Praise for RITA® award-winning author Robyn CARR

The American Library Association’s Booklist names Virgin River one of 2007’s top ten romances.

“The Virgin River books are so compelling—I

connected instantly with the characters and just

wanted more and more and more.”

—New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber

“Virgin River is sexy, tense, emotional and satisfying. I can’t wait for more!” —New York Times bestselling author Carla Neggers

“Robyn Carr writes a beautiful romance entangled

with passion and intrigue.”

—New York Times bestselling author Clive Cussler

“Jennifer is a beautifully drawn character whose

interior journey is wonderful to behold.”

—RT Book Reviews on Runaway Mistress

“This is one author who proves a Carr can fly.”

—Book Reviewer on Blue Skies

“Robyn Carr provides readers [with] a powerful,

thought-provoking work of contemporary fiction.”

—Midwest Book Review on Deep in the Valley

“A remarkable storyteller.”

—Library Journal

“A warm, wonderful book about women’s

friendships, love and family. I adored it!”

—New York Times bestselling author Susan Elizabeth Phillips on The House on Olive Street

“A delightfully funny novel.”

—Midwest Book Review on The Wedding Party

Dear Reader,

It was such an honour to be asked to create a Christmas story that would take place in Virgin River, especially because, in my mind, the miracle of Christmas is synonymous with that special town. Virgin River seems to be a place of kindness, friendship, love and miracles.

In this story you’ll meet Ian and Marcie, two courageous people who have weathered too many storms in their young lives. Both of them need two things to help them get to a place of peace and happiness: namely, faith and love. Between them they have a lot of history but, at the same time, they’re just getting to know one another. And what they find in their renewed relationship could bring them closer to the peace and serenity they both need so much.

The Virgin River novels are part of an ongoing series, and A Virgin River Christmas is a special addition to that series. While many of the well-known Virgin River characters are present in this book, you don’t have to read the first three in the series to feel at home here. But for those of you who have started at the beginning, and have waited patiently for this next book, let me put you in the time frame. A Virgin River Christmas takes place just a few weeks before Christmas—right in the middle of Whispering Rock, the third book in the continuing series.

Christmas can mean many different things to each of us. For Marcie and Ian, I’ve tried to create a special time for two people who couldn’t be more deserving.

It was a privilege to create this story. I hope you’ll treasure it.

My best wishes to you and yours,

Robyn Carr

A Virgin River Christmas

Robyn Carr

www.mirabooks.co.uk

A Virgin River Christmas is dedicated to Kris and Edna Kitna, with deep gratitude for your help, your incomparable hospitality and your friendship.

Prologue

Marcie stood beside her lime-green Volkswagen, shivering in the November chill, the morning sun barely over the horizon. She was packed and ready, as excited as she was scared about this undertaking. In the backseat she had a small cooler with snacks and sodas. There was a case of bottled water in the trunk and a thermos of coffee on the passenger seat. She’d brought a sleeping bag just in case the motel bedding wasn’t to her standards; the clothes she’d packed in her duffel were mostly jeans, sweatshirts, heavy socks and boots, all appropriate for tramping around small mountain towns. She was itching to hit the road, but her younger brother, Drew, and her older sister, Erin, were stretching out the goodbyes.

“You have the phone cards I gave you? In case you don’t have good cell reception?” Erin asked.

“Got ‘em.”

“Sure you have enough money?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Thanksgiving is in less than two weeks.”

“It shouldn’t take that long,” Marcie said, because if she said anything else, there would be yet another showdown. “I figure I’m going to find Ian pretty quick. I think I have his location narrowed down.”

“Rethink this, Marcie,” Erin said, giving it one last try. “I know some of the best private detectives in the business—the law firm employs them all the time. We could locate Ian and have the things you want to give him delivered.”

“We’ve been over this,” Marcie said. “I want to see him, talk to him.”

“We could find him first and then you could—”

“Tell her, Drew,” Marcie implored.

Drew took a breath. “She’s going to find him, talk to him, find out what’s going on with him, spend some time with him, give him the baseball cards, show him the letter, and then she’ll come home.”

“But we could—”

Marcie put a hand on her older sister’s arm and looked at her with determined green eyes. “Stop. I can’t move on until I do this, and do it my way, not your way. We’re done talking about it. I know you think it’s dumb, but it’s what I’m going to do.” She leaned toward Erin and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Erin, so sleek, beautiful, accomplished and sophisticated—so nothing like Marcie—had been like a mother to her since she was a little girl. She had a hard time leaving off the mothering. “Don’t worry—there’s nothing to worry about. I’ll be careful. I won’t be gone long.”

Then she kissed Drew’s cheek and said, “Can’t you get her some Xanax or something?” Drew was in med school and, no, he couldn’t write prescriptions.

He laughed and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tight for a moment. “Just hurry up and get this over with. Erin’s going to drive me nuts.”

Marcie narrowed her eyes at Erin. “Go easy on him,” she said. “This was my idea. I’ll be back before you know it.”

And then she got in the car, leaving them standing on the curb in front of the house as she pulled away. She made it all the way to the highway before she felt her eyes sting with tears. She knew she was worrying her siblings, but she had no choice.

Marcie’s husband, Bobby, had died almost a year ago, just before Christmas, at the age of twenty-six. That came after more than three years in hospitals and then in a nursing home—hopelessly disabled and brain damaged, with injuries incurred as a marine serving in Iraq. Ian Buchanan was his sergeant and best friend, a marine Bobby said would do twenty. But Ian exited the Marine Corps shortly after Bobby was wounded and had been out of touch ever since.

Since she knew that Bobby would never recover, since she had grieved his loss for a long time before he actually died, Marcie would have expected to feel a sense of relief in his passing—at least for him. She thought she’d be more than ready to step into a new life, one that had been put on hold for years. At the tender age of twenty-seven, already a widow, there was still plenty of time for things like education, dating, travel—so many possibilities. But it had been just shy of a year, and she was stuck. Unable to move forward. Wondering, always wondering, why the man Bobby had loved like a brother had dropped out of sight and had never called or written. He’d estranged himself from his marine brothers and his father. Estranged himself from her, his best friend’s wife.

So there were these baseball cards. If she stretched her imagination to the limit she couldn’t come up with anything her lawyer sister would find more ridiculous than wanting to be sure Ian had Bobby’s baseball cards. But since she’d met Bobby at the age of fourteen, she knew how obsessed he was with his collection. There wasn’t a player or stat he didn’t have memorized. It turned out that Ian was also a baseball nut and had his own collection; she knew from Bobby’s letters that they had talked about trading.

In the deserts and towns of Iraq, while they hunted insurgents and worried about suicide bombers and sniper fire, Bobby and Ian had talked about trading baseball cards. It was surreal.

Then there was this letter that Bobby wrote to her from Iraq before he was wounded. It was all about Ian and how proud it would make him to be like Ian. He was a marine’s marine—the guy who got into the mess with his men, led them with strength and courage, never let them down, hung with them through everything—whether they were up to their necks in a fight or crying over a dear-John letter. He was a funny guy, who made them all laugh, but he was a tough sergeant who also made them work hard, learn and follow every rule to the letter so they’d be safe. It was in that letter that Bobby had told her he hoped she’d support him if he decided to make it a career. Like Ian Buchanan had. If he could be half the man Ian was, he’d be damn proud; all the men saw him as a hero, someone on his way to being a legend. Marcie wasn’t sure she could part with the letter, even though it was all about Ian. But he should know. Ian should know how Bobby felt about him.

In the year since Bobby had moved into a quiet and peaceful death, she had passed his birthday, their anniversary, every holiday, and still, it was as though there was this unfinished business. There was a big piece missing; something yet to be resolved.

Ian had saved Bobby’s life. He didn’t make it out whole, but still—Ian had braved death to carry Bobby to safety. And then he’d disappeared. It was like a hangnail; she couldn’t leave it alone. Couldn’t let it go.

Marcie didn’t have much money; she’d had the same secretarial job for five years—a good job with good people, but with pay that couldn’t support a family. She was lucky her boss gave her as much time as she wanted right after Bobby was wounded, because she’d traveled first to Germany, then to D.C. to be near him, and the expenses had been enormous, far more than his paycheck could bear. As a third-year enlisted marine, he’d earned less than fifteen hundred dollars a month. She’d pushed the credit cards to the max and took out loans, despite the willingness of Erin and Bobby’s family to help her. In the end, his military life insurance hadn’t gone too far to pay those bills, and the widow’s death benefit wasn’t much either.

The miracle was getting him home to Chico, which was probably entirely due to Erin’s bulldogging. Many families of military men who were 100 percent disabled and in long-term care actually relocated to be near the patient, because the government wouldn’t or couldn’t send the patient home to them. But Erin managed to get them into CHAMPUS, a private nursing home in Chico paid for by the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Uniformed Services. Most soldiers were not so fortunate. It was a complicated and strained system, now heavy with casualties. Erin had taken care of everything—using her exquisite lawyer’s brain to get the best benefits and stipend possible from the Corps. Erin hadn’t wanted Marcie to be stressed by benefit or money worries on top of everything else. Erin had done it all, even paid all the household bills. In addition to all that, she was somehow managing the cost of Drew’s medical college.

So, for this excursion, she couldn’t take a dime from her sister. Erin had already given so much. Drew did have some pocket change, but being a poor medical student, he didn’t have much. It would have been far more practical to wait till spring—until she’d had a chance to put aside a little more—to head into the small towns and mountains of Northern California looking for Ian Buchanan, but there was something about the anniversary of Bobby’s death and Christmas approaching that filled her with a fierce longing to get the matter settled once and for all. Wouldn’t it be nice, she kept thinking, if the questions could be answered and the contact renewed before the holidays?

Marcie meant to find him. To give peace to the ghosts. And then they could all get on with their lives ….

One

Marcie Sullivan drove into the small town, her sixth small mountain town of the day, and found herself face-to-face with a Christmas-tree trimming. The assembled staff didn’t look big enough for the job—the tree was enormous.

She pulled up beside a large cabin with a wide porch, parked her Volkswagen and got out. There were three women at work on a Christmas fir that stood about thirty feet. One was about Marcie’s age, with soft brown hair and she held an open box, perhaps containing ornaments. One woman was old, with springy white hair and black-framed glasses, who pointed upward, as if someone had put her in charge, and the third was a beautiful blonde at the top of a tall, A-frame ladder.

The tree stood between the cabin and an old boarded-up church with two tall steeples and one stained-glass window still intact—a church that must have once been a beautiful structure.

While Marcie watched the trimming, a man came out onto the cabin’s porch, stopped, looked up and cursed, then took long strides to the base of the ladder. “Don’t move. Don’t breathe,” he said in a low, commanding voice. He took the rungs every other one, climbing quickly until he reached the blonde. Then he slipped an arm around her, somewhere above what Marcie realized must be a little pregnant bulge and beneath her breasts and said, “Down. Slowly.”

