by Jane Porter
He glanced around, seeing nothing but moonlight on snowcapped mountains, an empty road in front, with a pasture and a crumbling log cabin on the far side. Somewhere behind the schoolhouse was the river. “Because there is nobody anywhere.”
“That’s why they’re talking about closing the school. Fifteen years ago kids from six or seven families attended this school, and they were big families so there were enough children to make it worthwhile, but today it’s just four small families, which is why it’s no longer economical.”
“So they’d bus the kids into Marietta?”
She nodded, leading the way up the small porch and unlocking the front door. “But bus service up into the mountains is treacherous in winter, which is why they left the school open as long as they have.” She turned on the lights and stepped aside to let him enter the school.
Shane closed the door behind him. They were in a little enclosed entry lined with hooks and wooden cubbies on the ground. “This is where the kids keep their lunches, snow boots, and coats,” she said, before heading through a wide opening into the main room. “And this is where I teach.”
“It’s like a freezer in here.”
She nodded. “It’s cold.”
“Where is your heater?”
“We have an old furnace in the back and then I’ll plug in a space heater on really cold days.”
“I’d plug in more than one.”
“If you do that, you’ll blow a fuse. Electrical is old, too. That’s why I can only have a mini refrigerator and a low watt microwave.”
His gaze swept the tidy rows of desks. There were about twenty desks. “You have twenty students?”
“We had thirteen. That family’s gone as of last week, so we’re down to twelve.”
“What happened to that student?”
“The Hainsleys decided to try a new Christian academy in Livingston.”
“Is there a bus to that school?”
“No, the parents are going to drive Jamie each way. They thought it would be better for her. I think they hoped a Christian curriculum would be preferable.”
He shot her a narrowed glance. “Why?”
“They don’t believe in evolution, or sex education.”
“Ah.” His brow wrinkled. “Do you teach sex ed?”
“To the older ones, yes.”
“And what do the younger ones do while you teach the birds and the bees?”
“Work at their desks.”
“Wouldn’t they be listening in?”
“I teach the health stuff in a very quiet voice.” Her cheeks turned pink.
“How I’d love to be a fly on the wall for that,” he answered.
She made a face; cheeks still rosy and blue eyes impossibly bright. “Thank goodness you’re not. It takes a lot of work for me to be really calm and matter of fact.”
“But as a farm girl, I’m sure you’re comfortable with…the mechanics.”
She choked on a smothered laugh and then shook her head. “That’s terrible, but you’re not far off. These are all children of ranchers. They’ve grown up hunting and fishing and helping out on the property. Sometimes I feel like they know more about the real world than I do.”
“I know you’ve only been here for a little over a month, but do you feel like you’ve gotten a sense of the importance of this school? Is it an archaic way to teach, or is there a value to keeping the school open…beyond the obvious that it’s historically significant?”
“I love that question because I wondered that, too, and while I haven’t been here for any of the big events, I’ve been told that the Christmas play and spring picnic and eighth grade graduation are all huge events, drawing people for miles. Apparently everyone in the valley comes, not just the students’ families, but the entire community because this school is the heart of the community, and it keeps everyone connected.”
“I would think the local churches serve that purpose.”
“But the churches are divided into denominations, and this isn’t about a denomination, but the families that live here and call Paradise Valley home. Nearly every student here has a parent who attended this school, and those parents’ parents came here, and so it goes, stretching back four and five generations.”
He watched her face as she talked. She was pretty and fresh and animated and he could imagine how her students must hang onto her every word.
At least he hung on to every word.
He liked listening to her, and watching her. When she was excited about something her eyes lit up and her expression was bright and light. But then, Jet radiated light. It was a special magic inside of her, the thing that made her irresistible, the thing that warmed him and made him want to pull her close and wrap his arms around her and keep her safe. She deserved to be protected. Cherished. Not that he was the one to do it. God knew he wasn’t the relationship sort. He was good at paying for things, whipping out a credit card and picking up expensive dinners and buying pretty trinkets, but connecting…loving? Not his forte.
She was so different from who he’d expected her to be, so much more in every way, and she had the sweet, bubbly side he’d seen while watching her these past few weeks, but she had another side—smart, thoughtful, inquisitive—and he liked talking to her, liked that she wanted to discuss ideas and not just things.
In the past few years, he’d met far too many beautiful women who were more concerned with Instagram and Snapchat than what was happening in the world, and while he appreciated beauty, he was bored by the shallow, superficiality of a social media driven culture. A year ago he’d sat across from a woman on a flight who’d spent easily—no exaggeration—ten minutes flipping her hair, adjusting her sunglasses on top of her head, taking the sunglasses off, pouting, pursing lips, making duck lips all to get a perfect shot of herself, which she then spent another five to ten minutes doctoring with filters, and her intense self-absorption had fascinated and repelled him at the same time.
How exquisitely, painfully narcissistic…
He’d vowed then to nix dates with Instagram accounts filled with nothing but images of themselves.
