A Virgin River Christmas (18 page)

Ian didn’t poke around at the tree for too long, but he could see in a moment that these military unit patches came from everywhere and there might have been hundreds reaching up to the top of that enormous tree. It made him feel something he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in a very long time. Pride.

His reverie was broken when he heard Marcie cough; it came out like a bark. He turned and went to her, taking her hand in his, leading her to the truck. “Did you bring your cough medicine with you?”

“No,” she said, coughing again. “Stupid, I know. But I was in a real hurry to get in your truck before you realized that I’d tricked you into letting me come—” She quickly jumped in the truck and when he was behind the wheel, she broke into another spasm. Then she said, “Sorry.”

“For what, exactly? For hacking all the way home or for forcing yourself on me all day long?”

She glanced at his profile. Without being able to see his eyes and with all that hair on his face, she couldn’t tell if he was amused or angry. “Both.”

“I don’t think you’re coughing on purpose. And I’m not annoyed about the day anymore. It was a good day.”

“Really?” she said. “Really? Did you have kind of a good time?”

“Kind of,” he relented. “My favorite part was when you told the librarian I was an idiot savant. You think on your feet.”

She smiled to herself.

“I think it turned out to be too much of a day for you,” he said. “You’ve been doing so much better, we both ignored the fact that you were real sick there for a few days. You’re supposed to be taking it easy.”

“I don’t have to rest or anything. But I am supposed to take that cough medicine a few times a day, and I let it go all day. Like I said, I wasn’t thinking. I’ll be fine.” She coughed a little more. “I’ll take the medicine as soon as we get home. Ian—do you ever get lonely? Up on the mountain?”

The first thought that came to his mind was,
I never used to.
But what he said was, “It’s kind of strange how fast you can get used to something, like quiet. Like being alone. I didn’t think it would end up being this long.”

“Does that mean you planned to come back? Like to Chico? At least out of hiding?”

He turned and looked at her. “Marcie—I haven’t been hiding.” He looked a little surprised. He looked back to the road. “I mean, when I first got up this way, I didn’t tell anyone where I was headed because I didn’t know, and didn’t tell anyone where I ended up. But I haven’t been hiding. I have a driver’s license and a registered vehicle. I pay taxes on the property. I do business—even if it’s not very official. But I’m not that hard to find. You might have to get used to the idea that no one wanted to find me. No one was looking for me. But you.”

“But I checked—I’ve been to the police and everything. Someone checked to see if you had a registered vehicle, though they said they couldn’t give me any information about you if—”

“Did you check in Humboldt County? Because that cabin is over the line—it’s in Trinity.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” She coughed a little more; this is what happens when you’re fighting the last remnants of a bug, don’t take your medicine and get a little tired out. “Can I ask something?” she said carefully. “Why’d you come up here?”

“I remembered the place. I’d come up here fishing with my dad when I was a kid. Before my mom died; before he lost interest. I first came when I was young, then as a teenager. I just remembered it as a place you could hear yourself think. I needed something like that—something low stress. And you admitted yourself, it’s really beautiful.”

“And it just turned into over four years?”

“It just did,” he said. “Something I learned in the Marines—it works for me to challenge myself physically. Push myself. It gives me a look at who I am, what I can do. I was living off the land, roughing it. And I was starting to think clearly. I came up in late summer. I had a bedroll and backpack. Back then, I thought it might be best if I stayed away from people for the most part—thought some things through, tried to get a handle on the ways my life was changed since the Marine Corps. Then all of a sudden, it was snowing and I wasn’t quite ready to take the next step. There were options—the GI bill and school, a job, whatever. But I wasn’t ready, and the old man, Raleigh, kicked me back to life. Before I knew it, I’d lived with him for months—like two old bachelors going their own way, doing their own thing. Then I was taking care of him, then he was dead. By then, I had a routine and a lifestyle. It was working for me.”

“But you didn’t have friends…”

“Yeah, I didn’t seem to need people. I swore I’d never let that happen. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“Huh?”

