Forever After

  Stop it, Meredith. Just stop it. Gathering her courage, she stepped outside.

  The creak of the back porch steps made Meredith’s skin crawl. Swiveling her head, she peered into the shadows, her eyes burning. Nothing. But then, a black dog wouldn’t exactly shine like a beacon. Would it? She hauled in a deep breath, trying to concentrate on the smell of the grass hay, which reminded her of home.

  “Mommy?”

  “I’m right here,” Meredith answered as she walked to the garbage can out by the shed. Heavens, it seemed dark. “See?” she called back over her shoulder. “No dog.”

  Just as Meredith lifted the metal lid, a crate beside the can brushed against her leg. She gave a startled leap and lost her hold on the lid handle. The resultant racket was deafening. To make matters worse, she dropped the kitchen trash.

  “Mommy!” Sammy cried from the doorway. “Mommy!”

  “I’m all right,” Meredith called, her voice quavering.

  This was ridiculous. She was a grown woman, not a fanciful child. She stooped to pick up the spilled trash, patting the ground to find the stuff. When she thought she’d cleaned up most of the mess, she brushed her hands clean and groped for the lid she’d dropped. After setting it back on the can, she retraced her steps to the porch.

  “See? I’m back,” she called, trying to sound cheerful. “And fine as a frog’s hair.”

  Sammy wasn’t standing at the screen. After stepping inside, Meredith righted the door in its frame as she closed it, then fastened the latch for good measure. “Sammy? Where are you?”

  No answer.

  Meredith set the trash pail in the rusted utility sink, waited for her eyes to adjust to the light, and then began searching for her daughter. She found the child between the washing machine and wall, her small shoulders wedged into the narrow space.

  “Oh, Sammy.”

  Taking care to be gentle, she extracted Sammy from her hiding place. “Sweetheart, I’m all right. See? Nothing bad happened to me. I just dropped the garbage can lid, that’s all.” The blank look in the child’s eyes filled Meredith with fear. “Oh, punkin. Mommy’s here. Everything’s fine.”

  Only everything wasn’t fine, and Meredith was beginning to wonder if anything ever would be again. She carried the child to the bedroom, her heart breaking at how rigid the little girl’s body felt. Disassociation from reality. That was the clinical term a psychotherapist back in New York had used. Rigidity, a blank stare, no response to stimulus. Every time it happened, Meredith felt panicky. What if Sammy never came out of it? That was the fear that haunted Meredith. The psychotherapist had assured her that as long as Sammy remained insulated from the sorts of experiences that had caused her illness in the first place, it was unlikely that the incidents would ever last more than a few hours. But even so, Meredith worried herself sick.

  The hardest part of all, Meredith knew from experience, would be when Sammy woke up. Not that she was actually asleep. She would simply blink, as if an invisible switch inside her had been turned back on. Then she would look around, as if to orient herself, smile, and behave normally. It was Meredith’s lot to behave normally as well—to act calm, to pretend nothing frightening had happened—when she yearned to hug her daughter and weep with relief.

  After turning on Sammy’s bedside light, she sank onto the old rocker she’d bought at a secondhand shop, cradling Sammy close and stroking her silken hair. She resisted the urge to shake the child or try to talk to her. Those tactics never worked.

  With a push of her feet, she set the rocker in motion. The rhythmic creak should have been soothing. Instead, it made Meredith want to scream. This was her baby who lay so rigid in her arms. Her baby. Sammy needed professional help, and since their move to Oregon, Meredith couldn’t provide her with it. The counseling sessions cost a small fortune, and she no longer had health insurance.

  Tears filled her eyes. Please, God, help me. I can’t cope with this alone anymore. The prayer seemed to bounce off the walls of her mind, a plea that would never be voiced. Maybe it was only wishful thinking, but Meredith believed the child could still hear her when she got like this, even though she didn’t respond.

  At some point, the telephone started to ring. The sound pealed through the otherwise silent rooms, monotonous, seeming to go on forever. Meredith didn’t move. Since she’d come to Oregon, the only evening calls she ever got were from solicitors.

