My Sister, Myself

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Where’s Christine?”

  “She’s—” Tory was having trouble breathing.

  Taking the younger woman’s trembling hands, Phyllis led her to the couch. She responded to Tory’s desperation, and her own emotions began to shut down, preparing her for the bad news she sensed was coming.

  “Bruce…” Tory tried again.

  “He found you,” Phyllis said, trying to keep her panic at bay. “He’s got Christine.” Tory’s ex-husband was the reason Christine had accepted the job in Shelter Valley—to get Tory as far away from the man as she could.

  Tory shook her head. “He…killed…her…” The last word trailed off into a tormented whisper. “He caught up with us on the New Mexico border.”

  “What happened?” Phyllis gasped.

  “When Christine wouldn’t pull over, Bruce started bumping the side of the car, trying to force us to stop.” Head down, she played with her fingers. “I don’t remember much else. When I came to in the hospital, they told me there’d been a one-car accident—that we’d lost control and driven over a cliff—and that my s-s-sister was dead.”

  “I’m so sorry…”

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome back to Shelter Valley! Or, if you’re visiting for the first time, all of us who’ve been here before wish you a warm Shelter Valley welcome. You’ll find that just about everything here is warm—the welcome, the people, the weather…

  On this particular visit to Shelter Valley, you’re going to meet Tory Evans. She’s only twenty-six but circumstances, experience and a sharp intelligence make her more aware of some things than she’d like to be. You’ll get to know Tory from the very beginning of this story—but only you and one other person in Shelter Valley know that she’s Tory Evans; everyone else believes she’s her older sister, Christine. Tory is lonely, but because she can’t tell anyone who she really is, making friends is almost impossible. That’s where you come in. I hope you’ll be moved by Tory and that she’ll find a friend in you—an advocate—to see her through the battle for her freedom.

  I think we all fight Tory’s battle in one guise or another. Sometimes we’re faced with a wrong that seems right—a decision that looks right but which, on further reflection, we recognize is wrong. And we’re all forced, at some time or other, to confront who we really are, the people life and circumstances have made us—and the possibilities of who we might become…. And ironically, the part that often takes the most courage is being able to see the value that already exists within ourselves.

  Luckily, Tory is making her search in Shelter Valley, where life’s most fundamental truths still form the basis of people’s decisions and relationships. In that sense, my home is a mini-Shelter Valley and I find, along with Tory, that knowing what’s important, keeping the heart at the heart of the matter, can and does lead to happiness.

  So, welcome to Shelter Valley. Travel the road to happiness!

  Tara Taylor Quinn

  P.S. I love to hear from readers. You can reach me at: P.O. Box 15065, Scottsdale, AZ 85267-5065 or check out my website at http://members.home.net/ttquinn

  My Sister, Myself

  Tara Taylor Quinn

  For Patty

  I pray that you will never run out of answers—or the willingness to share them with me.

  Thank you for opening up my world, and filling my heart.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  PROLOGUE

  SHE WAS ALMOST there.

  Shelter Valley, once a two-day drive away, was now just two miles ahead. How had more than thirty hours passed without her being aware? What had she driven by along the way?

  Was she going to take the exit? Or wasn’t she?

  How could she possibly make a decision when she wasn’t ready?

  If Christine didn’t show up to take this job, she’d lose it.

  Another green sign whizzed by the passenger window of Tory’s new Ford Mustang. Shelter Valley, 1 mile.

  Christine. Tears flowed from Tory’s eyes, as they’d been doing for most of the trip, trailing almost unnoticed down her face. Christine. So beautiful. So worthy.

  What do I do? How do I go on without you?

  And then, to herself, How do I not?

  Tory’s life had been spared. That made no sense to her. Justice had not been served.

  “What do you want me to do?” she cried to an absent Christine when the silence in the car grew too overwhelming. “Bruce thinks he killed me, not you.” Pulling over to the shoulder of the road, Tory barely got her car into park before the sobs broke loose.

  Her beloved older sister had only been dead a week.

  Tory was all alone. Completely and totally alone for the first time in her godawful life. And she’d thought, after spending two years fleeing a maniacal ex-husband, that it couldn’t get any worse.

  Her tearstained face turned toward the sky, she tried, through blurry eyes, to find some guidance from above. Was Christine up there in all that blueness somewhere? Watching over her, guiding her?

  There were no answers from up there. But straight ahead was another green sign with fluorescent white lighting. Shelter Valley, this exit.

  Twenty-six-year-old Tory Evans had been searching for shelter her entire life. But she’d never found it. Was this time going to be any different?

  As long as Bruce thought her dead, she’d be safe from him.

