Sharon Mignerey - Small Town Secrets

The nursery stood ready for the child who had never come home. Foley had accused her of turning the room into a shrine, but that wasn’t it at all. She was simply keeping the room ready for the child she prayed would soon be hers to love and cherish.

And then her gaze lit on a teddy bear sitting in the middle of the crib. A bear that hadn’t been there earlier in the day.

She began to shake.

Foley had been in her house. Again.

And changing the locks hadn’t kept him out.

Her heart pounding so hard it hurt, Léa slowly crossed the room. There was nothing malevolent looking about the stuffed animal, but it was no more welcome on the crib than a rattlesnake would have been. The bear’s foot covered an envelope. With trembling fingers, Léa picked it up.

Early in her marriage, she had thought of Foley’s habit of giving her cards as endearing. Later she had come to dread them because they always, always picked at her in some covert way. He was the good guy, trying to make amends. She was the one who didn’t understand. As usual, there was no name on the envelope. And why would there be, since he never called her by her name?

She pulled the tab out of the back of the envelope and slid the heavy card out. A picture of a pair of teddy bears leaning against each other was on the front of the card. She opened it and read,

Baby, I know about your adoption application. I have a plan you’re going to like.

The card was signed with his initial F in a big, bold stroke that overshadowed the words.

Léa’s heart started to pound as she crumpled the card. Of course he knew about the adoption application. In Rangeview everybody knew everything about everyone else. Her aunt Jackie had undoubtedly told her uncle Curtis, the chief of police. And he would have told Foley.

And of course he would have a plan. He always did. That awful night—he’d had a plan then, as well. He had wanted to sell her grandmother’s house so they could build a new one with all the conveniences he wanted. What Léa had wanted hadn’t mattered at all, and, when she had tried to explain why the house was so important to her, he had refused to listen. He had stormed out and returned a few hours—and a lot of beers—later, and they’d had a stupid argument with both of them shouting. She had turned to go down the stairs…and the next thing she remembered was the long ride in the ambulance and her consuming fear for her baby. Everything had shattered in an instant.

The telephone rang and jarred her back to the present.

She glanced at her watch while the phone pealed again. Twelve-fifteen. Since it was after midnight, only one person could be calling.

Her answering machine picked up, and the instant her leave-a-message recording ended, Foley’s voice came through the speaker. “I know you’re there, baby. Pick up the phone.”

She moved to the doorway, drawn by the voice, needing to know what he would say, hating that she needed to know.

“I can see the lights on.”

She had no idea if he really could see because he was close by and calling from his cell phone, or if he was guessing. Irritated that he was playing mind games with her, she went down the hallway to her dark bedroom where she peeked out the window.

From her answering machine downstairs, Foley continued to talk.

“Okay, be that way. You just need to understand one thing. You’re being plain stupid if you think you can adopt a kid without me. You need me to make this work. You know you do. I’m done with being patient.”

“And I’m done with this nonsense,” she muttered. As soon as she was sure that he’d disconnected the call, she picked up the phone and dialed the number for her aunt and uncle’s house. Never mind the late hour, her chief-of-police uncle needed to make sure Foley understood that he had trespassed.

“Oh, honey,” came her aunt Jackie’s sleepy voice over the phone after Léa identified herself and asked to speak to her uncle. “Are you sure this can’t wait until morning? You know how little sleep Curtis gets.”

“I’m sure.” Léa stared a moment at the card, then dropped it in the wastepaper basket next to the phone.

“You’re calling about Foley again, aren’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“He was so upset tonight,” Aunt Jackie said, “after I told him about your adoption application. The poor man just couldn’t imagine why—”

“Why would you even tell him? This has nothing to do with him.” Léa inwardly fumed, hating that her assumption was right—Foley had found out about the adoption from her own family members.

“Of course I would tell him,” Aunt Jackie said. “He’s a God-fearing man, and he has every right to know what you’re intending to do.”

She made it sound as though Léa planned to enlist her friends to paint the water tower Pepto-Bismol pink. To her regret, she had done just that a lifetime ago. Aunt Jackie’s notion of both her maturity and Foley’s seemed to have frozen in time ten years earlier. “Adopting a child—”

“Should be done by two parents, Léa. And let’s face it. You’re not exactly a poster child for stable.”

“Aunt Jackie, what are you talking about?”

“As if I have to remind you. One example. The time you and Sally Miller stole her father’s car—”

“I was sixteen then—”

“And got stranded in Steamboat Springs after you crashed the car,” Aunt Jackie continued. “You can’t have forgotten that.”

Léa hadn’t. In the twelve years between then and now, she had graduated from college, been married and dealt with the deaths of her parents. Yet her aunt made it sound as though it had happened yesterday. As far as her two aunts were concerned, she was still the wild child who had driven her parents crazy. Foley was still the guy most likely to succeed—the star athlete, the student-body president. Never mind they had both changed. A lot.

“I know I’m not a modern woman and all, but in my day it took both a mother and a father to raise children. That’s the natural order of things, the way the Lord meant it to be.”

“I’ve got to go,” Léa said, figuring she was a hairbreath away from one of her aunt’s diatribes against the life she assumed Léa was leading. Tempted as she was simply to hang up, she added, “I’m sorry to have bothered you so late. Good night.”

As soon as her aunt said goodbye, Léa hung up the phone. One thing was abundantly clear. She couldn’t expect any help from her chief-of-police uncle tonight, and since she had no assurance she could keep Foley out of the house, she couldn’t stay here and go to sleep. She found herself wishing Sadie was at home instead of Europe. If she had been, Léa could have gone there to sleep as she had done a couple weeks ago when Foley had kept calling every couple hours.

After she washed the greasepaint off her face, she decided she might as well go to work. At least then she’d be accomplishing something while she wasn’t sleeping. After changing her clothes, she paused at the front door, watching for a long time before finally deciding no one was outside. Though she would normally have walked the couple blocks to her café, she took her car. There, she locked herself inside and flipped on the radio, dialing through the stations in search of the show tunes that reminded her of learning to cook with her grandmother. As she slowed the tuner knob in search of the station, a deep, comforting voice came through the speaker.

“‘The eternal God is thy refuge,’” the announcer said, “‘and underneath are the everlasting arms.’ Deuteronomy 33.27.”

The words gave her pause, and she remembered a time when she had believed. Before her parents died. Before her divorce. Before her grandmother’s stroke. God hadn’t been a refuge or a comfort, no matter how many platitudes she had listened to. Léa moved the tuner to the station that played soundtracks from movies and Broadway plays—the music she always cooked to.