Born in the Valley

“I don’t know,” Bonnie said, frustration welling up inside her. She glanced at the clear, blue Arizona sky—illuminated by a sun that was already heating this March day to Midwest summer temperatures.

She slid her hands into the pockets of her slacks. “Have you ever had the feeling that the role you’re playing isn’t significant?”

“Of course you’re significant, Bonnie!” Beth said, stopping to stare at her. “My gosh! This entire family revolves around you.”

“Only because I got here first,” she said. “It could just as easily revolve around you.”

“But you—”

“That’s not really what I meant,” Bonnie continued, cutting off Beth’s rebuttal. “And you’re right. I have no business feeling like I do and I’m just going to stop.”

She turned, heading back toward the day care.

“No.” Beth grabbed her arm. “Wait. I’m listening now. Talk to me.”

Feeling ungrateful and selfish, Bonnie tried really hard to convince herself that if she just kept working on it, she could make these feelings go away.

She’d been trying for months.

“I just feel my life is too small, that I’m not doing enough with it.”

Beth started to walk and Bonnie fell into step beside her. “With my education and capabilities, I could be helping the homeless or abused women, making some kind of real difference. Sounds crazy, huh?”

“No. Not at all.”

“The world is filled with people who need my help more than the relatively privileged, well-loved kids who come to my day care.”

“We don’t have a lot of homeless people here,” Beth said softly. “And though I’m sure there are some, there probably aren’t many abused wives, either.”

“That’s part of the problem, I think. Shelter Valley is such a protected—and protective—place that I’m isolated from larger realities.”

“So you want to leave town?”

“No!” Bonnie ran her fingers through her hair, trying to massage the ache from her head. “Of course not. Maybe I just need to feel needed.”

“Which you are, of course, by so many people.”

“Yeah, but not in the way I mean.” She tried to find words to articulate things she wasn’t sure she understood. “Last week, after the fire, Shane Bellows helped me clean up. All I did was talk to him for an hour and yet I left feeling I’d really used my life for a greater good. He was responsive and just so happy to be part of an adult conversation. He needs a friend, Beth, someone who’ll treat him like a grown man with something to contribute, instead of the half person he’s sort of become. It’s that kind of satisfaction I’m missing. I think.”

“Be careful with Shane, Bonnie. You’ve got a history with him that could trip you up.”

“No worry there. He’s not at all the man he once was. That history is dead and gone.”

“From what I understand, even the doctors aren’t completely sure how much Shane’s mind has been altered.”

“He’s completely harmless, Beth, if that’s what you’re getting at. His doctor didn’t think there was any problem with him working around small children, which he certainly would have if Shane posed any kind of threat.”

“Just be careful.”

Beth waved as a car passed. Mr. and Mrs. Mather. They’d been one of her house-cleaning clients, Bonnie remembered.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you.”

Bonnie wished Beth’s opinion didn’t matter so much.

“No.” As if by previous consensus, they both turned the corner, slowing their pace as they started down another deserted street. “As a matter of fact, I completely understand.” She spoke in a low voice, holding Bonnie’s full attention.

“You know how I spent my youth, Bonnie. Training to be a concert pianist is completely consuming, draining every ounce of energy you have and then demanding more. I gave it everything and somehow managed to get my business degree, as well. And then, after my parents were killed and I was on my own, I suddenly found myself with skills and discipline and drive, and nothing important to contribute. People were dying every day while I played scales.”

“Hardly.” Bonnie still got chills every time Beth sat down at the piano. The woman brought something elemental, spiritual almost, to everything she played.

“It’s how I felt,” Beth insisted. “And that feeling drove me straight into the trap James Silverman and Peter Sterling set.”

It was the first time Bonnie had ever heard her friend mention her ex-husband and his partner. The two men who’d, in the end, contracted a killer to ensure her death.

“I wanted to make a difference, to stand for something, to help save the world in some significant way.”

Taking Beth’s arm, a silent support, Bonnie ached for her friend, ached because of the memories Beth would never completely escape.

“The cult allowed me to believe I was contributing something huge, and that feeling drove me for a long time, Bon. Far longer—and farther—than it should have. It drove me into turning a blind eye to things that were not only immoral but illegal, as well.”

Sterling Silver, the cult run by Beth’s ex-husband and his doctor partner, had been shut down the previous year when Greg had gone searching for the identity of the woman he loved. James Silverman and Peter Sterling were currently serving life sentences in separate Texas prisons.

“So you’re saying I should just ignore this feeling and be thankful for the life I have.”

It was exactly what she’d been telling herself.

“I don’t know,” Beth said, turning with Bonnie as they reached another corner, heading back toward the day care. “I don’t think there are any easy answers.”

Bonnie didn’t think so, either.

“You said Keith noticed something’s wrong. What does he say about all this?”

“Nothing,” Bonnie said, kicking a pebble into the street. “I can’t tell him I need more out of life than he’s giving me, Beth. It would kill him. And it’s not fair to him, either. Because there’s nothing he can do. Besides, I might wake up tomorrow and be perfectly satisfied again.”

“I doubt it.”

“Me, too.”

They walked on, their silence broken only by an occasional passing car. And there weren’t many of those.

“But I still can’t tell him,” Bonnie eventually said. “I can’t hurt him like that.”

“I couldn’t, either.”

“That letter from Diamond today…”

“Yeah?”