An Impostor in Town (Colorado Series) (3 page)

Johanna’s letters were always vague, never hinting as to her whereabouts. It was the reason for the post office boxes they routinely used. It was per their agreement. Her heart stuttered as she glanced at the return address. The address was in Ouray. Why had Johanna brought Jake so close to Durango? She ripped the envelope open fearful of what was inside.

Dear P.,

I don’t need any money right now. I have a job that includes board and meals that should take care of us. If my situation changes for the worse, I will let you know.

J.

Once again, Johanna had tucked a picture of Jake inside the note. She studied the photo. Maybe she was wrong about Johanna squandering what she sent her. The boy always looked healthy and well dressed. She puffed out her cheeks in relief. Maybe she should send the woman some money anyway, but not as much as usual.

She hugged the new picture of Jake close to her heart. When would she ever feel safe enough to reclaim her son?

****

Peyton watched from across Santa Rita Park as Brian and Chris tossed a disc on July fourth. She pouted. He had been about to sit with her when Chris tempted him with the Frisbee. She declined when Brian suggested she join them. She didn’t want to play with Chris Smith.

Emily sat on the same side of the picnic table and followed her gaze. “He’s hung up on her.”

She swirled ice water in a plastic cup. “Yep.” She kept her eyes glued to Brian and Chris.

“He’s wasting his time.”

“Maybe.” She wasn’t going to argue.

“You’re more his type.” Emily wouldn’t leave the subject alone. That was her way.

“So?” She sniffed. “Does it matter?”

“It does to you! I think it might to him if you’d encourage him.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Discussion closed. Or it should have been. Chris overshot Brian’s head by three feet and the Frisbee landed in Peyton’s practically untouched cheese fries.

He grinned as he approached the picnic table. “Oops. Sorry about that.” He retrieved the Frisbee and began plucking the debris it left behind from her fries.

“Don’t bother. I wasn’t eating them anyway.” She managed a straight face, but it was difficult to keep her amusement in check. His expression was so…serious.

His hand stilled over the greasy, cheesy, dirty mess. “Can I get you some more?”

“Oh…no. I’m okay.” She didn’t want him buying her anything.

He plopped onto the seat between Peyton and Emily with his back against the table and kicked his long legs out in front of him. “How’s my angel of mercy?”

Peyton cringed. “Doing okay, I guess.”

Emily leaned forward on her elbows and arched her eyebrows at Peyton behind his back. She glared at her and Emily suppressed a giggle. Brian turned to Emily and was about to open his mouth when Chris sauntered up. She looked fresh in her flowered sundress that perfectly offset her golden hair. Peyton glanced down at her worn jean shorts and green tank top. Chris glowed like a sunrise compared to Peyton’s drab appearance.

“Hey, Brian, I have to go to work.” Chris acted as if Peyton and Emily were invisible. “I’ll play with you later.” She grabbed her Frisbee and walked toward the full parking lot. Brian followed her with his eyes.

Emily nudged him. “She’s a pretty woman.”

Peyton glared at her. He appeared to catch the undercurrents, but was obviously clueless as to the meaning. She wasn’t going to enlighten him despite the questioning look on his face.

Emily wasn’t done interfering. “Wonder if she’ll ever discover her identity.” Peyton narrowed her eyes.

He shrugged. “Who knows?” A worried frown crinkled his forehead.

“Well, she can’t possibly marry or have a family as long as she isn’t certain she doesn’t already have one.” Both Peyton and Brian stared at her without commenting. “Well…I think I’ll go find Conner.”

She sat in miserable silence after Emily left.

“How’re things going with you?” This time his question seemed more than perfunctory.

After Shelly Carter attempted suicide, he’d asked her to mentor the girl. At first, she’d balked. She could hardly contemplate her own experience let alone deal with someone else’s. But when she found out Shelly was pregnant, she couldn’t refuse. “It’s been tough.” There had been numerous emotional moments during their meetings.

He squeezed her shoulder. “I appreciate what you’re doing.”

“You were right. Mentoring Shelly has been good for both of us.”

“Do you always go straight to the heart of the matter?”

“Huh?” His sudden question surprised her. “I guess so.” She dared to venture into uncertain territory. “How old were you?”