When he first left school and started out on his career, the pretty young self-absorbed things hadn’t bothered him so much. As a loner, he hadn’t wanted a woman for conversation. He was happy to just look at her, and if the physical was satisfying, he was satisfied. But he was almost thirty-five and the shallow and empty left him feeling shallow and empty. Better to be alone, than with someone that left him cold inside.
And he’d been cold, for so long now he’d begun to wonder if the issue wasn’t others, but himself. He’d wondered if perhaps he’d been a loner so long that he didn’t know how to form real attachments. Perhaps the years of being shuffled around had damaged him completely…
But standing here in this freezing school, he wasn’t cold. If anything, he felt warm, surprisingly warm.
And even more surprising…happy.
“I’m definitely coming one day to see you teach,” he said. “Not so I can yap, but I want to sit in the back and just watch you and the kids.”
“Why?”
“I think it’d be interesting. You’re interesting.” He smiled at her. “Maybe a little too interesting because I’d rather be with you than working on my book.”
“But you’re close to the end, right?”
He thought of his desk, and the piles of notes, and the months of research that had ground to a halt as he’d hit one dead end after another. “Not as much as I need,” he confessed.
“But you’ll get it. You will,” she said.
He looked down into her upturned face, her pale brow knitting, her wide, blue eyes narrowing with concern. Her worry made something inside him tighten and ache. He did not want to disappoint her. She believed in him. He couldn’t let her down.
“I’m missing key pieces that I need to move forward, and that happens in every book, but not usually at this point—” He broke off, unable to continue, hating to hear himself share his failure ye
t again, out loud, twice in one day. He was never so open, not at all comfortable revealing chinks in his armor.
“And?” she prompted after a moment.
“It’s stressful. The book is due in a couple months and I hate feeling as if I am running out of time.”
A deep crease formed between her eyebrows. “Is there anything I can do? Any way I can help? Something I can type for you, or research? I’m pretty good with research.”
He smiled, touched by the offer, as well as her sincerity. She meant it. She wasn’t trying to make points or placate him. “I don’t think your family would approve,” he reminded her gently. “But thank you. I appreciate your support more than you know.”
And then he kissed her, lightly, sweetly, just because she was lightness and sweetness and everything he liked best. “We should go check on your car,” he said gruffly, sweeping his thumb across her warm, pink cheek because he didn’t want to let her go, but she wasn’t his, and couldn’t be his and so he forced himself to step away. “Make sure it’s still out there, running.”
Driving home, Jet thought about the kiss and Shane’s book and his worry about the deadline and she wanted to turn her car around and drive back to Paradise Valley and do something for him, do something to help him, even if it was just to make him dinner while he settled back at his desk.
She wasn’t a great cook, either, so it’d have to be pasta or maybe a simple broiled steak and baked potato, but he could eat and she could maybe get on the Internet and look up stuff, or go to the library and research…
But he was right that the Sheenan family wouldn’t be happy if she helped him in any way, and she’d made Harley a promise just this morning to try to keep her distance from Shane.
She didn’t want to keep her distance though.
Today, when he kissed her she wanted to lean in, wanted more of the kiss, more pressure, not less. The kiss had been so fleeting. It had teased her, stirring her senses but leaving her wanting so much more.
When he’d lifted his head, her pulse was jumping and her lips tingled and she couldn’t remember when she last felt so alive. And yet it had been just a brief kiss.
Imagine if it had been more…
Shane returned to the ranch, feeling better for the break. He’d only been gone thirty or forty minutes total, but the visit to the schoolhouse jarred a memory, and he suddenly needed to have another look at the church program in the Bible on the bookshelf in the Sheenan living room.
During the tour of the school, Jet had said that the school served the entire valley, making it the heart of the valley and a community center.
Tugging off his coat, he tossed it onto the bannister railing before heading across to the living room with its cold hearth and mostly empty bookshelves flanking the mantel. Last night he’d given the Bible a cursory glance but suddenly he was curious about the church bulletin inserted into the Bible.
Crossing the living room, he retrieved the book with the stiff, black leather binding. Opening the book, he flipped to the bookmarked page, the one he’d seen last night, and looked more closely at the printed bulletin.
July 27-August 4 1996
The New Awakening
Pastor Sawyer Newsome
There it was. Why hadn’t he noticed the name and dates last night?
He carried the Bible and church program to the couch and sat down to inspect both.
The New Awakening was a revival, held every year during the summer in that big field behind the one room schoolhouse.
The preacher and his lay people would park their trailers at the far end of the parking lot, and then erect a huge white tent for the worship services. The revival had been in town just a week when the Douglases were murdered, abruptly ending the revival. After that summer, Pastor Newsome never returned.
Early in his research, Shane had spent several long days researching the itinerant, evangelical group which crisscrossed the Pacific Northwest, traveling from Southern Oregon to Eastern Montana each year, preaching salvation by committing to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through prayer, good work, and self-sacrifice. Newsome had as many critics as supporters. Depending on the perspective, Sawyer Newsome was either heaven-sent, or wildly delusional.
