"I figured you might be heading out here and would need a key," she said, handing it to him. "The horse in your barn is mine, his name is Ozzie. I figured boarding him here was an even trade for keeping the vagrants and the vermin out, and keeping the place from falling apart. I patched the roof on the barn a year ago, but it needs a new one."
"You've been taking care of the place all these years?" Jack said.
Josie shook her head. "I left Rawlings two years after you did, but I, at least, came back occasionally. Uncle Mason was still here, so I tried to keep an eye on him. County services put him into a facility about ten years back to dry him out. He didn't last long in there. Still, when I did manage to get back, I'd come out, pound in a few nails where needed, and crank up a mower.
"Sheriff Bowles was a good friend of your father's and he kept an eye on this place, and later mine, when I moved out of state. He was the one that had it boarded up and kept watch over it. If you recall, he was not one to allow vandalism or thieving in his town. He ran this town with an iron fist and God help anyone who dared cross his path and break the law. When the County put Uncle Mason in that home and I left, the Sheriff did the same for my place. I put Denny Mosser on a yearly retainer to mow here and at my Uncle's place in town and to keep a general eye on both places for needed repairs. When I took over for Sheriff Bowles a year ago, I also took on the job of watching out for this place and a few others. I opened it up and cleaned out a bunch of mice. Other than that, it didn't look like anyone had vandalized or stolen anything. Not that I would have been able to tell, since I'd never been inside. But there didn't seem to be any gaping holes where furniture should have been. I did toss anything and everything that mice could use for nesting material. I'm sorry, but it had to be done. There aren't any couches, chairs, mattresses, drapes or the like in there anymore. People in town knew I was taking an interest in both places. Being a Fed put a scare into anyone who might have thought about breaking in."
"You were a Fed?" Jack asked, surprised.
"Yeah, was," Josie said with a half laugh, but she shifted her gaze from him to fields. "Well, if you're home to stay, I'll find somewhere to board Ozzie. A friend runs a riding and boarding place about four miles up the road. I'll talk to her. Can you give me a few days to make the arrangements?"
"Leave him here," Jack said. "I don't know how long I'm staying, but you're welcome to use the barn. Thanks for looking out for the place."
"No problem," Josie said. "Welcome back, Jack."
Jack worked steadily at his place for the next three days. He tore the plywood off most of the windows and had the electricity turned on. He got the water pump working—the plumbing was loud, but water ran through the pipes. The old appliances kicked on, but he brought in a bar-sized refrigerator because he didn't trust the old one. The place was surprising clean. There was an overall neatness to it despite a coat of dust over everything. There was no trash lying about; the cabinets were empty, and bottles of cleaning liquids were under the kitchen sink. Ancient linens and towels were clean and sealed in plastic tubs.
There were also dozens and dozens of disposable mouse and bug glue traps laid out everywhere, in cabinets and under the edges of old furniture. It seemed like every time he took a step—he was stepping in a glue trap. Josie! He grumbled and swore each time he had to peel one off and got sticky gunk on the soles of his shoes. He noticed several cats hanging around the barns and crumbling outbuildings. He also realized they must have been neutered and spayed because there weren't any younger ones running around, and the one good barn wasn't overrun with vermin.
He had not seen Josie again. Her horse was being cared for, but he hadn't caught her out there. It was almost as if she were avoiding him.
Although Jack spent those three days reacquainting himself with his home and hometown, he had never felt more alone in his life. Solitude had never bothered him before. He was used to it and usually liked it, but that was before, when he didn't have something eating away at his gut. Now, three days of solitude were more than enough for him, although to be honest, he had been talking to some of the old-timers he knew in town.
He went to the grocery and hardware stores, and haunted Cherilynn's Café, thinking it was a logical place for the town sheriff to show up. He also spent some time at the local watering hole, Riley's Tavern. Riley Connors owned it now. They had gone to high school together, and even run into each other occasionally in the Navy. However, as most transient men did, they'd eventually lost contact with each other. Kids he had gone to school with—now young men—hung out at the tavern. Some lounged around and complained about the lack of jobs and work. Others stopped in for a drink after they had finished their day's work.