He didn’t respond for quite a long, drawn out moment. Finally he said, “My dad. When my mom died, I was twenty and had been in the service a couple of years. She’d been sick with cancer. She was only fifty-five, but she’d had a hard fight for about three years. She was ready, but my old man wasn’t. It really aged him and he was so pissed off. I mean more pissed off than he had been. He’s never been what you’d call happy. He isolated himself, lost interest in things he used to like, slowly left what few friends he had. Every time I came home on leave, he was a little worse. I kept thinking he’d snap out of it, but he didn’t. I swore that that would never happen to me, no matter what.”

“And it did?”

“Not the way you think. I’m not angry. Not very, anyway. I just turned into a loner because my life was mostly spent alone.”

“But don’t you ever want more? I mean, like friends? A shower? An indoor john? A full set of dishes?”

He turned and grinned at her. “I have given some thought to the idea of a shower—it’s a pain in the ass hauling water. But we mountain men, we don’t need a lot of baths.”

“Don’t you want a TV? A CD player? A computer?”

“See if you can understand this. I want trees that are three hundred feet tall, black bear that poke around my stuff, deer that eat out of my hand, and a view that almost brings me to my knees every morning. I want to work just hard enough to afford my life. I’m sorry I don’t have an indoor john and shower for you, especially while you’ve been sick, but I don’t really need one.”

She turned toward him and put a hand on his arm. “Aren’t you just a little worried you could turn out like that old guy you took care of? Alone on a mountain for fifty years?”

“I’ve thought about it a time or two,” he said. “I plan to keep going to the dentist at least once every other year—I’d like to go out with all my own teeth. Old Raleigh couldn’t eat much that wasn’t soft. But in all other ways, he didn’t have a bad life.”

“Okay, wouldn’t you rather have a better way to earn money than selling firewood?”

He shot her a surprised look. “I don’t sell wood because I’m poor and stupid—I sell wood because it’s good money. The trees are free. There’s no mark-up. I like cutting ’em down and chopping ’em up. I work at it year-round and make a lot of money when I sell the cut and split logs. I work for the furniture mover in spring and summer, while business is heavy for him. It lets me tend the garden and fish, not to mention get ahead on winter firewood—it has to be seasoned for six months. The river up here is pure and deep. The fish are fat and delicious. It’s incredible. Listen, if I needed anything more, I’d work more.”

“No regrets then?” she braved.

He snorted. “Marcie, I have lots of regrets. But not about how I live or what I do.”

She chewed on her lip for a moment. Then she coughed until it bent her at the waist.

“This truck is too cold for you,” he said. “We shouldn’t have gone to the bar—we should’ve gone home. You get straight to the couch when we’re home. Cough medicine and bed.”

She took a breath. “Do you regret leaving Shelly?”

He glared at her for a moment, putting her on notice that she was getting too close to that forbidden territory again. But to her surprise, he answered. “It didn’t go exactly that way. I’m not sure who left who.” And then he fixed his eyes ahead again and started up the mountain to his cabin.

“But she said—”

His head jerked back to her. “You
talked
to her?”

“I was trying to locate you,” she said weakly, like the wimp she’d suddenly become.

“Okay, this conversation will have to wait. No more.”

And that was that. Silence reigned in the truck the rest of the way up the hill and she was afraid she’d made him very angry. She wondered if this was the point at which he’d load her up in his truck—maybe first thing the next morning—and take her to town, to Mel at the clinic, turning her over. This could be the point at which he was through putting up with her and all her talk about what had happened four years ago.

When they made the top of the hill, they each took their turns in the outhouse before entering the cabin. She dutifully took her cough medicine, hacking the whole time, and he turned his back while she got down to just his shirt and her panties and planted herself on the couch. He fed the woodstove, prepared his coffeepot for morning, rolled out his pallet and heavy blanket for bed.

Then he came to the couch. He scooted her over with a brush of his hand and sat on the edge.

