The Sheriff of Shelter Valley

Widowed. Oh yeah, that. It was the story she’d invented when she’d come to town. She was a recent widow attempting to start a new life. You’d think she could at least manage to keep track of the life she’d made up to replace the one she couldn’t remember.

“Look,” she said, really needing to get back to work. Ry was going to be looking for her soon. Routine was of vital importance to her little boy. “If you were serious about the friend thing, I could use some help.”

She was testing him. And felt bad about that. But not bad enough to stop herself, apparently.

“Sure.”

“I just bought a used apartment-size washer and dryer.” Taking a two-year-old’s two and three changes a day to the Laundromat had been about to kill her—financially and physically. “I need someone with a truck to go with me to pick it up and then help me get it into the duplex.”

He’d know where she lived, then. But who was she kidding? He was the county sheriff—a powerful man. And Shelter Valley was a small town. He’d probably known where she lived for months.

“I have a truck.”

“I know.”

She’d passed him in town a couple of times, feeling small and insignificant in the old, primer-spattered Ford Granada she’d bought for five-hundred dollars next to his beautiful brand-new blue Ford F-150 Supercab.

“If I offer to help are you going to brush me off again?”

“No.”

“You aren’t just setting me up here?” He was smiling.

“No!” Beth said indignantly, but she was smiling, too.

“I’m tempted to force you to ask, just to win back a little bit of the pride you’ve been quietly stripping away for months. But because I’m afraid to chance it, I’ll ask you, instead. May I please help you bring your new appliances home?”

Beth laughed out loud…and was shocked by the sound. She couldn’t remember having heard it before. Couldn’t remember anything before waking up in that motel room in Snowflake, Arizona, with bruises and a child who called her Mama crying on the bed beside her.

“If you’re sure you wouldn’t mind, I could sure use the help,” she said, all laughter gone. She had no business even thinking about flirting with the county sheriff, but she and Ryan needed those appliances. And she couldn’t get them to the duplex alone.

“What time?”

“Tonight? After dinner?”

“Sure we couldn’t do it before dinner and just happen to eat while we’re at it?”

“I’m sure.”

Beth hated the conflicting emotions she felt when he gave in with no further cajoling and agreed to pick her up at six-thirty that evening for the ten-minute drive out to the Andersons’. They were remodeling the one-room apartment over their garage and no longer needed the appliances, which, while five years old, had hardly been used.

Conflicting emotions—one of the few experiences Beth knew intimately. Intermittent relief. Disappointment. Resignation. Fear.

Peace. That was, and had to be, her only goal. Peace for her. And health, safety and happiness for Ryan.

Nothing else mattered.

CHAPTER TWO

HE’D SEEN HER DOWNTOWN, coming out of Weber’s Department Store, at the grocery store, the gas station, and in the park just beyond Samuel Montford’s statue. Seen her at Little Spirits once or twice when he’d stopped in to visit Bonnie or spring Katie. According to his sister, Beth Allen never left her son at the day care, but she volunteered once a week so he could have some playtime with the other kids.

He’d seen her at the drugstore once, and at Shelter Valley’s annual Fourth of July celebration.

But he’d never seen her at home.

The duplex was not far from Zack and Randi Foster’s place. But it didn’t resemble that couple’s home with its garden and white-picket fence. Her place was very small. One bedroom—the door was shut—a full bath squished into a half-bath space, a living room with a kitchen on the other end. And a closet that would fit either coats or the stackable laundry unit Beth had purchased. But not both.

The closet had washer-dryer hook-ups, and a clothes bar and single door, both of which had to be removed to fit the washer and dryer. The door he could rehang. The clothes bar’s removal would be permanent for as long as the closet remained a laundry room.

The entire house was meticulous.

“Where’d you say you lived before coming to Shelter Valley?” Greg asked as, pliers in hand, he attached a dryer vent to the opening on the back of the appliance.

“I didn’t say.”

“That?” Beth’s two-year-old son was standing beside Greg’s toolbox.

“It’s a hammer,” Beth said.

“That?”

“A level.”

“That?”

“A screwdriver.”

Glancing between the top rack of the toolbox and the little boy, Greg frowned. “How do you know which tool he’s referring to?”

Ryan hadn’t pointed at anything. His index finger had been in his mouth ever since Greg had collected Beth and her son more than an hour before.

She shrugged, hoisting Ryan onto her hip. “I could see where he was looking,” she said.

“You don’t have to hold him.” Greg returned to the metal ring he was tightening on the outside of the vent. “He’s welcome to help.”

She held the boy, anyway, as defensive about her son as she was about herself.

Greg still liked her.

“Here, Ryan,” he said, standing to give the little boy his wrench. “Can you hang on to this and give it to me when I ask for it?”

After a very long, silent stare, the toddler finally nodded and took the tool. He needed both hands to handle the weight of it, meaning that finger finally came out of his mouth—but he didn’t seem to mind the sacrifice.

“You changed.”

Beth’s words threw him. “Changed?” he asked. “How?”

“Out of your uniform.”