He had looked up a few select friends he actually remembered, Riley being one of them. Some women from his high school days had stopped by and put out some feelers. Some of the women at the bar had made some blatant passes. Jack had never had a problem attracting women, but he wasn't interested at the moment with one exception. The woman who had peaked his attention seemed to be MIA.
Sick of his own company, Jack headed for town. He took a roundabout way and drove by the old Raintree house. The house was a quirky structure built about the same time as his parents' house in the late l890s. It was a big place, nearly as big as his parents' place, but didn't have any of the ostentatious features of his old Victorian-style mansion, which had always been oddly out of place on the ranch.
The Raintree house looked almost whimsical; a combination of Queen Anne and Southern Plantation, with touches of Gothic Revival and even some Craftsman features added into the mix probably during a remodel at some point in its history. The house had towers and eyebrow windows, elaborate double porches on the front, balconies on the back, and lots of stained-glass windows. The clapboard siding was decorated with rows and rows of patterned shingles, and there was gingerbread millwork everywhere. The roofline was elaborate peaks and gables and detailed with slate designs that replicated the shingle designs. It was an architect's nightmare, but it had always been one of his favorite places. Someone had picked all their favorite parts of different styles, stirred them up and built a house. It should have been an eyesore but somehow it worked in a quirky way.
As Jack approached the Raintree property, he slowed down and steered off onto the dirt shoulder. The entire house was surrounded by ladders and scaffolding, and it was being painted. Someone was renovating and breathing life back into the old Raintree house, which had been a unique, but mostly dilapidated house, when he had lived in Rawlings. Josie stood outside the house talking to a tall, lanky man and pointing out something. He got out of his Jeep and joined them.
"Hi." Josie's smile was pure delight, her smoky gray eyes bright with excitement. "Jack, do you remember Jimmy Richards?"
The man she introduced laughed. He was a good-looking man with a tanned face and eyes surrounded by laugh lines from spending a lot of time outdoors squinting into the sun. He was beginning to get that bit of a paunch around his middle that men gained in their mid-thirties if they didn't work hard at not gaining it. "If you don't remember me, I sure remember you. You about scared me to death, and I was barely sixteen!"
Jack nodded realizing that this was the boy he'd caught groping Josie when she had been much too young to be going out with boys. "I remember," he said with a scowl.
Jimmy held up both his hands, but he was still smiling. "She's been safe from me ever since, Scout's Honor."
"Stop it," Josie said, laughing. "Jack, this is Jimmy Richards. Jimmy owns the general contracting company that is helping me put this place back together, and he's been acting as a personal consultant when I need other tradesmen from the area."
The two men nodded to each other.
"I like to see these old places resurrected instead of torn down," Jimmy admitted. "It's going to be a beauty when you're done with it."
"How long is it going to take to finish the exterior painting?" Josie asked.
"We'll be fi
nished with the primary color today. That light greenish gray is a good color-match to the original," Jimmy promised. "There's a lot of trim and decorations, so painting all that is going to take extra time since you want us to match the original colors as best we can except for that God-awful purple that was in the mix. That's labor-intensive. We'll paint as much of the trim as we can from the scaffolding. After we take that down, we'll bring in cherry pickers for the fish-scale details and the trim pieces up by the gables. Three, maybe four more days and we should be done."
"The neighbors will be glad," Josie said. "I keep getting complaints. They can't go through me, so they've been calling the mayor."
"What are they complaining about?" Jack asked. "This place was an eyesore when I lived here. Are people actually complaining because you're fixing it up?"
