Pastor Edwards.”

  Keith stood up abruptly. “No, Bonnie, you don’t get to change the rules,” he bit out. “Our relationship has never been about ownership and it’s not going to start now. I’m not a possession. You do not choose who I may befriend and who I may not.”

  Bonnie was momentarily shocked speechless. She stood, but found she couldn’t head back. Not yet. “Does that mean you can have an affair and I’ve got no say in the matter?” she asked after moments of unfriendly silence.

  “Of course not.” The anger appeared to have left him as suddenly as it had come. His gaze, holding her own, softened perceptibly. “I just never thought there’d be room for doubt between us.”

  “Like I said, the world’s gone mad.”

  “Yeah,” he said, his arm touching hers as they started back.

  “So how do we protect ourselves?”

  “I don’t think we can,” he replied sadly. “The truth of the matter is, people change. Hearts change. Minds change.”

  By people did he mean her? Or him?

  She supposed it didn’t matter.

  Because he was right.

  NOTHING MADE SENSE.

  “What’ve we got in common here?” Greg asked, though he and Culver had already gone over the evidence—what little there was—several times.

  “Three fires,” he answered himself while his deputy looked over notes.

  “But all set differently,” Culver muttered.

  “And we can’t rule out the flooded bathroom and fallen ceiling panel.”

  “Those could’ve been normal wear and tear, just like your sister thought.” Culver looked up at him.

  The two men, both in uniform, were meeting in Greg’s office. Greg leaned back with an elbow on the arm of his chair behind his massive desk; Culver, an ankle crossed over his knee, sat in one of the chairs in front of it.

  “If this is an inside job, the john and the ceiling could easily have been tampered with.”

  “I checked out the other tenants this afternoon,” Culver said, eyes narrowed. “No one else is having any structural problems.”

  “The day-care portion of the mall was built first.”

  “Only by a few weeks. They all opened at the same time.”

  Dropping his arm, Greg stood up. Paced once around the room. Settled on a corner of his desk. They’d had deputies driving by the day care more often, but so far there’d been absolutely nothing to report.

  “Who do you suspect?” he asked.

  “Because nothing fits any kind of MO, the way I see it we have three choices,” Culver said.

  “They are?”

  “We’re dealing with someone really stupid—”

  “An amateur.”

  “That’s a given. But this is either a stupid amateur who’ll eventually get caught. Someone with an ax to grind, who isn’t smart enough to fight his battles in a legal way.”

  Greg nodded. “Number two?”

  “It’s a really smart amateur who’s making us run in circles. Maybe a kid who’s in it for the challenge.”

  Harder. But definitely a possibility.

  “Or?”

  “Or it’s an inside job, meaning Diamond or your sister.”

  Everyone else at Little Spirits had alibis. Except the janitor, who couldn’t remember where he’d been.

  But in his case, his lack of memory was his alibi. And that checked out with his physician.

  “My sister doesn’t have a strong enough motive.”

  “I agree.”

  Greg was damn glad to hear that.

  “And while Diamond has the motive and no verifiable alibi, he says he stands to lose, not gain, by these mishaps, and I believe him. It doesn’t make sense that he’d sabotage his own sale. He admitted to the gambling problem, by the way. And to being in debt past his ears.”

  Once again, Greg agreed. He also trusted his deputy’s instincts.

  “If it’s either of the first two, the strikes are going to get more dangerous, do more damage, possibly even during the daytime when Bonnie’s got kids there.”

  Culver laid a hand on Greg’s shoulder as he passed him on his way out. “We’ll get him, Sheriff. We always do.”

  Yeah. Before or after Bonnie got hurt?

  BONNIE RAN INTO Becca and Bethany Parsons in the grocery store Thursday after work. She had Katie in the cart and needed to get home to make dinner, but wanted to know how the afternoon had gone.

  “You’d left before I got back,” she told her friend as the two little girls s
truck up a toddler version of conversation. “Did the one-year-olds wear you out?”

  “No.” Becca chuckled. “I had a meeting with Junior Smith late this afternoon.”

  “So is it true that you’re running for mayor?”

  Becca glanced around, as though to ensure they were alone in the aisle. “I haven’t decided for certain, and I won’t until we get home with the baby, but Will’s encouraging me to go for it.”

  Bonnie grinned, truly happy that life was turning out so well for a woman the town had counted on for more than twenty years. “When do you leave to get him?”

  Becca named a date and then rattled off several things they had to do before they’d be permitted to bring their new son home.

  “How old is he?”

  “A month.”

  “Does he have a name?”

  “Will wants to name him Randall—after his little sister, Randi. I think he should be Will, Jr.”

  “So, you’ll have this decided sometime before his first birthday?” Bonnie asked, smiling.

  The girls were both hungry and restless, and after another moment of congratulations, Bonnie pushed her cart up the aisle.

  “By the way…” Becca called behind her.

  Handing Katie an animal cracker from the box the little girl had grabbed from a display, Bonnie turned. “Uh-huh?”

  “I saw Lonna this afternoon. Apparently she’s got a couple more people calling her for meals.”

  Bonnie had spent the evening before with Keith’s grandmother. “Yeah. And now they’re talking about visits, too. When I left last night, Grandma was working up a tentative chart to schedule volunteers.”

  Something else Bonnie had to worry about. Her attempt to help grandma meet her goals might very well be the death of the older woman.

  “You know,” Becca said, pulling alongside Bonnie again, nodding as Bonnie asked if Bethany could have a cracker. “There’s money available for community programs. I used some to start up our Save the Youth group. Maybe Lonna ought to think about writing a grant proposal.”

  “To hire help, instead of relying on volunteers?” Bonnie asked. That would sure solve one problem. Volunteers weren’t always the most reliable people to have on staff and every time one didn’t show, Lonna had to step in.