Born in the Valley

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  He’d promised Greg that he’d spend the evening with her, not that he’d be open to friendly conversation.

  With the help of a flashlight, Keith dug a little pit for the log, then went back to get the wine. Bonnie spread the blanket close enough to the pit that he could tend the fire without having to move.

  Darkness had fallen during the short drive out, and once the sun was down, the evenings were still chilly enough to warrant sweaters. Without them, the fire would be just right.

  Bonnie broke the silence. “Have you got matches?” She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of that until now. If they had to drive all the way back to town…

  “Right here.” He pulled a pack out of the back pocket of his jeans.

  Ripping off a match, he struck it, holding it away from him as it plumed into flame, lowering it to one end of the paper-wrapped log.

  As she watched the flames burst into life, Bonnie’s cell phone rang. Keith glanced at her.

  “It could be Katie.” Which was why she’d carried the phone from the car. She and her phone were inseparable any time she and Katie were apart. It had been that way from the beginning.

  Her mind on the moments ahead with Keith, she said hello.

  And then went numb. The blood drained from her face. Less than a minute later she hung up the phone, fear tightening her chest. Her throat.

  She stared at Keith. God, she needed his strength.

  And she was going to have to hurt him again.

  “What is it?” His voice was firm, demanding. He was already covering the fire with dirt, although his eyes never left Bonnie’s face.

  “Grandma,” she said, her voice cracked and barely audible, even to her. “She’s been taken to Phoenix. They think she had a heart attack.”

  IT WAS ONE of the longest nights of Keith’s life. Most of the time, as he sat in the too-bright waiting room of a too-busy hospital, he felt completely separate from the people swarming around him, separate, it seemed, from the whole of human existence. As though he was on an island alone. And yet, as the hours dragged on with precious few words from anyone who knew anything about his grandmother, Bonnie seemed to inhabit the island with him more often than not.

  They didn’t talk much. They just sat quietly together. Later they were joined by Beth and Greg, who must have dropped off the children somewhere.

  Coffee appeared. He didn’t remember having any. Someone offered him a pillow. Someone in a pair of green scrubs.

  What a ludicrous thought. As if he could sleep at a time like this.

  He took the pillow for Bonnie.

  And then noticed that she’d been offered one, as well. She wasn’t using hers, either.

  Beth said something about calling Martha. And Jennifer Grayson, the teacher of the three-year-olds at the day care and Bonnie’s longest-standing employee. She moved to a far corner of the waiting room, a cell phone at her ear.

  Greg sat and read a magazine, though whenever Keith glanced his way, he caught his brother-in-law staring, seemingly, at nothing.

  Life was hell. Love was hell. Most of all, dying was hell.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  GRANDMA DIDN’T DIE.

  After a night that lasted days, the doctor finally assured them that her heart was strong and healthy—for a woman of her age. As far as he could tell, she’d been suffering from a severe case of indigestion.

  And exhaustion.

  He intended to keep her for at least a week, to make her rest, to keep her hooked up to a monitor just in case and to run some tests.

  Keith stayed in Phoenix to be close to her. Bonnie returned to work—and home, since Keith wasn’t there—on Tuesday, leaving Katie with Greg and Beth after work every day so she could make a run to Phoenix to sit with Grandma.

  With no pastor to turn to, no husband present and accounted for, no Grandma to confide in, Bonnie tackled the issue with Shane herself.

  On Wednesday evening. After the last parent had left and before she drove to Phoenix.

  She found him in one of the complex’s common areas, waxing the floor.

  “Can I talk to you a sec?” she called over the sound of the large machine he was guiding back and forth across the floor.

  He shut off the machine immediately. “Yes.”

  And then, before she could figure out a way to begin when she had no idea which direction to take, Shane said, “I want to make you happy again, Bonnie.”

  He’d given her the perfect opening—if she could figure out what to do with it.

  “I’m married, Shane.” At least for the moment.

  “But you aren’t happy.”

  And suddenly all she could think about was Katie. The little girl made life worth living. From the moment her daughter had left her body and entered the world, Bonnie had felt an incredible sense of love and protectiveness.

  No matter what else happened, that mattered.

  “I can make you happy.” The repetition appeared to be intentional for once.

  “I have a daughter, Shane.”

  Such an obvious truth and yet, in that moment, so profound.

  “I have to think of Katie first and foremost,” Bonnie said. She was talking to the janitor, but the words reverberated inside her, loud and sure.

  Hands still on the bars of the waxing machine, Shane watched her, the expression on his face frozen one moment, confused the next.

  He pulled a note out of his pocket. Read it. Replaced it.

  She was probably upsetting his schedule.

  She’d promised to help him make up a better one. And hadn’t done it yet.

  “I’m not going to do anything to hurt Katie,” she pressed on, eager to get this done and get out, let him continue with his list of jobs.

  His silence made her uneasy. Did he not understand? Or were his feelings hurt, after all?

  God, she hated this. All she’d wanted to do was help him.

  “Anything between you and me would hurt her, Shane,” she told him, speaking to the little boy she saw in him most often.

