Return to Oak Valley Read Free Page B

New Orleans after the end of the Civil War. She had been thrilled when Josh had told her they had been among the few things saved from the fire that had destroyed the old house.
    Her hand caressed the soft leather, obviously reupholstered, and as she looked closely at the wooden legs, she could make out the faint signs of charring the refinishers had not been able to obliterate. Sinking down into one of the chairs, she stared blankly into space.
    It seemed impossible that Josh was dead. Her brain knew that he was dead, but her heart was still having trouble accepting that he was actually gone. He would have turned fifty in April, she had teased him about the big five-oh, but as far as she knew he had been in excellent health, which made his death all the more senseless. Why, she wondered for the hundredth time since Michael Sawyer had called with the devastating news of Josh's death, had he killed himself? She was positive that there had been no hint, nothing that would have alerted her to the fact that he was depressed, that he planned to kill himself when she had last spoken to him. She hesitated. Except, now that she considered it, for those few odd comments at the beginning of their conversation…She shook her head. She was just being fanciful—trying to read something into nothing. He had sounded, she decided firmly, his usual cheerful self, and mostly they had talked about what a great time they'd had together in February during Mardi Gras when he'd flown out to visit. The phone call had ended with his promise to call her the following week. And three days later, he had ridden to Pomo Ridge on his favorite horse and shot himself in the old family hunting shack.
    Her breath caught, pain knifing through her. Thinking of her laughing, pleasure-loving brother, it seemed inconceivable that Josh had killed himself. But if he hadn't killed himself…She frowned. Did she really think that he
hadn't
killed himself? The coroner's report had stated clearly that his death had not been accidental—one didn't accidentally shoot oneself in the temple. So that left what? Murder? Had someone else placed the pistol at his temple and pulled the trigger? A shudder went through her. The notion of Josh being murdered was just as hard to accept as the idea that he had killed himself.
Everyone
loved Josh! Her mouth twisted. Except, of course, the Ballingers.
    The warm milk was having the effect she had hoped for, and, yawning, she finally made it upstairs to bed. Snuggled in bed, she let her thoughts drift, forcing her mind away from Josh. It was weird to be lying here with no screaming sirens, no honking horns or the sound of swishing, screeching tires on pavement to disturb the silence. And the darkness! It was complete, only the stars winking in the sky overhead splintering the blackness. There were no streetlights, no flashing neon signs, and no headlights spearing through the darkness to disrupt the black velvet cloak of night. She'd forgotten that. The utter lack of light was almost unnerving, but she stilled the impulse to turn on a lamp. The lack of sound, too, was strange and, at first, it bothered her, the only noises she heard just the natural creak and squeak of the house. As the minutes passed, the night and the silence began its magic, just as it had when she was a child—she'd forgotten that, too. Oh, how she had missed the soft quiet, the soothing dark, and she suddenly wondered how she had stood all the blaring noise, the constant bustle and glaring light that was New Orleans.
This
, she thought drowsily,
is where I belong. This is my home. My roots.
    It wasn't something she could explain. She had been away from home for a long, long time and though she had told herself there was nothing in Oak Valley for her, there had always been a faint persistent longing to see the valley again. To see if it was as lovely as she remembered—the sky as blue, the creeks and streams as crystal clear and the trees as green. She'd been