“What does this mean?” she asked, running her fingers over the words on the other arm.

“Often tested, always faithful, brothers forever.” He touched her cheek. “What did Preacher tell you?” he asked her.

“That the boys come up here and stir up some of your roughest memories of the wars you’ve been in. But, I suspect that now and then you’d have those memories anyway, whether they came or not.”

“I love those boys,” he said.

“And they’re devoted to you. So—maybe it’s worth a little discomfort now and then. Friendships like that don’t come cheap.”

Chapter Ten

J ack was back to his old self. It was either the Scotch or the fact that he woke up to a pretty blonde in his bed. He bet on the blonde.

He never did ask Preacher precisely what he had told Mel. And he didn’t ask Mel to be more specific. It didn’t really matter. What did matter was that he had bonded with Mel on a new level that night without planning to. That she knew he was tortured over something terrible from his past and instead of shying away, stayed with him, willing to take it on—it had meant something. She had held him while he tossed and turned against a mean-spirited ghost. After that, she yielded more willingly to those kisses. He was definitely ready to move ahead with her.

They were the current talk in Virgin River, which gave Jack a strange satisfaction. For a man who didn’t want to be tied down to a woman, a man who tended to keep his woman in the shadows, he found himself wanting everyone to know they were a couple. And he worried that she would make good on her threats to leave before he could convince her to stay forever.

Jack took Mel to the coast to whale watch and they talked all the way there and back, but on the high cliffs above the ocean, they held hands, quiet, while the great fleet of behemoth mammals swam by, jumping out of the water and landing with an enormous splash. Their own guard of dolphins escorted them to the north. She let him kiss her for a long time that day. Many times. Then if his hand wandered she said, “No. Not yet.” And that gave him hope. Not yet meant it was on the agenda. He was completely smitten. Jack was forty and this was the first time that he had a woman in his life he couldn’t imagine giving up.

Mel called her sister. “Joey,” she said quietly, in almost a whisper. “I think I have a man in my life.”

“You found a man in that place?”

“Uh-huh. I think so.”

“Why do you sound so…strange?”

“I have to know something. Is it okay? Because I’m not even close to being over Mark. I still love Mark more than anything. Anyone.”

Joey let out her breath slowly. “Mel, it’s all right to get on with your life. Maybe you’ll never love anyone as much as you loved Mark—but then maybe there will be someone else. Someone next. You don’t have to compare them, honey, because Mark is gone and we can’t get him back.”

“Love,” she corrected. “Not past tense. I still love Mark.”

“It’s all right, Mel,” Joey said. “You can go on living. You might as well have someone to pass the time with. Who is he?”

“The man who owns the bar across from Doc’s clinic—the one who fixed up the cabin, bought me the fishing pole, got my phone installed. Jack. He’s a good man, Joey. And he cares about me.”

“Mel…Have you…? Are you…?”

There was no answer.

“Mel? Are you sleeping with him?”

“No. But I let him kiss me.”

Joey laughed sadly. “It’s okay, Mel. Can you really think otherwise? Would Mark want you to wither away, lonely? Mark was one of the finest men I’ve ever known—

generous, kind, loving, genuine. He’d want you to remember him sweetly, but to get on with your life and be happy.”

Melinda started to cry. “He would,” she said through her tears. “But what if I can’t be happy with anyone except Mark?”

“Baby sis, after what you’ve been through, would you settle for some marginal happiness? And a few good kisses?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Give it a go. Worst case—it takes your mind off your loneliness.”

“Is that wrong? To use someone to take your mind off your dead husband?”

“What if you put that another way? What if you enjoyed someone who took your mind off your dead husband? That could pass for happiness, couldn’t it?”

“I probably shouldn’t be kissing him,” she said. And she cried. “Because I just can’t stay here. I don’t belong here. I belong in L.A. with Mark.”

Joey sighed heavily. “It’s only kissing, Mel. Just take it one kiss at a time.”

When they hung up the phone, Joey said to her husband Bill, “I have to go to her. I think she might be heading for a crisis.”

Mel had started thinking about the past more—that morning that the police came to the door to tell her that Mark was dead. They had worked the swing shift together at the hospital the night before. They’d taken their lunch hour together in the cafeteria. But Mark was on call and the E.R. was busy, so he stayed through the night. It happened when he was on his way home.

She had gone to the morgue to view him. Left alone with him for a little while, she took his cold, lifeless body into her arms, his chest riddled with three perfect holes, and wept until they dragged her away.

She had a video in her mind—one that ran from the pictures of Mark lying on the floor at the convenience store, the police at her door at dawn, through the funeral, those nights that she cried literally through the entire night, right up to the long days of packing up his things and the long months of not being able to part with them. She saw the film in her head as if from above, curled into a fetal position in her bed, grabbing herself around the gut as though she’d been run through by a knife, crying hard, loud tears. Cries so loud that she thought the neighbors would hear and call for help.

