Shelter Mountain (25 page)

He was glad, in a way, that it hadn’t found him. He’d hate to have a beautiful, sexy, devoted wife in his bed and leave her wanting. So—the bullets had decided. He’d be on his own from now on. One thing he had discovered, it was a little easier to be alone here than a lot of other places. There were loyal friends and the air was real good. If he kept at it, kept working and practicing, he’d be able to fish and shoot just fine with the left arm and hand.

When Jack was driving back to Virgin River, he got off the road right before they got to town. “Aren’t we going home?” Mel asked.

“One quick stop,” he said. Then he pulled onto that bumpy, narrow road that went up and up until it opened into a clearing with a view that went for miles.

“Why are we here?” she asked.

He reached in front of her and opened the glove box, pulling out a thick document. He handed it to her. “Merry Christmas, Mel. It’s ours. I’m going to build you a house right here.”

“Oh,” she said, a little breathless. “Oh, God,” she cried, tears coming to her eyes. “How’d you convince them?”

“It was easy. I told them it was for you. Do you have any idea how much this town loves you?”

This was what she’d dreamed of when she decided to come here—good country people who would appreciate her help. “They all mean an awful lot to me, too. Then there’s you…”

They sat in the truck for a long time, just looking out over the land, talking about the house. “A great room with a fireplace, a kitchen so big that your entire family can gather in it,” she said.

“A soundproof master bedroom,” he said.

“And master bath with two closets and two sinks,” she supplied.

“Three bedrooms in addition to ours, and maybe a guest house—a one-room guest house with a refrigerator in it, and a roomy bath. In case my father, you know—”

“In case your father what?” she asked.

“Ever needs a place with us. In his old age.”

“Wouldn’t he want to be with one of your sisters?”

“Actually, I think he’s been trying to get away from them for years now.” Jack laughed. “Haven’t you noticed how bossy they are? No, you wouldn’t notice because—” He stopped suddenly and she threw him a look. He thought, What am I? Suicidal? “Because you all get along so well.”

“Nice save,” she said. “What do you need all those bedrooms for?”

“You never know.” He shrugged. “Emma might be having company.”

“As in siblings? Jack, we weren’t supposed to get this one!”

“I know. And yet—”

“That’ll never happen again,” she said. But she shivered.

“What was that?” he asked.

“I can’t help it. Sometimes when I think about that night…That first night…You know, I think she was conceived the second you touched me.”

He was sure that was accurate. “Thus, the bedrooms,” he said.

“And Jack?”

“Hmm?”

“There will be no dead animals on the walls of my house.”

“Awww.”

“None!”

Jack and Mel immediately labored over a floor plan and rendering that they could send to Joe Benson, the Marine architect in Grants Pass, Oregon. After Joe’s first tour in the Corps, he went into the reserves, got his degree and started his business, but then was called up for Iraq, where he served with the others under Jack. He was thrilled to be asked to draw up their plans. In January, the initial plans were complete and Joe brought them down to Virgin River. When he walked into the bar, Mel was there with Jack. Joe had the plans rolled up under one arm and Mel jumped up with an excited gasp.

Joe stood right inside the door, a smile growing on his lips and a wonderful warmth lighting his eyes as he looked her up and down. “Oh, honey,” he said in a breath. “Look at you. You’re gorgeous.”

Mel laughed. These guys, she thought. To the last one, they loved pregnant women. It was very amazing, very
sexy. No one could better appreciate that kind of man than a midwife.

He dropped the plans on a table and moved toward her with his hands stretched out, tentative.

“Go ahead,” she said.

His hands were on her belly in no time. “Ah, Mel.” Then he pulled her into his arms to give her a hug. “Ripe and ready,” he said. “You’re so beautiful.”

“I’m right back here,” Jack said from behind the bar.

Joe laughed. “Be right with you, buddy. I have my hands full of woman right now.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “My woman.”

“You need your own woman,” Mel said. Another one who was, like her husband, a big, handsome man, an angel of a man, and though he was surely over thirty-five, completely unattached.

