“Okay,” Mel said, leaning her elbows on the table. “I don’t have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, but I do have a little. I have myself a marine who’s been to war way too much and he has a shaky, vulnerable side. I don’t know all the triggers. I wouldn’t want you at risk when you finally decide to confront these things—”

“He’s not going to snap,” Marcie said. “In fact, I don’t think he even realizes it, but he is not a tortured man. Maybe he was a few years ago, and maybe those memories are still disturbing, but now he’s just a man who lives in the mountains…in a simplified life…and he lives alone. It’s less complicated than it seems. At least, that’s my opinion.”

“I know. He sings,” Mel said with a smile.

“It’s not just that. He talks to me about other things. About the old man who gave him the cabin, about the deer that comes visiting. He washed my hair for me. He heated water so I could take a bath. He goes to the library and he reads every day—he doesn’t read books about how to build bombs or make poisons—he has a big stack of biographies. He’s intelligent. Has a sense of humor he doesn’t really want me to see—I’m sure he thinks I’ll get the misguided impression he’s enjoying me.”

“Still—”

“No, he’s not on a hair-trigger,” Marcie said, shaking her head. “For some reason he thinks being alone is better for him…Eventually I’ll figure that out.”

“Marcie, I think your sister has run out of time on this. She suggested she should come up here and get you.”

Marcie stiffened. “Did you tell her not to?”

“I told her I saw you myself and that you were fine. But I lied when I said that, you weren’t fine. You had a fever, a cough, and—”

“And I was being taken care of! I’m fine! My legs are even shaved!” Mel straightened up with a questioning look on her face. “It was a joke—I wanted to shave my legs and he wondered why that would matter out here, in the woods. But they’re shaved, damn it!”

Mel smiled. “You’re comfortable?” she asked.

“Hell, there’s no refrigerator or indoor plumbing,” Marcie said. “Ian’s gone from before six in the morning till early afternoon and then he reloads his truck, so I don’t see him until dinnertime. He always cooks something and we talk during dinner, which is early, and then he likes it quiet so he can just read his book and go to sleep, like he’s always done. I’m lonesome and I want to watch Medium, and Men in Trees. I want my favorite CD’s and DVD’s—I used to watch Love Actually once a month. Comfortable? I’m getting by—better than when I was looking for him and sleeping in my car, but—”

“You were sleeping in your car?” Mel asked, aghast.

“Well, I was running low on money. And I hadn’t found him. We shouldn’t tell Erin about that…”

“That’s not exactly medical business,” Mel warned.

“I bet it is, somehow. I bet it helped get me sick!”

Mel just smiled. She reached down and picked up her bag. “Can I take your temperature, look in your throat, hear your chest?”

“Yeah, sure…I can’t seem to shake the cough, but I feel pretty good.”

Mel got busy. While she was giving Marcie a once-over, she said, “I think you should tell Ian you have to make a phone call. Talk to your sister yourself.”

“I can drive. I’ll just go into—”

“You have snow tires or chains?”

“Well—no, but—”

“Ohhhh, Marcie. That little VW of yours would slip right off the mountain real easy. We’ve had snow up here since you arrived, and a bit lower, some rain. You just don’t have the weight or traction. Until we dry up a little, get a lift into town in something heavy—like that big, old truck of Ian’s. Or, you can tell me when you’d like a trip to town and I’ll come and get you—but, believe me, it’s a crazy notion to drive that VW into town. It could be disastrous. Besides, it appears to be buried…”

“Okay, sure. Maybe I’ll talk to him about that in the next day or two…”

“You’re definitely on the mend, my girl. I don’t think you’re contagious. We’ll keep an eye on the cough, and you take that expectorant Doc gave you. But your chest sounds good and I’m afraid it’s not that unusual for the cough to hang on. Your throat is still a little irritated and your lungs want to clean themselves of drainage.”

“Listen—was there a bill? For coming out here? For medicine?”

“Taken care of,” Mel said, packing up her stuff.

“Ian?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I think it might’ve been a case of pride. Why don’t you come to town for a few hours—it’ll help you from going stir crazy. The bar’s open from early morning till nine or ten at night. People are in and out all day. You can use the phone there or the one at the clinic.”

“Ah. Not a bad idea. Mel? The tree? The Christmas tree in town? Is it done now?”

“Almost done. There’s a little left to do. It’s awful big, you know. It’s beautiful,” she said, beaming. “And don’t tell Jack, but I got a ride in a cherry picker while he was away, running errands. It was so cool.”

Marcie waited until dinner to broach the subject of going into town. She wanted to time it perfectly—not too early in their meal, but not at the last spoonful when he could get up with his empty plate and turn his back on her. Halfway through dinner she asked, “Is Virgin River out of your way when you go to sell wood?”

He looked up from his plate, meeting her eyes quizzically, lifting his good eyebrow. “Why?”