“How old?” His face registered first confusion, then comprehension. “I was seventeen.” He leaned his forearms on his bare upper legs and sucked in his breath. “I guess it’s still a little hard to talk about after all these years.”

Now maybe he understood her attitude. “It’s easier to ask someone to talk about it than to talk about it yourself, isn’t it?”

He sighed. “How old were you?” Consternation clouded his face as soon as the question passed his lips. She read his mind. He had promised to respect her privacy.

She hesitated a moment. What harm could there be in telling him? She was probably safer with him than anybody. “I was twenty.”

Sympathy erupted on his face and she regretted bringing the topic out into the open. She closed her eyes, sure his next question would be uncomfortably probing, but she was wrong. He leaned over and plucked a blade of grass from the turf. “Come on. Let’s walk.”

****

They trailed the edge of the river. Bright sprays of water splashed over rocks in the streambed. The sun descended in the west, casting yellowish green shadows along the well-trodden path. The few inches that separated them seemed like miles to Brian.

He drew in a deep breath. He had practiced what he would say just in case this occasion presented itself. “I was young and immature and had absolutely no self-esteem. I didn’t fit in. I was a pimply, gangly, awkward teenager—a social disaster.” The words tumbled out of his mouth as if they had a life of their own. “I thought the world was a dark place, but that was because I was always looking inward. I had a very dark heart. I might have been the original Goth.”

“I can’t believe that!”

“My mother died when I was sixteen. My father and I were barely communicating.” He snatched at a tree branch, clutching the leaves in his fingers and crushing them. “My girlfriend ran away to California with my best friend. All my life I wanted to work for the railroad, but I was turned down because of my reputation. I felt totally abandoned.” The memories still swamped him with pain. He shoved the hurt into the part of his psyche where he usually hid it and concentrated on the details…for Peyton’s sake.

“I’ve felt like that,” she whispered.

“Something changed in my father when I was about ten or eleven years old. He started treating Mom awful…verbally abusive. It was like all the love in his heart just vanished…what little he’d had to start with.” He pushed his story past the clog of emotion in his throat. “He told me I’d never amount to anything over and over again until I believed him. When he came to the hospital after I cut myself, he said I couldn’t even kill myself like a man.”

“That had to be devastating.”

“It was. I thought he’d never forgive me for embarrassing
him
.”

She stopped him and placed a hand on his upper arm. “Have you forgiven him?”

She had a strange way of turning a question around and giving an issue a different perspective. He smiled at her direct hit. “Yes.”

“Does he know that?”

“No. At least, I don’t think he does. I’m not sure he wants my forgiveness.”

Her eyes lit with sympathy, empathy, or at least a deep understanding. “Have you asked him?”

He smiled. Now she was the one counseling him. That was her way. “I haven’t seen him in fifteen years. The last time…he wouldn’t even look me in the eye. I gave up and went home.”

Her brows pulled together over her nose. “Didn’t all this come out when you ran for sheriff?”

“Well…yeah, it did.”

“Then how—”

He laughed. “Well, it got ugly. My opponent wanted the job
real bad
. Have you ever heard of Doug Crenshaw?”

“Wasn’t he the sheriff before you?”

He nodded. “If Doug hadn’t stood up for me, I would have never gotten elected. He was my mentor, the daddy my father never was. He saw the potential in me I never saw in myself and bucked a lot of people to hire me on as a deputy—back before all the psych evaluations cops go through. I probably wouldn’t pass now.”

“You’re the most stable person I know.” He barely caught her whispered admiration.

He laughed…mostly at himself. “That’s kind of pathetic, Peyton, if I’m the most stable person you know.”

She smiled at him. “Yeah, I guess it is.” She kept smiling. The pain on her face stayed with him for days.

****

Peyton dropped into her easy chair and let her purse fall to the floor. She tossed the mail on the side table and plopped her feet on the nearby hassock, closing her eyes for a moment to contemplate the day. The only bright spot had been when she joined Shelly in the hospital cafeteria for lunch.

Since Shelly’s failed suicide attempt, she had shown no further signs of harming herself, but the young woman was still struggling with feelings of despair and loneliness, even more so now that the birth of her baby neared. Her mother had abandoned her, and Shelly needed a mother figure.

