“I could punch the bastard in the face,” Conner said.
“Hmm. Very sensitive. But somehow I don’t think that’s going to make Katie feel a lot better…”
He gave a deep sigh. “All I wanted for my sister was happiness. She’s had such rotten luck, you know? Not just bad guy luck—but losing our mom and dad, losing Charlie when she was pregnant with the boys, being stuck with a brother as her only security, losing the hardware store, our inheritance… I just wanted her to have a real life. A good, stable, happy life. You know?”
“I know, Conner. I know.”
“After Charlie, I couldn’t call her after eight at night,” Conner said softly, almost mournfully. “It used to break my heart. She’d go to bed when the kids did, because staying up and having a whole long evening alone, it was too lonely. She said she was never too lonely in the early morning or the afternoon, but the nights were always hard. She missed going to bed with her man at night. It never got easier to go to bed alone, she said. It’s kind of hard to get used to the idea that your beautiful little sister has that kind of loneliness.”
“Even though
you’ve
had some serious loneliness of your own?” Leslie asked him.
“Even though. So when I met that Dylan character, I tried not to count on him too much, but there was no missing that her eyes were brighter. Her smile was pretty loaded, like she had one helluva secret. She was happy. And I’ll admit, I hoped this was something that would work out for her.”
“She did, too,” Leslie said.
“She’s okay now?”
“Conner, she might be a little emotional for a while. You have to let it go, let her grieve it in her own way and time.”
“Yeah,” he said grumpily. “You’re probably right… So, did she say what she’s going to do tonight? Since we left her?”
Leslie looked at Conner sympathetically. “She said she’s going to bed early.”
Grrrr
came from the driver’s side. “I’m going to have to beat the shit out of that son of a bitch.”
Twelve
T
he phone didn’t ring again for Katie, not that she expected it to. She did have this wild and uncontrollable wish that Dylan would call her every day or several times a day, to have him say he’d been a fool to leave her as he had, to promise to be back to see her because he couldn’t stay away. She wouldn’t even consider it, of course. She would say,
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice…
That she wanted to see him, that went without saying. But she wouldn’t take that chance again. It couldn’t possibly make the whole thing hurt less.
She had a few shameless problems over the following week. She couldn’t stop herself from going to the grocery store in Fortuna and lingering in the magazine aisle and at the checkout, looking for a familiar face. He was still an item, it appeared, though there didn’t seem to be any more kissing on the front pages. It was hard not to buy those papers, bring him home with her, but she resisted valiantly. Still, she kept the ones she had, tucked away in the trunk that held other keepsakes.
She had read and reread the articles, however. It was so like twenty years ago when her
Teen
magazine was shredded from use. One story said that Dylan had been living on his famous grandmother’s Montana estate. Wow. You’d think he could afford jeans without holes in the knees, right?
She cried some, but not malignantly. She knew her twinkle was gone. In fact, she just didn’t feel quite right—the whole ordeal had robbed her of appetite and unsettled her eating and sleeping patterns. No big surprise there—that’s why the term
divorce diet
had been invented. Katie really didn’t have weight to spare, however. If Dylan made her gaunt and thin in addition to everything else he’d done, she was really going to be pissed off.
She tried to push herself to spend a little more time with people, even if they did want to know what was wrong. Jack Sheridan always asked if she was feeling any better, which implied he knew all the reasons she wasn’t feeling that great. She forced a smile and said, “Much. Thanks.”
She sat with Leslie and her young neighbor, Nora, on Leslie’s front porch and talked about everything from bad haircuts to having children and she found she could open up to Nora. Though young, she seemed so worldly. She had two little girls, nine months and two years, and was not only a single mom but a never-married single mom who had escaped a brutal relationship. Even though Katie had lost her husband to a war, she was not oblivious to the challenges Nora had faced. And it was Nora who said, “Reverend Kincaid really helped me get on my feet after I’d been dumped here without a dime to my name. Now I have two part-time jobs and can take my kids to both of them if I have to—I work at the clinic with Mel Sheridan and at the school with Becca Timm, the teacher, and some other mothers. But the most important thing is how practical and nonjudgmental Reverend Kincaid has been. I was very reluctant to go talk to a preacher after all the horrid things I’d done to get myself into my own mess.”
Even with that glowing endorsement, Katie didn’t feel inclined to seek counseling from the church. She was a little concerned about how the good minister might react to the fact that one of the things she grieved was the best sex of her life.
“I see him with his wife,” Leslie said. “I have a feeling he’d be sympathetic. He looks at her like a starving man looks at a rib roast.”
Katie giggled.
“You look like you could use a little milkshake or something,” Leslie suggested. “Has this whole thing caused you to lose weight?”
“Possibly a pound or two, but don’t worry. I’ll gain it right back.”
“Aren’t you eating?”
“My appetite is a little off, but what do you expect? It’ll come back. Soon, I think, since I’m starting to hate him.”
“Really?” Leslie asked with a bit of excitement.
“Yes, really. What the hell was he thinking, telling me he doesn’t date women with children because he’s never going to be a family man, then not only dating me but shtupping me all the time. Did he really think I was taking him seriously? Wouldn’t any woman think he’d shifted his thinking? What a fool!”
“Fool?” Leslie asked.
“If he’s not going to get involved, maybe he shouldn’t get involved. Hmm?” she asked, lifting a brow.
“Novel concept,” Les agreed with a grin.
“Someone was thinking with his dick,” Katie said, bringing a burst of laughter from both Leslie and Nora. “I was pretty hurt and lonely but I’m getting angry.”
“I think I like where this is going,” Leslie said.
“He ought to be ashamed of himself. At least I was sincere on all fronts. In for a penny, in for a pound. The jerk.”
