Born in the Valley

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  He told Martha about his last real conversation with his wife. The one in which she’d told him about the job offer.

  “If she turned it down, why would you think she’s leaving?”

  “Because she couldn’t quite hide the resentment she felt at having to do so. It would’ve been a great opportunity for her.”

  “Maybe it’s time to ask her for a divorce.”

  His eyes shot open. He sat up. “What did you say?”

  “I think you should ask her for a divorce.”

  That was what he’d thought she’d said. And the last thing he’d expected to hear.

  “You’re supposed to be buoying me up here,” he muttered.

  “I can see I’ve done a swell job of it so far.”

  She’d helped him a lot. She had to know that. Elbows on his knees, he stared at the floor. The rug had a couple of stains from Katie’s juice spills, but it was a hell of a lot easier on the eyes than the blinding cheerfulness of a sun that wouldn’t stop shining.

  “If nothing else, the conversation would shake Bonnie up,” Martha said after she gave him an opportunity to reply—which he opted out of. “Force her to make a decision.”

  “I don’t want a divorce.”

  “If you ask her,” Martha continued, irritating the hell out of him, “and she’s shocked and horrified, you’ll have the answer you want. You’ll know she’s still yours.”

  “And what if she isn’t?” He felt claustrophobic at the thought of it.

  “You’ll still have your answer,” she said.

  Keith wished he’d never answered the phone.

  “Not the one you want, but at this point it sounds as if any answer would be better than none at all.”

  Didn’t the woman know when to quit? Still—although he remained silent—he held the phone to his ear.

  “You need to be able to move forward, Keith.”

  She was right about that.

  “I’m not asking for a divorce.”

  “Because you’re afraid she’ll give you one?”

  He refused to answer that.

  “Because if that’s the reason, that’s exactly why you should ask.”

  Martha’s voice, uncharacteristically soft, urged him to think about what she’d said. And then she told him she’d talk to him the next day.

  Keith didn’t say a word.

  LONNA LAY IN BED Tuesday night too keyed up to sleep. Or too exhausted to sleep. She wasn’t sure which.

  She should get up and put one of her favorite Doris Day movies in the VCR. The chipper blonde was always good company. Except that she had to be up to start breakfast in five short hours and knew she had to rest. Late-night movies were something she had to pass up for now.

  Lonna closed her eyes, but when she did, the vision of Alice Morsi crying that afternoon was right there to greet her. Alice had lived in Shelter Valley since her marriage sixty years before and was now considering moving into one of those assisted-living places in Phoenix.

  Though she could no longer drive, Alice didn’t really need the assistance, but since her husband had died the previous fall, her kids had been after her to sell the family home. Until recently, Alice had been fighting them, but she’d said that after so many lonely days and nights, she wasn’t sure there was a reason to fight anymore.

  For anything.

  It sounded as though Alice was moving to Phoenix to die.

  And all, as far as Lonna could tell, because she was lonely.

  Eyes open again, she thought about the grant money Bonnie had mentioned after dinner on Sunday. She’d offered to help with the writing of the proposals.

  Lonna had gratefully accepted. But she was beginning to see that a little money, a get-together once a week, wasn’t going to be nearly enough to stop up all the holes in the lives of her friends.

  BONNIE DIDN’T GO to choir practice the following Wednesday. She just didn’t have it in her to go, considering what she knew about Pastor Edwards. She’d seen the pastor with his wife on Sunday and she’d had to look away.

  Driving home from Little Spirits, she tried to shake off the day she’d had at work.

  “Katie, please stop kicking the back of Mama’s seat,” she said for the third time—and only after taking a long, slow breath.

  “I’m hungry…” Katie drew the word out into a wail as only a child can.

  “Sweetie, you know Mama’s going to make dinner just as soon as we get home.”

  “I’m hungry now.”

  “Too bad.” Her sharp reply must have surprised Katie as much as it had Bonnie, because the little girl fell silent.