“Jack!” she scolded. “Leave me alone!”

“If I have to, I’ll carry you down. Back down the ladder, slowly. Now.”

“Oh for God’s—”

“Now,” he said evenly, fiercely.

She began to descend, one rung at a time between his big, sturdy feet, while he held her safe against him. When they got to the bottom, she put her hands on her hips and glared up at him. “I knew exactly what I was doing!”

“Where is your brain? What if you fell from that height?”

“It’s an excellent ladder! I wasn’t going to fall!”

“You’re psychic, too? You can argue all you want, I’m not letting you that high up a ladder in your condition,” he said, his hands also on his hips. “I’ll stand guard over you if I have to.” Then he looked over his shoulder at the other two women.

“I told her I thought you wouldn’t like that,” the brown-haired one said with a helpless shrug.

He glared at the white-haired woman. “I don’t get into domestic things. That’s your problem, not mine,” she said, pushing her big glasses up on her nose.

And Marcie became homesick. So homesick. It had only been a few weeks that she’d been driving around this area, but she missed all the family squabbles, the tiresome complications. She missed her girlfriends, her job. She longed for her bossy older sister’s interference, her goofy younger brother and whatever current girlfriend was shadowing him. She missed her late husband’s large, fun, passionate family.

She hadn’t made it home for Thanksgiving—she’d been afraid to go for even a day or two, afraid she’d never pry herself out of Erin’s grip a second time. Home was Chico, California, just a few hours away, but no one—not her brother and sister, not Bobby’s family—thought what she was doing a good idea. So, she’d been calling, lying and saying she had tips about Ian and was close to finding him. Every time she called, at least every other day, she said she was getting closer when really, she wasn’t. But she was not ready to quit.

But one problem was looming large—she was just about out of money. She’d been sleeping in her car lately rather than in motels, and it was getting uncomfortable as the temperatures dropped in the mountains. At any moment snow would be falling now that it was early December, or rain could turn to sleet and that little VeeDub could sail off the mountainside like a missile.

She’d just hate to go home with this mission incomplete. More than anything, she wanted to see it through. If she wasn’t successful now, she’d only go home to earn a little money and then do it all again. She just couldn’t give up on him. On herself.

They were all looking at her. She pushed her wildly curly, out of control, bright red hair over one shoulder nervously.

“I … Ah … I could go up there, if you want. I’m not afraid of heights or anything …”

“You don’t have to go up the ladder,” the pregnant blonde said, and her voice had softened considerably. She smiled sweetly.

“I’ll go up the ladder,” the man said. “Or I’ll get someone to go up the goddamn ladder, but it’s not you.”

“Jack! Be polite!”

He cleared his throat. “Don’t worry about the ladder,” he said more calmly. “Anything we can do for you?”

“I … Ah …” She walked toward them. She pulled a picture out of the inside of her down vest and extended it toward the man. “I’m looking for someone. He dropped out of sight just over three years ago, but I know he’s around here somewhere. He seems to be taking mail at Fortuna Post Office general delivery.”

She passed the picture to the man. “Jesus,” he said.

“You know him?” she asked hopefully.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, I don’t, and that’s strange. The guy’s a marine,” he said, studying the picture of a man in uniform. It was Ian’s official Marine Corps portrait, a handsome man all clean shaven and trussed up in dress blues, hat and medals. “I can’t believe there’s a marine within fifty miles of here I don’t at least know about.”

“He might be keeping that fact to himself—he and the Marine Corps had a troubled relationship at the end. So I’ve heard …”

He looked back at her face and his expression was much more tender. “I’m Jack Sheridan,” he said. “My wife, Mel. That’s Paige,” he said, nodding toward the younger woman. “And Hope McCrea, town busybody.” He put out his hand to Marcie.

She placed hers in his. “Marcie Sullivan,” she said.

“Why are you looking for this marine?” Jack asked.

“Long story,” she said. “A friend of my late husband. I’m sure he doesn’t look like this anymore—he had some injuries. There’s a scar down his left cheek and on that same side, no eyebrow. And he probably has a beard. He did the last time he was seen, about three or four years ago.”

“No shortage of beards around here,” Jack said. “Lumber country—men get a little scruffy-looking sometimes.”

“But he could’ve changed in other ways, too. Like—he’s older. Thirty-five now—that picture was taken when he was twenty-eight.”

“Friend of your husband’s? From the Corps?” Jack confirmed.

“Yes,” she said. “I’d like to find him. You know—because he’s been out of touch for a long time.”

Jack seemed to think while he studied the face in the picture. It was several silent moments before he said, “Come on into the bar. Have a bite, a beer maybe, or whatever you like. Tell me a little about him and why you want to find him. How’s that?”

“The bar?” she said, looking around.

“It’s a bar and grill,” he said with a smile. “Food and drink. We can eat and talk.”

“Oh,” she said. Her stomach growled angrily. It was late in the day, about four o’clock, and she hadn’t eaten yet, but she was saving her money for the gas tank and she figured she could forget about food a while longer. Maybe she’d get something real, real cheap to tide her over, like a loaf of day-old bread to go with that half a jar of peanut butter in the car …. Then, she’d find a safe spot to park and button down for the night. “A glass of water would be really welcome—I’ve been driving around for hours, showing his picture to anyone who will take a look. But I’m not hungry.”

“Got lots of water,” Jack said with a smile. He put a hand on her shoulder and started to direct her toward the porch of the bar, but then he stopped suddenly. His brows drew together in a frown. “Go ahead,” he said to her. “I’m right behind you.”

Marcie walked up on the porch and turned to see what he was doing. He was confiscating the ladder so his pregnant wife wouldn’t climb it again, that’s what he was doing. It was a jackknife kind of affair that could be a short or tall A-frame ladder, and he collapsed it, folded it up until he could lift it with one hand. It was about six feet long dismantled and he carried it right into the bar. Behind him, Marcie heard his wife yell, “You’re a bossy pain in the ass! When did I ever indicate I’d take my orders from you?”

Jack didn’t say anything back, but he grinned as though she’d just thrown him a kiss. “Hop up there,” he said to Marcie, indicating the bar. “I’ll be right back.” And he carried the ladder through a door behind the bar.

She took a deep breath and thought, Oh hell—I’m not going to be able to survive the aromas! Her stomach made itself heard again and she put a hand against her belly, pushing. Something in the kitchen was sending out waves of delicious smells—something simmering, rich, hot and thick, like beefy, seasoned soup; fresh bread; something sweet and chocolate.

And when the man named Jack came back, he was carrying a tray with a steaming bowl on it. He put everything in front of her; chili, corn bread and honey butter, a small bowl of salad. “Gee, um, sorry,” she said. “Really, I’m not hungry …”

He drew a cold draft and her mouth actually watered. Gratefully she didn’t drool on the bar. She swallowed hard. She had about thirty bucks and didn’t want to waste it on a fancy meal, not when she needed every cent for gas to hit all these little mountain towns.

“Fine, then you’ll only eat what you want,” he said. “Just have a taste. I showed the picture to Preacher, my cook. He hasn’t seen the guy either. We’ll check with Mike—he’s the town cop and gets around all the back roads, just to know who’s out there—maybe he’ll have a tip or two. They’re also marines.”

“Where exactly am I?” she asked.

“Virgin River,” he said. “Population six hundred twenty-seven at last count.”

“Ah, that made the map.”

“I should hope so—we’re a screaming metropolis compared to a lot of small towns out here. Just try it,” he said, nodding at the bowl.

Her hand trembled a little as she picked up the spoon and sampled some of the finest chili she’d ever eaten. It melted in her mouth, and she actually sighed.

“Made with venison,” he said. “We got a nice buck a couple months ago and when that happens, we have some of the best chili, stew, burgers and sausage in the world, for months.” He patted a big jar of jerky that rested on the bar. “Preacher makes some unbelievable venison jerky, too.”

Her eyes watered—the food was so good. Despite all her promises to Erin and Drew, she hadn’t been eating well or playing it carefully, scrimping on food and sleeping in the car. When Erin saw the way her jeans were hanging off her little frame, the shit was going to hit the fan.

“Want to tell me a little about our guy, between bites?” Jack asked.

Oh, what the hell, Marcie thought. She hadn’t had a really good hot meal in days, and once she was out of money there would be no choice but to go home. She’d just have to spend a little of that money, maybe leave the mountains a day earlier than she wanted to. She had to eat, for God’s sake! Couldn’t hardly perform a manhunt without food!

She took a couple of quick bites to beat back the worst of her ravenous hunger, then a sip of that icy beer to wash it down. It was heaven, pure heaven. “His name’s Ian Buchanan. We came from the same town, but didn’t know each other growing up, even though Chico’s small—only about fifty thousand. Ian’s eight years older than we are. Were. My husband and I, we grew up together, went through high school together and got married real young, at nineteen. Bobby went into the Marine Corps right out of high school.”

“So did I,” Jack said. “Did twenty. What was your husband’s name?”

“Bobby Sullivan. Robert Wilson Sullivan. Any chance …?”

“I don’t recall a Bobby Sullivan or an Ian Buchanan. Got a picture of your husband?”

She reached into her vest pocket and pulled out a wallet, flipped it open and turned it to face Jack. There were several pictures in the clear plastic sleeves. She ate while Jack flipped through—the nineteen-year-olds’ wedding picture, Bobby’s official Marine Corps portrait—a fine-looking young man, a beautiful man. There were a couple of casual shots showing off his strong profile, powerful shoulders and arms, and then the last one—Bobby, almost unrecognizable, thin, gaunt, pale, eyes open but unfocused, in a raised hospital bed, Marcie sitting beside him, cradling his head against her shoulder, smiling.

Jack lifted his gaze from the pictures and looked at her solemnly. She put the spoon in the chili and patted her lips with the napkin. “He went over to Iraq in the first wave,” she said. “He was twenty-two. Twenty-three when he was wounded. Spinal cord injury and brain damage. He spent over three years like that.”

“Aw, kid,” Jack said, his strong voice weak. “Must’a been awful hard …”

She blinked a few times, but her eyes didn’t tear up. Yeah, there were times it was terrible, times it was heartbreaking, even times she resented the hell out of what the Marine Corps left her to deal with at her young age. There were also times she’d lie beside him in bed, pull him into her arms, press her lips against his cheek and just hold them there, remembering. “Yeah, sometimes,” she answered. “We got by. There was a lot of support. My family and his family. I wasn’t in it all alone.” She swallowed. “He didn’t seem to be in pain.”

“When did he pass?” Jack asked.

“Almost a year ago, right before Christmas. Quietly. Very quietly.”

“My condolences,” Jack said.

