A Family For The Sheriff

Joe shook his head and stared at the ground. “Well, anyway, your mom hasn’t said—”

“Mom.” Sam turned to Maria, who’d been about to give his offer a flat thanks, but no thanks. “We have to let him go with us. I know he’s lying.”

Maria glanced at Joe’s dark eyes fixed on her son’s back, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

She sighed, hoping they wouldn’t run into anyone they knew. “He can come with us. Can we get out of the rain now?”

It was crowded for a Wednesday night. Maria winced at every voice, worrying that someone she knew would be there. No one from Gold Springs would understand her helping Joe Roberts.

She wasn’t sure she understood it herself.

They found a table and ordered pizza, then Joe and Sam disappeared into the game room. The music was loud, and the excited screams from the game room punctuated the laughter and the calls for pickup in the pizza kitchen.

Costumed characters posed for pictures with their arms around children and adults alike. Flashing lights danced in time to the music while a group of waiters sang “Happy Birthday” slightly off tune.

Maria put a hand to her head. It was beginning to ache. Her life wasn’t usually more stressful than trying to get a good price from her herb crop. A chance encounter had made her placid existence choppy.

It wasn’t that she was afraid of her neighbors and family. She just didn’t want them to think she didn’t support them. It wasn’t in her nature to thrive on controversy.

“Wow!” Sam jumped into his chair at her side, his face flushed but happy. “He’s good.”

Joe took the chair opposite and grinned at him across the table. “I’ve spent so much time in places where there wasn’t anything else to do.” He shrugged. “That’s why I’m the best.”

“He might be.” Sam grinned then jumped up. “Can I go back and try Wrangler again?”

“Go ahead,” Maria told him. “The pizzas haven’t even gone in yet.”

“Thanks.” He took a few more coins from her. “If I keep practicing, I could be as good as Joe. He said I have natural talent.”

Maria smiled and glanced at Joe. “That’s great. Good luck.”

“Call me if the pizza comes,” he yelled as he was running away.

Maria faced the man across the gleaming white table. “I’m not sure I should thank you for telling him to practice.”

“Definitely not.” He shook his head, resting his arms on the table. “I wanted some time to talk to you alone. It seemed the easiest way.”

Maria tensed, looking at a napkin she had neatly folded on the table.

“Look, I’m sorry about what’s happened,” she said. “It got out of hand.”

“What exactly has happened?” he asked, leaning forward, trying to catch her eye. “Surely I have the right to know that, anyway.”

“It’s not easy to explain.” She unfolded the white paper napkin. “The county commission and the town disagreed about who should run the new sheriff’s department. It sounds silly, I know, but the town felt like it should be someone from Gold Springs. Someone who knows the area.”

“They told me that there wasn’t anyone who knew enough to set up the type of department they wanted,” Joe explained.

“The Lightners are the biggest problem.” She bit her lip, feeling as though she was somehow betraying Tommy and the others.

“Your husband?” he wondered.

Her eyes met his then, and the depth of sorrow he saw there made him sorry he had wanted to know the truth.

“My brother-in-law. My husband died two years ago. He was Gold Springs’ constable. He might have been the new sheriff.”

“I’m sorry.” He felt trite when the words were out of his mouth. “This must be hard for you.”

She looked up again, her hair falling back a little from her face. “Actually, it’s not like that for me. It seems to hurt the others, Tommy and Josh’s parents, more than me. Maybe that’s because I always hated Josh doing that job. It’s what killed him.”

Joe drew a deep breath and looked away for an instant, not relishing the memories those words dredged up for him. “So it’s nothing personal. They would have hated anyone.”

“That’s true,” she agreed with a shrug. “Only Tommy would have been good enough for the Lightners once Josh was gone.”

“Why didn’t Tommy get the training and take the job?” he asked, his voice harsh.

Maria smiled. “The commission made it clear from the beginning that they wanted someone with experience in setting up a sheriff’s department. Even if he’d had the training, Tommy would have been out of his depth. Josh had law enforcement training. They would have worked with him.”

Maria looked at the paper napkin only to find that she had shredded it.