Rather than just telling his picture that she loved him, she began carrying on long, one-sided conversations with his flat, lifeless face. She would tell him everything she’d done all day and it would inevitably end with, “I still love you, damn you,” she would exclaim harshly. And urgently, “I still love you. I can’t stop loving you and missing you and wanting you back.”

Mel had always thought that Mark was the kind of lover, the kind of husband, who would find a way to contact her from beyond, because he was so devoted. But there had never been any evidence that he’d crossed back. When he went, he went all the way. He was so gone, it left her feeling desolate inside.

She woke up crying three days running. Jack had asked her if anything was wrong, if there was anything she wanted to talk about. “PMS,” she told him. “It’ll pass.”

“Mel, have I done anything?” He wanted to know.

“Of course not. Hormones. I swear.”

But she was starting to think that the brief reprieve she seemed to have experienced lately was now officially over and she was on her way back to the darkness of grief and longing. Back to the stark loneliness.

Then something happened to jar her out of it. She returned from her short walk to the corner store to watch her soap with Joy and a recovering Connie to see a rented car in front of Doc’s. When she went inside she was face-to-face with her sister’s bright smile. Mel gasped, dropped her bag and they swooped together, lifting each other off the ground, laughing and crying at once. When the crazy moments had passed, still holding Joey’s hand, Mel turned toward Doc to make a formal introduction. But before she could, Doc said, “Kind of scary, there being two of you.”

Mel ran her hand over Joey’s shiny and smooth brown hair. “Why are you here?” she asked.

“You know. I thought you might need me.”

“I’m okay,” she lied.

“Just in case, then.”

“That’s so sweet. Do you want to see the town? Where I live? Everything?”

“I want to see the man,” Joey whispered in Mel’s ear.

“We’ll do that last. Doc? Can I have the afternoon?”

“I certainly wouldn’t be able to stand having the two of you yakking and giggling around here all day.”

Mel rushed on Doc and gave him a kiss on his withered cheek, which the old boy quickly wiped off with a grimace.

Mel’s spirits were high and she didn’t think about Mark for a little while. She took Joey to all her favorite places, beginning with her cabin in the woods, which Joey thought was charming, if a little in need of her professional decorator’s touch. “You should have seen it when I arrived,” Mel laughed. “There was a bird’s nest in the oven!”

“God!”

Then they went to the river where there were at least ten men in waders and vests, angling. A couple of them turned and waved to her. “The first time I was here, Jack brought me and we saw a mama bear and her cub, right downriver, fishing. First and last bear I’ve ever seen. I think I’d like to keep it that way. The next time I came, I fished. I fly fished—not as good as what they’re doing, but I actually caught a fish. I have my own gear in the trunk.”

“No way!”

“Way!”

Next, to the Anderson ranch to visit little baby Chloe and see the new lambs. Buck Anderson lifted a couple of little lambs out of the pen and handed one to each woman. Mel stuck her finger in a lamb’s mouth and he closed his little eyes and sucked, making the women say, “Awwww….”

“I raised six kids—three boys and three girls—and each and every one of them smuggled a lamb into their bedroom to sleep in their beds. Keeping the livestock out of the house was a lifetime chore,” he told them.

Mel drove her sister down Highway 299 through the redwoods and took great pleasure in her oohs and ahhs. They got out and walked through Fern Canyon, one of the filming sites of Spielberg’s The Lost World. She showed her the back roads of Virgin River, the green pastures, fields of crops, craggy knolls, towering pines, grazing livestock, vineyards in the valley. “If you’re going to stay awhile and I can pry myself away from Doc, I’ll take you to Grace Valley to meet some of my newer friends. They have a larger clinic there, complete with EKG, a small surgery and ultrasound.”

Then, as the dinner hour approached, so did a heavy and cool summer shower and they ended up at Jack’s, where the drop in temperature had prompted the laying of a friendly fire. Word had apparently gotten out, because the bar was busier than usual—

so untypical of a rainy night. Some of her favorite people were present. There was Doc, of course, and Hope McCrea. Ron brought Connie for a little while and where Connie went these days, Joy was nearby with her husband, Bruce. Darryl Fishburn and his parents stopped by and she introduced Darryl as the daddy of her first Virgin River baby. Anne Givens and her husband were there, a couple from out on a big orchard—their first baby was due in August. Preacher treated Joey to his rare smiles, Rick was his usual grinning, adorable self, joking about how the whole family must be gorgeous, and Jack charmed her thoroughly. When he went to the kitchen to get their dinners, Joey leaned close to Mel and said, “Holy crap, is he a hunk or what?”

“Hunk,” Mel confirmed.

They were served a delicious salmon-in-dill-sauce dinner, which Jack ate with them, and Mel regaled her sister with tales of country doctoring, including the two births she had attended on her own.

It was a little after seven when Doc’s pager sent him to the phone in Jack’s kitchen. Then he dropped by Mel’s table. “Pattersons called. The baby seems to be having trouble breathing and is getting a little pale and blue around the gills.”

“I’m going with you,” Mel said. She stood and told Joey, “I delivered that baby and he had a slow start. If I’m late, can you find the cabin?”