  Keith had beaten her home. She’d hoped for a couple of minutes to recuperate from her day before facing another evening of trying to pretend that everything was all right between the two of them.

  “You look like you’ve had a rough day,” her husband greeted her at the kitchen door.

  “The only fingerprints on the rock were mine and Shane’s.” She watched to make sure Katie made it into the house, setting down her bag and purse on the first available surface. The floor. “I got a twenty-minute lecture on not touching anything at a crime scene. And I was lucky. Greg subjected poor Shane to a much longer version.”

  “He works after hours,” Keith said from where he stood at the sink rinsing cooked lasagna noodles. “He could easily come upon evidence.”

  Bonnie stood, empty-handed, by the door, staring at those noodles. She’d been planning to make macaroni and cheese.

  “You said you were going to make lasagna tonight, right?” Keith asked, turning toward her.

  “Yes!” She began to collect ingredients. “The hamburger’s thawing in the refrigerator.”

  It didn’t matter that, all the way home, she’d been imagining the hamburger in a pot with macaroni and cheese. Keith was helping her, being a family, and she wanted that far more than an easy supper.

  Turning off the water, he leaned back against the sink. “So what else happened today?”

  He was trying, thank God. She’d been afraid he was giving up on them.

  Bonnie put the hamburger on to brown, chopped some onion and grated a clove of garlic.

  “Other than two kids vomiting, Katie throwing the biggest tantrum I’ve ever seen from her and Bo’s parents telling me that until the vandal at the day care is caught, they’re pulling him out of Little Spirits?”

  “But where will they take him? Bo’s grown up with you. He knows you guys, responds to you. He’s not going to be happy anywhere else.”

  “But he’ll be safe,” Bonnie said.

  A crash sounded from the other room. Dropping her grater in the sink, Bonnie raced off ahead of Keith.

  “Katie wants Bambi.”

  Visions of her darling drenched in blood quickly gave way to the defiant glare staring up at her from angelic features. Katie stood on top of the television set, surrounded by an entire shelfful of movies. Bonnie turned around and left the room.

  Keith would be the better parent at the moment.

  “Katie, you know you aren’t supposed to touch that shelf,” was how her husband started.

  Bonnie’s version would have gone more like, “Katie Marie Nielson, what are you doing on top of that television?” in a voice that could’ve been heard down at the courthouse.

  She’d had a call that day from Dan Gentile, a man she’d met at the conference in Phoenix. He was the CEO of a nonprofit organization that ran high-quality, secondhand stores all over the country for lower-income families. He’d offered Bonnie the national directorship of the children’s division.

  KATIE GOT LASAGNA in her hair. After pronouncing it yucky. Which it was, because Bonnie had forgotten the ricotta. Keith got a call during dinner and still hadn’t returned to the kitchen by the time Katie wanted to get down. Which she couldn’t do without immediately going in for a bath.

  Leaving the dirty dishes covered with drying, caked-on food, Bonnie took her daughter to the bathroom, turned on the faucet and put
her in the tub. Only after splashing water all over the floor did Katie submit to a dunk and a shampoo. And then she refused to allow Bonnie to dress her in her pajamas.

  That wouldn’t have been so bad, except she also refused to dress herself.

  “Katie Marie, you may not run around the house naked.”

  “Katie go to bed.”

  “You may not go to bed naked. You’ll catch a cold.”

  “It’s not cold under my blanket,” the child said in her little voice, missing her “r” in the way Bonnie found particularly adorable.

  “It’s not nice, either,” Bonnie persisted, remaining patient with difficulty.

  It took forty-five minutes to get the little girl dressed and settled in her bed.

  And Bonnie, expecting that Keith would have finished eating and cleared away the dishes, traipsed out for a cup of tea before collapsing in the family room in front of the television.