“Thank you. He served with Ian. Ian was his sergeant. Bobby loved him. He wrote me about him all the time, called him the best sergeant in the Corps. They became good friends almost right away. Ian was the kind of leader who was right in it with his men. Bobby was so happy that Ian turned out to be from our hometown. They were going to be pals forever, long after they were out of the Corps.”

“I went to Iraq right away, too. Went the first time, too. I was probably there at the same time. Fallujah.”

“Hmm. That’s where it happened.”

Jack shook his head. “I’m so goddamn sorry.” Jack slid the wallet back. “That why you’re looking for Buchanan? To tell him?”

“He might already know—I wrote to him a lot. Care of general delivery in Fortuna. The letters didn’t come back, so I assume he picked them up.”

Jack’s brow wrinkled curiously.

“I don’t know what happened to Ian. Right after Bobby got hurt, while he was hospitalized in Germany and then in Washington, D.C., at Walter Reed, I wrote to Ian and he answered my letters. He wanted to know about Bobby’s condition and how I was holding up. I looked forward to his letters—I could see what Bobby saw. I felt kind of close to Ian just from Bobby’s letters, then when we started to correspond and I was getting to know him myself, he started to feel like my friend, too. I can’t explain it—it was just letters. And they were mostly about Bobby. But I think I got close to him—”

“Lotta servicemen get really attached to pen pals,” Jack said. “Especially when they’re on isolated tours like that.”

“Well, no indication Ian got close to me, but I did to him. Then he came back from Iraq, looked in on us once and got out of the Marines shortly after that. He drifted away and didn’t come back to Chico. He had some trouble in the Corps after Iraq. I don’t know the details, but his father thought he was a lifer, yet he got out at the first opportunity, right on the heels of having a real hard time.” A huff of sad laughter escaped. “He never called or wrote again. He broke up with his girl, fell out with his father and went away. About a year later, I found out he was living in the woods like an old hermit.”

“How do you know that he’s out in the woods?”

“There’s a VA outpatient clinic in Chico I got pretty cozy with because of Bobby. A few people there knew I wanted to get in touch with Ian. I’m sure they weren’t supposed to tell me things, but vets—they help each other all they can. Turns out, Ian showed up at the clinic once—it must have been the nearest facility for him. He said he didn’t have an address because he was out in the forest and the nearest big town was Fortuna, and he could get any VA forms or whatever at general delivery there. He hurt himself chopping wood and needed stitches, a tetanus shot and antibiotics. He was right there—where we were, where his father was—and he didn’t even phone to say he was all right, or to ask how Bobby was doing. This just doesn’t seem like the man my husband had described to me. The man I got to know.”

Jack was quiet a moment, and Marcie took a few more bites of food. She spread butter on the corn bread and gobbled up half, giving lie to her “not hungry” state.

“I started sending letters to Fortuna after that, but he didn’t respond. I think I wrote him more for myself than for him, and I pictured him reading them, but … I invited him to call me collect, but I never heard from him.”

“And you’re going after him?” Jack finally said.

“I’m going to find him,” she affirmed. “I have to know if he’s all right. I’ve thought about it a lot—for all I know, he might’ve come back from Iraq with some serious issues, maybe not as plain to the naked eye as Bobby’s issues. I’d blame the Marine Corps for not helping him, if that was the case.”

“Well, you’re right—if he needed help, they should’ve helped. But try not to be too hard on the Corps. It gets complicated—you train a marine to be fearless, then expect him to ask for help? Doesn’t add up. When I figure out how they should get around that, I’ll write the state department.”

“Just the same …”

“Could be he chose the lifestyle he wants. I came out of the Corps looking for a quiet place to hunt and fish and found Virgin River. I holed up for a while, too.”

“Did you lose contact with your family?” she asked, lifting one tawny brow. “Refuse to answer mail?”

Jack had not only had constant contact with his family, but with his squad. And he appreciated it. “No. Point taken.”

“I’m going to find him. Some things need to be sorted out. Finished. You know?”

“Listen, what if he’s not all right?” Jack ventured, leaning both hands on the bar and looking at her closely. Intensely. “What if he’s a little nuts or something? Even dangerous?”

“He still has a father who’s getting older and isn’t well. Things are unsettled with the two of them. Mr. Buchanan is a stubborn, crotchety old coot, but I bet underneath all that crust he wants his son back, no matter what he is. I would.” She started on her salad.

“I get that,” Jack said. “But what if he’s dangerous to you?”

She let go a short laugh. “I guess it’s possible, but I doubt it,” she said. “I’ve been to the police department, sheriff’s department and every gas station, hardware store and bar around—he doesn’t have a record and no one knows him. If he was dangerous, he would probably have drawn some attention to himself, don’t you think? He’s probably just a sulky, troubled, screwed-up marine who thinks dropping out is better than dealing with his baggage. And he’d be wrong.”

“You wanna think this through?” he asked. “Marines all screwed up by war have a lot of mysterious reasons for taking that route, dropping out like that. Could be he’d like to forget, and seeing you just makes things worse.”

“Well, you’ve been to war, so you would know something about that—”

“Boy howdy, as my wife would say. I’ve carried around my own crap, had a problem or two with PTSD. Luckily, I have strong support.”

“He’s only thirty-five, time enough to start over, patch things up with anyone he’s alienated himself from, get beyond any trauma he has over what happened to Bobby. His father might’ve been a little pissed off back when they fought, but the old man still loves his son. I’d bet on that.” She took a sip of her beer and said, quietly, “I might lose my money, but I’d bet.”

“Then why doesn’t his father try to find him?” Jack asked.

“Why didn’t anyone? His ex-fiancée really hates him for ditching her, his father is seventy-one and sick. Widowed, bitter, stubborn. I gotta say, he’s one mean, unforgiving old man. But even if there’s no help for that, I can get to know Bobby’s best friend again. We only wrote for a few months, but I thought I knew him. And he was sweet. This is going to sound silly—his handwriting was strong and nice, the things he wrote were kind and sensitive. I kind of feel like I lost a friend and …” She smiled at Jack. “Besides, no one’s as determined as I am.”

“And why is that? Why are you so determined?”

She looked down. “I can’t move on until I know why the man my husband loved most, admired most, would disappear like that. Ignore us the way he did. Let himself be gobbled up by a forest and not have any contact with his family, his friends. Really—that’s the insane part. I have to know why. I want to be sure he’s okay. Then I’ll let it go.” She looked up. “Then maybe we can all move on.”

Jack couldn’t help but grin at her; she sure knew what she wanted. He watched her shovel the last of her salad into her mouth. “Chocolate cake?” he asked. “It’ll bring you to your knees.”

“No, thanks. This was good.” Her wallet still sat on the bar. She drained the beer, then began leafing through the bills in her wallet. “What do I owe you?”

“You’re kidding me, right? You’re going out in the woods to find one of my brothers and you think I’d take your money? Hell, I’d offer to help, but you can see—I can’t leave Melinda alone for one second. She’s trouble. Nah, it’s my pleasure to give you a little meal. Anytime you want, in fact. Check in here regular, fuel up your belly, let us know if you find anything … anyone. We’d all appreciate that. Bunch of us jarheads from Fallujah around here.”

“Why are there marines here?”

“Sweetheart, there are marines everywhere.” He grinned. “Once I opened the bar, a lot of my old squad started showing up to hunt or fish. A couple of them didn’t have better options and moved here. Really, we try to look out for our kind. All for one,” he added.

She closed the wallet and smiled at him, an affectionate, grateful smile. She was well-trained in taking whatever help was offered. “Then I’ll have the cake,” she said.

“And coffee?” he asked.

“Oh, God, yes, coffee,” she said, almost sighing in appreciation. A cold beer, a hot cup of good coffee—two of her biggest weaknesses.

“Best coffee you’ll ever taste,” he said, filling a cup for her. When a thick slice of cake sat before her, he asked, “When you find him, what are your plans?”

“He was awful good to Bobby—I’d just like to thank him. Talk to him. Get to know him again, like I started to before. I have something of Bobby’s to give him. I plan to ask him what happened, see if there’s anything I can do for him now. Maybe once we get through all that, we’ll both be happier. Obviously he hasn’t moved on, and I need a little more closure. Wouldn’t it be great if we could both get that? Aw, I don’t know, Jack. Freedom? The freedom to put the past in the past?”

Jack’s eyebrows rose. “And if he’s not inclined to talk?” She put a big forkful of velvety, rich chocolate cake into her mouth, scraping the icing off the fork with her teeth and lips. She let her eyes drop closed for a brief luxurious moment. Then she smiled at Jack Sheridan and said, “Then I’ll be his worst nightmare until he comes around. I’m not giving up.”

Before Marcie had finished her coffee, a good-looking Hispanic man came into the bar by way of the side door. He had a disgruntled look on his face and was carrying a catalog. “Your wife has me in search of the perfect tree topper,” he said to Jack. “Whose idea was this again?”

“I think it was yours,” Jack said. “And don’t complain to me—there’s no way to decorate that tree without a cherry picker. I’m going to have to rent one before I see Mel using ropes and pulleys to get to the top. Mike, meet Marcie—Marcie, say hello to Mike Valenzuela.”

“How do you do,” she said, sticking out a hand.

He took it, smiled and said, “Pleasure. This was his idea—the big tree. Trying to impress his wife. She requested a large tree—he had us out in the hills a full day till he found the biggest tree we could take down in one piece.”

Just a little embarrassed, Jack interrupted Mike, “Marcie here is looking for a marine who dropped out after Iraq. Show him the picture, Marcie.”

She pulled it out again and once again explained the possible changes in his appearance since the photo was taken.

“Don’t know him,” Mike said.

“But he might be so different …”

“Don’t know the eyes,” Mike said.

She let out a heavy sigh. “Any ideas where I might look?”

“Well,” Mike began, scratching his chin. “I haven’t seen him, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been seen. There are a lot of people out in the mountains who have been there for years and they aren’t real sociable—maybe one of them has seen him.”

“Can you tell me where to go?” she asked.

“I can give you a couple of markers,” he said. “More important, I’d like to tell you a few places to steer clear of—there are some illegal growers out there who get real territorial. Real unfriendly. Sometimes their property is booby-trapped.” He pulled a large napkin out from under the bar, brought his pen out of his shirt pocket and drew a line on the napkin. “Here’s highway 36 …” In ten minutes, he had drawn a rough map of a half-dozen cabins in the mountains where people lived—people who just might have seen Ian Buchanan. As well, he listed three locations she should avoid.

The cabins Mike X’d on the map were located down abandoned logging roads, sometimes gated, snuggled behind trees and shrubs, impossible to see from the highway. A lot of that mountain property had been homesteaded and logged. Once a property was logged, the owner had to wait another thirty to fifty years to log it again. It became an acreage full of oak, madrone, young fir and pine fifty to sixty feet tall—real pretty, but not mature enough for logging.