  The ringing finally stopped, then started again. Her breath hitched, and she stopped rocking. What if it was Masters calling? Ever since she’d learned the sheriff lived up the road, she’d tormented herself with the possibilities, all of them beginning with, “What if?” What if there was an APB out on her? What if the sheriff had seen her likeness and somehow recognized her? What if he showed up on her doorstep with a warrant for her arrest? When he drove past her house in his Bronco, he always slowed down, as if he were trying to catch a glimpse of them. In her experience, cops were suspicious by nature. That was no big problem, if you had nothing to hide.

  God, she was tired. So awfully, horribly tired. Too tired to worry about it any more. If he showed up at her front door, she would deal with it then.

  Resting her chin on her daughter’s head, she let her gaze trail slowly over the room. She hadn’t pinched pennies to decorate in here, hoping to create a place where Sammy would feel cherished, a fairy tale world, where danger and fear couldn’t enter.

  The clown lamp on the night table radiated light through the ruffled shade, creating a cozy nimbus of gold. Along one pink wall, Winnie the Pooh plaques held court over a Strawberry Shortcake toy chest. The bookcase farther down the wall displayed children’s books, mostly fairy tales or collections of whimsical nursery rhymes.

  Satin and lace. Little girl fantasies and castles in the clouds. Fairy dust and magic wands. Not so long ago, Meredith had stubbornly clung to a childish belief in those things herself—or at least in an adult version of them—that good was stronger than evil, that handsome heroes truly did exist, that anything was possible, if you believed.

  His gaze fixed on the well-lighted windows of Meredith Kenyon’s house, Heath depressed the receiver button on his portable phone, cutting off the connection in the middle of a ring. Why the hell didn’t she answer? He rejected the possibility that she might have caller ID and simply didn’t wish to speak with him.

  Goliath chose that moment to rear up on the windowsill again, his claws scraping loudly on the expensive oak. Heath grabbed the Rottweiler’s collar and pulled him down. “Would you stop it, Goliath? I’m not letting you out. Just go lie down.”

  The dog whined and circled, his stout body bumping Heath’s legs.

  “No,” Heath said more firmly. “You’d make a beeline for that little girl. Don’t think I don’t know it. Now go lie down.”

  As the dog trotted away, Heath tossed the phone on the sofa. Screw it. If the lady didn’t want to answer her calls, he had better things to do. What did he plan to say to her, anyway? That Goliath was a great dog, once you got to know him?

  Disgusted with himself, Heath crossed the living room, flopped down on his manure brown recliner, and jerked up the footrest. A cold beer, as yet untouched, sat on the end table, condensation pooling on the coaster. He reached for the satellite remote control, hit the power button, and then poised his finger over the selection browser. Police shows. He saw enough in real life, not to mention mysteries to solve, and unlike in the movies, solving them was never easy.

  Meredith Kenyon was no exception. Something about her troubled him. He wasn’t sure what. He only knew there was more going on with her than met the eye. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. Had he seen her someplace before? Was that it?

  A niggling suspicion formed. Maybe the lady was wanted for something. Usually when Heath felt a nagging sense of familiarity when he first met people, it was because he’d seen their pictures come in over the wire at one time or another.

  Nah. He gave himself a hard mental shake. If he didn’t w
atch his step, the first thing he knew, he’d be suspecting harmless old ladies of being ax murderers.

  Fed up, he turned off the set, pushed up from the chair, and grabbed his untouched beer. Goliath fell in behind him en route to the kitchen. After emptying the bottle and stuffing it into the recycling bin, Heath stared down at the pile of rinsed dishes in the sink. Seven plates. That meant he still had five clean ones left.

  Since he had the evening off, he toyed with the idea of washing dishes—just for the hell of it. But, nah. If he ran out of pots, he could always muck one out.

  Before heading for bed, he stepped outside so Goliath could take a leak. From down at the pond, frogs croaked, creating a cacophony. As accompaniment, cattle lowed in the distance, and occasionally a horse whinnied. To Heath it was like listening to a symphony. He loved ranch life. As a young man, that had been his dream, to be a rancher. On a much larger scale than this, of course.