“While I was in Iraq, Shelly was planning our wedding. It was set to happen a few weeks after I got back, and while I was gone, it turned into a frickin’ coronation. My fault—I’d said, ‘Anything that makes you happy.’ But when I got back I told her I needed some time, that I was in no shape to be a husband. I was barely in shape to be a marine, which was supposed to be my life’s work. I asked her to postpone the wedding—but she was in full bride mode. There are things I barely remember about that talk—something about the dress being fitted, invitations out, deposits made. I tried to convince myself to just close my eyes, lock up my brain for a few weeks and get it done. But I knew I’d be letting her down, letting a lot of people down. I knew I was screwed up and needed to decompress. Also, I knew she had no earthly idea what was happening to me—how could she?
I
barely knew. She said a lot of things, but what I remember most was that she said if I didn’t let this wedding she’d worked so hard on happen, I could go straight to hell.”

Marcie’s eyes were wide, bright green. “Ian, I—”

“I don’t want to hear her version,” he said, holding up a hand. “I hope she’s happy. I hope I didn’t screw up her life too much. Believe me, if I’d married her then, it would have been worse for her. Now—you get some rest. I’ll be back early in the day tomorrow. Don’t do too much. Read one of your books. And take the medicine.”

“She’s married,” Marcie said softly. “Pregnant.”

“Good for her,” he said easily. “It all worked out, then. Now, tomorrow try to get a handle on the cough.”

“Yes,” she replied. “Of course, yes.”

Ten

M
arcie had slept surprisingly well, despite her conversation with Ian right before falling asleep. She could see him in her mind—a thirty-year-old marine, home from some devastating war experiences, still scarred from being wounded—scarred on the inside from all he’d been through. And the love of his life doesn’t have a care about any of that as long as she gets to wear a white lacy dress on
her
special day.

This brought some things to mind for Marcie, things she hadn’t even considered when she’d gone to see Shelly to ask if she’d ever heard from Ian. Shelly had still been angry and had no interest in knowing whether Ian was all right. But after hearing Ian’s side of things, Marcie recalled a conversation she’d had with Shelly when their men were in Iraq together. Marcie had called Shelly, suggesting they meet since their husbands were such good friends. But Shelly was very busy. “Planning a big wedding is a lot of work,” Shelly had said by way of an excuse.

“I’d be happy to help,” Marcie had offered.

“Thanks, but between my mother, aunts and bridesmaids, I’m up to my eyeballs in help. Still, it seems to take every spare minute I have.”

“Maybe you’ll come up with a break in your schedule and we could meet for coffee,” Marcie said. “Since our guys are best friends and we live not ten minutes from each other.”

And Shelly had said, “Give me your number and if I find the time, I’ll give you a call.”

But she never did. Clearly, never intended to. And for the first time ever, Marcie wondered—would we have been invited to the wedding?

Ian had left a half pot of coffee on top of the woodstove but, while Marcie had slept, the fire had died down. The coffee had cooled. She remembered having that great, rich, steaming hot coffee at Jack’s, and it set up a real craving in her. Ian’s coffee wasn’t bad, but it would be a lot better if it was hot.

She fed the stove, but she didn’t have the patience to wait for it to flare and heat that coffee. She eyeballed the little propane stove and thought, that’s a quicker option. She took the pot to the stove and studied the dials carefully. Gas on. Simple enough. She turned the dial but nothing happened. She blew on it like she had to do on her dad’s old stove. Nothing happened; there was no spark. She smelled the gas however. She gave it a second and said a chant over it—light! Heat the coffee! She turned the knob again—and again there was no spark and the smell of gas was evident. A third try produced nothing.

Then she noticed the matches on the counter and thought, so that’s it. Turn on the gas, light the stove! With the pot on the burner, she turned on the gas again and struck a match. And poof! The flame shot about three feet in the air, hitting her square in the face.

She shrieked and whirled, patting her face and hair, running her hands over the rest of her wild red mop to check for fire. She felt the burn on her face. When she looked at the little stove, the flame was just normal, burning nicely under the pot, but her face felt as hot as a poker!

She started to whimper like a baby, all shook up by what could have been a disastrous accident. She rushed to the couch, pulled on her boots and, in Ian’s chambray shirt, she ran outside to her car, disregarding all manner of possible vicious wildlife. There wasn’t a mirror in the entire house; that much she already knew. She used the sleeve of the shirt to wipe off the little bug’s side mirror and took a look. Then she screamed.