“I’ve been roaming around back in there, just checking it out, just to know who’s out there. There are a couple of old men living alone out in the sticks and a couple of old widows. There’s a man and woman combo or two, even a family of five. But so far, no single thirty-five-year-old male.”

“Maybe he’s not single anymore.”

Mike shook his head. “Pretty sure there’s no one in that age group; not with those eyes. Even with a beard.”

“Believe him,” Jack said. “He used to be a real cop, LAPD, before he was Andy of Mayberry where we have almost no crime.”

“Nice,” Marcie said. “No crime and a big tree. I take it you’ve never done a big tree like that before?”

They both laughed. “Twenty-seven feet,” Jack said. “We thought we were so manly, finding us a big one like that, till we had it down and almost had to rent a flatbed truck to bring it back to town. We tied the limbs tight and dragged it behind a truck. And that wasn’t the hard part. Standing it up took a day.”

“Two days,” Mike corrected. “We got up the next morning and it was lying in the street. Frickin’ miracle it didn’t fall on the bar and crush the roof.”

She laughed at them. “Why now? You’re trying to show off for your wife?”

“Nah. Now was the time. We just lost a comrade in Iraq and one of the local boys—a real special one—went into the Corps. We thought it would be good to erect a symbol, a monument to the men and women who serve. Next year, I think we look for a slightly smaller symbol. Cheaper and easier on the nerves. But I’ll go over to Eureka and find a cherry picker for rent and get it done. Melinda and the other women have put a lot into making it a perfect tree.”

“It’s a pretty awesome tree,” Marcie said, growing a little melancholy. She really wanted to find Ian before Christmas. For some reason, that seem crucial.

As she was leaving, the sun was lowering and the bar was starting to fill with locals. It was already getting too dark to venture into the back woods to check out the few cabins Mike had told her about. It was time for her to find a place to park for the night, somewhere safe and not too far from a service station for her morning rituals of peeing, face washing, teeth brushing. She’d start again in the morning, though she wasn’t feeling optimistic she’d find her guy. She’d been disappointed so many times. At this point in her search, crossing all the places off her list meant as much as striking pay dirt.

But before going to her car, she approached the tree, partially decorated to about twelve feet. She got up close and looked at some of the ornaments. Between red, white and blue balls and gold stars were patches—the kind you’d wear on a uniform—from various Marine and other military commands. She touched one reverently; 1st Battalion, 8th Marines; 2nd Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment; 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion, all laminated to protect them against the outdoor elements. Airborne Division, Sniper Squad, 41st Infantry Battalion. Her throat got tight; her eyes blurred.

This was exactly why she was determined to find Ian Buchanan—because these men never forgot, never walked away. There had to be powerful reasons for him to leave his military brothers, his Corps, his family, his town. You don’t save a comrade’s life and then ignore him. Ian Buchanan was given both the Bronze Star and Purple Heart for carrying Bobby through sniper fire to medical transport. He took two bullets and kept going. He was not a man who gave up. So why? Why give up now?

Two

Marcie’s thirty bucks—$28.87, to be exact—lasted another thirty-six hours. Twenty-five of them went in the gas tank; she could hardly afford the gas even with the great mileage she got in her little green bug. Three dollars for a loaf of bread and two apples and she finished off the peanut butter. Then she went back to that little Virgin River bar and asked if she could use the phone to make a call to her sister—she’d almost exhausted the phone cards because she wasn’t supposed to be gone this long, but there was a little time left on one. Erin, seven years older than Marcie, had taken charge of the family long ago, and she was growing extremely irritable by Marcie’s time away.

The cook, a guy they all called Preacher, let her into the kitchen.

Marcie called Erin and, though it made her stomach clench, she asked for money. “Call it a loan,” she said. She lied and said she was getting so close, that Ian had been seen.

“We had a deal, Marcie,” Erin said. “You promised you’d only be gone a couple of weeks and it’s been a month. You didn’t even come home for Thanksgiving.”

“I couldn’t. I explained about that. I had a tip—”

“It’s time for you to come home now and think about another way to find him.”

“No. I’m not stopping. I’m not giving up,” Marcie said resolutely.

“Okay, but come back to Chico and we’ll try it my way—we’ll get a professional to find him for you—then you can go from there. Really, the only way I know to get you home and through with this madness is to say no. No money, Marcie, for your own good. The only money I’ll wire you is enough to get home. Come home now. Right now. This is scaring me to death.”

“No,” she said. “I’m not done!”

Marcie then called her younger brother, Drew, who might not agree with what she was doing any more than Erin did, but he was a softer touch. He said, “Marcie, I can’t. Erin’s right, this has gone on too long. You have to give this up now. Come on, I can’t stand to think about what you’re doing. You’re going after a friggin’ lunatic, by yourself!”

“Please,” she whimpered. “We don’t know he’s a lunatic—he could be perfectly normal. Or maybe just sad. Please, just a few more days. Please. I’m so close.”

Drew let out a breath, defeated. “I’ll wire you a hundred bucks, then you come back, you hear me? And don’t you dare tell Erin what I did.”

“I won’t tell,” she said, wiping at her cheeks, smiling into the phone. “Thank you, Drew. I love you so much.”

“Yeah, well, I’m afraid I’m not showing you how much I care by doing this. I worry about you.”

“Don’t worry, Drew,” she said with a sniff. “Can you just put some cash in my checking account? I’ll go to Fortuna and withdraw it from the branch there. I’ll be there in less than an hour—and I’m running on fumes. Fortunately, I can coast downhill most of the way.”

“Where was he seen?” Drew asked.

“Um … He was seen … um … out in a cabin off the highway a ways. I’ll check out there later to see if it’s really him,” she said, and then her cheeks actually flushed. She said goodbye, disconnected and fanned her face, saying, “Whew.” She looked up and found herself staring into the fierce eyes of the giant in the kitchen. She actually started.

“He hasn’t been seen,” Preacher said, his thick dark brows furrowing. “Has he?”

“Well, maybe he has. And I’m just about to find out.”

“Sometimes a man just wants to be left alone for a while. You account for that?” Preacher asked. While he was talking, he pulled a plastic grocery sack out of a drawer, then turned to get something that looked like a wrapped sandwich out of the refrigerator and put it in the sack. Then a second one went in.

“It’s been longer than a while,” she said. “But I’ll certainly give him a chance to tell me, if that’s the case. If that’s it, I’ll have the opportunity to thank him for his friendship to my husband, then I’ll go back to Chico and tell his father and anyone else who cares that he’s just a man who wants to be left alone. But isn’t there something ‘off’ about that? That he’s been out of touch for years now?”

Preacher took a big bowl out of the refrigerator, flipped the lid and spooned potato salad into a smaller plastic container, then sealed it. “You’re real insistent on this, then?”

She didn’t want to admit that, for no accountable reason, she’d been obsessed about Ian Buchanan’s disappearance. She’d written him a couple dozen letters—at first for him, updating him on Bobby and whatever else was going on in her family, her life, giving information and reassurance. Then, it was more for herself—like keeping a journal. She didn’t know exactly why, but he had been with her a long time. So she shrugged. “There are a few of us who want to know. Well, there’s me. I want to know.” Quietly she added, “Have to know.”

Preacher added the container and a spoon to the bag. Then he got out a huge jar of pickles and picked out three big ones, putting them in a handy ziplock bag. “Well then, I guess you’re not going to quit early.”

“I guess not,” she said.

He pushed the whole business toward her. “Don’t let that potato salad sit and get warm. It’s cold enough outside to keep it all day if you leave it in the trunk and not in a warm car. Just remember, old warm potato salad has a nasty reputation.”

“What’s this?”

“The car can coast,” he said, lifting one of those menacing black brows. “You, on the other hand, can only run on fumes so long.”

Her mouth dropped open a bit and she stared at him. She wondered if he’d done that because he’d seen the way her once-tight jeans hung off her fanny. “That’s nice,” she finally said. “I’ll … ah … bring back the spoon.”

“If you drop by, fine. If you don’t, we have plenty of spoons.”

“Thanks,” she said, accepting the bag.

“Good luck,” Preacher said. “I hope it goes the way you want.”

“Me, too,” she said with a sheepish smile.

Several hours later, as the day drew into afternoon, she was driving up her fifth or sixth unmarked dirt road, but she was a hundred bucks richer. Well, eighty bucks richer, the Volkswagen belching on a good, healthy half tank. She’d had half a ham and cheese sandwich, a pickle and some of the best potato salad she’d ever eaten, thinking The guy’s a genius with a boiled potato.

The roads all backed into the trees and most were in godawful condition. Her little bug was bouncing and struggling, but hanging in there like the little champ she was. Marcie wished she could have found a way to get a Jeep or some other all-wheel-drive vehicle. If she could have waited longer to embark on this search, it might’ve been possible to have saved enough for a down payment, but she couldn’t wait that long. She took what little she’d put aside for this exact purpose and planned her route. Despite what she’d told Erin and Drew about being away for a couple of weeks, she’d taken an unpaid leave of absence from her job until the first of the year. She had worked at the insurance company since Bobby went to Iraq—five years ago—and her boss had been understanding.

Erin had been completely against this wild notion that she had to find Ian from the very start. It took months of arguing to convince her there was some purpose for Marcie in this search. Then Erin had come up with a hundred better ideas that she’d offered to take care of herself—a people search, a private detective, anything but Marcie going after him alone. But there was a driving force in Marcie to see him, know him, talk to him, connect again, like she thought she had before.

Bobby’s family wasn’t much in favor of the idea either, but it didn’t involve any ill will toward Ian—they barely knew about him. Bobby had written Marcie about Ian all the time, but in his short letters to his family he’d only mentioned him a few times. The Sullivans suggested that, if Ian hadn’t been around while Bobby was in the nursing home, the bond was not as solid as Bobby thought. Then there was Ian’s father—one of the nastiest and most negative old men Marcie had ever met. He told her she was wasting her time; he had no interest in finding his only son. “He left without a word and never got in touch. That’s enough message for me.”

Through perseverance, Marcie learned that the elder Buchanan had not experienced good health in the past few years. He’d had a mild stroke, was being treated for high blood pressure, prostate cancer, Parkinson’s and, she suspected, a tish of dementia.

“Don’t you miss him?” she asked. “Wonder what’s become of him?”

“Not on your life,” he said. “He’s the one burned his bridges and run off.”

But when he said that, there was wet in the folds under his old eyes and she thought: He can’t give much more than this, but he would love to see his son once more, or at least know he was all right. Wouldn’t he?