“I do,” he said. He touched her nose. “Why don’t you find me one?”

“I’ll get right on it,” she said, pulling out of his arms and grabbing the rolled-up plans from the table.

They looked them over together, then Jack and Joe went out to the property to walk it. Before pounding in stakes or painting an outline on the ground, Mel and Jack would take at least a couple of weeks to consider changes. Joe stayed over one night, Grants Pass being a four-to six-hour drive, and had a nice evening with Preacher, Paige and Mike.

The plans tended to stay at the bar. Every time someone who was interested in their house came in, they asked to see the plans. Doc Mullins said, “Lot of wasted space in that kitchen.”

“I like a big kitchen,” Mel said. Though for what, she was uncertain, since Jack seemed to do most of the cooking when they were at home and they took the majority of their meals at the bar. “Jack likes a big kitchen,” she amended.

“That Jack,” Connie said. “You sure have him trained.”

“I found him trained,” Mel said.

“Love this bathroom,” Connie said. “What I’d give for a bathroom like that.”

“All I need in a bathroom is a hole in the floor,” Ron said.

Jack and Mel spent a lot of their time together looking at the plans, people looking over their shoulders. One morning Mel came into the bar to have coffee with Jack, who was out splitting logs. Preacher and Harv were found poring over the drawings by themselves.

Mel backed out of the bar and went around back to find Jack. He stopped what he was doing as she approached.

“Do you know what’s going on in there? Preacher and Harv have our plans spread out and are going over them. Our house has become a community project.”

“I know. Don’t let it worry you. We’re going to do what we want.”

“But does it bother you that everyone has an opinion? That usually disagrees with our ideas?”

He grinned proudly. “I hired excavation,” he said. “They start the first week in February. They’ll clear and level the land, widen the road. I’m having them clean and stack the trees for firewood.”

“It’s happening,” she said. “It’s really happening.”

“Yep. It’s happening.”

“Jack? Not even fish. No dead animals.”

Rick was cleaning out the ice machine under the bar, whistling. “Looks like you’re doing better these days,” Preacher observed.

Rick stood up. “Yeah, things are a little better. Probably thanks to Jack having a sit-down with Connie.”

“Yeah? What’s going on?”

“We have a couple of things ironed out,” he said. “Lizzie’s staying with me. I gotta have her close, Preach. Keep her reassured, you know.”

“’Course. You gotta keep an eye on that.”

“We’re spending nights with my grandma—I think it makes her feel good to have people there. And my grandma has always said that house will be mine someday, anyway. Not a lot of room there,” he said with a shrug, “but enough for now. We have a little crib in the room and a couple of things for the baby. Lizzie is helping out at the store during the day. She’s taking a leave from school for a little while. She didn’t go back after Christmas break and she’s a lot happier. Lots calmer. The baby will be here in a couple of months, then she’ll need some time with him. She’ll get a little behind, but I’ll graduate on time. Then we’ll work on her diploma.”

“Planning to keep that baby?” Preacher asked.

“Can’t do anything else, man. It’s not going to be easy. I’ll take care of the baby while she’s at school, and when she gets home in the afternoon, I can come in to work till eight, nine, whatever. We’re not going to try to get married till we have a year or two together. And get a little bit older.”

“You thought about college?”

Rick laughed. “Not for a few months now.”

“One thing at a time, bud. You have a family to think about. Then, there’s always community college when Liz is in high school. All I’m saying is, these things don’t have to come in a hurry. No point in taking on things that will only tip you over the edge. You’re only seventeen—there’s time.”

“That’s kind of what Jack said….”

Preacher grinned. “Did he, now.” He and Jack had talked about this. A lot.

“God,” Rick said, shaking his head. “You guys. You’re the best friends I’ve ever had.”

“So are you, pal. You just have to never panic. Things can fall into place.”

“Maybe that’s right,” Rick said.

“Sure that’s right. You’re doing fine, kid. Give yourself a little credit. You make us old boys real proud.”

Mel went to the bar in the afternoon, looking for Jack. Preacher told her he was out at their property, shooting with Mike. “Where’s Paige?” Mel asked, looking around.

