Moonlight Road (Virgin River #11)(25)

But she’d never cared about that. Had she?

“Yeah, my dad depended on me,” Erin said. “I was going to do that up here. Find a great fulfilling hobby of some kind. So far I haven’t thought of a thing.”

“You’re still trying to cope with the loss. The empty nest.”

“Really?” she asked. “You think that’s all it is? Empty nest?”

“All?” Mel asked. “Erin, that’s a lot of loss. It’s a little death. Some women just blow it off. When their kids go off to college or get married, they just close the vents in their children’s rooms or turn those spaces into dens and sewing rooms. Other women really struggle and feel a lot of emotional pain. You were awfully young when you started mothering them.”

“Huh,” she said. She took a drink of her cola. “Well, what am I supposed to do for fun now?”

“Gosh, I don’t know,” Mel said. “There’s bound to be a period of adjustment. You’ve probably been going through a period of grief already and maybe you’re not quite done with that. Something will come to mind.” The door to the bar opened and a man in rough-sewn work clothes wandered up to the bar. Mel looked over her shoulder. Then back at Erin. “Can you tend bar?”

Five

All the way home, Erin thought about what Mel had said. Of course she was right. The empty feelings had started when Ian and Marcie moved into their own home. She’d been so happy for them, but she also had that empty, lost feeling inside. And shortly after that, Marcie had told her she was pregnant. She had hosted a dinner to celebrate that event—Ian was absolutely lit from inside, he was so alive and excited, but her feelings were a mixture of excitement and emptiness.

It wasn’t just the empty nest. She was also grieving that lost childhood, the lost young womanhood, and the fact that she was thirty-six and had never put any energy into a lasting relationship or children of her own. And how was she supposed to do that? Given a choice, there was no way she could have cast Marcie and Drew to the wind and told them to do their best while she worked on her personal life. Instead, she had helped nurse Marcie’s disabled husband, Bobby, helped Drew study for the MCAT to get into med school and worked her ass off to build an impressive clientele that pumped money into her firm, into her bonuses, and helped pay for med school, which cost the earth.

Lost in her thoughts, she put the dinner she had brought home from Jack’s in the refrigerator for later.

She took a low-fat yogurt and spoon out onto the deck, sat in her chaise looking out at the magnificent view and began to softly cry. She was thinking about the prom, of all things. She had picked out a prom dress one year, but she hadn’t been asked. And why would she have been asked? She was never available for the social things. No one knew she was alive. Fuck the Prom, she thought. I didn’t care about the f**king prom. Which is why I’m actually crying!

“I should’ve gone on a goddamn cruise with a bunch of goddamn old people,” she muttered, giving a sniff and a hiccup.

Suddenly, a head covered with dark hair and a full red beard peeked around the corner. “I didn’t know you were home,” Aiden remarked. “I didn’t hear a car.”

Erin’s eyes grew round, she gasped, and then instinctively dug her heels into the chaise to push herself away from him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He came around the cabin and stood in front of the deck. He was wearing his uniform of fatigue pants, T-shirt and boots and held a rake or something in his hand. “I thought you’d left. Given up and gone back to the city or something. But then I saw stuff, like the plants and pots, but no potting soil or fertilizer. I was trying to think of something to give you to say I regretted the head injury. I’m not taking responsibility for it, you understand,” he said, putting up a hand. “But I was going to get you a plant or something, and then I noticed the garden. Uh, well, it was sort of a garden….”

Erin wiped impatiently at her cheeks, trying to be nonchalant about it. “It turns out gardening isn’t my thing….”

“Yeah, I got that impression, but I thought maybe—” He bent at the waist and peered at her, frowning. “Are you crying?”

“Of course not!” she slammed back. “I have a little cold, or allergies, or something. My nose is runny, that’s all.”

“Oh. Sure. So I got to thinking, maybe you just needed a little help getting started. It’s been a while, but when we were kids, my mom kept a garden and made us all help, so I…” He squinted at her. “Allergies, huh?”

It was then that she noticed the plants she’d bought were now potted and sitting in the corners of her deck. “You potted the plants?”

“And got your vegetable garden going. It’s a little late, but with the right amount of fertilizer and water, you’ll get some stuff. Tomatoes if there’s enough sun. I put some flowers around the border. I planted sunflowers because they’re fun—you can almost see them grow. You could use a border of flowers along the front of the cabin. They’re on sale right now. I thought I’d run over to the nursery sometime this week and get you some, if you don’t mind. You can take it from there.”

She put aside the yogurt and stood up. “And if I just pack up and leave?” she asked.

“You thinking of doing that?”