Born in the Valley

“Tell you what?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head and moved aside as he worked. “It’s just an expression, but much more of this, and parents are going to wonder if it’s safe to bring their kids here.”

“And your business would be in trouble.”

So why didn’t that thought strike terror in her heart?

He mopped and wrung, bending down to wipe a bit of debris off the baseboard behind the toilet with a paper towel he’d pulled from his back pocket.

“I’m really sorry about this.”

“It’s okay, it’s my job.”

The simple statement brought tears to her eyes.

Bonnie didn’t know what was wrong with her. She didn’t seem upset about what was happening to her day care—her life’s dream. And Shane Bellows’s mopping made her cry.

“I’ll go call a plumber,” she said, and escaped to her office before she could do something else she didn’t understand.

Like ask Shane to have dinner with her so she could figure out a way to help this shell of a man with whom she’d once been so in love.

Or use the flooded bathroom as an excuse to call her husband and tell him she couldn’t come home.

KEITH WAS LYING on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, three-year-old Katie astride his upper back. She was leaning forward with her chin near his ear as her green eyes intently followed along in the big book of children’s stories her father was reading to her.

If one could refer to Keith’s dramatic rendition of each scene as simply reading.

Closing the door from the garage into the kitchen, Bonnie stood and watched the two of them, filled with so much love she ached. Keith’s voice rose and fell, his head turning or nodding, his shoulders rising and falling, with Katie riding right along with him, her body responding to each change of cadence. Her little hands clutched her daddy’s sweater and patted his shoulders in excitement. Her eyes grew large. She laughed. Her dark curls seemed to dance. Then, as the story grew more serious, she listened quietly again.

Keith looked up as he played the part of a frog turned into a prince and caught Bonnie standing there. The grin on his face froze; his voice died. Katie looked up then, too, her wriggling body stilling immediately as she saw her mother. And the questioning look in the little girl’s big green eyes shocked Bonnie. It was as though, like her father, Katie was assessing the situation.

“Hi!” Bonnie dropped her purse and briefcase on the table. “Don’t stop,” she told Keith. “You were just getting to the good part.”

His face softened as she joined them in the family room. “How was your day?”

She thought of the flood. Of Shane.

“Fine.” She didn’t want to spoil the fun Katie and Keith were having.

Keith watched her for a minute more and then, without letting her see his thoughts, turned back to the book.

The tales continued and eventually, as Bonnie relaxed and laughed along with her daughter when Keith tried to play the wolf huffing and puffing at the straw house, Katie slid down from her father’s back and crawled onto her mother’s lap.

As she hugged her little girl close to her heart, savoring Katie’s warmth, and shifted just enough to let her toes rest against Keith’s thigh, Bonnie swallowed hard.

GRANDMA NIELSON called just as they were finishing the pizza Bonnie had made for dinner. Katie had sauce smeared on her nose, rimming her pert baby mouth, over her chin and on her chest. Bonnie couldn’t see Katie’s booster chair under the table, but there was probably sauce mixed in with a pile of crumbs on her lap, as well.

“She just got back from Phoenix,” Keith said, hanging up the phone.

“At eight o’clock? She drove home in the dark?”

Her husband frowned. And nodded. While he accepted his grandmother’s right to live her life the way she wanted to—encouraged it even—her health and well-being had become a constant worry to him.

“How’s Dorothy?” Bonnie asked, getting a damp cloth to wipe Katie’s cheeks.

“She doesn’t need a hip replacement.” Keith didn’t look too happy.

“That’s good news.”

It was testimony to the changes in their little family when, without a fuss, Katie lifted her face and only blinked when Bonnie wiped her clean.

“She’ll be home next week.”

Bonnie set Katie on the floor before tending to the mess on the booster chair and table. “Wow,” she said to her husband, never missing a beat in their conversation. “That’s a fast recovery, isn’t it? She’ll be able to get around that soon?”

“No.”

Cloth in hand, Bonnie stopped. “No?”

“The doctor suggested long-term care. Grandma’s determined to bring her home.”

“Who’s going to…” Bonnie didn’t need to finish the question. She knew the answer. Lonna Nielson was.

“She says she’s sure she can get people to come in shifts—at least for meals.”

And who would do the rest? Bonnie’s heart lurched when she thought of her adored grandmother-in-law doing any lifting or carrying while her old friend recovered. Hips could take months to heal.

“Is she coming over?” she asked Keith, satisfied that Katie was safely ensconced in front of her favorite animated video before she started the dishes.

Grandma usually joined them for a game of canasta on Friday nights. Maybe she could talk to her.

“She says she has paperwork to do.”

“You going to get her?”

“Of course.”

Bonnie grinned, her troubled heart filled with warmth as she heard her husband’s exasperated tone. It was always the same.

When Keith started college, his parents left Shelter Valley on a church service mission in Cairo. His father was Grandma’s only child. Consumed by their jobs as house parents at an orphanage there, they’d returned to Shelter Valley just once in fifteen years. Their deaths in a bus accident shortly after Katie was born had left Grandma and Keith as the only surviving members of their family. But no matter how lonely Grandma might feel, or how much she might want to be with the kids, she always made excuses. When Bonnie and Keith got married more than six years before, Grandma had determined that she would not interfere with their lives. Which was why her car was never seen in her grandson’s driveway. Whether for Sunday dinner, Friday-night canasta, holidays or anything in between, Keith more often than not had to go and get her or she wouldn’t come.

Wet hands in the sink, Bonnie looked over her shoulder, her eyes meeting his.

“You’re a good man, Keith Nielson.” The whispered words came from her very depths.

Almost as if they drew him, Keith moved toward her, then bent to press his lips to hers. The wealth of love she’d been feeling since she’d walked in the door that evening just continued, fueling the kiss. God, she loved this man. Wanted him.

There was never any doubt about that.