Sheriff Barstow collected his keys and gloves from the counter where he’d been seated before the confrontation between Dwight Parrish and Knox. The middle-aged man gave her a rueful shake of his head as he approached the cash register.
“You know, Lenora, the best thing you can do for yourself and that boy is find a way to make peace with the Parrishes.”
“Make peace?” She blew out a short breath as she grabbed a cloth and a bottle of spray cleaner and began wiping down the countertop. “If you’ll recall, I’m not the one who started this war.”
“Maybe not. But do you really want to be the one to escalate it?” Barstow swept a hand over the thinning strands of his grayed comb-over. “I realize you’re not happy about Travis coming home on Saturday.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” she muttered, scrubbing the laminate. “Should I be happy that the man who went to prison for brutalizing my sister seven years ago is getting out early for so-called good behavior?”
“He’s served his time, Lenora. He feels terrible about what happened to Shannon, but he’s said all along that their off-and-on relationship was a volatile one. All due respect, your sister was no angel, either. She was a rebellious, troubled girl.”
“Only after she got involved with Travis.”
“She’d been in and out of rehab most of that year, Leni.”
“Are you really trying to justify what Travis did by blaming Shannon? As if it matters, I know for a fact that she’d been sober for months the night he assaulted her.”
Sheriff Barstow held up his hands. “Be that as it may, according to Travis’s testimony, Shannon struck him first. He had the bruises and scratches to prove it.”
Leni scoffed. “He had bruises and scratches, Amos. Shannon’s skull was fractured in three places. He hit her so hard he almost knocked out her front teeth.”
And despite all of that, her sister hadn’t wanted to press charges. She probably wouldn’t have, but after a trip to the county emergency room with a concussion revealed she was eight weeks pregnant, Shannon had pushed past her fears of retaliation from Travis or his family. All for the safety of her unborn child.
Now that responsibility rested on Leni.
“I’m Riley’s legal guardian,” she reminded the sheriff. “Until my sister comes home again, I’ll decide what’s best for her son. I don’t suppose I’ll be able to count on you to make sure that man doesn’t come anywhere near Riley.”
The sheriff’s furrowed brow and sheepish stare was answer enough. “Travis Parrish is coming home a free man, Leni. So long as he stays on the right side of the law, I can’t prevent him from going anywhere he wants to.”
“You mean you won’t.”
It was a well-known fact that Amos Barstow’s allegiance to the Parrish family went way back. His father had been one of old Enoch Parrish’s closest friends before the elder Barstow died about a decade ago. Now, Amos was more than willing to look the other way over a lot of things when it came to the old man and his three sons.
His gaze gentled as he considered her now. “I’m sorry for what happened to your sister, Lenora. I truly am. I’m sorry she left all this burden on you when she abandoned her child and never looked back. This mess shouldn’t have been yours to clean up.”
“This mess?” Leni’s voice rose along with her outrage. “Riley’s not a mess I’m cleaning up. He’s not a burden. As for my sister, she didn’t abandon her child. She would never do that. I don’t know where she is or what made her leave, but it wasn’t by choice. She’s going to come home one day. I know she will.”
The sympathetic look on the seasoned law officer’s face said this wasn’t the first time he’d heard someone plead a case for an errant family member’s honor. She could see his doubt. He didn’t have to say he expected Shannon was gone for good—or possibly not even alive. His prolonged silence conveyed that clearly enough.
Leni couldn’t take it another second.
“You mind turning the sign on the door around on your way out, sheriff? I’m going to close up now.”
Besides, Riley was waiting for her to pick him up at her best friend’s place. Although Leni and he lived in the house behind the diner where she and Shannon grew up, on weekdays her friend Carla Hansen brought Riley home with her after teaching at the elementary school he attended.
After her confrontation with Dwight Parrish and the reality of Travis’s return tomorrow, she needed to see her little nephew’s sweet face and know that he was tucked in safe and sound at home where he belonged.
Sheriff Barstow zipped up his jacket, then put his gloves on. “You be careful out there on the road tonight, all right?”
Leni inclined her head. “Goodnight, sheriff.”
She continued her cleaning and watched him leave. His SUV turned left out of the diner parking lot, heading back toward the neighboring town where he lived.
A few minutes later Leni locked up, shrugged into her heavy wool peacoat without buttoning it up and trudged out to her old red Bronco. She cleared off the eight hours’ worth of snow that had buried it during her shift, then hopped in and cranked both the heat and the wipers to full blast.
As the vehicle warmed up, she tapped Carla’s number on her cell. “I just closed up and I’m about to head your way,” she said after greeting her friend. “How was he today?”
“Great, as usual,” Carla said, a smile in her voice. “We made snow angels in the yard after school, and then we spent a couple of hours looking at the blizzard on weather maps online and learning all about the biggest snowstorms. Did you know the world record for most snowfall in twenty-four hours was set in Colorado in nineteen-twenty-one?”