“Lying down with Chris, I think. She took him up for a nap and said she might.”

Mel looked at her watch. She had twenty-five minutes to kill before her next appointment and had been looking for an opportunity just like this. She jumped up on a stool facing Preacher. “Paige seems very happy,” she said.

The look that came over Preacher’s face was wistful. Angelic. “She does,” he said. “It blows my mind.”

Mel couldn’t help but chuckle. “Could I have a ginger ale?” she asked. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something….”

He poured her a drink, put it on a napkin in front of her. “Yeah?”

“You remember that time several months ago, after the boys were up to fish and play poker, Jack had that meltdown. Got tanked, passed out, had to be carried to bed. You said sometimes the past snuck up like that and it would take him a while to get his stability back.” Preacher gave a single nod, frowning slightly. “So—you know what that was, right? I’m sure if you served in combat, the Marine Corps talked about it some.” He just looked at her. “Post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD.”

“Has he been having trouble with that?” Preacher asked.

“No, he’s been good. I watch, though. I want to tell you a story. A short one. I had a friend back in L.A., in the hospital where I worked. She was an administrator, older than me. A brilliant woman. When I knew her she’d been in her second marriage for twenty years. One night over
a glass of wine she told me that her first marriage, a brief marriage, had been extremely abusive. She got beat to a pulp regularly. And while her second marriage was totally kind and loving, sometimes she’d see an expression on her husband’s face or he’d have a tone of voice—completely innocent for him—yet it would conjure something from her previous life with her ex-husband and there’d be a rush of emotions—fear, anger. Terror. It would put her in a funk, depress her, really challenge her ability to cope. She said it was as if her nervous system was programmed to react a certain way, which had helped her to survive the first marriage. But she felt bad about the way her reaction would make her second husband feel. Like he’d done something wrong, when really, the wrongdoing was ages ago.”

Preacher looked down. “You mean I could remind her of that shitbag somehow?” he asked.

“Not really, no,” Mel said. “It’s way more subtle than that. Something harmless and innocent ‘suggests’ that earlier time…because…” Mel’s explanation trailed off.

After a moment of silence, “I can get that,” he said. “Like a war veteran hearing fireworks and suddenly feeling like he’s back in a firefight.”

“Exactly,” she said. “And then there’s the thing about shame. My friend, she told me that sometimes she would be chased by it. It’s hard to understand why a woman who has done nothing wrong and has been abused would ever feel shame—it’s the shame of letting herself get into that situation, at not getting out faster, shame at having let it happen. It’s not a right or wrong thing, it just is. We can’t judge feelings. John, I wanted you to know about this. In case you run into it.”

He was quiet for a minute. Finally he said, “Is there something special I should do?”

“Nah,” she said, shaking her head. “If you sense a
chronic problem, behavior you can’t understand or explain, think about support counseling. Maybe none of this will happen with Paige. I’m only telling you because it can. It might. You should be in the know. I think you do the things that come naturally—be loving. Forgiving. Patient. Understanding. That night with Jack? I held him in my arms and told him it was all right.”

Again he was quiet for a minute. “That woman, your friend. Those times her husband did something…Did she stop loving him? Even for a little while?”

“No. Never had anything to do with love. Plus, he saved her life, loving her in a pure way like that. It had to do with being hurt real bad once. A little time, a reality check on her part, a solid partner…She could always manage to get back on track. Kind of like Jack. Lucky to have good people around. Lucky to be safe.”

He smiled a small smile.

“If you ever sense something is wrong, don’t be too private about it. Let me help you with it. I know a couple of things about this.” She glanced at her watch. “I have a patient due. I have to go. I just wanted to talk to you about that. You take it easy,” she said. She jumped off the stool.

W
es Lassiter didn’t have to go to court. A plea agreement was reached by the prosecutor and the attorney for the defense, and it did not give Paige any peace of mind. The judge was disappointed in Lassiter for breaching the conditions of his bail by phoning Paige and trying to leverage her, but in the end he sentenced the man to forty-five days in jail, five years of probation, and two thousand hours of community service. Also required, a meeting at Addicts Anonymous every day, the order of protection was enforced and the custody agreement upheld. And he immediately went to jail.