Ian’s former fiancée, Shelly, was still angry about the way she’d been abandoned, even though she’d married someone else three years ago and was pregnant now with her first baby. She had not a kind or sympathetic word for the man who’d run through sniper fire, taken injuries to save a comrade, won both a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. She pretty much hated Ian for the way he’d dumped her and bolted. A thought came to Marcie—if Shelly was happy with her life now, why would Ian’s obvious troubles cause her such prolonged hate? Couldn’t she see how war would shift his thinking, cause his emotional confusion? After having a life-limited husband for so long—a hopeless invalid who couldn’t even smile at her—giving a little patience and understanding to a man who’d been through a lot of trauma seemed a small thing.

But, Marcie had reminded herself, I don’t know the weight of anyone else’s burdens—only my own. She didn’t judge. She didn’t feel smart or strong enough to judge.

It was beyond important to Marcie to look at Ian’s face and ask him how he could save her beautiful young husband’s life and then never respond to her letters.

Maybe Ian couldn’t give her answers that would make everything feel settled for her, and to that end, she thought it made sense for them to talk about it. Talk it through. They called it “closure” in the shrink club.

As she pulled up to a small, roughly hewn house, she caught sight of a man coming around the corner, his arms laden with firewood. He was clean shaven but stooped, his legs bowed with age, his head bald. He stopped walking when he saw her. She got out of her car, then went toward him. “Afternoon, sir,” she said.

He put down the logs and the scowl on his face said he was suspicious of her.

“I wonder if you might be able to help me. I’m looking for someone.” She pulled the photo out again. “This was taken about seven years ago, so he’s obviously aged and I hear he’s got a beard now, but the rumor is, he’s living somewhere out in these hills. I’m trying to find him. Thirty-five years old, big man—I think he’s over six feet.”

The man took the photo in his bent, arthritic fingers. “You family?” he asked.

“More or less,” she said. “He and my husband were good friends in the Marines. I should tell him, my husband passed.”

“Ain’t seen him. Ain’t seen no one looks like that, anyway.”

“But what if he was kind of gone to seed?” she said. “I mean, older, maybe heavier, bearded, maybe bald, maybe has a pot belly or is way too thin—who knows?”

“He grow weed?” the man asked, handing her back the picture.

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“Only folks I know around here about that age grow pot. And even if he’s family, you might wanna cut him a wide berth. There’s trouble around the growers sometimes.”

“I heard that, yeah. Still—you know anybody like that I should just have a look at? Just to rule them out? I’ll be real careful.”

“There’s a guy up on the ridge, kind of hard to find. Could be twenty, could be fifty, but he’s got a beard and he’s good-sized. You’d have to go back where you came, down 36 a mile or so and then up again. It’s a dirt road, but halfway up the hill there’s an iron gate. It ain’t never been locked because you can’t see the gate or the house from the main road. Only reason I know about it, is a guy I used to know lived up there in one room. Nice big room, though. He’s been gone a couple years at least. Guy who lives there now was with him at the end.”

“How will I know what road?”

He shrugged. “No markers. It goes right and about a half mile up, you’ll either come to a gate or turn around and try the next road.”

“You want to come with me maybe? Show me where? And I’ll bring you back?”

“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “I got no business with him. He’s odd. Talks to hisself, whistles and sings before the sun’s up. And he thinks he’s a bear.”

“Huh?”

“Heard him roar like an animal when I was out near his place. You prob’ly ought to just let him be.”

“Sure,” she said, tucking her picture away. “Right. Thanks.”

And off she went, encouraged about another whack job who almost fit the description. It was hardly the first time; she’d been to VA outreach, homeless shelters in Eureka, hospitals, the Gospel Mission. She’d followed bums down alleys and country roads, traipsed around the forest, met up with ranch hands and lumberjacks. But it was never him; no one had heard of Ian Buchanan. All she’d have to do was look into the eyes.

She’d never forget his eyes. They were brown, same shade as his brown hair, except they had a ton of amber in them. She’d seen them both soft and almost reverent, and then fierce and angry—all in the space of fifteen minutes—the one and only time he’d come to see Bobby. Ian was on leave and Marcie had brought Bobby home to Chico to care for him while they waited on a facility that could take him. She watched as Ian ran his huge hand over Bobby’s brow and head, murmuring, “Aw, buddy … Aw, buddy …” Of course Bobby didn’t respond; he had been unresponsive since the injury. Then, after a few moments of that, he turned almost-wild eyes on her and the gold in them flashed. “I shouldn’t have let this happen to you. This is wrong, this is all wrong.”

Ian’s visit had come five months after Bobby was wounded in Fallujah and it lasted less than half an hour. She always thought he’d be back, but that was it. She’d never seen him since.

If he’d read her letters, he would know that, soon after his one visit, they’d moved Bobby into a nursing home. Over time, she felt Bobby had had some recognition—there were times he’d turn his head, seem to look at her, even move his head closer as if nuzzling her, then close his eyes as though he knew she was there, as though he could smell her, feel her. She might’ve been the only one to think that way, but she believed that, somewhere inside that completely incapacitated body, he lived a little bit, knew he was with his wife and family, knew he was loved. Whether that was enough for a life, she didn’t know. His family wanted the feeding tube pulled so that he’d die, but she couldn’t do that. Ultimately, she took peace in the fact that it wasn’t up to her, she wasn’t in charge. Her job was to stay with him, do her best to comfort and love him, make sure he had everything he needed. She wasn’t a real religious person and she rarely went to church. She prayed when she was afraid or in trouble, and forgot when things were going all right. But beneath it all, she believed God would take Bobby home when it was his time. And what would be, would be.

What had been, had been.

It was her fourth little dirt road that finally presented a gate, and she sighed in audible relief because her little bug was churning, burning oil, straining over the bumps and up the steep grades. The gate wasn’t closed and she pressed on further, praying it wasn’t going to be far. And who knew how far it actually was? She was only going ten miles an hour. By the time she got close enough to spot a small house with an old pickup parked outside, it was growing late in the afternoon. This time of year, dark would descend before long.

Marcie was tired enough that she never gave a thought to what she would do if this turned out to be him; it had not been him so many times. She pulled right up to the house and gave the horn a toot, the country way of announcing yourself. Mountain people didn’t have doorbells. They could be inside or out in the yard or woods or somewhere down by the stream. The only way they knew there was a visitor is if someone hollered, shot off a gun or blasted the horn. Poor little VeeDub didn’t have a blast, but a pathetic bleep.

She got out and looked around. The house, a cabin really, had to be more than fifty years old. It looked as though it might have once been painted orange, a long, long time ago. The land around it was cleared of trees and there was a large stack of logs under a tarp near the house, but no corral or livestock or barn. No porch; the windows were small and high. There was a small chimney, an outhouse and a storage shed that might’ve measured eight by ten. How does a person live out here like this, so far from humanity, so far from all conveniences?

She would go to the door in a minute, but she waited to see if the guy who lived here showed himself first. She should’ve been all spooled up, hopeful. But hell, she’d totally lied to Erin and Drew—no one had sighted Ian and she’d talked to dozens if not hundreds of people, in the towns, in the country, in the mountains. She was just plain tired and ready to eat the rest of that sandwich and more potato salad, hit a gas station bathroom and find a place to park for the night.

Then he came around the corner of his house with an ax in his hand. He was scary-big, his shoulders were very broad and his beard was bushy and reached inches below his chin. He wore a dirty tan jacket that was frayed at the hem and sleeves; some of the plaid lining was torn and hanging out. His boots had worked hard; his pants were patched on the knees. At first glance, she thought, damn, not Ian. The beard was burnished red, though the hair on his head was brown—long and tied back into a ponytail—and he had both eyebrows, so it couldn’t be him. “Hi,” she said. “Sorry, don’t mean to bother you, but …”

He took several long strides toward her, an angry scowl on his face. “What the hell are you doing here?”

She looked way up into those eyes and the amber came alive in them, on fire, glowing. Dear Jesus in heaven, it was him.

She took a step forward, stunned. “Ian?”

“I said, what the hell are you doing here?”

“I’ve been … I was … I’m looking for you. I’m—”

“I know who you are! Now you found me, so you can go away.”

“Wait! Now I’ve found you, we should talk.”

“I don’t want to talk!”

“But wait—I want to tell you about Bobby. He’s gone. He passed away. Almost a year ago now. I wrote you!”

He pinched his eyes closed and stood perfectly still for a long moment, his arms stiff at his sides and fists balled. Pain. It was pain and grief she saw.

“I wrote you—”

“Okay,” he said more softly. “Message delivered.”

“But Ian—”

“Go home,” he said. “Get on with your life.” Then he turned and walked into the little cabin and slammed the door.

For a moment, Marcie just stared at the cabin, at the closed door. Then she looked over the ridge to see the sun lowering. Then at her watch. It was only five o’clock and she was standing at the top of a hill, so the descending sun was giving them a little more daylight on this December afternoon. If she were down the mountain, the tall trees combined with sunset would have already plunged her into near darkness.

She didn’t relish having unfinished business between them after dark, but after all she’d been through, she wasn’t about to let him get away now. She took a few deep breaths, remembered that he was probably just troubled and not crazy, and stomped toward the house. She rapped on the door. Then she moved back a few steps to be safe.

The door jerked open and he glowered at her. “What do you want?”

“Hey! Why are you mad at me? I just want to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk,” he said, pushing the door closed.

With inexplicable courage, she put her booted foot in its path. “Then maybe you can listen.”

“No!” he bellowed.

“You’re not going to scare me!” she shouted at him.

Then he roared like a wild animal. He bared his teeth, his eyes lit like there were gold flames in them, and the sound that came out of him was otherworldly.

She jumped back, her eyes as wide as hubcaps. “Okay,” she said, putting up her hands, palms toward him. “Maybe you do scare me. A little.”

His eyes narrowed to angry slits, and he slammed the door again.

She yelled at the closed door. “But I’ve come too goddamn far and gone to too much goddamn trouble to be scared for long!” She kicked the closed door as hard as she could, then yelped and hopped around from the pain in her toes.

It obviously had no effect on him. Marcie stood for a moment, staring at the closed door. She took a second to decide what to do next. She wasn’t likely to turn tail and run just because he roared—the big bully—but then again, she wouldn’t confront him right away. Apparently he needed a little time to calm down—and to realize she wasn’t giving up. So she decided her best course of action was to wait. And eat.

She went to the little bug and got the rest of Preacher’s lunch out of her portable refrigerator—the trunk. Then she got into the backseat, pushing the front seats up as far as they’d go, and spread out her sleeping bag to sit on. It was like a little nest; she settled in. And she thought about his glower and his roar, as she slowly opened up the bag and took out the second half of her sandwich.

All right, she thought—it was not supposed to go like this. In every fantasy she’d had about finding him, there had been many possibilities. He could be glad to see her, embracing her in welcome. Or he could be withdrawn. He could even be a raving lunatic, on another planet, totally out of touch with this world. But never had she imagined he would take one look at her, cringe in obvious despair at the news of Bobby’s death and cruelly, heartlessly, meanly, scream at her to go away.

