The One And Only

“You’ve created a wonderful B and B,” Shelby said sincerely. “You make all your guests feel welcome.”

“It’s because I’m happy. I learned home is truly where the heart is, and this is mine.”

For a minute Shelby wanted desperately to bare her soul to Amelia and to tell her of her own past mistakes and her present quest. She hesitated, the phone rang and the moment was lost.

That was probably better anyway. She didn’t want the information about her search leaking. If her birth mother still lived here, she didn’t want to expose her to the embarrassment of her neighbors knowing about the child she’d given up twenty-nine years ago.

After having her own child and losing it, albeit to death, she didn’t want to cause pain to anyone else. Setting the finished tray in the fridge, Shelby waved to the other woman and went to her room.

She considered the old records in the attic at Beau’s office. They might tell her everything she needed to know without her having to search for a living person.

Tomorrow she would start work for Beau Dalton. She would ask him about going through the records for the Historical Society and volunteer to dispose of them. She considered this plan from all angles and decided it had no problems that she could see.

A picture of intense blue eyes flashed into her mind, eyes that seemed to see right inside her at times. She would have to compose her request beforehand so that she didn’t stumble over the words and arouse his suspicions.

She wondered if he believed her story of finding out about the position here over the Internet.

It was true…as far as it went.

But, of course, it wasn’t the whole story. She’d known exactly where she was going to look for a job.

The town was the only thing she knew about her birth mother. A copper bracelet had been forgotten and left at the birthing clinic. It had been made by a Nez Perce family and sold through a gift shop here in Lost Valley. The nurse had put it with her belongings when her adoptive parents had come to pick her up.

Shelby removed the bracelet from her small jewelry carrier, a velvet roll-up bag with several pockets her aunt, one of her father’s sisters, had given her at graduation years ago. The copper gleamed brightly in the afternoon light from the window. Its polished stones were engraved with intricate symbols, similar to Egyptian scarabs but using birds and plants for models.

She didn’t think her parents had been Native American, but that was a possibility. After considering wearing the bracelet, she reluctantly put it away. She had no idea whether anyone might recognize it, but she wasn’t ready to take that chance. Not yet.

With a rueful smile, she admitted she’d learned caution in her old age. Her birth mother must have learned it, too.

The lines from a poem studied long ago came to her.

I was young, as was my heart;

And I followed where it led—

Followed my heart and not my head,

Those days

When I was young, as was my heart.

Some wistful part of her longed to be that young, confident girl again, excited about life and all that it could hold.

A more cynical part of her scoffed at the idea.

She knew which part to believe.

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