The Sheriff of Shelter Valley

The woman was a contradiction. Vulnerable one moment, and completely in control the next. Able to accomplish anything. Needing no one.

Teasing—and instantly defensive.

Insecure. And then confident.

And those breasts. He was ashamed of how much he was noticing them, how many times he thought about touching them.

Greg stayed long into that night, talking, mostly about growing up in Shelter Valley—including his college years at Montford University, the Harvard of the West, Shelter Valley’s pride and joy. Beth had a million questions, making him wonder if she’d been storing them up for the entire six months she’d lived in town.

A million questions, but very few answers.

He got to know nothing at all about the circumstances and facts, the history, that made up Beth Allen’s life.

CHAPTER FIVE

SHE WAS GOING TO HAVE TO LIE. Driving her old Granada to Bonnie’s for her second Sunday dinner in three weeks, trying to distract her thoughts with the grand beauty of the mountains surrounding them, Beth finally accepted that she’d have to make up a past—not just the couple of lines she’d recited anytime anyone asked about her. Up until now, the fact that she was a grieving widow had sufficed. Recognizing that her recent past was painful, people were sensitive enough not to ask further questions.

But that was when those people were only acquaintances.

Bonnie Neilson and her family—her brother—wanted to know Beth Allen. Where she came from. Where she went to school. Her most embarrassing moment. Happiest moment. The men she’d dated.

The man she’d married.

They wanted to know it all.

They had no idea how badly she wanted to know all those things herself.

What she didn’t want was the rest of the memories that would come as part of the package. She was scared to death to find out she might have stolen her son.

If that was the truth, and if she remembered it, she’d be forced to give him back.

Still, before she’d left home today, she’d read over the few entries in her memory notebook, trying to piece together a picture she could give people.

“We’re going to Katie’s house, Ry,” she told her son, sending him a big smile. His feet, hanging over the edge of the sturdy beige car seat, were still. But his eyes were alert, intent, as he looked back at her, straight-faced.

“You remember Katie from Little Spirits,” she continued, knowing that Ryan understood everything she was saying, even if he wouldn’t respond. “We went to her house for dinner a few weeks ago and you fell asleep on Mommy’s shoulder. You played with Katie’s blocks. And she has a Magna-Doodle, too.”

Ry’s little voice filled the car, but Beth couldn’t make out the words. From his intonation it sounded like a question.

So Beth replied to what she could only assume he’d asked. “Yes, I think she’ll let you play with the Magna-Doodle, but I want you to promise something, okay?”

Ryan nodded.

“I want you to promise that you’ll play with Katie today. Okay? Just like you play with Bo and Jay and Bethany Parsons.”

Ryan watched her lips and then her eyes.

“Okay?” she repeated.

He nodded again. Slowly, deliberately, his little chin moved up and down. The chin that had the same cleft in the middle as hers.

Ryan might not say much, but when he agreed to something, she could count on it. Soon after they’d arrived at the Neilsons he picked up one of Katie’s puzzles and took it over to sit by the little girl. He dumped the wooden pieces and, with the hand-eye coordination of a two-year-old, he started putting them awkwardly back on the board. Within seconds Katie turned around and placed another piece. Not a word was spoken between them.

Beth wished her own interactions could be so clean and simple. She spent the first five minutes staying out of the way, clutching her canvas bag.

Dinner was excellent—another cold main-course salad in deference to the weather. It was the first Sunday in September, and still too hot to even think about turning on the oven. Or eating anything warm, for that matter.

She was saved from having to sit next to Greg by Katie’s last-minute insistence that she get to sit by “Unca” which resulted in Grandma Neilson and Greg switching chairs to accommodate Katie’s booster seat.

“Lou can lose my high chair, Wyan,” the little girl said importantly as she climbed up and set her little bottom down in her new blue plastic booster.

Well before the end of dinner, Beth had fallen in love with Grandma Neilson. The white-haired, barely five-foot-tall woman didn’t let anything—not age, infirmity nor death—get in her way. She’d reduced life to its simplest terms. Being loved and loving others were what mattered. Anything else was simply an inconvenience to be dealt with as quickly as possible.

“So, Bonnie says you’ve got a cleaning business here in town,” Grandma said to Beth as she chomped on her Chinese chicken salad.

Dressed in a long-sleeved button-up blouse and pair of navy slacks in spite of the heat, Keith’s grandmother looked like she was ready to go to the office.

“I do,” Beth said, on edge that afternoon as she waited for a question she couldn’t answer.

Maybe this was too much of a life for her—having friends, trying to have family experiences. And yet, seeing Ryan sitting there in his high chair, pulled up to the table as though he belonged, watching him grin at Keith and babble a sentence to Bonnie, she wasn’t sure she had any choice.

She had no idea what she’d taken Ryan away from. Aunts, uncles? Maybe a grandmother or two like Grandma Neilson?

A father?

How could she not do everything possible to provide him with some of the same now?

“Good for you,” Grandma was muttering. “Get on with it, that’s what I say.”

Head bent over her plate, Beth nodded.

“Use your spoon, Katie, not your fingers,” Keith said. Greg leaned over to help his niece do as her father directed.

“Losing a husband is hard,” Grandma said. “I’ll grant you that, but you still have to get on with it, or the Good Lord would’ve taken you, too.”

“Sorry about that,” Keith said. “Grandma just tells it like she sees it.”

“I don’t mind,” Beth said. She had a feeling that if there was ever a time she needed someone to confide in, Keith’s grandmother would probably be her most sympathetic audience.

The least judgmental, anyway.

She’d understand how a woman could love her baby so much she’d do anything for him.

“Do you have room for another customer?” Grandma asked. “I’ve gotten myself on so many committees, I sure could use some help keeping up the house.”

Beth didn’t miss the way Bonnie, Keith and Greg shared surprised looks. But she didn’t really care.

“What committees?” she asked.