  The kitchen looked exactly as she’d left it, with Keith’s uneaten dinner congealing on his plate in the middle of a table littered with food that had been pretty disgusting when it was still fresh. Six months ago Bonnie would have tackled those dishes with a cheerful heart and a fullness of spirit. She was a wife. And a mother. Exactly what she’d always wanted to be.

  And still wanted to be.

  She stacked the dishes. Carried them to the sink, removing the pans she’d put there while making dinner. She turned on the water, grabbed the scrub brush to rinse the dishes. And used her shoulder to dry the tears dripping softly down her face.

  “Sorry, hon.” Keith came back in just as she was getting to the pans.

  “You couldn’t have put that call off until after dinner?” She didn’t know who was more horrified by her waspish tone. She or Keith.

  Bonnie ached to wrap her arms around him and take away the sting. Except that she thought it would probably require a lot more than that to undo the damage they’d managed to inflict on each other.

  “Our satellite went off the air.”

  “You pay technicians to take care of stuff like that.”

  She winced. A woman who wanted her husband to massage her shoulders the way he used to after she’d had a hard day should not harp at him for something he couldn’t help.

  She scrubbed at the pans, washing them herself rather than placing them in the dishwasher, because she thought it might be therapeutic.

  Keith hadn’t said a word. She was afraid to turn around. To see the look on his face. Or worse, to find him gone. So she kept scrubbing.

  And then he spoke.

  “WE NEED TO TALK.”

  Chest tight, certain he was bringing himself more unhappiness, Keith stood his ground. He had to take charge. Put a stop to this endless waiting. Forget about holding on to a faith that was flimsy at best.

  Bonnie took one look at him, nodded and wiped her hands.

  As if on cue, they went into the living room. A place reserved mostly for the occasional formal event. Bonnie sat at one end of the beige silk couch, perched on the cushion’s edge.

  Keith took a chair. A deep breath. And then plunged in.

  “I need to leave,” he said calmly, forcing himself to look her straight in the eye. “At least for a while.”

  The qualification was unnecessary. Stepping backward when he had to run forward.

  Bonnie didn’t say anything. Just sat there, staring at him. He couldn’t read her thoughts anymore.

  “I’m just not cut out for this, Bon. I’m happy here, in this house, this life. And as hard as you’re trying to be, you’re not. I don’t see how anything’s going to change and I can’t go on day after day waiting for the other shoe to drop. I can’t keep walking through my days with this awareness that I’m not enough to make you happy. That the life I can give you is not enough.”

  She didn’t argue. Didn’t say anything. Just continued to sit there, staring at him. Keith had no idea what to do next.

  How did one leave a wife? he wondered. He wasn’t angry, didn’t have the energy to storm out.

  Should he just get up and go?

  Could he tell her how much he loved her?

  Bonnie bowed her head, her black, riotous curls a temptation and a sadness to him. He’d expected to have the right to run his fingers through those curls, to wake up beside them for the rest of his life.

  “I’ll go.”

  Her words shocked him so much that for a second there he thought his heart was ripping in two.

  “I’m the one who started this whole thing,” she said, her voice eerily steady. “I should be the one to leave.”

  Keith had to struggle to breathe. What had he thought? That once he’d called her bluff she’d come to her senses? Confess her undying need for him? Beg him to stay?

  He couldn’t have been that foolish. Could he?

  He didn’t think so.

  Bonnie stood. Left the room.

  So what had he been expecting?

  Keith honestly didn’t know. But it sure as hell hadn’t been this feeling of paralysis. As if he didn’t have the strength to stand. Or the will to think.

  Where was anger when he needed it?

  Life as he’d known it was ending.

  He didn’t have a script for the rest.

  KEITH WAS STANDING by the garage door when Bonnie, suitcase rolling behind her, came into the kitchen.

  “Where will you go?”

  “I have a room at the Holiday Inn in Wickenburg.” She named the nearest town.