  A sad, lost feeling settled over Heath as he remembered the young man he’d once been. One bad decision had altered the entire course of his life. For the most part, he was happy. At one point in his life, working in law enforcement had been his salvation, and even now, his work with teenagers helped keep his demons at bay. He was certainly too busy to spend much time mourning over the dreams he’d left behind. But deep down, in a secret place he seldom acknowledged, the yearning to have his own ranch was still there, waiting to assail him when his defenses were down.

  He took a deep breath, savoring the smell of alfalfa and grass hay, wondering what it was within him that made him love it so. Thinking of his dad, he knew damned well it had nothing to do with genetics. Granted, Ian Masters owned a large ranch, but he seldom spent much time there.

  Heath shook off his nostalgia and squinted to see through the moon-silvery darkness. Goliath had wandered up the drive and looked as if he were about to bolt. “Don’t even think about running off,” Heath warned.

  Goliath came loping back to the porch. Heath didn’t miss the look of longing the Rottweiler sent toward the Kenyon house before he bumped open the screen door to go inside. Heath turned to follow, wondering if he should flip on the air-conditioning. He decided to just open a bedroom window. In this country, the ambient temperature plunged drastically in the wee hours of the morning. This being only May, it’d be colder than a witch’s tit by dawn, and he’d wake up freezing with the air conditioner on.

  Meredith squinted into the morning sunlight, one hand pressed to the small of her back, the other clenched on the cracked handle of a sledge hammer.

  “Whew!” she said, smiling at Sammy. “Fence building is hard work.”

  Sammy settled a bewildered gaze on the tangled sections of hog wire and rusty metal posts that Meredith had dragged from the shed. “It isn’t gonna be very pretty when you get done, neither,” she observed with a child’s candor.

  Meredith was far more concerned with functionality. “No, but it’s free. Lucky for us, someone who lived here stored this stuff instead of throwing it away.” She glanced over her shoulder at the sagging fence dividing their yard from the cow pasture. “If I have any posts left over, maybe I can use them to shore up that old thing as well.”

  “How come do we gots to have fences?”

  Already sporting blisters on her palms, Meredith gingerly shifted her grip on the sledge hammer, her mind racing for an explanation Sammy would believe. Admitting the truth, that she was terrified the Rottweiler next door might return, would only fuel Sammy’s anxieties and make her afraid to play outside. Meredith figured she was worrying enough for them both, thus her decision to enclose the backyard. The dog would play heck trying to reach Sammy through a fence.

  “I’m going to have a garden,” she improvised. “What do you think about that?”

  “What kind’ve garden? For flowers?”

  “Vegetables. I was your age when I planted my first row in my mom’s garden.”

  “Was it fun?”

  “Well, yes, it was. My mom left the responsibility of it completely to me. I had to water my row and weed it, and I got to pick my own veggies and wash them for supper.”

  Sammy frowned. “I still don’t know how come we gots to have a fence.”

  “To keep the cows from trampling our plants.”

  Sammy glanced at the pasture. “They don’t never come over here, Mommy.”

  “No, they haven’t yet. But if they get loose, they might. Cows love gardens, you know. What plants they don’t manage to eat, they cut to pieces with their hooves.”

  Sammy made a face. “We gonna grow okra?”

  Meredith laughed. Her daughter didn’t share her enthusiasm for Southern-style food. “Maybe. But we can plant other things, too. Broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, turnips, and cucumbers. Squash, too, and maybe even some taters. They have potato farms here, so they must do well.”

  Now that the thought of a garden had occurred to Meredith, she quickly warmed to the idea, wondering why she hadn’t considered the possibility before. Too many years of city living, she guessed. As a girl growing up in Mississippi, she wouldn’t have been able to imagine people not having a garden. It was a way of life for her folks.

  Given the state of her finances, Meredith needed to economize, and growing her own produce would cut back on the grocery bill. If she started collecting quart-sized jars and lids, she’d have plenty to use for canning by the end of summer, and she could probably pick up a pressure cooker at the thrift shop.