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I’d like a ride into town. I should call my sister. I had that nurse, Mel, call her and tell her I was here with you and there was no phone, and that I’d call her myself when I got to town. I should do that, so she doesn’t worry.”

“This would be the sister who thinks you’re reckless and crazy?” he asked.

She smiled at him. “The same.”

He leaned against the back of his chair, leaving his spoon to rest on his plate of stew over rice. “If you’re feeling better, you should think about going home. You found me, you told me what you wanted to tell me.”

She chewed her lip for a minute. Then she lifted her bright green eyes to his face. “Ian, I need your help here. I’m not saying this so you feel sorry for me—it’s not necessary. But I was losing Bobby for a long time and I really thought that by the time he passed, I’d be ready for the next stage in my life. For three years I wondered what I’d do when he was gone. I thought about the possibilities—school, travel, maybe dating. Have my mornings and evenings free for…For whatever. But it’s not working for me. He’s been gone a year and I’m totally stuck. I don’t want to do any of the things I considered. I can’t seem to move on, and it’s not just grief. It’s like there’s unfinished business. Being here with you—it’s the right thing—”

“You’re still here because you were sick!” he said in a very annoyed tone.

“Yeah, well, I haven’t been too sick to appreciate getting to know you again. It’s like getting reacquainted. It feels like it’s helping.”

“Reacquainted? What are you talking about?”

She looked down. “I knew you. Not like Bobby did—but in his letters he talked about you, and then we had a few letters, you and me. I felt like we knew each other. Like we were friends. You’re the link—”

The palms of his hands came down on the tabletop hard enough to make her jump. “But I don’t want to go over all that!”

“I know!” she shouted back at him. “Jesus, have I asked you to do that? You can be so damned obstinate sometimes! How the hell did you get by all this time without having anyone to fight with, huh? I know you have issues—but do you suppose you could think of someone besides yourself for five seconds? We talk and it’s helping me put some stuff in perspective. If you want me to go, I’ll go. But if you’ll just let me stay a little while, till I feel—Shit.” She ran a hand through her wild, fiery tresses. “Till I don’t know when! Till I feel this part of my unfinished business is finished. I’ll be glad to buy the food or help with chores or whatever—I just can’t drive into town to call my sister because the bug doesn’t have chains or snow tires.” She took a breath. She swallowed. “That’s all I have to say.”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “Are you sure that’s all you have to say?”

She leaned back and eyed him warily. “For now.”

The other corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “You’re one stubborn little broad, aren’t you?”

“Told you,” she said, lifting her chin. And she thought, It’s probably what got me through the worst of it.

“You don’t have to buy food or do chores. I just can’t figure out how a grumpy old guy like me helps you with anything.”

“Well,” she said, a little mollified and somewhat confused, “it’s because of the way—”

“Tomorrow I deliver wood. I’ll go early with a load, come back empty and reload. I can take you to town then. It’ll take me a couple hours to deliver that load, then I’ll pick you up in town. You’ll be okay in town for that long? Where will you go?”

“I’ll sit in Jack’s bar and drink coffee.”

“Take your medicine first. That cough gets scary.”

She smiled very happily. “Thank you, Ian.” And that’s when she knew. He might fight it, but he needed to go over the details of the past as much as she did. The more he acted out against it, the more obvious it became—he had a lot to get off his chest. They’d get to that in time. Then she’d show him Bobby’s letter, give him the silly baseball cards and go home feeling lighter. Better.

Seven

I an pulled into Virgin River and stopped in front of the tree. My God, what a tree, he thought. Decorated for the troops, obviously. And while it looked as if the trimming was complete, the cherry picker still stood behind it.

“Look for me in two and a half hours,” he said to Marcie. “I don’t want to have to try to find you.”

She glanced at her watch. “I’ll be waiting,” she said. “Thank you.”

He just nodded. But he watched her walk up the steps to the porch of the bar and then pulled slowly out of town.

It was very hard for him to admit it to himself, but having her around had brought him a strange comfort, and he had no idea why. Looking out for her made him feel better somehow. Making sure she was fed and protected against danger—that seemed to work for him, too. It was a lot of trouble, actually. If she hadn’t been around, he wouldn’t go to as much bother with meals. Three out of four nights he’d just open a can of something, but because she’d been sick and needed a hot meal he’d put his best foot forward. Plus, she needed to put on another few pounds. He had spent a lot of time wondering if searching for him, sleeping in her car and probably skipping meals had made her thin and weak.

Knowing she was going to be there when he got home, pestering and bothering him, made him hurry a little bit through his work, his chores. He couldn’t figure out why—he was damn sure not going to go over all that old business about the war, about Bobby. Just thinking about that stuff put a boulder in his gut and made his head ache. And yet, he had a ridiculous fear that this phone call to her sister would result in her saying, “I have to go home now.”