  Hands in his pockets, he nodded. He was still wearing his slacks and tie and looked so good Bonnie could barely make herself take another step.

  She glanced down the hall toward Katie’s bedroom door.

  How was she ever going to do this?

  Should she say goodbye to Katie? Or just go? Which would be kinder?

  She glanced at Keith, needing him so desperately. Needing his help and support to find her own strength. He met her gaze, but there was no recognition there.

  “You’ll bring her in the morning?” she asked hoarsely.

  “Yes.”

  She had to make it out to the van. That was all she had to do for now. Just find the energy to put one foot in front of the other until she was in her van.

  “I’ll call Grandma tomorrow,” Bonnie told him. “I’m sure she’ll come stay until we figure something out.”

  He nodded. She had no idea what he was thinking.

  “This’ll be hard enough on Katie without wrenching her from her own home, her own bed, her routines….”

  She was babbling. She had to get out of there before she begged him to let her stay.

  “I’ll have my cell phone.”

  At the door she looked toward the hall one more time. She couldn’t leave her baby girl. She just couldn’t.

  So she’d call Dan in the morning and say no? Say no to any future opportunities, as well?

  She couldn’t stay. Not when she was so filled with frustration. She was starting to take her dissatisfaction out on Keith. And Katie.

  Still, she couldn’t walk out on her baby girl.

  Or Keith. Love for him burned through every pore. And guilt, for hurting him. Fear that their life together wasn’t enough for her. And anguish at the thought of spending one day without him.

  Keith and Katie were part of her. She belonged with them.

  “Just go.” His voice penetrated the fog.

  So she did.

  IN THE END, Bonnie spent the night at Little Spirits. And was up and ready long before the first parent arrived.

  Keith. With Katie.

  “Mommy!” the little girl cried, darting to Bonnie, her little arms clutching Bonnie’s legs.

  Tears—and questions—in her eyes, Bonnie looked up at Keith.

  “I’ll be by to get her after work.”

  He turned and walked out.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THINGS WERE GOING to hell in a handbasket. Lonna Nielson had no idea where that cliché came from, but neither did sh
e have time to make up a better one.

  Her back ached. Her hip ached. And she had ten meals to prepare that afternoon. The young mother who’d agreed to make Friday night’s meals had a sick child. Bonnie and Keith were going to be taking Ryan and Katie to Phoenix to attend a stage version of one of those new newfangled educational cartoon shows the kids were so crazy about these days. Only, this one had actors, instead of animated characters.

  Greg and Beth were going to Beth’s students’ first recital at MU—which was where she’d hoped to be. Becca and Will and Phyllis and Matt and Tory and Ben and the Montfords would all be there, too.

  Lonna stirred, chopped, browned, took a sip of milk to offset the acid in her stomach and preheated the oven. Everyone on the list was getting baked spaghetti with tossed salad that night. She’d gone easy on the spices; there was nothing in the meal that broke dietary restrictions, and garlic was a cure for most everything.

  Except, perhaps, whatever was ailing her grandson and his wife.

  Breaking the spaghetti noodles into halves, she dropped them gently in the boiling water, wiped the sweat from her forehead and tried not to think.

  Running from her thoughts wasn’t something she did often. It wasn’t her way. Lonna Nielson had survived widowhood at the age of twenty-seven, made it through the raising of her son and somehow lived through the tragic deaths of him and his wife. She’d conquered demons in her mind and in the world around her, fought battles at work, on the civic front and occasionally at home.

  While the spaghetti boiled, she added chopped onions and green pepper, grated garlic, tomato sauce and paste to the ground beef.

  As tragic as the Second World War had been, it hadn’t robbed her of faith in humanity; it had strengthened her resolve that, against all odds, miracles happened and good could prevail. The Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War…

  She lifted the big kettle of spaghetti, wincing at the pain between her ribs as she carried it to the strainer in the sink.

  Even terrorism hadn’t made a cynic of her.