“You have a lot of your brother in you, Katie,” she said. “Hungry?”
“Actually I am a little hungry. You have any cookies?”
Even a little bit of man-hate didn’t completely restore her appetite. But then, fretting and feeling emotionally gutted didn’t connect up to that good old robust habit.
It was a relief to see how well Conner and Leslie fit into the town; they had clearly found their place. And that helped Katie see this as a good place to raise her sons, even without a husband.
The second week in July passed and the weather was about as steamy as it was going to get in the mountains—a hot eighty degrees. After driving the boys to summer program, she headed for Fortuna. First she went to the grocery store’s news rack and, thank God, Dylan Childress wasn’t groping anyone for the paparazzi today. Then she went to the pharmacy aisle where she grabbed a pregnancy test. She didn’t think it possible, but she just hadn’t felt well and couldn’t imagine it was all grief. She picked one up. Fifteen dollars? she thought in amazement. And who knew how accurate it was. She picked up a second for twenty-one dollars. And a third for seven and a fourth for twelve and a fifth for nineteen. “I’ll send him a bill,” she said aloud, and she walked to the checkout, head held high.
Realistically, Katie thought her period was overdue because of the stress, the sadness and upset of having a love affair go south without warning. She never kept track of her monthlies because she could feel it coming—a low backache, some cramps, tender breasts and bang—there it was. She thought she was at least a couple of weeks late, so a test to be sure she wasn’t pregnant made sense.
An hour later she was peeing on a stick. The directions said it would be more accurate first thing in the morning but it was more likely to give a false negative when it was positive than a false positive if testing was done in the middle of the day.
Ding, ding, ding.
“Nooooooo!” she wailed. “No, no, no, no, no, no, NO!”
But yes. It said yes. And this was completely impossible—there had always been protection, always. Not only was she responsible about it, Dylan was obsessive! He was the guy who didn’t want a family! God forbid he should end up paying the piper for all his screwing around!
She tried the seven-dollar test, though she didn’t much have to pee anymore.
Bingo.
“No, no, no!”
She went to the kitchen and drank water. And tea. And more water. Then she paced around her clearing, holding it all as long as she could. She made it a couple of hours. She peed some on the twelve-dollar stick, some on the nineteen-dollar stick and saved the last for the big one—the twenty-one-dollar stick. Then she lined them up on the small bathroom counter and stared at them.
Bing, bing, bing. We have a winner.
She sank down on the bathroom floor and dug her fingers into her hair.
Oh, God, what in the world did I do to piss You off? Was it that no sex before marriage thing? It would be a more practical and effective lesson to have me eaten by a bear!
And she heard noises. Squeaking. Jingling of chains. The play set. She got to her feet and ran to the kitchen window. Yes, they were back. Not playing on the jungle gym, but merely cutting across her clearing—Mom and the triplets. As if they owned the place.
Katie lunged for her air horn and ran right onto the porch, fearless. She blasted the horn and watched as they turned as one to look at her. “Get out of here,” she screamed, giving the horn another long blast. “I am in NO mood!” And after an insulted grunt from Mother, they scuttled off into the brush.
Jack was just putting up clean glasses in the middle of the afternoon when the door to the bar opened. He looked up, half expecting his wife, who often took advantage of the quiet time before the dinner crowd showed up. But it was not Mel—it was the welcome face of a man he hadn’t seen in some time. “I’ll be damned,” he said with a big grin. He came around the bar and approached a young man, about thirty years old, and pulled him into a fierce hug, hammering his back with a fist. Then he held him away and said, “Hey, Tom! You home on leave?”
“I’m out,” Tom Cavanaugh said. “Six was enough for me. And my grandmother either has my help with the orchard or sells it. I vote for helping her. That orchard’s been in the family a long time.”
“How is Maxie?” Jack asked.
“Stubborn as ever, but as near as I can tell, tougher and healthier than you or me.”
“I haven’t seen you in a couple of years,” Jack pointed out.
“I deployed a second time—I think that was the convincer. Plus, I never made it any secret, I was made to take care of apples. It’s what I was raised to do.”
“And we couldn’t be happier about that. Let me find Preacher, he’ll want to say hello.”
Tom Cavanaugh grew up in Virgin River and had been a college student when Jack first arrived in town. It not only became a great refuge for him on his weekend and holiday visits home to Virgin River, but with his own plans to spend at least a few years in the military after college, he bonded with Jack and Preacher. Now at around thirty he was home for good, ready to take over the family business with his grandmother. Cavanaugh Apples.
He was halfway through his beer when Katie came into the bar.
“Well now,” Jack said. “Look who’s here. Katie Malone, meet one of the neighbors—Tom Cavanaugh. Tom just exited the Marine Corps and is home for good. Tom, Katie is new in town.”
“It’s definitely a pleasure,” Tom said, his eyes lighting up a bit as he looked at her.
“Likewise,” she said, putting out a hand.
“Glass of wine?” Jack asked.
“No, thanks, I’ll be picking up the boys in fifteen minutes. So, Tom, you live here in town?”
“No, out about three miles down the mountain. I grew up on an apple orchard and that’s where I’m probably going to be for the rest of my life.”
“You say that with a smile,” she observed.
“I like apples.”
“Tommy here was raised on ’em,” Jack said.
“Cavanaugh apples make some of my best pies,” Preacher put in.
“So, you’re looking a little better, missy,” Jack said. “Got a little color in your cheeks.”
“No surprise there,” she said. “Remember that bear? She’s been back and she acts like I’m renting space from her. I need a gun.”
“What bear?” Tom asked.
“A mother bear with triplets. They like my boys’ jungle gym.”