Joe touched her hand lightly, stopping its restless destruction, then jerked his fingers away as though he’d been burned.

“I’m sorry to cause you this trouble. There wasn’t any way for me to know.”

“There wasn’t,” she agreed, picking up the pieces of napkin and depositing them in a trash container near their table. “I’m sorry for you, too.” She took her seat again and looked at him more thoroughly in the bright lights.

He had a kind face, she thought, and eyes that did understand what she was feeling, because he looked as though he had been hurt a few times himself. And there was something more. Something she’d never expected to feel again. Something she thought had died with her husband. Heat. Fire. When Joe touched her; when he looked at her. She didn’t want to feel that way but she couldn’t deny it. His voice seemed to hold her, stroke her. His words shivered down her spine.

“Don’t be.” He smiled, his eyes glittering as he made a rapid decision. He wasn’t running anymore. From his memories or this place. “I don’t plan on going anywhere.”

“Maybe you don’t understand—”

The pizza arrived, accompanied by Sam’s loud whoops of excitement.

“Look who’s here, Mom.” He dragged his towheaded friend to the table. “Ronnie’s science project won first prize, and his dad brought him here, too.”

“Dad says we should share a table,” Ronnie said in a voice that said he didn’t care as long as he could get back to the games. “He’s right over there.”

Maria looked across the crowded restaurant, and Ronnie’s father, Ron, waved to her enthusiastically. He pointed at the empty seats at his table and motioned for her to join him.

“Oh, God,” she moaned. “I can’t believe it.”

“They better get used to the idea.” Joe waved and flashed a smile. “I guess it might as well be now.”

“I have to live here,” she told him. “Everyone’s going to think I planned this.”

“I’m sorry, Maria,” he assured her quietly. “I didn’t plan this, either.”

“Maria!” Ron approached their table, a pitcher of soda in his hand. “I think my table was bigger, darlin’, but if you’d rather sit down here, that’s fine with me.” He pulled two chairs to their table.

Maria glared at Joe, who looked the other way. Is this what she deserved for her good deed? She should have kept herself out of it. Then she wouldn’t be sitting here waiting for the fat to hit the fire.

“I don’t believe we’ve met.” Ron hitched up his pants and stuck out his hand to the stranger across the table. “Ron Washington.”

“Joe Roberts.” Joe took his hand in a hard grip. His gaze targeted the other man’s as Ron’s face went from friendly to hostile.

“Joe Roberts?” Ron spluttered, staring at Maria, who wouldn’t look at him. “From Chicago?”

“Yeah.” Joe grinned. “How ’bout those Cubs?”

Chapter Two

“Why is he here?” Ron demanded when Sam came and pulled Joe off to the game room after they had finished eating.

“You know why he’s here,” Maria returned angrily.

“You know what I mean! He should have been in that fancy car of his and gone already. I never expected to actually meet him! Especially not here with you!”

“Ron, it doesn’t matter to me if someone else does Josh’s job. Especially a stranger. I’ve already had enough of that. So you and Tommy will just have to fight your own battles.”

Ron was thrown off guard by Maria’s outburst. He was a small, mean man who gloried in any sense of power. His dark hair was thick and greasy, slicked back from his forehead.

“Maria, honey.” His tone was clearly conciliatory. “I know Josh’s death has been hard for you and the boy, but...you aren’t dating the man, are you?”

“No.” Maria ground the word out, pushing her last bite of pizza aside. “But it wouldn’t have anything to do with you if I was dating him. He plans on staying, Ron, and after meeting him, I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do to change his mind.”

“He hasn’t seen the house yet.” He grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “After that, we’ll just see, won’t we?”

“I think you might be surprised,” she informed him darkly. She wasn’t sure what they had expected, but she didn’t think they were prepared for Joe Roberts.

Ron left her, headed for the game room, found his son and led him out of the restaurant.

Maria’s headache had turned vicious halfway through the meal. She’d searched her purse for an aspirin but had come up empty.

It wasn’t anything that had been said between the two men. Ronnie had behaved as though Joe was a long-lost cousin. He didn’t have enough nerve to tackle the taller, clearly better conditioned man by himself.

