Born in the Valley. Tara Quinn Taylor
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“No,” she told him, walking back to the closet.
She couldn’t prevaricate with Shane. It would be too cruel to this man who was trying so hard to make sense of an already bewildering world. And she didn’t need to pretend with him. In Shane’s mind, what was, was. He wanted predictability, craved patterns and rules, but there was no analysis of motivation, no judgmental thought, no opinion of what should be. Only an acceptance of the environment around him.
Most importantly, her confusion wouldn’t hurt Shane.
“People were talking to you today like you were sad. I saw them when I was waxing floors.”
“I know they were.” They were standing, one on either side of the mangled shelving unit, tilting it to get it out the closet door. “You may not remember, but Little Spirits is something I’ve talked about my whole life and I’ve worked really hard to make it successful. Most of the people in this town know that. So they think it would be really disturbing for me to have it intentionally vandalized. Or even damaged by accident.”
He stopped, stared at her, his gaze intent. The brown depths of his eyes had always been compelling.
“I remember.”
Bonnie didn’t know how to respond. When Shane had suddenly reappeared in her life a couple of months before—her new handyman, instead of the high-powered financier she’d heard he was in Chicago—she’d immediately accepted the man he’d become. Never probing for traces of the man he’d been.
Beyond acknowledging to her landlord that they knew each other, they’d never once referred to their personal past.
The two of them deposited the ruined unit by the emergency exit door.
“What do you remember?”
“That you always wanted to take care of people.”
Yeah. He was right about that. Was that all he remembered?
“And now you don’t?”
Breaking eye contact, she shrugged, dipped back into the closet to start clearing rubbish from the corner. “Of course I do.”
He was hauling out what was left of the vacuum cleaner Beth and Greg had bought her for Christmas.
Bonnie scratched her cheek, felt the slimy wetness of soot from her fingers and wiped her face with her shoulder. She’d brought sweats and a T-shirt with her to work that morning to wear for closet gutting. She was glad she had. She’d probably be throwing them away when she got home that night, because of their smell alone.
“What’s wrong, Bonnie?”
She piled a few more pieces of unidentifiable trash on her outstretched arm.
“I don’t know,” she said, sighing as she dumped it into the rapidly filling can. “I love this place. It just…doesn’t excite me like it used to. I’m feeling differently about a lot of things lately, and that kind of scares me.”
“Different about what things?”
She dumped and gathered more mostly unrecognizable residue. What the fire hadn’t destroyed, the sprinkler system had. “My life, my work, my marriage, Shelter Valley.” She rattled on as she worked. “It used to be that those things filled my every waking thought. They gave me strength and incentive.” Now it almost felt as if they were holding her back.
“I think you wanted to be married and stay in Shelter Valley and take care of people.”
His words were slow, deliberate. His work, focused on one task—cleaning everything out of the closet—with no decisions to be made, was quick and efficient.
“I think I did, too.”
“Do you like being married?”
“Yes, very much.”
“Do you like your husband?” His back was turned as he asked the question.
Staring at those broad shoulders, Bonnie thought of the hundreds of times she’d wanted to tell Shane Bellows what a great man she’d found after he’d left her.
Like the realization of her lifelong dreams, the fulfillment of that wish was hollow.
“I adore him.”
Which was why she was finding all this so hard. How could she possibly need more than Keith and the life they’d built together?
Pulling a rag from his back pocket, Shane wrapped it around the sharp edge of a broken jar of buttons she’d forgotten was in there.
“You love the kids,” he said after disposing of the jar. “I see you laugh with them a lot.”
Those big hands picking up tiny little buttons gave her pause.
“You’re right. I do.”
“Then are you okay now?”
“I think I’m just tired.” Shaking her head, Bonnie tossed some spare floor tile she’d found behind the shelves they’d removed. “I never thought I’d start to resent this place.”
“I never thought I’d be a blue-collar worker.” Shane’s tongue dragged around the last word.
He stopped on one side of the closet, facing her as she stood on the other. The space between them was almost empty, but not quite.
These times, when he seemed as clear-minded as she, disconcerted her. She didn’t know how to respond.
“I used to be powerful,” he told her, his voice sounding at that moment as though he were still the man handling fortunes bigger than Bonnie would ever dream of having.
“I know.”
“I remember it,” he said. “I remember Chicago.”
Her heart ached as she listened to him. She couldn’t imagine the hell his life must be. And felt miniscule and petty as she stood there, discontented with her own.
“What do you remember best?” she asked, hoping the question was okay, that it wouldn’t distress or confuse him.
“All of it.”
A more typical nonanswer. Because he couldn’t sift through the memories and make a decision?
“I remember going to work,” he said, his words slow again. “I remember my office, how I could understand and fix anything that came in. I was really good,” he told her with that strange combination of the intelligent and successful man he used to be and the more childlike creature he’d become.
“I know you were. We used to hear about the great things you were doing.”
“I still look at the stock reports and know what they mean,” he told her. “I even play the market.”
Bonnie frowned. “Is that a good idea, Shane? You don’t want to blow your savings.”
“Now that I can’t earn as much?” he asked. He didn’t sound bitter. Instead, he sounded like a little boy who’d just been told he couldn’t go on the big camp-out. Disappointed. Sad.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” Bonnie broke off.
“It’s okay,” he said, his voice switching back to that of the man he’d once been. These sudden changes were disturbing, even after months of getting used to them. “I got some insurance money from my accident.” The voice was still deep, but with the tenor of a little boy again. “I just kept some of it for me and most of it my friend in Chicago is handling for me.”
Bonnie hoped to God his friend was honest and taking good care of Shane.
“So how’ve you done with the money you kept yourself?” she asked, smiling at him.
Bonnie’s heart lightened when Shane grinned back. “Good,” he told her. “I’ve tripled it so far.”