“I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you’re winning,” Brie told Paige over the phone. “He’s been compromised—he’s not getting away with anything. Even though the jail sentence is short, it might be enough to modify his behavior. Jail is ugly. Mean and dangerous. And the scuttlebutt is that he has to liquidate to pay his lawyer, which means you’ll be getting your divorce settlement.”

“I don’t care about that. I don’t care about money. I just want to be safe from him.”

“I know,” Brie said. “But in the grand scheme of things, forty-five days with the threat of the judge going
bonkers and sentencing him to ten years if he screws up is better than three to five. Really.”

“Why doesn’t it feel that way?” Paige asked.

“Because you’re scared,” Brie said. “I would be, too. But this is good. No one’s letting him off. And the chance of him calling or approaching you in that five years of probation and getting hammered for it—that’s a strong deterrent. During that five years, he could actually move on. I don’t hold much hope of him becoming a different kind of human being, but, God help me, he might find a new target. Oh, God really help me.”

“I don’t know if that’s encouraging, or the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I know,” Brie said. “So it goes in our business.”

Paige was notified that the house was listed for sale, and that her signature was required. Her lawyer sent her papers regarding the liquidation of 401Ks and retirement accounts. The closed checking and money-market accounts were accounted for, as well as the charge accounts and mortgage balances.

In a quiet moment, Preacher asked her, “Are you worried about money?”

“No, I’m worried about never being free of him. I don’t want to be afraid anymore.”

“I don’t know what I can do about that, besides promising to do everything I can to keep you safe. But, it looks like you’re going to get a few bucks here—maybe something you can put away for emergencies. The being afraid part, we’ll have to take it as we go. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“I know you will, John. I’m sorry you’re stuck with this basket case who’s afraid of her own shadow.”

“I’m not stuck,” he said, smiling. “I’ve never felt stuck. I live a real simple life, Paige. I’ve never really worried too much about money. Maybe we should talk about that a little bit. Money.”

“Could we not?” she asked. “Money and things—it was so important to Wes. It drove him mad, trying to be rich, to have a lot, to look like he was successful. It leaves such a bad taste in my mouth that if a check comes in the mail, I might not even be able to cash it!”

“Understandable,” he said. “But I don’t want you to think that if you and Chris are my family, you’d have to worry about your future. His future.”

“When I look at the difference between my life then and now, I feel richer now. I have everything I need. Chris and I—we’re so much better off.”

Preacher decided to let the matter rest, at least for the time being. He’d never talked to anyone about money. He and his mom had been pretty much lower middle class, maybe poor. They lived in a two-bedroom cinder-block house with a cyclone fence around the yard and roof that wasn’t dependable. There weren’t any sidewalks or streetlights on their block. She kept it real nice, but he couldn’t remember a stick of new furniture in his lifetime. When she died, there was a policy paying off the little house plus a life insurance benefit and a small pension through the church. It was a small piece of suburban Cincinnati real estate in a declining neighborhood plus a modest amount of cash. He was only seventeen and didn’t care about what a sale might bring—he wanted his mom, their home together.

When he went into the Marines, he had to let it go, had to realize he’d never have that life back. It was a hundred and forty thousand dollars in total, a fortune for an eighteen-year-old kid with no family but the band of brothers he signed on with. He’d felt a little like Paige—like he couldn’t even cash the check. So he did the next best thing. He put it in a safe place—a CD. A few years later he put it somewhere else—a mutual fund. Since he had no attachment to it and it meant so little to him, it caused him no
stress at all to move it around a little, here and there. He had his first computer by then—and he was looking things up, his favorite pastime next to fishing, shooting, reading military history. He learned a little about investing on the computer, then began doing some online. In fourteen years his investments had grown considerably—they approached nine hundred thousand dollars.