But his glances at Maria had told her that it was far from over. He would head to Gold Springs and be on the phone all night telling everyone what had happened at the pizza restaurant.

Joe had tried to talk to Ronnie about the changes that were coming, about the needs the county felt weren’t being met with the present arrangement.

Ron nodded and didn’t say anything, preferring to keep his vehemence until Joe had left them alone at the table. Then he had lashed out at Maria, leaving nothing unsaid.

“Is everything all right?” Joe asked, bringing Sam back with him after Ronnie had gone.

Maria looked at him, her head pounding. “All right?” she asked scornfully. “No, everything isn’t all right!”

“Maybe we should leave,” Joe suggested, and Sam nodded.

“She gets upset sometimes,” he told the older man.

“Sometimes, women take things the wrong way,” Joe returned with a sigh.

“I think we should leave right now.” Maria glared at them both and stuck the check for the pizza in Joe’s hand. “Thanks for supper.”

She stormed past Joe and took Sam’s hand in a firm grip as she pushed open the door into the cool, rainy night.

“Aren’t we waiting for him like you said?” Sam asked as she headed for the truck. “We can’t just leave him,” he continued when she didn’t answer.

Behind the wheel of the truck, Maria contemplated doing just that. Helping Joe Roberts wasn’t going to be worth the hell she would go through every time she came in contact with someone from town.

And he had certainly left her out to dry by announcing who he was to Ron. She had explained the situation to him. He could have kept it to himself. He could have—

“Mom?” Sam tried to get her attention as Joe walked out of the tire store with a new tire on his arm. “Are we going to let him walk out to his car after you promised him a ride?”

Maria could hear by the tone in her son’s voice that leaving Joe would be an unforgivable event.

She sighed and started up the truck. “We’ll give him a ride out there, Sam. But then we won’t see him anymore, okay?”

“Okay, I guess. But I don’t understand why we can’t see him.”

Maria knew she had only herself to blame. She should have left well enough alone. There was no way the town would ever accept Joe Roberts as sheriff. Trying to be nice was only prolonging the inevitable.

But she’d finish what she started. She pulled the truck into the tire store parking lot and waited while Sam opened the truck door.

“He can put the tire in the back, can’t he, Mom?” Sam turned to her.

“Sure,” she answered curtly.

She didn’t look at Joe as he closed the truck door behind him. Nothing that had happened was his fault. She had put herself in an awkward position by picking him up in the first place.

But she was mad anyway. He seemed like a decent person, but there was no way to win this fight. The best he could do was to change his tire and go on with his life.

Joe and Sam kept a quick-paced conversation going while the truck took them out of town. They talked about games and science, wondering about virtual reality, a favorite concept of Sam’s.

“You have a computer with a CD ROM?” Sam whistled. “I’d really like to see that.”

“Anytime,” Joe promised easily.

Maria seethed and tried to coax a little more speed out of the old truck. She didn’t like to think of Sam being let down, but once they let him off at his car, they wouldn’t be seeing Joe Roberts again.

She let out a sigh of relief when she saw the exotic red car in the headlight beams.

“Here we are,” she said, pulling the truck up behind the car on the shoulder.

“I appreciate this,” Joe said, climbing out of the truck. “I know it won’t be easy for you to explain.”

“I can take care of it,” she announced stiffly, wishing he would go.

“Can’t we wait until the tire is fixed and I can ride back with him?” Sam interrupted.

“I don’t think—”

“I’d like that.” Joe agreed hopefully. “It shouldn’t take long.”

“Sam,” Maria groaned. “You’re not riding in that car.”

“Mom! He said himself he’s trading it! It might be the last chance I have to ride in a car like that!”

“No, Sam,” she said.

“It’s no problem,” Joe assured her. “And I promise to go the speed limit.”

“Please, Mom!”

“I’ll just be out here changing this tire.” Joe backed out of the argument.

“Mom!” Sam pleaded. “We’re just a few miles from home, and you’ll be behind us. Can’t I go with him? Just this once?”

Maria decided later that her headache had brought about insanity and that was why she’d agreed to the request. Nothing else could account for it.