  He loved the kids. She’d seen how gentle he was with them the time or two he’d had to fix something at the day care when they were there. He’d watched them with a grin on his face.

  Come to think of it, he’d always been good with kids. Patient with the younger siblings of his friends, working with younger kids during the summer in a city athletic program. She’d always figured it was because he was an only child. Kids were a novelty to him.

  And because it fed his ego to be the hero.

  He continued to stare at her, as though he expected more.

  “Children need stable home lives,” she continued. “Especially in a town the size of Shelter Valley. If I do anything that would cause a scandal, it’ll affect Katie’s whole life.”

  Like leaving the child’s father wouldn’t?

  “Okay.”

  Shane turned the machine back on.

  “Okay?” she called over the loud humming of the waxer.

  “Okay,” he called back, and started to move in the slow, rhythmic motion she’d interrupted.

  Apparently she’d been worrying about nothing. He probably didn’t even remember the kiss that had been making her sick for days.

  Life.

  Would she ever understand it?

  “HOW WAS YOUR DAY?”

  Keith looked relatively rested in the jeans and short-sleeved shirt she’d packed for him earlier in the week.

  “Good. Yours?”

  “Fine.”

  “Grandma seemed to be in better spirits.”

  “She’s pissed off at me for making her stay.” He tended to his food and the napkin on his lap, not her.

  “Yeah, but she’s probably secretly glad. She needed the rest.”

  Bonnie had barely been there an hour when Grandma had shooed them out to have a nice dinner, rather than the hospital-cafeteria food they’d been eating all week. She’d shamelessly played the sick-old-lady card, forcing them to either upset her while
she lay there in a hospital bed or spend time together. Bonnie saw through the ploy and so, she was sure, did Keith.

  Still, here they were, a separated couple sharing a cozy dinner.

  Grandma had been engrossed in a game show, sputtering answers to the idiot contestants, when they’d left. She certainly hadn’t appeared the least bit sick or frail.

  “Martha called. The crew filmed and aired graduation without a hitch.”

  “Oh. Good.” Montford graduations were usually a big thing in Shelter Valley, as the town doubled in size with all the parents coming to celebrate. She’d barely noticed the increased traffic.

  “How’s Katie?”

  “Fine. She misses you.”

  “I miss her, too. But she’s probably having the time of her life with Greg and Beth.”

  “Yeah, but I think she’s a little lost without her routine. She was hanging on me all day today.”

  He nodded. And ate.

  Bonnie’s mind wandered back to her conversation with Shane. Or rather, the conversation she’d had simultaneously with herself. If she left Katie’s father, it would affect the rest of Katie’s life. Not just the months the child would spend adjusting, but every day, every year, every holiday and special occasion for the rest of her life.

  Was her need to make a difference in the world worth that much to her? Children survived divorce. But did she and Keith have a valid enough reason for putting their daughter through that?

  She just didn’t know.

  “Becca’s doing all of Grandma’s meal organizing for the next two weeks. And she’s got people lined up for Grandma’s turns, too.”

  Bonnie had handed in the grant proposal, but knew Keith wouldn’t want to hear about that.

  He nodded. Took a swig from the beer bottle in front of him. Chewed. She waited. For what she didn’t know. Nothing came.

  Was this what they’d come to? Were there so many forbidden and potentially explosive or hurtful topics between them that there was nothing left to say?

  And how good could that be for Katie? To live in a house filled with silence?

  Sitting across from Keith at the California Pizza Kitchen in Phoenix on Thursday night, she wished she could just lie down and cry. Right there, over her pizza.

  “Edwards quit his job,” she told him.

  Not the uplifting topic for which she’d been searching.

  Using his fork, Keith scooped up the lettuce and tomatoes that had fallen from his slice of pizza. “They’d have fired him, anyway.”

  “Rumor has it that he and Emily Baker are leaving Shelter Valley. Together.”

  “What about her kids? She has two boys in high school, doesn’t she?”

  “One’s in his first year at Montford, but they’re both living at home. I assume they’ll stay with their father.”

  “I guess we’ll have interim preachers until they hire someone.”

  That was all he had to say?

  “So you think it’s right, what they’re doing?”

  He shrugged, tended to his plate. “It’s not for me to say.”

  Bonnie stopped eating altogether. “But what do you think, Keith?” She really had to know. She was a thirty-five-year-old woman in the middle of a crisis and she needed the opinion of the man who’d been her anchor for most of her adult life. “I mean, what they’re doing is incredibly selfish.”

  Keith grabbed a couple of strands of shredded lettuce from his plate. Put them in his mouth.

  “What they’re doing is wrong, in that they pursued their own happiness when they were still obligated elsewhere—living a lie.”

  “But the end result isn’t wrong? Once you’re no longer living the lie, it’s okay to do anything you want in the pursuit of happiness?”

  Keith’s shoulders dropped as he scrutinized her. “I don’t know the answer to that, Bonnie. Certainly we have a right to happiness.”

  “But at what cost?” It was beginning to sound as if she was trying to talk her way back into her marriage.

  So was she? Had she really determined that was the right decision?