The only pleasure Preacher had ever gotten from his nest egg was watching the balance grow—he had no use for it. But now he had a boy who’d be going to college in fifteen or so years. With any luck there’d be more kids needing college. He could keep going—investing and reinvesting—but it occurred to him to stuff a couple hundred thousand in bonds, which were safe, so that by the time it was needed, it would be handy.

Later, when the time was right, he’d tell Paige that if she couldn’t cash that check from her divorce settlement, it couldn’t matter less. She really did have everything she needed. She just didn’t know it yet.

Mel’s mind might have been wandering a little—pregnant women were known for that sort of thing. She was in Clear River where she’d been gassing up the Hummer, and while stopped at the only light in town, it turned green and she didn’t move. By the time she looked up to see that it had changed, there was a loud bang and a jolt; the Hummer was pushed into the intersection. When she got out of the vehicle, a hand pressed to her back and her stomach protruding like Mount Kilimanjaro, the man in the pickup truck who’d rear-ended her went completely pale. She recognized that man—he wore the shady brady on his head, and he had all but kidnapped her to deliver a baby in an illegal grow in a trailer a few months ago.

Mel looked at the bumper of the Hummer. One side was smashed in pretty good.

“Shit,” she said.

“You okay?” he asked, a panicked look skittering across his face.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Oh, Jesus, I really don’t want to have to deal with your husband on this,” he said.

“Me, neither.”

“I have insurance. I have a license. I have whatever you need. Just say you’re all right.”

“Sit tight,” she said. “Try not to go nuts on me. Don’t flee the scene or anything really stupid.”

“Yeah,” he said nervously. “Right.”

There were no local police in Clear River, so Mel walked back to the gas station and called the California Highway Patrol. She called Jack, assured him she was just fine, knowing that wouldn’t cut any grass with him and he’d be flying across the mountain.

About thirty minutes later CHP responded, pulling into the intersection, the car lit up to keep the traffic away from the accident. When the patrolman stepped out of his car, he found Mel sitting in the passenger seat of the Hummer, door open and feet in the street, listening to her belly with a fetoscope. He frowned down on Mel’s big belly. “Oh, boy,” he said. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, rubbing a hand over her belly. “I’m fine.”

“Um. You’re awful pregnant,” he said.

“Tell me about it.”

“You a doctor?”

“Midwife.”

“Then I guess you know what you need,” he said.

Right at that moment, Jack’s truck came screeching into the intersection and he was out and striding toward them. Mel looked up at the officer. “Well, that’s probably going to be irrelevant.”

Jack took one look at his old friend in the shady brady and got himself all stirred up. The jaw pulse ticked, his complexion went dark and angry. She put a hand on his arm. “I know it’s technically his fault, but the light had changed and I didn’t go. So try to leave your personal feelings out of this and let the cop do his job.”

He glanced over at the cop collecting the man’s data and said, “It might be real hard for me to not get personal here.”

“Okay, then,” Mel said. “Let’s shoot for rational.”

Forty minutes later, she was lying on the exam table in Grace Valley, the ultrasound bleeping beside her. Jack was nearly distraught, but no one else was particularly worried. John said it wouldn’t hurt to check, make sure everything was all right. Clearly the baby was not traumatized; she was bouncing around like a gymnast. June Hudson and Susan Stone were peering over Mel’s big belly, looking at the baby on the monitor while John moved the wand around. Then John said, “Well, shit.”

“Oh, brother,” John’s wife said.

“That doesn’t happen very often,” June said.

“What?” Jack said. “What?”

“But I have all these pink things! From Christmas!” Mel shrieked.

“What?” Jack said. “What the hell is it? Is the baby all right?”

“Baby’s fine,” John said. “It isn’t Emma, that’s for sure. Look—femur, femur, penis. I blew it. And I’m so damn good, I can’t imagine how that happened.”

“It was probably just on the early side,” June said. “We should’ve done another one at twenty weeks to be sure.”

“Yeah, but I’m so damn
good,
” John insisted.

“Penis?” Jack asked.

Mel looked up into his eyes and said, “We’re going to have to come up with another name.”

Jack had a dumb look on his face. Mel didn’t recall
having seen that look before. “Man,” he said in a breath. “I might not know what to do with a boy.”

