Forbidden Falls (Virgin River #9)(93)

Silence answered her while he thought. “I don’t know if I cried for them when my grandma first brought me home to Virgin River—you’d have to ask her. But growing up? Vanni, I don’t remember them at all. Sometimes, when I look at the old pictures, I think I remember them a little bit, but really, I don’t have a single true memory of them. I hate that.”

She sighed. “But how could you help it? If you can’t remember, you can’t remember.”

“I had a lot of questions, growing up. And I had some pictures. Not a lot of pictures. First of all, my gram didn’t take a lot of pictures of my dad when he was growing up. They were kind of poor, picture taking wasn’t a big thing. My mom had hardly any family—her folks died when she was real young, and no one knows what happened to pictures of her, if there were any. But there were pictures of them with me when I was a baby, and I had my gram to answer questions about my dad’s growing-up years. And she said they were real in love and happy to be having a baby.”

Terri wanted her baby, Vanni remembered. “I’m trying to understand what Hannah will need,” she said, almost more to herself than to Rick.

“She doing okay?” Rick asked.

“She’s doing great. She has no idea all she lost,” Vanni said.

“Well, there’s one thing I remember from growing up. My gram was so great to me—I couldn’t ask for more. I never knew my grandpa, but my gram took good care of me. And I had Jack. Then Preacher. But there was one thing…I always wished I could have had a mom and a dad, like other kids. You know—a regular family. But, hey, accidents happen to families. I had the next best thing. I have to say, there wasn’t anything about my growing up I’d call bad. But a regular family…That would have been good.”

What if Paul and I were killed in an accident like Rick’s parents? Like Terri Bradford had been? Who would take care of little Matt? Matt was luckier than Hannah—his paternal grandparents were alive and well, Vanni’s father a young sixty-two and her brother, Tom, twelve years younger and devoted to Mattie. Paul’s parents and brothers considered Mattie their own. There were many people to keep Mattie’s parents alive for him, to assure him he was loved and wanted, to be sure he knew the details of his ancestry.

Vanni was quiet for a minute. Then she said, “She’s going to have a regular family. A ton of pictures of her mom and details about her life, her family, so she knows what she needs to know about herself.” And she will never doubt, Vanni vowed, that she has a loving home.

Paul should have shot straight home after he was finished supervising work on the church, but, gee—Jack’s Bar was right there. He knew that Ellie had family stuff going on and hadn’t been to his house to help Vanni and, frankly, his house with a tired wife and two wild little kids wasn’t exactly a relaxing place most days. So he clapped Noah on the back and said, “Let me buy you a beer, pal. I need one and it probably wouldn’t kill you.”

“Wouldn’t kill me, that’s for sure,” Noah said.

They walked out of the church and across the street and Paul said, “So, there was a big deal going on at Jack’s last night and I missed the whole thing. Ellie’s ex showed up and spewed a whole lot of bad trash about her being a stripper and stuff, and the whole thing ended with her kids living with Jo and Nick Fitch.”

“How do you know all that already?” Noah asked.

“Well, I could’ve found out from Jack, but I was still home this morning when Ellie called Vanni. That true?”

“What part?” Noah asked.

“The kids are with Jo and Nick now?” Paul asked.

“That’s a fact,” Noah said. “Turns out Jo and Nick are certified foster parents, though they haven’t had any kids in a few years. And the social worker from Child Welfare was up a creek—had a court order saying the kids were to be with the stepfather, and that turned out to be a bad choice. So it was a solution. And a good one for Ellie.”

“Wow. And it’s true? She’s a stripper?”

Noah stopped walking and looked at Paul. “No. She’s a pastor’s assistant.”

“Right,” Paul said, losing that boyish grin the second he saw the angry tic in Noah’s jaw. “Okay, my bad. That wouldn’t do so much for you. Sorry.”

Noah started walking again. “Sure makes life interesting, though,” he said. “And all this has made Ellie’s life a challenge, to say the least.”

“And all that other stuff? Vanni says that other things he said—like about drugs and stuff—”

“Not a kernel of truth to it,” Noah said.

Both men walked up to the bar and Jack was right there. “Paul,” Jack said, “what’s going on out at your place?”

Paul shrugged and shook his head. “Same old stuff, far as I know.”

“Vanni called here earlier. She was looking for Rick’s phone number and she sounded a little…frazzled or something.”

“Rick’s number? Why?” Paul asked.

“She didn’t say, just that it was important and she was in a big hurry. I asked her if she was all right and she said she’d be fine.”

Paul turned questioning eyes to Noah. “Hey, I don’t have the first idea,” Noah said.