Her mouth was a little dry for eating and she tried some of the water out of her thermos—bottled water had become too expensive. She kept an eye on the front door of the cabin. She could feel the heat on her cheeks, furious that he’d do that to her after she’d looked so hard for him. All she wanted in the world was to make sure he was all right. The asshole. And then she felt her eyes cloud with tears for the very same reasons. His reaction really hurt her. What had she ever done to him? It made her absolutely enraged and broke her heart at the same time. How could he do that? Roar at her and slam the door like that? Without even hearing her? All he had to do was invite her in, tell her he was just fine, explain he wanted to be alone, accept the baseball cards and …

She just let the tears roll soundlessly down her cheeks for a moment. It had been a while since she’d cried. She realized then that her hopes for how this would turn out had been too idealized—exactly the reason Erin had wanted to hire a professional to handle this. Ian Buchanan had gone away, because he didn’t want anything to do with anyone from his former life, not because he needed help. Especially her help.

With a hiccup of emotion, Marcie admitted to herself—she might need his help. This business of moving on, it might have to do with Ian helping her understand his relationship with Bobby and with her, and how everything had changed. Ian’s growling and slamming the door in her face wasn’t going to get her where she needed to go. She was going to have to sit it out until he understood—she wasn’t done with him yet. And this whole business was going to get complicated, since there were good odds he was actually nuts.

She tried to gnaw at her sandwich, even though she now had no appetite. The sun sank slowly, and she ended up wrapping it up and putting it back in the grocery sack, unfinished. The thing was—if you didn’t eat that much, you didn’t feel like eating that much.

The sun dipped below the horizon, the lights in the cabin shone, and a thin curl of smoke rose from the little chimney. She leaned back against the sleeping bag, physically comfortable even if she was an emotional wreck. But the decision had been made—she was sitting right here until she figured out what to do.

On a more practical matter, she really hoped she wouldn’t have to pee in the night. She’d been choosing her sleeping spots carefully, so that if nature called in the dark of night, she wouldn’t have to venture far from the little bug.

She’d never been any kind of camper, never had been good at relieving a full bladder on a whim. Never had quite figured out that squat; it seemed like she’d always wet her right foot. But after a little over a month of searching the hills and sleeping in her car in various parking lots, quiet residential streets, rest stops and country roads, she had it figured out. She could squat, whizz, get the job done, jump back in the car and lock the doors in just over a minute. There were showers available at the YWCA and at workout rooms in community colleges where they didn’t check ID’s too closely. She’d indulged in motels the first week out and then quickly realized her money would go further if she slept in her car. And with no hints of Ian’s whereabouts, she needed to make her money last.

Then she remembered—that was an outhouse out there, wasn’t it? Wow, how hilarious to think she’d be glad to see an outhouse! Life had gotten real interesting.

Drew and especially Erin would absolutely die if they found out she’d been sleeping in the bug. She shook her head. I’m as nuts as he is, for sure. And then she noticed snow flurries against the window of the bug. Very pretty, light, fluffy snowflakes in the waning light with a narrow streak of sunlight in the west through the clouds—the flakes glittered as they fell. The view over the ridge was amazing—there was a rainbow shining through the snow drifting down onto the tall pines—it was magnificent. She just couldn’t be upset in this place. Not with Ian, in any case. Maybe he had forgotten they were friends.

He probably wanted her to think he was crazy, roaring like that, but she wanted to believe that, underneath the bluster, he would still be all the things Bobby said he was, all the things he’d been in their early letters, before Ian got out of the Marines—strong, compassionate, gentle, loyal. Brave. He’d been so courageous to do what he had done.

With the snow lightly falling, and the sun causing the rainbow to fade into dusk, she relaxed and closed her eyes for just a second. To think.

Three

Ian tried to keep himself from looking out the window; he’d be damned if he’d open the door. The silence in the mountains was such that if she’d turned the ignition to start the car, he could have heard the click. So he refreshed the fire in the woodstove, fired up the propane cookstove and heated large pans of water for a bath.

He’d made it a year in this cabin without a tub, shower or electricity, but he had made a few adjustments; he bought a generator and wired up a couple of lights inside. He found an old clawfoot tub in a salvage yard that he’d repaired and patched, enabling him to wash out of something larger than the kitchen sink.

It was always a shallow bath—a couple of pans of cold water hand pumped into a pot in the sink from the spring-fed well under the house, and a couple of large pans of boiling water didn’t make for a nice long soak. In the winter, he got in, got clean and got out real quick. He would probably never have plumbing other than the pump; he worried about money and he wasn’t skilled enough to do the plumbing himself. He hadn’t had a real honest-to-God shower in years. But he was a guy—he didn’t exactly primp. This was all he really needed. It got him good and clean.

After a quick scrub and some clean clothes, he warmed some stew on the stove, leaving it right in the can with the paper ripped off the outside. He wanted to see where she was, what she was doing, but he wouldn’t let himself. He’d ignore her, refuse to talk to her, and she’d go away. Soon, he hoped.

After all this time, Ian had managed not to dwell on everything that came before the mountains, but one look at that fiery red mane and her flashing green eyes brought everything rushing back. The first time he’d seen that beautiful little face had been in a photo that Bobby carried with him.

That kid was something else. Ian had been twenty-eight and Bobby twenty with a couple of years in the Marines when they first met. Bobby already had himself some stripes. Ian was just getting a new command and he took to the kid immediately—he was funny and fearless. Big, like Ian—about six feet of hard body—and no attitude. At first, Ian just worked him to death, but found himself responding right away to Bobby’s incredible endurance and commitment. It didn’t take long before Ian was mentoring him; teaching him and building him into one of the best of the best. Also, he was having a beer with him now and then and talking about home, about things that were not military—sports, music, cars and hunting. And then they went to Iraq together.

They got out pictures of their girls and read the letters they got to each other, sometimes leaving out the more personal parts, sometimes not. Bobby had married his girl, but Ian had been engaged less than a year when they went to Iraq in the same unit.

Ian had Shelly back then. While he was gone, she was planning a wedding that would take place when he got back. Bobby and Marcie were hoping to start a family. Their women were beautiful—Marcie was small and fragile-looking with that great mass of curly red hair and a completely impish smile. Shelly was a tall, thin, sophisticated-looking blonde with long straight hair. Ian remembered that Marcie had sent Bobby a pair of her panties that he proudly showed to the guys, but no one was allowed to touch. Shelly sent Ian a lock of hair, but he’d have rather had panties. Marcie sent Bobby a picture of herself in her underwear on Bobby’s motorcycle; Shelly sent a picture of herself posed in front of a Christmas tree, wearing slacks and a turtleneck sweater. Their girls also sent them cookies, books, cards, socks and tapes, anything they could think of. When the flak jackets ran low and soldiers started buying their own, Marcie and Shelly sent their men armor as well.

He didn’t want to think about this. Couldn’t she understand that? He didn’t want to be haunted by it. He absolutely couldn’t talk about it. He sat at his small table, head in his hands, but the memories assaulted him nonetheless.

There was no such thing as a routine mission in Fallujah. Ian’s squad hadn’t seen much action, but that day they hung tight against buildings while they did their door-to-door search for insurgents. The street was nearly deserted; a couple of women stood in doorways, watching them warily. Then it hit fast and hard. There were a couple of sudden explosions—a car bomb and grenade—and then a breakout of sniper fire. Ian saw one of his marines fly through the air, catapulted by the explosion. The second the noise subsided a little, Ian saw that it was Bobby who was down. He quickly assessed the rest of his squad; they’d taken cover and were returning fire. Bobby, however, got a double whammy—he’d been thrown probably twenty feet by the force of the explosion and by the time Ian got to him, there’d been a couple of gunshot wounds as well—head and torso.

Bobby looked up at him and said in a hoarse whisper, “Take cover, Sarge.”

And Ian had replied, “Fuck off. I’m getting you outta here.” Ian scooped him up, and right that second, he knew how bad it was going to turn out. He knew that fast. Bobby was limp as a hundred and eighty pound bag of sand. Carrying him over his shoulder, Ian got him behind the wall of a decimated building, called for a medic, an EMT who could administer battlefield first-aid. Ian put his hand over Bobby’s head wound in an attempt to stanch the bleeding and waited for help.

The medic who traveled with their squad finally came and opened up Bobby’s BDUs, the desert camouflage battle dress. He rolled him carefully. “It’s through and through,” he said of the torso wound, applying a compress to stop the bleeding. “We won’t know how much damage till we get a closer look. His vitals are hanging in there.”

“He’s gonna make it,” Ian said, though Bobby was out cold.

“We’re not going anywhere fast,” the medic said, getting out his gauze and tape to close up the head wound. “We can’t get a chopper in this close. We’ll have to carry the wounded or use litters.”

“Just keep him going till we get transport,” Ian demanded. But the medic was called to another wounded marine and Ian knew it was down to him to do everything he could to keep Bobby alive, to get him to that helicopter. Bobby was unconscious and barely breathing.

It wasn’t that long, but it seemed a lifetime, before the medic’s radio alerted them to a helicopter a few blocks away in a safe zone. Ian knew in his gut that Bobby wasn’t getting out of this okay, but he refused to think about it. “You’re going to be okay, buddy,” he kept saying. “You stay with me, I’ll get you outta here.”

The minute sniper fire seemed to have abated, Ian hefted Bobby into his arms and began to run down the dusty, bullet-riddled streets of Fallujah toward the chopper and the paramedics who had better equipment than what was available in the field. He took sniper fire in the thigh, but it was muscle not bone, and he ran through the pain. He took another one across the face, but he still couldn’t feel the pain. He felt the fire on his cheek. Then he saw the corner of the building on the other side of which would be medical transport.

He got Bobby to the chopper, where the rescue crew took over. He tried to go back to his squad, when one of the medics snagged his sleeve and said, “Hold up there, Sarge. Let’s have a look.”

Ian looked down. He was covered with blood. He couldn’t tell his from Bobby’s. Right then, his leg throbbed and his face burned; his vision blurred from blood running into his eye.

“Whoa, Sarge—you’re not going anywhere. We gotta look at—”

“Take care of him,” Ian said sternly. “I’ll be fine.”

“Everyone’s getting taken care of Sarge,” the medic said, taking the scissors to his pants, cutting them up to his thigh to expose a bleeding hole.

“Oh,” Ian said. “Damn.” And he swayed a little.

He sat while the medic attended to his face wounds—a cut across his eyebrow and a flesh wound that ran down the length of his check. While this was going on, while they were waiting for a couple more wounded marines, Ian watched as they worked on Bobby.

One of the medics said, “No casualties today.”