Josie nodded. "You'd be surprised what people will complain about. This place has been going downhill for the last fifty years or more. Nevertheless, complain they do. We're making too much noise. The construction is making the place an eyesore. Do we have the right permits? Mrs. Jenkins next door complained about the industrial-sized dumpsters I brought in while clearing out the place. I asked her if she would rather have fifty years of booze bottles in the backyard and a hoarder's garbage in the neighborhood. I wanted to tell them to shut their traps and mind their own business, but I didn't" She wrinkled her nose and rolled her eyes. "As the Sheriff, I have to be polite."
"Which takes some considerable effort on your part," Jimmy agreed, shaking his head with a laugh.
"I made some fresh coffee. Would you like some?" Josie asked the contractor.
"No. It's time for me to cut off coffee for the day," he answered. "Mary Anne says if I drink too much caffeine, I snore at night. She's got me on that decaf stuff. I've got to go. The crew knows what they're doing. I'll be back in the morning to check on the work before they get started again."
"Thanks, Jimmy," Josie said.
"I wouldn't mind that coffee," Jack said. "Providing the coffee is caffeinated."
Josie gave him a look and a nod. "That's the only kind I drink. Follow me through the maze. It's a little tricky to get through the scaffolding."
Jack followed Josie, ducking under a lot of metal tubing and ladders to weave his way to the back door. He watched the curvy ass filling tight jeans swaying in front of him and felt his jeans getting tight. "Are you seeing Jimmy, again," he asked.
Josie laughed. "Jimmy has been married since he was eighteen years old and straight out of high school. He has five boys." She measured out marks indicating heights with her hand—"two, four, five, seven and ten. They're like stair steps and as cute as can be. Jimmy married Mary Anne Shearer. Her parents moved here when she was in her first year of high school. She was in the class below mine. You had left town by the time her family moved here. Jimmy and Mary Anne have been busy. The rumor grapevine says she's pregnant again, but they haven't made it official. Both of them wanted a big family, and they're certainly going for it." Josie stepped on a piece of rug at the back door, carefully wiped her boots and took them off. "Rule of the house," she said bluntly. "At least until the construction and outside painting is completed. I don't want that mess tracked inside."
Jack complied and followed her across a screened-in back porch. He understood why when he stepped into the house. The ancient mix of changing decades over a hundred years plus was gone. The peeling wallpaper, rusting metal kitchen cabinets and ancient appliances were all gone. There was no more hoarder's garbage stacked everywhere. Now, a sophisticated showroom kitchen opened up into a family room. He could see beyond that to an elegant curving stairway. The basic bones of the house were still there, but the downstairs was an open floor plan with one room easily blending into the next.
A skinny towheaded boy of eleven or twelve with large blue eyes was sitting at a stone countertop bar with his head leaning on one arm as he flipped through a schoolbook. When they came through the door, he sat up and frowned.
"Having problems with the math?" Josie guessed.
"Some," he mumbled.
"I'll help you later," she promised, giving his shoulder a squeeze. "Alex Carter, this is Jack Rawlings. They named the town for his family way back in 1895 when the town was founded. Jack is a Navy SEAL."
"Yeah? How do you know, Josie," the boy demanded.
"We grew up in this town together," he said, looking over as the woman in question was pouring coffee. "I've known Josie since she was seven or eight years old."
"Yeah?" the boy said, perking up and looking interested.
"No telling tales!" Josie laughed. "You don't want to give Alex any ideas. He needs to be on his best behavior for a while."
"I'm going to my room to finish my homework," the boy said. "You're missing something."
Josie looked around the kitchen quickly, but the boy grinned and took off up the stairs.
At Jack's questioning look, Josie shook her head and rolled her eyes upward.
"It's a game we play. He picks something of mine and moves or hides it in plain sight. It can't be my keys or my cell phone. Sometimes it takes a while to figure out what is missing before I can even attempt to find it. When I do find it, I turn the tables on him." She laughed. "It took me two days to find the computer mouse. It was sitting on the kitchen counter by the phone charging station. It's all about paying attention and being observant."
"Your kid," Jack asked.
"Hopefully, he will be," Josie said, passing a mug of coffee to him. "Do you need that doctored?