“All right.” She shook her head. “All right. You can ride home with him and then you can get in the shower and go to bed.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Sam whooped and jumped out of the truck.

Maria leaned her head against the cool window and closed her eyes. A light rap on the glass brought her head up with a start.

“Sorry it took so long,” Joe apologized. “We’re ready when you are.”

“I’m ready,” she replied. “You won’t—”

“Go a hundred and sixty?” He chuckled, his face nearly invisible in the darkness. “I promised a sedate fifty. You can track me.”

“I will,” she vowed, rolling up the truck window.

Sam waved to her from the lighted interior of the expensive car, then Joe started the engine.

True to his word, Joe drove the car carefully down the highway, the old truck a dark shadow on the car’s bumper.

There were no streetlights, so she couldn’t see into the car, but she felt sure her son was making conversation lively for Joe.

Maria trailed them to her driveway. Sam and Joe were already out of the car by the time she’d parked the truck.

“I just want to show Joe my award,” Sam said.

“No.” Maria was adamant “We had an agreement, remember? You wanted to ride in the car, but in turn you had to go straight in, take a shower and go to bed.”

“Mom,” he groaned.

“Another time,” Joe promised. “It’s getting late.”

“All right.” Sam glanced at his newfound friend in the halo of the porch light. “I’ll see you later.”

“I think my place is the next one up from here,” Joe told him cheerfully. “We’re neighbors. We’re bound to run into each other.”

Maria’s heart sank. It was true. The old Hannon farm was the next place up the road, about a mile away. However, they wouldn’t be all that likely to see one another.

“I appreciate your help, Maria,” Joe told her when Sam had gone inside the house.

“I did what anyone would have done. But I don’t see what good it will do for you to stay here.”

He laughed lightly. The sound sent a shiver up her spine, which she attributed to the late hour and the cool breeze that had picked up after the rain.

“I don’t give up so easily,” he told her bluntly.

“No one wants you here,” she replied in as blunt a fashion. “How can you get anything accomplished like that?”

“Sometimes people have to swallow the medicine even if it doesn’t taste like cherries,” he replied in a cheerful tone. “I guess I’m that medicine.”

Maria thought about the state of the old Hannon place but bit her tongue. She didn’t have the nerve or the heart to tell him the home he was looking for wasn’t to be found there.

“I guess everyone has to do what they think is best,” she said, and turned to the door. “I don’t envy you.”

And you wish I’d go to hell and get it over with, he thought. He wondered if he’d actually consigned himself to that hot spot by staying when his every instinct was telling him to leave.

“Good night, then,” she said, her voice a whisper in the darkness as the rain began to fall again.

“Good night,” he told her quietly. He added, “I’ve seen the house, Maria.”

After she’d closed the door, she thought she might have imagined the last part. How could he have seen the old house without his car? It didn’t make sense. Had he walked there from town?

Probably her guilty conscience putting words in his mouth. She had been part of the scheme. Or if not actively part, then at least she didn’t raise any protest.

But then she had never been one to purposely stand out or get people upset over anything.

She sighed when she saw the number of messages on her answering machine, having a good idea what those messages might be.

She stared at the little black box for a long moment, her head still pounding. Then she turned off the light without listening to the calls and slowly walked up the stairs to bed.

The rain was gone the next morning. Bright September sunlight flooded the changing leaves of the big oak trees around the farmhouse.

Maria got Sam off to school then went out to her garden. The sun was warm on her head as she worked, beginning what would probably be the last harvest of herbs for the year.

It had been a good year, a profitable year. The first since Josh’s death. With any luck and a mild winter, she might be able to afford a new truck by next year.

After selling off the livestock Josh had accumulated, she had changed the old barn into a crude greenhouse that would enable her to go on raising some of her best cash crop even after the first heavy frost of fall.

Over the summer, she’d finally managed to work out a long-term deal with two of the restaurants in Rockford. They would buy whatever she could raise and deliver of fresh parsley, sage, oregano and thyme.

Being able to grow her herbs all year would ease the financial setbacks since Josh’s death.

