Free Return to Oak Valley by Shirlee Busbee Page A

lessen her feeling of grief and loss, but it provided a distraction, and for the first time since she had learned of his suicide, that awful weight in her chest, that heaviness of spirit and the prickle of tears at the corner of her eyes was gone. Nick was right about something else, too: Until Josh's estate was settled she would have to put the question of his parentage on the back burner, and she was grateful that he was willing to do so.
    Shelly woke the next morning to rain. Not the fierce pounding of a major storm, but a heavy mist that blanketed the area and made it unpleasant to be outside. It was just as well; she spent the day going through Josh's office, trying to get a handle on his affairs.
    The rain continued off and on for several days, never quite stopping long enough to make going outside for any length of time feasible or desirable. Shelly couldn't bring herself to drive into town; she wasn't ready to face the curiosity and the questions and exclamations her return was going to cause. She knew that the news of her return was already circulating; she'd made no attempt to hide it, but so far, beyond a few phone calls from the friends she'd kept in touch with over the years, no one intruded upon her privacy. And the weather gave her an excuse not to venture too far from the house. Maria took care of all the shopping and meals and housework, so there was no real reason to venture forth. She saw Nick nearly every day—he usually strolled in about dinnertime and allowed himself to be persuaded to stay and join her for a meal. By tacit agreement they didn't discuss Josh. Mostly, they were busy learning about each other and quietly reestablishing the childhood link between them. Raquel was back in Santa Rosa, and Maria seemed determined to pretend that nothing had changed: she was the family housekeeper. Period. Shelly and Nick made faces at each other when Maria stiffly refused the invitations to join them, and the looks she sent her son as he sprawled at the oak table in the kitchen alcove were full of disapproval. Maria wasn't pleased with Shelly either; it offended Maria's sense of what was proper to have Shelly eating meals in the alcove rather than in the dining room, as Josh had always done. And Maria was tight-lipped about any relationship she might have shared with Josh. Shelly tried to introduce the topic once or twice when she and Maria were alone, but Maria's mouth remained firmly shut, and the resentment in her dark eyes made Shelly decide not to push the issue…at the moment. There would be time enough to breach those walls in the future. She spent the majority of her time in Josh's office and on the phone to Mike Sawyer. Her manner was polite and professional with him, and he responded in kind.
    A couple of times, Nick had dragged her out into the misty rain and they had hiked along the shaley mountainous roads, the rainfall not heavy enough to make them muddy and impassable. She enjoyed those walks. The cool, soft mist on her face, the stretching of her muscles, the fast pumping of her blood as they climbed a steep, twisting track, and the wet scent of pine and fir in her nostrils, after too many hours of sitting behind Josh's desk, were powerfully invigorating.
    April arrived and with it a glimmer of sunshine, and Shelly knew she could not put off the short drive into St. Galen's any longer. It was time. She'd been home now for over two weeks and had grown comfortable in Josh's house. Comfortable with her decision to remain in Oak Valley. A lot of the initial work on the settling of the estate had been done, and while there was still much to do, she could take a break from the paperwork with a clear conscience. She frowned. Going over the books, a troubling pattern of overspending and dipping into capital was beginning to make itself apparent, and she suspected that she was going to have to dig deeper and demand some detailed answers from Sawyer. Worse, it appeared that Josh had turned his back on