  Coming from old New England money, he had widespread influence. His tentacles were everywhere. They’d infiltrated every city, every small town, every hut she’d ever inhabited while trying to evade him. Bruce Taylor had never been denied. His mother, having found him perfect in every way, had refused to allow any kind of discipline in his life—still refused to see that her grown son was less than exemplary, making excuses for him at every infraction. And his father, a shipping magnate, had assuaged the guilt of his neglect with everything money could buy. He’d even bought off someone in the legal system the one time Tory had gone to the law for help regarding Bruce’s physical abuse. Somehow the tables had been turned on her, the innuendoes so twisted that Tory had known, even before she’d faced the judge, that she was going to lose.

  She would never have gotten her divorce if she’d gone about it the normal way—filing, having him served. In her desperation, she’d come up with a pretty clever plan: coaxing Bruce to accompany her on a Tiajuana get-away and then, in the middle of his three-day drunk, taking him to the local courthouse for a quickie divorce. He’d demanded the divorce be nullified. She wouldn’t agree to it, but he still hadn’t accepted her no.

  At thirty, Bruce didn’t know the meaning of the word no. He took what he wanted, accepted it as his due. And he wanted Tory. Was obsessed with keeping possession of his ex-wife. The only way to be safe from him was to be dead. To stay dead. And to let Christine live.

  It was never going to work.

  CHAPTER ONE

  BEN SANDERS approached the Shelter Valley exit with trepidation. Maybe he shouldn’t have come. There were other places to get a good education. Other places to start over. What if the town was nothing more than a few old buildings, some houses and a street or two? What if it wasn’t home?

  He’d heard about Shelter
Valley his whole life, heard it described as a town where people cared, where they looked out for one another. A place where family mattered. He hoped it was true.

  Signaling his turn, Ben guided the Ford F-150 from the highway, slowing as he came to the end of the ramp.

  With everything he owned packed in boxes and stacked in the bed of his truck, he took the turn toward Shelter Valley, glancing avidly around him. He had no idea what he was looking for. Something he recognized, maybe. But no matter what his boyhood imaginings told him, he knew there would be nothing. He’d never been here before.

  Except in his heart.

  He’d been hearing the story of his grandmother’s journey from Shelter Valley since before he was old enough to understand its significance—a fourteen-year-old girl separated from her family, from the strong father she’d adored, from the only way of life she’d ever known. That story was the one piece of family lore his father had ever shared with him.

  Shelter Valley had been beckoning him ever since. Maybe because of the nomadic way he’d grown up. Or maybe he’d inherited more than his share of his great-grandfather’s genes. Maybe old Samuel Montford was calling him to come home.

  Maybe he’d just built up some stupid fantasy of a home because at the age of twenty-six he’d never had a real one.

  The town came into view in a hurry. Over a hill, and there it was, out in the desert right where his great-grandfather had left it. Surrounded by hard ground and cacti, the town of his dreams had a color scheme of shades of brown and a backdrop of majestic mountains. Slowing the truck as he drove into Shelter Valley, Ben tried to notice everything at once. The neighborhoods, what he could see of them, looked nice, nothing fancy for the most part, but clean and well kept. There were people about, an old woman pruning a rosebush, some kids playing with a ball on the sidewalk, a teenage girl roller-skating alongside him.

  He let her pass.

  This time was for him. He wanted to savor it alone.

  A few mansions sat interspersed on the distant mountain ahead of him. He wondered if a Montford lived in one of those houses. If there were even any Montfords left in this town.

  He’d always believed he had family here.

  More wishful thinking of a lonely boy.

  Ben wasn’t a boy anymore. Marriage had cured him of that. Raising and supporting the child he’d believed was his had finished the job. Or maybe it’d been losing her—

  No! He’d promised himself he wasn’t going to allow himself those thoughts, those memories. The pain. Not ever. He had a new life now. The one that had been interrupted during his senior year in high school. He was going it alone, counting on the only person he knew he could count on—himself. No more looking back.

  His new address was on a piece of paper that lay on the seat beside him—an apartment in an older home near the campus of Montford University. Classes started in two days, but it wouldn’t take him that long to get ready. He’d already registered by mail and phone, only had a few books left to buy. Some boxes to unpack.

  Eight years later than he’d planned, he was starting college.

  Slowing even more as he neared downtown Shelter Valley—a strip of stores on both sides of Main Street, with angled parking along the curbs—Ben smiled. The Valley Diner, with its forest-green awning, Weber’s department store, the drugstore, were all just as he’d imagined. Almost as if someone had crept into his boyhood fantasies, stolen the images and dropped them here for him to find all these years later.

  And then, as he reached the intersection at Main and Montford, he noticed the statue holding pride of place in the town square. Surrounded by lush green and carefully cropped grass, the life-size sculpture sparkled with a newness that reminded him of Christmas. Its polished stone surfaces glistened beneath the setting Arizona sun. The placard was so big he could read it from the road.

  With a rush of incomprehensible feeling, Ben pulled his truck into the first empty spot he found, locked it up—kind of pointless considering all the stuff piled in the back—and as though compelled, headed straight for the statue. He read every word of the brief biography typed in smaller print on the placard before allowing himself his first real look.