  “I think you have to look farther than the here and now,” Keith said slowly. “Take Martha, for instance. She was devastated when Todd left. Her kids’ lives have been changed irrevocably. But in the long run, they might be better off. What kind of atmosphere would they have provided for those kids—and each other—if Todd had stayed with Martha while he was in love with someone else? At least now those kids live in a home offering them unconditional love. And what kind of eventual effect would it have had on Martha? Knowing that the man she went to bed with every night wished she were someone else?”

  “But if he’d never pursued that relationship, she’d never have known.”

  “You don’t think she’d have known something was wrong? You can’t live with a person and not sense that he—or she—isn’t happy.”

  Why did she feel they weren’t talking about Martha and Todd Moore at all?

  “So you’re saying it’s kinder for someone to be selfish and pursue his own happiness at the cost of others because in the long run, the others will be happier?”

  He shook his head when the waiter appeared, asking if he wanted another beer. “I don’t know,” he told Bonnie, putting his napkin down. “Who’s to say if it would be better to live alone or to live with someone who’s not really happy.”

  “Happiness is a nebulous thing. And it is, to some extent, in our control,” Bonnie said slowly, thinking out loud. “Don’t you think people can change their thinking, focus on what does make them happy? Don’t you think that’s the right thing to do?”

  “I don’t believe it’s a matter of right and wrong. It’s more a question of making the best decision for the greatest number of people concerned.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Has it worked for you, Bon?” he asked, his gaze penetrating deeper than it had in many days. “Have you been able to make yourself happy by focusing on the parts of your life that you like?”

  He knew the answer to that.

  And maybe he’d given her his answer, too. He wasn’t planning to be the spouse who went to bed every night with someone who wasn’t happy to be there.

  “Besides,” he added as the waiter disappeared with their credit card, “who’s to say that Martha, or Emily Edwards for that matter, are condemned to lives of unhappiness? Maybe there’s something else waiting for them just around the corner. Something that never would’ve presented itself if they were still married.”

  “By something else, do you mean some one?”

  The waiter returned with a slip for Keith to sign, leaving Bonnie to ponder her question. And his implied answer.

  Was Keith already moving on? Mentally, if nothing else? Panic struck her at the thought. His head was bent as he calculated the tip.

  He was her husband.

  And yet, in fairness to him, Bonnie had to figure out why she felt that way. Was it because she wanted him? Or just because she didn’t want anyone else to have what she considered hers?

  He thanked the waiter, wished him a good evening.

  She wanted Keith, loved him to distraction.

  Didn’t she?

  So why wasn’t that enough?

  “In answer to your question,” he said, right behind her as they headed out the door, “it could be either. An opportunity, a person. Martha loves her job, and it’s an opportunity she wouldn’t have had sitting at home while her kids all grew up and left.”

  And Martha was still young enough, attractive enough, to fall in love and live happily ever after.

  KEITH WONDERED if impasses could last forever. He’d been home from Phoenix for more than a week. He got up every day, went to work, picked up Katie from Little Spirits on the days he had her, came home, did chores, kissed Katie good-night, watched television and went to bed.

  On the evenings that Bonnie took the little girl to the Richards home where she was staying, he skipped the stop at the day care,
came home, did chores, skipped the good-night kisses, watched television and went to bed.

  Katie seemed to be faring all right, enjoying the extra time she got to spend playing with her cousin and finding it a special treat to sleep in the same big bed as her mommy when she was there.

  He hardly spoke to Bonnie that week, so he had no real idea how she was doing.

  Grandma was back in full swing, adding more people to her meals list, anticipating the grant money she hoped would soon come in. When he’d last spoken with her, she was planning to move a cooking crew into the church kitchen to keep up.

  Keith worried about her more than ever—a fact that only irritated Lonna.

  “I’ve just been through every damn test known to man and probably some that aren’t yet. I’m healthy as a horse.”

  “Those tests might’ve had great results,” he told Martha on the Wednesday afternoon not quite two weeks after his return home, “but if she keeps up this pace, we’ll be running them all again, with different results. She’s seventy-six years old.”

  He couldn’t go through another night like that hellishly long one at the hospital in Phoenix. At least, not any time soon.

  “She’s going to die, Keith. It’s a given. It’s just a matter of the quality of life you allow her while she’s here. You want it to be worthwhile, fulfilling, or a waste?”

  He stared at his program director, hearing something he had an idea he’d been told many times.

  Still. “It could also be a matter of quantity,” he told Martha.

  “Right.” She nodded, her face serious. “What would you choose for her, five years of an unhappy wasted life, or three filled with achievement and a measure of happiness?”

  Who are you really thinking about here?

  He didn’t know where the question had come from. Martha certainly hadn’t asked. But once it was in the forefront of his consciousness, he couldn’t avoid it.

  He wanted as many years as he could possibly squeeze out of his grandmother’s life—to put off the day he’d have to say goodbye to her forever. Did that mean he was willing to sacrifice her happiness to gain those years?

  His conversation with Bonnie the last time they’d had dinner together replayed itself in bits and pieces. She’d been asking him variations of this same question. At what cost did one obtain happiness?