Even the critics, though, couldn’t ignore Sawyer Newsome’s ability to stir the audience. He drew crowds and created devoted followers with his passionate, charismatic speeches.
The 1996 revival was New Awakening’s sixth visit to Paradise Valley. They’d arrived for two weeks of sermons, services, and prayer groups. The tent was just beginning to fill for the Thursday evening service on August first when they heard the first siren, and then the second, and then the third.
And the fourth.
And the fifth.
Ambulances, fire trucks, sheriff patrol cars.
More patrol cars.
And more.
The start of the service was delayed as people tried to decide if they should go see if they were needed. The valley ranchers were a relatively tight-knit group, and while not always friends, they pulled together in emergencies.
The fleet of emergency vehicles was ominous indeed.
Some ranchers left. Others stood ready by their trucks, waiting for word, or the signal, that they were needed. And then a car careened into the lot with news that the entire Douglas family had been murdered in their own home.
Pastor Newsome tried to turn the evening’s service into a prayer vigil but families were unnerved. A family had been senselessly slaughtered and nobody knew who did it. The killer, or killers, was still on the loose. He—they—could be anywhere. People raced home to arm themselves, barricading their families behind locked doors.
Saturday evening when no one showed up for the service, Pastor Newsome took down the tent, packed up the folding chairs, hitched the trailers, and left for Cheyenne.
And that was when people began to talk.
The authorities caught up with Pastor Newsome in Wyoming. Sawyer and his “people” were interrogated, but there was nothing to tie them to the murders. Indeed, Sawyer Newsome was in the middle of leading a group of local ladies in prayer when the murders took place. All of his deacons were on the school grounds, too. It couldn’t be them.
But people still wondered, speculating, as Caroline Grace Douglas attended the revival every year without fail, often with one or more of the Douglas children. The younger ones would go to the Bible “camp,” and the older ones would join Grace in the tent for the worship service.
But then others dismissed the speculation as dozens of local families participated in the revival each summer. The New Awakening revival had become as much a part of summer as the Fourth of July picnic and the September rodeo. It was unthinkable that Pastor Newsome—a man of God—could be involved with something that was clearly the work of the devil.
In his research, Shane discovered all the interviews the detectives conducted with those who attended the revival, getting statements, checking facts and leads. The detectives believed they’d spoken with everyone, but how could they be sure?
Now, seated on the couch with the Bible and bulletin, Shane flipped the bulletin over, scanning the scriptures, songs, and prayers before carefully sliding it back into the Bible where he’d found it and flipping through the rest of the Bible. There were more pages underlined, more delicate pencil marks, and then at the front he saw the flash of a name. Catherine Jeanette Cray.
He went back to that very first page. The name had been written in an unruly black script at the top of the first page of the book, and he lightly touched her name, written in that ragged, not quite confident calligraphy—Catherine Jeanette Cray. His mother.
This was her Bible.
He felt a hitch in his breath, his chest growing tight.
He was almost thirty-five and he still knew so little about her. He’d spent his life trying to come to terms with the mother who never returned for him, and seeing her girlish handwriting made him feel conflicting emotions. He didn’t wan
t to like her, but he loved her. He didn’t want to care about her, and yet he still needed her. Or, at the very least, to come to some kind of peace with her.
On the inside of the front cover there was an inscription from an Aunt Olive.
He didn’t know of an Aunt Olive. But apparently there was one. His past was like a shadowy cave with dark tunnels in every direction. It was easy to get lost. Easy to become confused. Over the years Shane had begun to fill in some of the missing pieces of his past—the Finley was a maternal great-grandfather, and Cray a maternal grandfather, and Swan the first name that had belonged to the Finely great-grandfather—but there were still so many things that didn’t make sense. Why had his grandmother felt the need to give him so many names? Why not just call him Shane Swan? Why add the Finley? Why the subterfuge, if there had indeed been subterfuge? Or had his grandmother simply been misunderstood by all around her?
Questions, and doubts, and a never ending mystery…
Just like the damn book he was writing.
He’d never set out to become a writer, but stories came to him, stories and questions, and Shane could never resist a puzzle, or a mystery.
Which was why he was here, sitting on an old, uncomfortable sofa in the home of a family that should have been by all rights his family, and yet they were strangers. Strangers who hated him.
They were arrogant, too.
The simmering rage boiled up, making his chest hot and his stomach burn. He didn’t like the anger, didn’t like the way he felt when his temper stirred, but every time he thought of their attitude and their arrogance.
Their house. Their land. Their community. Their name. Their reputation.
The Sheenans acted as if they were lords of a small kingdom. Marietta and Paradise Valley belonged to them. Perhaps they didn’t rule with iron fists, but they had tremendous influence. In a matter of weeks they’d turned much of Marietta against him.
He was certain they’d inherited the arrogance and pride from their father, William Sheenan. He’d read plenty about his biological father. His biological father had not been a kind man. He’d certainly had enemies, neighbor rancher Hawksley Carrigan, for one. Shane knew all about the land and water dispute. The two had feuded for over thirty years.