“Well, we got that news just in time,” June said, leaving the exam room.

“Yeah, right before the shower,” Susan added, following her.

“I really thought I had it nailed,” John said. “I feel betrayed, in a way.”

Mel looked up into her husband’s eyes and watched as a slow, powerful grin appeared. “What are you thinking, Jack?” she asked him.

“That I can’t wait to call my brothers-in-law, the slackers.”

Mel was ready to leave Doc’s for the day, to walk across the street and have dinner with her husband, when Connie came in assisting Liz to the front door. Connie had a hand under Liz’s elbow while Liz was gripping her belly. A dark fluid stain ran down her jeans from between her legs and she was crying. “It hurts,” she wailed. “It
hurts!
”

“Okay, honey,” Mel said, coming forward and taking the other hand. “Let’s see what’s going on. When did you see Dr. Stone last?”

“A couple of weeks ago. Oohh.”

“Is she in labor?” Connie asked.

“Maybe. We’ll know in a minute. Come into the exam room and let me check you. Then we’ll see if you should go to the hospital.”

Mel and Connie helped Liz undress, peeling off the wet jeans and helping her into a gown so she could get onto the exam table. “I’ll take it from here,” Mel told Connie. “I want to see where we are.”

“Call Rick,” Liz cried. “Please, Aunt Connie! Please! I need him!”

“Sure, honey.” Connie left the room, pulling the door
closed behind her. Mel applied her fetoscope to Liz’s belly, though Liz writhed. She waited for the contraction to pass, but it was a long, hard one. Finally her uterus relaxed, not that it gave Liz much relief.

Liz’s cries became quieter and Mel worked hard at listening, moving the fetoscope all around. Then she hung it around her neck and pulled out the Doptone, a fetal heartbeat monitor. She moved it over Liz’s belly as calmly as possible, despite Liz’s squirming and groaning.

“Is the heartbeat okay?” Liz asked.

“It’s hard to hear with the contractions right now. I’ll listen again after I check your cervix.” Next, she put on gloves. “All right, Liz, let me examine you. Feet in the stirrups, slide down for me. I’ll be as gentle as possible. There you go. Take some slow, deep breaths.” She carefully slipped her hand into the birth canal. Six centimeters. No, seven. Bloody fluid.

“Liz,” she said, “it’s time. You’re going to deliver soon.” Mel tried with the Doptone again, her heart plummeting. Liz was a little early; she hadn’t even started the weekly visits she would pay to John Stone during her last month. She probably hadn’t had an internal exam since the one Mel gave her when she returned to Virgin River.

She got a blood pressure and listened to her heart. Normal, under the circumstances. She applied the Doptone again. “Have you been having contractions long?” she asked Liz.

“I don’t know. All day, I guess. But I didn’t know what it was. It just kept getting worse and worse. It wasn’t like those Braxton things. It was like a
knife!
”

“Okay, honey. It’s okay. Have you been feeling the baby move a lot?”

“No. Just my back hurting and lots of…And a stomachache on and off. Gas, I think. Was it gas?”

“I don’t know, honey. When did you last feel the baby move?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” Liz cried. “Is he all right?”

“Try breathing like this,” she said, demonstrating a deep inhale, slow exhale. But Liz was too far into this. Mel showed her panting, short puffs of air, which seemed to work a little better. “There you go. I’m going to go make sure your aunt Connie called Rick. Okay?”

“Okay. But don’t leave me.”

“I’ll only be a minute. Try the breathing.”

Mel left the room, pulling the door closed. “Connie, did you find Rick?”

“Jack sent him over to Garberville to pick up some beef for the bar. He should be back pretty soon.”

“How soon?” Mel asked. It was her gut instinct to tell Liz immediately—there was no heartbeat, no movement. But she was so young, vulnerable, so dependent on Rick.

“Minutes, Jack said,” Connie answered.

“Okay, good. Liz is in labor and she’s dilated. Will you please go stay with her for a couple of minutes? I should call Dr. Stone. It won’t take me long.”