Little did they know …

The chopper finally lifted off and headed for the nearest camp hospital. There was a full surgical setup in tents and hastily erected buildings. That’s where Ian was separated from Bobby. Ian was taken into a treatment area while Bobby went straight to surgery. Some young doctor had shaved off Ian’s eyebrow to get a nice, clean stitch on the laceration; the nurse informed him it might never grow back. By the time Ian had a bandage and some crutches, Bobby had been stabilized and airlifted to Germany.

Ian stayed in Iraq. His injuries left some ugly scars but his recovery was relatively short. While Ian was behind the action for two months, he wrote letters to Bobby’s wife, letters telling her he was sure Bobby would be fine. Marcie went immediately to Germany and wrote back to Ian. Then she followed Bobby to Washington D.C.—to the Walter Reed Medical Center, and they wrote some more.

While Ian went back into action, Bobby went from Germany to Walter Reed to a VA hospital in Texas, then home to his wife. Ian kept up the correspondence—he heard from Marcie all the time and answered her every letter. She said things like, “He’s still pretty much unresponsive, but they’re working with him in physical therapy,” and “He’s not on a respirator or anything,” and, “I swear, Ian, he smiled at me today.” She said there was some paralysis and they feared brain damage, not from the bullet wound but from brain swelling. “Feared,” she had written. And “some paralysis.”

It was a few months later when she wrote to Ian again, “We have to face it—he’s not going to recover. He’s paralyzed from the neck down and he’s conscious but unresponsive.” The news hit Ian in the gut like a torpedo. He reread the previous letters; there wasn’t a hint of doom, yet the facts were there. A combination of his denial and her hope had kept the inevitable bad news at bay.

And then Marcie wrote, “I’m so relieved to have him home.”

Ian was given medals for saving Bobby’s life. Every day he asked himself why he should get medals for that, for saving a man to live in a dead body.

Since Ian had the basic information about his friend, he thought he was prepared for the visit he would pay when he was next stateside on leave. Marcie was so excited to see him, to throw her arms around him and thank him. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but it sure as hell hadn’t been what he’d seen. Just from earlier photos, he could tell Marcie had become thinner and more pale, even more fragile-looking. She was so tiny, so frail.

And Bobby? The man he’d seen did not resemble his friend. This man was a wasted, emaciated version of Bobby—his musculature gone, staring off at nothing, being fed through a tube, not responding to his young wife or his best friend. Bobby was gone, completely gone, yet his heart pumped and his lungs spontaneously filled with air. It was a travesty. And Ian had accepted medals for that?

* * *

Ian opened his eyes and they felt gritty. Sandy. He’d been literally transported to the past, a thing he’d been running from for years. He’d never been entirely sure if what happened next was due to the whole Iraq experience, or to the events that changed Bobby’s life so irrevocably. Whatever it was, it came to an ugly end when he got back from Iraq, a mess, his head all screwed up. He’d visited Bobby for probably less than fifteen minutes and it devastated him to see what he’d done—saving Bobby to live a life like that. He called off his wedding, tearing Shelly to shreds. He reported back for duty, not the same stalwart man, but a wreck who was impossibly short tempered. There was a phone call from Marcie’s sister saying it would be nice if Ian could at least be in touch with her—she was up against so much with Bobby, which added guilt to his growing list of demons.

Ian suddenly couldn’t stay out of trouble. Rather than being an example, he was a problem. He ended up spending a couple of nights in jail for stupid, random fights, and his father told him he was never so goddamned ashamed of him in his life. Ian’s response to that was to screw up enough so the Corps suggested it was time for him to exit and see if he’d be better as a civilian. He couldn’t face any of it. He had let Bobby down, disgraced his father, shattered and abandoned his woman. And he hadn’t been there for Marcie, who deserved better from him. He just wandered off, trying to figure out his head, but the task proved to be impossible.

He didn’t want to see Marcie now. He didn’t want to relive all that. There was no way he could apologize enough, no way to undo what he’d done. She should go away, let him figure out how to coexist alone with his monsters, someplace where he wouldn’t do any harm. He’d found some contentment here; there was nothing to be gained by going over the details again. God knew, he’d been over the details too many times, often without meaning to.

He had such horrible guilt. If Bobby was condemned to wasted life, why should he just pick up where he left off and thrive? Couldn’t, he couldn’t. But he could avoid hearing all the details of the traumatic last few years.

He looked at his watch. It was ten o’clock and he had to pee. He’d been in some flashback for more than a couple of hours. He seriously considered using the small pot he kept for emergencies, but it was time to see if she’d gone while he was in that other world.

He put on his jacket to take a trip out back, hoping beyond hope that when he opened the door, that little Volkswagen would be gone.

But damn, it was right there—covered with a thin layer of snow. It made him furious and he let out a loud, scary roar. But there was no response from within the car. He banged on the window. “Hey! You! Get outta here! Just go home!” Still, there was nothing from inside. He put his big hands on the top of the little car and began to rock it, shake it. When it settled, there was no movement, no sound.

Shit, he thought. It’s freezing. She wouldn’t fall asleep in there while the temperature dropped and the little car was covered with snow? No one would be that stupid. He pulled open the passenger door. She was gone.

“Goddamn it!” he cursed, turning around in a circle. “Goddamn you, Marcie! Where the hell are you?”

The night was silent. The snow drifted lazily to the ground. Then he heard the vague squeak of hinges and he looked across the dark. The outhouse door was open, drifting in the gentle breeze.

Dread colder than the winter sky filled him, and he ran to the little hut. She was slumped in the open doorway, her upper body inside and her legs covered with snow. Holy Jesus, she’d been like that long enough to have a dusting of snow on her legs.

He didn’t even think—he lifted her into his arms quickly and put his lips against her forehead to judge her body temperature. She was cold as ice. He ran to the cabin with her in his arms, conscious of the fact that she wasn’t stiff, wasn’t frozen solid, and he did something he hadn’t done in so long—he prayed. Oh God, I didn’t mean to roar like that—I just thought it best for both of us if she went away! Please, let her be okay! I’ll do anything … anything … When he got her inside, he put her on the couch, then rushed to put a couple more logs into the woodstove.

Then he hurried back to her and checked for a pulse. She was still okay, though hypothermic enough to induce unconsciousness. He knew what he had to do and started getting her out of her cold, wet clothes. First the quilted vest, then the boots and jeans. At least they’d been thick denim jeans and solid leather boots; it might’ve saved her from frostbite. She flopped weakly as he pulled her sweater over her head. Then he threw off his own jacket, ripped off his shirt, tore off his boots and shed his pants. He covered her small body with his and warmed her, skin to skin, holding himself up so as not to crush her with his weight.

He turned her face so that it lay gently against his shoulder. After minutes passed, he could feel the chill leaving her body. His arms trembled from holding his nearly two hundred pounds off her, keeping flesh on flesh, and the strangest image came back to him. Drop and give me twenty! And twenty! And twenty! God, how many pushups had he given, then demanded ….

He warmed her for an hour, while at the same time, the woodstove heated up the cabin. Her breath was soft and even on his shoulder; her body still and warm to the touch. He stayed over her a bit longer than necessary. Somewhat reluctant, he pushed himself off her, then wrapped her in a soft old quilt that lay at the foot of the couch.

Dressed again, he fed the woodstove and put a kettle of water on the cookstove.

Inside his one-room house was a couch, a table and two chairs, the clawfoot tub, the woodstove and a Coleman cookstove that ran on propane gas on the counter by the sink. There was a thick, rolled pallet he slept on and a stack of dry wood beside the woodstove. He had a few cupboards and a sink with a pump. There were two large trunks and a small metal box in which he kept his possessions and few valuables. Leaning in the corners were fishing gear and two rifles of the caliber to hunt game on the land that had become his. He had a stack of six books from the library; every two weeks he went to the public library using the card that had belonged to old Raleigh, the man who had lived here before him and died here, leaving a letter saying Ian could have the property.

He checked Marcie again. She was all right, sleeping soundly. So he took his trip to the outhouse and he made it real fast.

Ordinarily he’d be asleep long before now, there being little else to do. But instead, he sat in a chair at the table and opened the book he was currently reading. When the kettle whistled, he turned off the flame and checked on her. She was warmer and breathing regularly, so he read a while longer. Then he recharged the kettle, checked her again and found her the same.

That hair … It was everywhere on the couch pillow, thick and springy. If he didn’t have so much beard of his own, he could have enjoyed the feel of it against his face. He bunched some of it up in his hand and it was soft and thick. He couldn’t help but think of that girl, all of twenty-three and already a wife of four years, tending to a man who was nothing but flesh and bone. God, what kind of life must that have been?

Several more times, he reheated the water for hot tea, read, checked her. And then he heard a snuffling on the couch. A dry cough. He looked at his watch—a ten-dollar thing that had run for four years—and saw it was almost four o’clock. He went and knelt beside the couch. “You gonna wake up?”

She lazily opened her eyes and jolted awake, scooting up on her elbows. “What? What?”

“Easy. It’s okay. Sort of.”

She blinked a few times and then her eyes were wide. “Where am I?”

“I brought you inside. I had to. You were on your way to freezing to death. You must not have a brain in your head.”

She squinted at him, pursing her lips. “Oh—I have a brain. I’m just not real experienced in mountain life.” She struggled to sit up. “Gee, if I’d known you got your eyebrow back and grew your beard in red, I might’ve found you sooner. I’ll get out of your hair, which I notice, you have plenty of.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said, putting a big hand against her sternum, holding her down. “You’re stuck—and so am I.”

“No problem,” she said. “I sleep in the car every night. I have a good sleeping bag …”

“Did you hear me? You were passed out on your way back from the john, covered with snow and damn near frozen to death. You wanted to see me, you’re going to get your wish.”

Her eyes widened suddenly. “I’m … ah … naked under here?”

“You’re not naked. You have underwear. I had to get your wet clothes off you. That or just let you die. It wasn’t an easy decision,” he lied.

“You undressed me and wrapped me in this quilt?” she asked.

“Pretty much,” he said. And felt your small, soft body against mine for an hour, the first female body that’s been against mine in five years. Until tonight, he hadn’t thought he missed that feeling. “What happened out there? How’d you end up in the doorway of the john like that?”

“I don’t have the first idea. I was so glad there was an outhouse for once and I wouldn’t have to squat behind a bush. I was going to make it quick, but I was so tired I could hardly move, and that’s the last thing I remember till I woke up.” She coughed. “I didn’t think I was so tired I’d fall asleep on the way.”

“You didn’t fall asleep,” he said. “You lost consciousness. Hypothermia. Like I said—half frozen.”

“Hmm. Well, I have to pee now,” she said. “And I’m feeling really, really hot in here.”