As the shadows grew longer, Peyton turned on the table lamp near her chair. She glanced at the mail, noticing the return address on two of the envelopes. She slit open the first of the letters, unmistakably written in Johanna’s distinctive script. She had tucked a picture of Jake inside the envelope as usual. Peyton smiled at the photo of her nearly twelve-year-old son, laid it aside, and picked up the other letter. She didn’t recognize the penmanship and breathed uneasily as she ripped it open.

She had written the letter two years ago when Johanna and Jake lived in New Orleans. There was a new message scrawled in bright red ink on the bottom of the page.
Have you been resurrected from the dead, Peyton?

She released the breath she held in one swoosh. Someone close to Johanna knew the real Peyton Chandler was dead. She shivered even though the temperature was at least seventy-five degrees. The room spun around her. She breathed in jerky gasps as she braced on the chair arms, allowing her deepest fears to envelope her. Someone knew Peyton Chandler wasn’t her real name. Someone knew she’d taken her sister’s identity.

Jake may be in danger. Maybe I should go to Brian.
She rejected the idea. What would he think if he knew she was impersonating a dead woman? She clung to his opinion like a life preserver. Her moods ebbed and flowed with her perception of what he thought of her.

No, she wouldn’t go to Brian. There was another alternative. Her heart rate slowed, her mind cleared, and her respiration settled into a normal rhythm. She hastily wrote Johanna a note.

After all these years, she would have to risk meeting the woman face to face.

J.,

The prearranged spot at the prearranged time.

P.

It would be a hard wait. The prearranged spot was in the gazebo in Old Town Square in Albuquerque, the prearranged time the first Tuesday in the month at ten in the morning. It would be another month before she could confront the woman. She feared by then it would be too late.

****

Peyton gasped and pressed a hand to her chest when Brian startled her in the middle of the cereal aisle. He chuckled with amusement. “That’s not funny.” She squealed her protest.

“Sorry.” He grinned, but clearly wasn’t apologetic. “How’s my angel of mercy?”

“I wish you would stop calling me that!” She slugged him on the shoulder. The tension in their relationship had eased somewhat since their conversation by the river on July fourth.

“How’re things going with you?” He grinned after he uttered his predictable question. She groaned and glanced at his overloaded buggy. He followed her gaze. “A guy’s got to eat.”

“Horse feed?”

“It’s good. You should try some one day.” The twinkle in his eye made her heart sing. She tossed him a skeptical frown. “I wouldn’t give them anything I hadn’t tried myself.”

She stared at him as if he’d lost his marbles. “Okay. That’s your business.”

“I’m taking these supplies out to my place. Would you like to help me exercise the horses?”

Her good judgment screamed no, her heart countered with a solid yes. All he needed to do was nudge her just a little… “I’m so tired. It’s been a long day already.”

He placed a hand on her buggy. Was he trying to stall her escape? His grin widened a bit.

She wavered and then relented. “Okay, but don’t expect me to be much fun. I’m really exhausted.”

“Okay. You can relax while I feed the stock. We can ride another day.”

“Nope. If I’m going out to your place this evening, I’m going to ride.” Her reply allowed no argument.

He smiled as if he’d won a contest or the lottery or a major battle in a questionable war. Her cell phone interrupted the pleasant moment. She glanced at the caller ID. “Just a minute. It’s the hospital.” She listened to the ward clerk in the emergency room. “I’ll be there in less than fifteen.” She turned and offered him an apologetic half-smile. “It’s Shelly Carter. She’s hemorrhaging, and she’s asking for me.”

“You can ride to the hospital with me if you like.” She took him up on the offer. His flashing cop lights could get them there faster.

****

Together Brian and Peyton climbed three flights of stairs. Shelly had already been transferred to labor and delivery. Peyton conferred with one of the on-duty labor and delivery nurses and then reported to Brian. “Sounds like a ruptured uterus.” She couldn’t tell him she was afraid Shelly might lose her life or her unborn child’s life. The words lodged in her throat and refused to budge. “I’m going to scrub in.”

After she scrubbed, she entered the operating room where Shelly was already prepped. The girl stared up at her with bleary pain-filled eyes. A thin smile creased her ashen face. “I’m so glad you’re here. I couldn’t find my mother. I was so scared.”