  He’d been waiting all his life for this moment.

  And he wasn’t disappointed.

  Incredulous, his heart full, Ben stared up at the likeness of his great-grandfather. The sculpted features were solid and real, almost as though Samuel Montford would come to life if the sun got warm enough. And as Ben stood and stared at the man who’d lived so many years ago, he could have been looking in a mirror.

  A couple strolled by hand in hand, engrossed in each other, but they smiled at Ben as they passed. He smiled back. He wanted to ask if they saw the resemblance, half expected them to notice without his asking. They might have, too, if they’d ever fully looked his way.

  There’d be time for that later. The rest of his life.

  Bidding his great-grandfather a silent “See ya later,” Ben strode eagerly toward his truck. The apartment he’d never seen before was calling him. He’d come home.

  “COME ON, CHRISTINE, where are you?” Dr. Phyllis Langford paced in front of her living-room window, watching the road intently. She found herself playing an old childhood game: Christine’s would be the fifth car to drive down her street. No, the tenth…

  Catching a glimpse of her reflection in the window, she was a little frightened by the tension she read there. Even framed by her flyaway red hair, her face looked stiff, unyielding.

  With Christine already weeks later than she should have been, Phyllis was growing more and more anxious to see her, to know that her friend was all right. Daylight passed into darkness, and still Christine didn’t arrive. Her note, obviously quickly scrawled, had said today was the day.

  It had said nothing about the car accident that had delayed her. Nothing to convey to Phyllis the extent of Christine’s injuries, the damage to her car, how Tory had fared. Cryptic to the point of impersonal, the scribbled note had merely said she’d be arriving this afternoon.

  Afternoon was over now.

  Driven from her quaint little house by an energy she didn’t understand, Phyllis stood out by the curb, watching for headlights. Something was wrong.

  Her heart twisted as she thought of her friend, and the tortured life she’d led. Shelter Valley was supposed to be Christine’s new beginning. A life where good was possible—and where evil was left far behind. A time for healing. A time for Christine and her younger sister, Tory, to nurture each other.

  With a doctorate in psychology, Phyllis fully understood the steps the sisters would have to take, the stages they’d pass through on their way to emotional freedom from their abusive past. But it was as a friend that she intended to be with them, to accompany them on that journey.

  Back in her house, Phyllis rechecked the room that Christine and Tory would be sharing. The twin beds were made. The closet full of hangers. The new dressers empty and waiting.

  School was due to start on Monday. As the newest psychology professor at Montford University, Phyllis had been ready for the semester to begin weeks ago. Christine, the new English professor, hadn’t had the same time to prepare. She had her lessons planned; she’d shipped them—and all her books and research materials—ahead of her. But still, she’d left herself too little time to acclimate to her new home in Arizona—a far cry from the New England city they’d left—and to Montford’s campus, the small town, the people here.

  Not to mention the new climate, Phyllis thought, going in to change the short-sleeved knit shirt she’d pulled on over knee-length shorts earlier that afternoon. Even with the air conditioner running, she couldn’t seem to stop sweating. Arizona’s heat might be dry, but Phyllis certainly wasn’t.

  Maybe when Christine got settled in, she could help Phyllis lose some weight. She’d offered to help back when they’d lived next door to each other in Boston, but at that time Phyllis had still been punishing herself because of a husband who�
��d preferred another woman’s body to her own. Her plumpness had been what she’d deserved.

  Then.

  Christine and Tory weren’t the only ones reinventing themselves. In the weeks since she’d arrived in Shelter Valley, Phyllis had changed, too. Already she’d made some friends. Close friends. Becca and Will Parsons and their darling new daughter, Bethany. Becca’s sister, Sari. Martha Moore and John Strickland. Linda Morgan, the associate dean at Montford. Will’s energetic youngest sister, Randi. Most of them friends she knew would still be in her life thirty years from now.

  Because of their big hearts and their willingness to accept a stranger as one of them, Phyllis had begun to value herself again.

  And she knew that if Christine was ever going to find peace on this earth, Shelter Valley was the place.

  Having waited so long for the doorbell to ring, Phyllis felt her heart jump alarmingly when it finally did. She flew to the door, flung it open and pulled the young woman standing on the front step into her arms.

  “I’m so glad you guys are finally here,” she said, tearing up with relief.

  “Yeah.” Tory was crying, too.

  “Where’s Christine?” Phyllis asked, urging Tory into the house as she looked past her.

  There was a new Mustang in her driveway. An empty Mustang.

  Dread crawled over her as she turned slowly back. But there was no reason to think the worst.

  “Where’s Christine?” she asked again. Back in Boston there’d been reason to worry, but Christine would be fine now.

  “She’s…” Tory seemed to be having trouble breathing. “He…Bruce…”

  Taking the younger woman’s trembling hands, Phyllis led her to the couch. Phyllis responded to Tory’s desperation, and her own emotions began to shut down, preparing her for the bad news she sensed was coming.