So, she’d been half-frozen before she made the trek out of her VW He stared at her for a minute, then went over by the stove where he had her wet clothes draped over one of his two chairs to dry out. He felt them, then he went to one of the two trunks, opened it and pulled out a flannel shirt of his own. He took it to her and said, “Here, just put this on.” Next he reached behind the woodstove and picked up a navy blue porcelain pot with white dots that was probably fifty years old if it was a day. When he turned back to her, she was sitting up and buttoning the flannel shirt. “Use this.”

“For what?”

“To pee in.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Maybe, if you’ll give me my jeans and boots, I’ll just step outside …” Then she coughed again, several times.

“No, you can’t do that. And you better not get sick. I don’t have time to deal with a sick person.”

“I’m not sick, just a little dry in the throat. I could use a drink of water, but not until I take a trip out to the—”

“Let’s be clear,” Ian said gruffly. “I’m not letting you back outside. Not for a few more hours at least.” The kettle whistled. He shut off the propane stove and shrugged into his jacket. “I’ll step outside. You do your thing. Then you’ll have a cup of tea and go back to sleep.”

She just stared up at him with eyes that were dull green and very wide. She wiggled a little in discomfort. “Do you have any … tissue?”

He sighed deeply, letting his eyes fall closed impatiently. After handing her the pot, he went to one of his cupboards and pulled out a new roll of toilet tissue. Then he went out the door, hoping it wouldn’t take her very long to do her business. He shivered out there for five minutes and then he tentatively knocked on his own front door. He was answered by a round of hard coughing and he didn’t wait for further invitation.

She was leaning back on the couch looking flushed, her skinny bare legs sticking out from beneath the huge shirt, holding the pan possessively on her lap. She looked up at him and said, “What should I do with this?”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said. She didn’t move. “Let me have it now.” Reluctantly, she gave it up. “I’ll be right back.” And again he left her, this time to pour the contents down the outhouse hole. And as he was returning he thought, she’s sick. No question about it. She’s been sleeping in her damn car—who knew for how long?—and got weakened. She must have had a bug in her that was ready to strike, and that bad chill just added to her troubles.

He said nothing as he came in the cabin. He put the pot back behind the stove for her use if she needed it. He washed his hands, made her a cup of tea, and while it steeped, he poured a cup of water and brought her three aspirins.

“Huh?” she said. “What’s this?”

“I think you have a fever. Might be from damn near freezing to death, might be from something else. First we try aspirin.”

“Yeah,” she said, taking them in her small hand. “Thanks.”

While Marcie took the aspirin with water, he fixed up the tea. They traded, water cup for mug of tea. He stayed across the room at his table while she sipped the tea. When she was almost done, he said, “Okay, here’s the deal. I have to work this morning. I’ll be gone till noon or so—depends how long it takes. When I get back, you’re going to be here. After we’re sure you’re not sick, then you’ll go. But not till I tell you it’s time to go. I want you to sleep. Rest. Use the pot, don’t go outside. I don’t want to stretch this out. And I don’t want to have to go looking for you to make sure you’re all right. You understand?”

She smiled, though weakly. “Aw, Ian, you care.”

He snarled at her, baring his teeth like an animal.

She laughed a little, which turned into a cough. “You get a lot of mileage out of that? The roars and growls, like you’re about to tear a person to pieces with your teeth?”

He looked away.

“Must keep people back pretty good. Your old neighbor said you were crazy. You howl at the moon and everything?”

“How about you don’t press your luck,” he said as meanly as he could. “You need more tea?”

“If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll nap. I don’t want to be any trouble, but I’m awful tired.”

He went to her and took the cup out of her hand. “If you didn’t want to be any trouble, why didn’t you just leave me the hell alone?”

“Gee, I just had this wild urge to find an old friend …” She lay back on the couch, pulling that soft quilt around her. “What kind of work do you do?”

“I sell firewood out of the back of my truck.” He went to his metal box, which was nailed to the floor from the inside so it couldn’t be stolen if someone happened by his cabin, which was unlikely. He unlocked it and took out a roll of bills he kept in there and put it in his pocket, then relocked it. “First snowfall of winter—should be a good day. Maybe I’ll get back early, but no matter what, I want you here until I say you go. You get that?”

“Listen, if I’m here, it’s because it’s where I want to be, and you better get that. I’m the one who came looking for you, so don’t get the idea you’re going to bully me around and scare me. If I wasn’t so damn tired, I might leave—just to piss you off. But I get the idea you like being pissed off.”

He stood and got into his jacket, pulled gloves out of the pockets. “I guess we understand each other as well as we can.”

“Wait—it’s not even light!”

“I start before light. I have to load the truck.”

And he was gone.

Marcie reclined on the couch and closed her eyes. At first she heard the heavy thumping of logs being stacked in the back of the truck. Then she heard some soft whistling while she dozed off. Very pretty whistling with a distinct melody. She wasn’t sure what woke her, but when she opened her eyes the cabin was dimly lit with the first rays of dawn and she heard … singing. A beautiful male baritone. She couldn’t hear the words, but it was him and it took her breath away.

And she knew something. If you’re angry and in pain, you can’t sing. Can’t.

Four

Snow didn’t fall all the way into the valley, down near the ocean towns of Eureka and Arcata. But up here it was overcast, damp and chilly, and more snow was forecast. Ian had his truck parked along the road leading to a busy thoroughfare just before seven o’clock. At that juncture, he caught people on their way to work and, after four years, he was selling to the same customers over and over. Since he didn’t have a phone and no one knew where he lived, they watched for him to show up. Five cars right in a row pulled up and he made deals for as many half cords of wood. He took addresses in his little notebook and promised to deliver the wood in the next couple of days. Two of them he’d done business with in the past and accepted their checks, but the other three would have their wives give him the cash upon delivery.

The sixth customer was the police chief. He bought a cord from Ian every winter and must trust him by now because he paid cash in advance of delivery; other customers liked to see the wood before they shelled out the money for the delivery. “Got a good supply this winter, buddy?” the chief asked, pulling off his bills.

“Yes, sir. We’ll get you through. I’ll take this load right over.”

“Will you stack it up in the shed out back and put a little on the porch by the mudroom door for me?”

“You betcha. As usual,” Ian said, taking the money.

“You take care now,” the chief said. “Listen … There was this woman looking for a guy about your size, age … Aw, never mind …”

Ian smiled inwardly. No, chief, couldn’t be me, he thought. “I’ll get that wood over this morning.”

“Thanks, buddy.”

Twenty minutes later, a truck pulled up and Ian took his last order for wood, then was on his way to deliver his load to the chief. He made a stop for gas and a few supplies—broth cubes, half a roaster, an onion, some celery, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, noodles, couple of small orange juices plus some fresh apples and oranges, coffee, bread, peanut butter and honey. He was back at the cabin before noon.

The room had chilled down because the stove hadn’t been fed, but she’d kicked off her covers and her little rump was sticking out—lavender and lace. Her face was glowing pink. He put down his groceries and fed the stove. Then he took her juice and more aspirin, waking her. He pulled the quilt over her and made her sit up.

“When are you leaving?” she asked him groggily.

“I’m back. Here, you have to take aspirin. You have a fever. Where are you sick, Marcie? Head, stomach, throat, chest? Where?”

“Ugh. I don’t know,” she said, struggling awake. “I think I’m just tired and achy. I’ll be fine.”

“Juice and aspirin,” he said, lifting her. “Come on now. You got a bug.”

“Ugh,” she said again, lifting up. “I’m sorry. I’ll be better in a little while. It’s probably just a little cold or something.” She took the aspirin—four this time—and washed it down with orange juice.

“I have to go out again, Marcie. There’s more juice on the table. You need that blue pot closer to the couch while I’m gone?”

“No,” she said, settling back against the couch. “I don’t like that pot.”

“I’m going to go see if I can get you some medicine. There’s an old doc in Virgin River—he might have some stuff on hand for cold and flu. It’ll take me almost a half hour to get there, the same coming back.”

“Virgin River,” she said dreamily, eyes closed. “Ian, they have the most beautiful Christmas tree … You should see it …”

“Yeah, right. I’ll be an hour or so. The fire should more than last, but will you try to keep the blanket on? Till I get back?”

“I’m just too warm for it …”

“You won’t be in a half hour, when that aspirin kicks in and drops your temperature. Can you just do this for me?”

Her eyes fluttered open. “I bet you’re really pissed at me right now, huh? I just wanted to find you, not make so much trouble for you.”

He brushed that wild red hair off her brow where a couple of curly red tendrils stuck to the dampness on her face. “I’m not pissed anymore, Marcie,” he said softly. “When you’re all over this flu, I’ll give you what for. How’s that?”

“Whatever. You can howl at me with that big, mean animal roar if you want to. I have a feeling you like doing that.”

He grinned in spite of himself. “I do,” he said. “I do like it.” Then he stood and said, “Stay covered and I’ll get back as soon as I can.”

When Ian pulled into town, the first thing he saw was the tree. Somehow he thought she might’ve been hallucinating from the fever, which had scared the hell out of him. But there it was—biggest damn thing he’d ever seen. The bottom third was decorated with red-white-and-blue balls, gold stars and some other stuff; the top part was still bare. He actually slowed the truck for a moment, taking it in. But what was that patriotic color scheme about? Did they do this every winter? Did they have some town kids in the war?

He shook it off; he had to get something for Marcie. The old doc used to come out to his place when old Raleigh was at the end and real sick, years ago now. Ian had to use Raleigh’s ancient truck to fetch the doctor; Raleigh had never even considered a phone. And neither had Ian.

When he walked into the doc’s house, he saw a young blonde at the desk. “Hi, there,” she said. She stood up and he noted the pregnant tummy.

“Hey. Doc around?”

“Sure. I’ll get him for you. I’ve been here less than two years—does he know you?”

“Sort of, yeah.”

She smiled over her shoulder and went to Doc’s office. Momentarily, the old man was limping toward him, glasses perched on his nose, wild white eyebrows spiking. “Afternoon,” Doc said.

“Hey, Doc,” Ian said, putting out a hand. “Any chance you have anything on hand for a flu bug?”

“Sorry, son—I can’t remember the name. The face I know. You’re …”

“Buchanan. Ian Buchanan from out on Clint Mountain. The old Raleigh place. I was the one taking care of him at the end.”

“Right,” he said. “That’s right. What’s your complaint?”

“It’s not me, Doc. I’ve got a visitor who showed up yesterday and she took sick in the night. Fever, chills, aches, sore throat … I’m giving her aspirin and juice. I didn’t want to bring her out in this cold—the heater in the truck isn’t too good. But if you have any medicine—”

“I’m chock full of medicine, boy—but I usually like to make my own diagnosis.”

“It’s way out there—You remember.”

“Yeah, yeah, can’t hardly forget that old coot. No problem—I get around. Let me stock up a bag and I’ll follow you back. Most roads out that way are a goddamn mystery.”

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