Jack shook his head. He drank his coffee black.
"I'm his foster mother for the time being." Josie gave a quick look to make sure the boy wasn't in listening range and lowered her voice. "Alex's mother has drug problems, and she's being evaluated as to her fitness to remain his parent."
"That sounds rough on him," Jack said.
"It is. I know what he's going through, having lived through it myself with my uncle."
"Mason Ramsey wasn't on drugs that I ever heard about," Jack said.
"Same scenario, a different choice of drug," Josie said dismissively. "Mason used alcohol. Marcy Carter uses alcohol, cocaine and anything else she can scrounge up enough money to buy. Neither of them was fit to raise a child. No one stepped up for me, but I'm stepping up and doing what's best for Alex. I found him sleeping in one of the old sheds out back. He was cold, hungry and defiant. He slept in the shed because his mother was hooking to feed her habits. Not all her clients were satisfied with what they paid for—some of them thought an eleven-year-old kid was fair game."
"Jesus," Jack said with feeling. "Was he hurt?"
"He says not, but he admits it was close sometimes. He found places to hide, places to run, too. I intervened about eight months ago, pulled some strings and got my foster parent credentials fast-forwarded because of my background and clearances on record. I had to take a bunch of classes for foster parenting, CPR and first-aid refresher courses. Social Services placed him in a group home for a couple of months, while I was trying to get all the paperwork squared away. It was bad where they put him, and he ran away and came back here, twice. I was able to bring him home with me when the Judge and social workers agreed it was better for him to be with me until the courts and the psychologists decide if his mother is sincerely trying to rehab herself. He doesn't want to go back to her, but the system tries every venue to keep the child with the natural parents. They don't seem to get the idea that some adults can't keep themselves afloat, let alone be responsible for a kid.
"The hoops these people jump through to quote/unquote 'help' people who couldn't give a damn about their kids amazes me. Meanwhile, the kid is left dangling out in limbo with no security, no commitment and no hope. The system is a typical bureaucratic mess, run by regulation autocrats that think one rule applies universally to all. It sucks big time, but I have to work within their rules." Josie made an exaggerated motion with her hands. "Please, this is my personal soapbox topic. I need a change of sub
ject!"
Jack chuckled. "How long have you been back in Rawlings?"
"A little over a year," Josie said, taking a deep breath.
"Are you bored?"
She laughed. "I haven't had time to be bored. I came back and started clearing out this place while I was deciding what to do with it. For a while there, I thought I was going to have to bring in a Haz-Mat company to get it cleaned out. Two months after I got here, Sheriff Bowles had a massive heart attack and died. It was awful; no one suspected he had heart problems.
"The town has three deputies. Two of them are young and inexperienced, and the third one doesn't want the job of sheriff. The mayor and town council asked me to takeover as sheriff temporarily. I took the job because they were a little desperate at the time, but I'm only the acting sheriff. The town council is supposed to be looking for someone qualified to replace me. Since it's been almost ten months, I don't think they've been looking real hard, but I keep refusing to take the full job title."
"It's not exactly a fit for an ex-CIA undercover field agent," Jack said.
Josie lifted an eyebrow. "What kind of a job does my training make me a match for, exactly?"
"Good question, but I have my sources, so I ran a search on you—ex-police officer, ex-CIA agent, three commendations, and two citations in eight years. You were on a fast track to promotion."
"I was on a fast track to die young," Josie said matter-of-factly.
"So you had an epiphany or something and bailed?"
"Yeah, I did," Josie admitted with a hint of a smile. "It was a big 'ta da' moment in my life so far and it was life changing."
"So tell me," Jack said. "I'm sure a lot has happened in the last twenty years."
"You want my life story?" Josie laughed.
"Yeah, at least the highlights. You went from town hellion to town sheriff. I want to know how," Jack admitted. "I was invested in your life for a lot of years. I'd like to take a little credit for keeping you on the straight and narrow at least for a short time."
Full Circle Page 2