And maybe, she thought as she sat on her heels and stretched her back, she would even have enough to buy Sam a computer for his birthday next summer.

Like many couples, Maria and Josh hadn’t planned for his early death or what the loss of income would mean to the ones left behind. The first year, she and Sam had barely survived while Maria had tried to patch their lives back together.

By the second year, she was fighting back and finding that she didn’t have to be a victim after all. It wasn’t the life she had planned, but it was the life she had, and she was going to make the best of it.

Many people, including her own family, had said that she wouldn’t be able to make a go of it on her own after Josh’s death. She was determined to prove them wrong.

Maria walked into the house, knowing Sam wasn’t due home for another hour. She threw her dirty gloves into the washing machine then ran upstairs for a shower.

Muddy jeans and T-shirt went down the laundry chute while the water heated, making its strange gurgling and whining sounds.

It was an old house, but she and Josh had managed to get a good buy on it after they were married, when Maria had just learned she was pregnant with Sam. The house had seemed like a godsend, a way to get them out of her mother’s house before the baby was born.

It was a good, sturdy house. She looked at the walls around her. It was dark, with its tiny windows, and it was cold in the winter, hot in the summer. But it was hers.

The twenty acres she owned around the house were mostly overgrown and full of rabbits. Five acres of it she’d leased to a farmer to grow alfalfa for his horses. The rest, except for the acre or so adjoining the house, wasn’t used.

Josh had planned to raise cattle and horses there. It had been his dream. He had planned to buy up some land to go with what they had—the Hannon land the town had given the new sheriff.

The Hannon farm was forty acres. The land was worthwhile, but the house hadn’t been lived in for over twenty years. It was falling down, rotted in most places. No running water or electricity.

When she had first learned of the plan to discourage the new sheriff and defy the county commissioners, Maria felt it was wrong, but the entire town was in on it.

Or rather, the town kept their mouths shut and let the Lightner family tell them what to do.

There was no way to present a case for fairness or to persuade them to give the new man a try. During the town meeting where it had all been decided, they had used her and Sam as living reminders that the town needed a local sheriff.

She had smiled grimly and kept her mouth shut, but she wasn’t sure that had been the right thing to do. It was too late now, of course. The damage was already done. But she felt sorry for Joe Roberts. There was no way he could have known what he was walking into when they had hired him from Chicago.

She stepped out of the shower, shivering because the water heater had run out of hot water at. the worst possible moment, shampoo still in her hair.

She glanced at the clock on her dresser and realized that she had taken longer than she’d expected. Sam and his friend would be home at any minute.

Quickly, she pulled on clean jeans and a white cotton button-up shirt, then brushed her hair with quick, even strokes.

She looked at her face in the mirror and saw the same face she saw every day. The blue eyes worried. The mouth getting a little more set every day.

What would Josh have wanted? she wondered. He was a fair man, but he was inclined to run with the crowd. Would he have wanted the new sheriff to be treated with less than respect? Would he have gone along with the decision to give him the old Hannon house?

Sam’s call from downstairs reminded her that she didn’t have time to daydream. She clipped back her shoulder-length hair and slipped her feet into tennis shoes then met her son at the top of the stairs.

“Hey, Mom!” Sam rushed toward her. “We thought you were gone.”

“Hey, Mrs. Lightner!” Ronnie smiled at her then followed Sam.

“Supper’s at five,” she said to their backs as they disappeared into Sam’s room.

Since it was Thursday, the last day of school that week, Ronnie was spending the night. That was the last bit of conversation she’d have that night. She sighed. Maybe now was the time to curl up with that book she’d meant to read for a month.

The phone rang, startling her.

It was her mother, telling her that an emergency meeting of the county commission had been called for seven that night and they wanted her to be there.

“Why?” Maria demanded. “I don’t have anything to do with any of this.”

“Anna Lightner seems to think your word, the wife of the dead constable, would go a long way,” her mother told her, pleased that her little girl’s word was good for something. It had been the proudest day of her life when Maria had become a Lightner and the darkest one when they had buried Maria’s young husband.

“I can’t,” Maria replied. “Sam and Ronnie are here for the night. I can’t leave them alone.”