Five Miles to Paradise

8

Leah would miss Heck, but how would she know where he was? She was half-asleep when he'd told her he was leaving. Besides, it was early Saturday morning. No one would be in the office until Monday. The door to the sheriff's office was never locked, but Jonetta, his secretary, only worked weekdays. If a problem arose and he needed extra help, Heck called on Palmer or Mervyn.

Although Heck stayed out on patrol most days, he always swung by the office and checked the board he'd hung outside the office door. If something came up on a Saturday or Sunday, everyone knew to stick a note on the nail if they needed his assistance when the office was empty. Heck would check in, read the note, and address the problem. If they needed him at night, they simply called his house or paid him a visit. The system had worked satisfactorily for years.

Rayanne, Heck's wife, hadn't minded him working weekends, although it worried her that her husband never attended church. Heck told her not to fret. He worshipped the Lord in His fresh air chapel.

Still, Rayanne would have liked it better if Heck had accompanied her once in awhile and sat on a real pew in a real church. But she never complained. She used the time to deep clean the house and cook. Since she'd died, Heck kept to his routine of working as much as he could. It was better than rattling around in an empty house.

There was a telephone in the sheriff's office, and Heck could call out if the storms did not whip up and wreck havoc with the poles and phone lines, or if Eunice, the local operator who worked the switchboard in Sylvander wasn't on the rag or in one of her difficult moods.

Heck wasn't a doctor, but it really did seem that Eunice had her ornery spells like clockwork once a month. Many times, he'd simply bitten his lip and endured her tirade, then calmly explained who he needed her to connect him to, and waited until the spirit moved Eunice to put his call through. Heck had often wondered if maybe Eunice was just too high strung for public work. He didn't know. But she really could be a biddy, sometimes.

Yet now, even if she could, Eunice couldn't connect him to anyone. He was miles from the office and the telephone. No one but Harley knew where he was, and Harley was on his long run and probably wouldn't be back for three or four days. Heck was on his own. 

He knew he had to be careful. Yes, Leah would miss him, but she'd be the only one.

Leah's nice, he thought, pushing away that tinge of guilt that his heart was replacing Rayanne.

***

Without warning, visions of his dead wife flashed before his eyes. He hated these times when his brain played these kinds of tricks. Maybe he was getting too old for this line of work. He tried to concentrate. Now was definitely not the time to stroll down Memory Lane.

The scenes that flashed before him scorched his soul like acid. Nothing he tried made his brain shut down. The memories came at odd moments, and Heck never knew when they would crash over him like a tidal wave destroying a tiki hut.

He just couldn't seem to shake them off, no matter how hard he tried. He'd tried drowning them in a bottle, but that hadn't worked. In disgust, he's sworn off drinking. Nothing could wash Rayanne totally from his soul.

Rayanne.

Rayanne.

She had been so beautiful. Rayanne. Heck had been a goner the first time he'd ever laid eyes on her. All through grade school, he nurtured a secret crush on her. When he told his mother he was going to marry Rayanne, she'd laughed.

Heck was undeterred. 

And as luck would have it, his persistence paid off. He felt himself the luckiest man in the world when Rayanne started dating him. They married almost a year later, and Heck never looked back. Rayanne had been his whole world, right up until the day cancer snatched her from him.