Paradise Valley (Virgin River #7)(31)

“Hey, Jack,” Rick said. “It was nice of you to come all this way. Sorry I’m not good company.”

Jack smiled at him, a completely indulgent smile. “Rick, there wasn’t anything else I could do. Like it or not, that’s the way it is with best friends. If it was me in the bed, you’d be right here.”

A flicker of emotion crossed Rick’s features, but it didn’t last long. “Thanks. Have a good trip home.”

Normally Rick would have told him to give Mel his love, but on this visit he hadn’t even asked about her or the kids. In fact, he asked if his grandmother was holding up and that was all. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, see anyone, think about anyone. The way he was isolating himself from feeling not only worried Jack, it was completely familiar to him. Jack had been in a few bad situations in the Marines and he’d been too goddamn stoic for his own good. But, he reminded himself, he had somehow grown out of most of that. He had survived the traumas of combat.

The one who surprised him more was Liz. Jack was afraid he’d be dragging a weeping, sniveling seventeen-year-old basket case back across the Atlantic, but Liz, although troubled and sad, seemed to be in control of her emotions. “I’m afraid, you know,” she said to Jack while they sat together on the airplane. “I’m afraid he doesn’t love me anymore. But I understand I can’t know that for sure until he gets better. And he will get better. I was terrified that we’d get to Germany to find out he was—” She couldn’t finish.

Jack squeezed her hand. “I know, kiddo,” he said. “Listen, he’s hurting and he’s screwed up right now, but he has no idea what he’s getting himself into. I offered to bring him home to my house and drive him to PT as many times a week as he needed to go and he rejected that. He said he didn’t want anyone watching his struggle. Well, I talked to the social worker right before we packed up and left. When he gets to the hospital in San Diego, everyone will be watching him. They have a new care unit they call C-5—Comprehensive Combat and Complex Casualty Care. There’s a large amputee unit that combines everything from orthopedics and psych to drug treatment. He might be kicking and screaming the whole time, but as long as he’s there, there will be treatment for whatever is going on with him. And that missing leg isn’t all that’s going on with him.”

“What is going on with him?” she asked. “Because I’m not sure I get it.”

“Any guess.” He shrugged. “Could be what they used to call battle fatigue, but it’s really just the shock of seeing terrible things, doing things you wish you hadn’t had to do, denial, rage, fear. Add on top of that, he got hurt real bad and is minus a leg. He can get a good prosthesis, but he can’t ever get that leg back. He’s wounded, worried about the future and, for that matter, worried about the past. His war past. He’s going to the best possible place to get help with that. You and me? We can’t help him as much as they can. Bad as it hurts that he doesn’t want our help, it’s probably the best thing that could happen.”

“I hope he gets himself back,” she said. “Because no matter what, I’m probably going to love him forever.”

She leaned her head against Jack’s shoulder in the narrow, confining airplane seats. Without looking at Jack, she said, “Remember back when I was pregnant?” Then she laughed hollowly. “Fifteen and pregnant. God. Talk about hurt, scared and pissed off….”

“Rick was only seventeen,” Jack inserted.

“And he did everything he could for me. You can’t believe the things he did. He protected me from the popular girls who made fun of me, pointed at me, tortured me. He got in a fight because some guy said something mean about me and Rick defended me. He didn’t want to get married, but I wanted to so bad because I was scared of being alone, of my mom and aunt taking the baby away from me….” She looked up at Jack and smiled. “So he ran away with me. Trying to give me anything I needed to feel safe.”

Jack smiled back, stroking her hair. “You didn’t get too far,” he said, remembering. He’d gone after them, brought them back.

Her fingers were on that small diamond again, running it back and forth along the chain around her neck. “You know what I want to do? I want to hitchhike to San Diego and stand outside his hospital room and yell and cry and beg.”

“Ew,” Jack said.

“I want to, but I won’t. I can see he doesn’t want me right now and that would only make things worse. I just can’t think what I should do.”

“Did you ever check out those support groups?”

She sighed heavily. “Jack, if you’re not married to the Marine, no one has any time for you. And that’s that.”

“I thought the people in the group would…”

“Would bend the rules?” she asked. “No. Jack, I think I’m on my own this time.”

He smiled and brushed her hair across her pretty brow. He couldn’t relate to this. There was no special girl from years back that, if he saw her again, he’d regret letting get away. And he wasn’t even sure Rick and Liz were meant to be, despite all they’d been through together. But they were, individually, such incredible kids. So strong. They shouldn’t have to be that strong at their tender ages.

Could fate throw any more at them?