  Visions of her kitchen shelves lined with neatly labeled jars filled her mind. She and Sammy could make relish, catsup, pickles, and jelly. Not only would it be fun, but it would save her a load of money.

  She surveyed the backyard, trying to decide where might be best to plant a garden. “It’ll be so much fun, punkin. We can plant peas and corn, too.”

  Sammy brightened at the mention of her favorite vegetables. “Yummee.”

  As Meredith bent to get another post, she found herself glancing at the rickety old house and remembering all the grand plans she’d had when she moved in. Last night, she’d felt so defeated and afraid, her one thought to pull up stakes and move as quickly as she could. Now, her optimism was returning. With a fence, it was unlikely that the Rottweiler would get in the yard again, and with that threat out of the way, she’d have no more run-ins with Masters. Maybe they could make their home here, after all.

  Hope burgeoned within her as she ran her gaze over the sagging back porch and weathered red shingles. Definitely not a palace, but to a dyed-in-the-wool country girl, fancy houses held little appeal. This place needed lots of work, but if she kept after the landlord and did a lot of it herself, it would get done eventually.

  “What’s wrong, Mommy?”

  Meredith snapped from her reverie to focus on her daughter. “Nothing, sweetie. Everything’s right, absolutely right.”

  Chapter 4

  Over the next two days, Heath’s life was a whirlwind. The recall petition was causing a stir, and he’d been called before the board of county commissioners three times, only to accomplish nothing. He refused to toss teenagers into overcrowded cells, even for short stays until their folks could come get them. A look at the dark side, up close and personal? Not while he was sheriff. As for calling parents, no problem. He just needed fifteen more deputies and another pair of hands to do the job.

  Then there’d been the accident, for which Heath would always believe Tom Moore had been responsible. At final tally, seven boys had lost their lives, all honor-roll seniors who would have gone on to universities next fall on football scholarships. They’d been well liked by their teachers, popular with classmates, and deeply loved by their families. It was a devastating loss. Heath had attended the memorial service, and he’d spent most of the first day after the wreck at the school, giving lectures on teenage alcohol abuse, counseling kids with drinking problems, and enrolling drinkers and nondrinkers alike into prevention programs, sponsored by businesses in the community.

  In addition to th
e problems caused by recall and the accident, Heath had been dealing with what he was coming to think of as the “Moore Factor.” The younger man was about to drive Heath and everyone else at the department crazy. The possibility of Heath’s recall pleased the deputy, no end. For the last two days, his uniforms had been starched so stiff, they looked as if they could walk by themselves. And when he came in to work, he all but danced a jig. He actually seemed to think that he would have Heath’s job in the bag if Heath were out of the picture. Right. Moore had a lot of growing up to do before he’d be ready. In ten years, maybe, maybe being the keyword. If he kept pushing Heath’s buttons, he might not live that long.

  Being so preoccupied, Heath might have forgotten the pretty little brunette down the road but for one small detail: nearly every time he drove past her house, she was outside tackling some chore that made him feel guilty as hell for not stopping to help. One time, she was building a fence, which he assumed was to keep Goliath out, the next time swinging a hoe as if she were killing snakes. Another afternoon, she was trying to fix a section of fence between her yard and the pasture, wrestling with a post bigger than she was. Two days later, he saw her removing a sheet of particle board from the top of her battered Ford sedan. What in the hell was she up to over there?

  He’d chewed on that question ever since. Not my business. The lady wants nothing to do with me, and if I’m smart, I’ll keep it that way. What am I gonna do? Repair the place for her? Like I have time for that.

  Logical reasons notwithstanding, Heath still felt like a heel for not helping. Not that she’d accept. He wouldn’t be welcome if he went back over there, dog or no dog.

  This is ridiculous, Meredith thought one morning as she stared at the black dog hair on the edge of the bathroom sink. How could there be dog hair in the house after all her efforts? She’d washed Sammy’s bedding and the clothes she’d been wearing the night Goliath got in the yard. Plus, she’d dust-mopped the floor in Sammy’s room three times since. But the hair kept appearing. It was as if the stuff was procreating.