The Lost Sheenan's Bride

But he was right that the Sheenan family wouldn’t be happy if she helped him in any way, and she’d made Harley a promise just this morning to try to keep her distance from Shane.

She didn’t want to keep her distance though.

Today, when he kissed her she wanted to lean in, wanted more of the kiss, more pressure, not less. The kiss had been so fleeting. It had teased her, stirring her senses but leaving her wanting so much more.

When he’d lifted his head, her pulse was jumping and her lips tingled and she couldn’t remember when she last felt so alive. And yet it had been just a brief kiss.

Imagine if it had been more…

Shane returned to the ranch, feeling better for the break. He’d only been gone thirty or forty minutes total, but the visit to the schoolhouse jarred a memory, and he suddenly needed to have another look at the church program in the Bible on the bookshelf in the Sheenan living room.

During the tour of the school, Jet had said that the school served the entire valley, making it the heart of the valley and a community center.

Tugging off his coat, he tossed it onto the bannister railing before heading across to the living room with its cold hearth and mostly empty bookshelves flanking the mantel. Last night he’d given the Bible a cursory glance but suddenly he was curious about the church bulletin inserted into the Bible.

Crossing the living room, he retrieved the book with the stiff, black leather binding. Opening the book, he flipped to the bookmarked page, the one he’d seen last night, and looked more closely at the printed bulletin.

July 27-August 4 1996

The New Awakening

Pastor Sawyer Newsome

There it was. Why hadn’t he noticed the name and dates last night?

He carried the Bible and church program to the couch and sat down to inspect both.

The New Awakening was a revival, held every year during the summer in that big field behind the one room schoolhouse.

The preacher and his lay people would park their trailers at the far end of the parking lot, and then erect a huge white tent for the worship services. The revival had been in town just a week when the Douglases were murdered, abruptly ending the revival. After that summer, Pastor Newsome never returned.

Early in his research, Shane had spent several long days researching the itinerant, evangelical group which crisscrossed the Pacific Northwest, traveling from Southern Oregon to Eastern Montana each year, preaching salvation by committing to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through prayer, good work, and self-sacrifice. Newsome had as many critics as supporters. Depending on the perspective, Sawyer Newsome was either heaven-sent, or wildly delusional.

Even the critics, though, couldn’t ignore Sawyer Newsome’s ability to stir the audience. He drew crowds and created devoted followers with his passionate, charismatic speeches.

The 1996 revival was New Awakening’s sixth visit to Paradise Valley. They’d arrived for two weeks of sermons, services, and prayer groups. The tent was just beginning to fill for the Thursday evening service on August first when they heard the first siren, and then the second, and then the third.

And the fourth.

And the fifth.

Ambulances, fire trucks, sheriff patrol cars.

More patrol cars.

And more.

The start of the service was delayed as people tried to decide if they should go see if they were needed. The valley ranchers were a relatively tight-knit group, and while not always friends, they pulled together in emergencies.

The fleet of emergency vehicles was ominous indeed.

Some ranchers left. Others stood ready by their trucks, waiting for word, or the signal, that they were needed. And then a car careened into the lot with news that the entire Douglas family had been murdered in their own home.

Pastor Newsome tried to turn the evening’s service into a prayer vigil but families were unnerved. A family had been senselessly slaughtered and nobody knew who did it. The killer, or killers, was still on the loose. He—they—could be anywhere. People raced home to arm themselves, barricading their families behind locked doors.

Saturday evening when no one showed up for the service, Pastor Newsome took down the tent, packed up the folding chairs, hitched the trailers, and left for Cheyenne.

And that was when people began to talk.

The authorities caught up with Pastor Newsome in Wyoming. Sawyer and his “people” were interrogated, but there was nothing to tie them to the murders. Indeed, Sawyer Newsome was in the middle of leading a group of local ladies in prayer when the murders took place. All of his deacons were on the school grounds, too. It couldn’t be them.

But people still wondered, speculating, as Caroline Grace Douglas attended the revival every year without fail, often with one or more of the Douglas children. The younger ones would go to the Bible “camp,” and the older ones would join Grace in the tent for the worship service.

But then others dismissed the speculation as dozens of local families participated in the revival each summer. The New Awakening revival had become as much a part of summer as the Fourth of July picnic and the September rodeo. It was unthinkable that Pastor Newsome—a man of God—could be involved with something that was clearly the work of the devil.

In his research, Shane discovered all the interviews the detectives conducted with those who attended the revival, getting statements, checking facts and leads. The detectives believed they’d spoken with everyone, but how could they be sure?

Now, seated on the couch with the Bible and bulletin, Shane flipped the bulletin over, scanning the scriptures, songs, and prayers before carefully sliding it back into the Bible where he’d found it and flipping through the rest of the Bible. There were more pages underlined, more delicate pencil marks, and then at the front he saw the flash of a name. Catherine Jeanette Cray.

He went back to that very first page. The name had been written in an unruly black script at the top of the first page of the book, and he lightly touched her name, written in that ragged, not quite confident calligraphy—Catherine Jeanette Cray. His mother.

This was her Bible.

He felt a hitch in his breath, his chest growing tight.

He was almost thirty-five and he still knew so little about her. He’d spent his life trying to come to terms with the mother who never returned for him, and seeing her girlish handwriting made him feel conflicting emotions. He didn’t wan

t to like her, but he loved her. He didn’t want to care about her, and yet he still needed her. Or, at the very least, to come to some kind of peace with her.

On the inside of the front cover there was an inscription from an Aunt Olive.

He didn’t know of an Aunt Olive. But apparently there was one. His past was like a shadowy cave with dark tunnels in every direction. It was easy to get lost. Easy to become confused. Over the years Shane had begun to fill in some of the missing pieces of his past—the Finley was a maternal great-grandfather, and Cray a maternal grandfather, and Swan the first name that had belonged to the Finely great-grandfather—but there were still so many things that didn’t make sense. Why had his grandmother felt the need to give him so many names? Why not just call him Shane Swan? Why add the Finley? Why the subterfuge, if there had indeed been subterfuge? Or had his grandmother simply been misunderstood by all around her?

Questions, and doubts, and a never ending mystery…

Just like the damn book he was writing.

He’d never set out to become a writer, but stories came to him, stories and questions, and Shane could never resist a puzzle, or a mystery.

Which was why he was here, sitting on an old, uncomfortable sofa in the home of a family that should have been by all rights his family, and yet they were strangers. Strangers who hated him.

They were arrogant, too.

The simmering rage boiled up, making his chest hot and his stomach burn. He didn’t like the anger, didn’t like the way he felt when his temper stirred, but every time he thought of their attitude and their arrogance.

Their house. Their land. Their community. Their name. Their reputation.

The Sheenans acted as if they were lords of a small kingdom. Marietta and Paradise Valley belonged to them. Perhaps they didn’t rule with iron fists, but they had tremendous influence. In a matter of weeks they’d turned much of Marietta against him.

He was certain they’d inherited the arrogance and pride from their father, William Sheenan. He’d read plenty about his biological father. His biological father had not been a kind man. He’d certainly had enemies, neighbor rancher Hawksley Carrigan, for one. Shane knew all about the land and water dispute. The two had feuded for over thirty years.