“A bad ogre, maybe. Not the nice cartoon kind.” She took a helping of potatoes, then passed the bowl. “You know about being careful to not talk to strangers, don’t you?”
The child’s head bobbed. “Uh-huh. Memaw told me. Stranger danger.”
“That’s right.”
Kyle suddenly sobered. “Are you a stranger?”
“Not really.” Jamie’s smile gentled. So did her eyes. “But you still need to listen to your daddy and the rest of your family if they tell you to stay away from somebody, even me. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to such a good buddy of Useless.”
The five-year-old clapped his hands and grinned. “See, Memaw? I told you that was his name.”
The soft laugh Shane heard coming from Jamie was so congenial, so comfortable, he was taken aback. Apparently, interacting with children was her gift and doing so allowed her to relax and be herself. Too bad adults were so perceptive. There was no way he’d ever be able to think of her as anything but a poser, a liar who pretended to be someone else so she could return to Serenity and begin digging up dirt on people he called his friends.
That was part of the problem, he realized. A big part.
Shane clamped his jaw tight as reality dawned. To take her accusations seriously would mean looking beneath the surface of dozens of lives that up until now had seemed untainted. Honest. Not only acceptable but exemplary. He didn’t want to see any of their reputations torn down or tainted, especially not by baseless rumors.
Looking at her across the dining table and appreciating her tenderness and beauty the way he had been when she was talking with his son, it was easy for Shane to forget how dangerous she was to his family’s stability, not to mention the unidentified menace that might be watching her every move.
* * *
Jamie offered to help Marsha clear the table and do the dishes. Her motive was not totally unselfish. One, she wanted to escape the tension in the dining room, and, two, she wanted the chance to quiz Sam’s widow in private. To her delight and relief, Marsha expressed a similar desire.
“I’ll rinse and load the dishwasher while you hand me the plates and fill me in on what made you decide to come back,” the older woman said. “And don’t be like Shane.”
“Like Shane? How?”
“He tries to protect me. Always has, particularly since Sam was killed.” She grew pensive, her hands stilling. “It’s funny. My life is divided into two parts, the years before Sam was taken from me and the years since, almost like I’m two different people.”
Jamie Lynn nodded soberly. “I know what you mean. Until I saw Serenity again, I felt as if the girl I’d been before I went to live with Aunt Tessie was just a fantasy.”
“Whatever happened to your parents?”
“I wish I knew. That’s one of the reasons I’m here. Tessie finally gave me some details about my past and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know the whole truth.”
Marsha had gone back to scraping and rinsing plates. “Why didn’t you just ask your aunt?”
“I did. She insisted she didn’t know anything else. After R.J. was arrested and went to trial, Mom sent me to Tessie’s. I thought she was just trying to shield me during the trial. I had no idea I was staying for good.”
“That must have been hard on all of you.”
“Yes. I’m afraid I made everybody’s life miserable for a while. I was mad at the world.”
“What happened next?”
“Dad soon left Mom and everybody seemed to accept it as desertion. However, according to Tessie, both my parents had been threatened with harm if they kept trying to prove R.J. was innocent. After Dad disappeared and she knew I was safe with my aunt in New England, Mom supposedly left everything behind and hit the road—for her own protection.”
“And you believe that?” Marsha looked astounded.
“I was a lot more skeptical until I got here and met with such violent resistance to my queries.”
Silent for a moment, Jamie Lynn mulled over the events of the past few days. “You know, if whoever is upset about my interest in the past would have left me alone, I’d probably have satisfied my curiosity as best I could and gone back to New England none the wiser.”
“And now?”
She huffed and shook her head. “Now? Now they couldn’t get rid of me with dynamite.”
Marsha quirked a smile. “Let’s pray they don’t go that far. From what my son has told me, it sounds as if they were just trying to scare you off. So, what’s plan B?”
Jamie shrugged. “Beats me. I’ve requested copies of the trial transcripts and I plan to try to look up some of my brother’s friends from his teen years, if they’re still around. Other than that, I have no idea.”