Virgin River (Virgin River #1)(62)

“You found a man in that place?”

“Uh-huh. I think so.”

“Why do you sound so…strange?”

“I have to know something. Is it okay? Because I’m not even close to being over Mark. I still love Mark more than anything. Anyone.”

Joey let out her breath slowly. “Mel, it’s all right to get on with your life. Maybe you’ll never love anyone as much as you loved Mark—but then maybe there will be someone else. Someone next. You don’t have to compare them, honey, because Mark is gone and we can’t get him back.”

“Love,” she corrected. “Not past tense. I still love Mark.”

“It’s all right, Mel,” Joey said. “You can go on living. You might as well have someone to pass the time with. Who is he?”

“The man who owns the bar across from Doc’s clinic—the one who fixed up the cabin, bought me the fishing pole, got my phone installed. Jack. He’s a good man, Joey. And he cares about me.”

“Mel…Have you…? Are you…?”

There was no answer.

“Mel? Are you sleeping with him?”

“No. But I let him kiss me.”

Joey laughed sadly. “It’s okay, Mel. Can you really think otherwise? Would Mark want you to wither away, lonely? Mark was one of the finest men I’ve ever known—

generous, kind, loving, genuine. He’d want you to remember him sweetly, but to get on with your life and be happy.”

Melinda started to cry. “He would,” she said through her tears. “But what if I can’t be happy with anyone except Mark?”

“Baby sis, after what you’ve been through, would you settle for some marginal happiness? And a few good kisses?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Give it a go. Worst case—it takes your mind off your loneliness.”

“Is that wrong? To use someone to take your mind off your dead husband?”

“What if you put that another way? What if you enjoyed someone who took your mind off your dead husband? That could pass for happiness, couldn’t it?”

“I probably shouldn’t be kissing him,” she said. And she cried. “Because I just can’t stay here. I don’t belong here. I belong in L.A. with Mark.”

Joey sighed heavily. “It’s only kissing, Mel. Just take it one kiss at a time.”

When they hung up the phone, Joey said to her husband Bill, “I have to go to her. I think she might be heading for a crisis.”

Mel had started thinking about the past more—that morning that the police came to the door to tell her that Mark was dead. They had worked the swing shift together at the hospital the night before. They’d taken their lunch hour together in the cafeteria. But Mark was on call and the E.R. was busy, so he stayed through the night. It happened when he was on his way home.

She had gone to the morgue to view him. Left alone with him for a little while, she took his cold, lifeless body into her arms, his chest riddled with three perfect holes, and wept until they dragged her away.

She had a video in her mind—one that ran from the pictures of Mark lying on the floor at the convenience store, the police at her door at dawn, through the funeral, those nights that she cried literally through the entire night, right up to the long days of packing up his things and the long months of not being able to part with them. She saw the film in her head as if from above, curled into a fetal position in her bed, grabbing herself around the gut as though she’d been run through by a knife, crying hard, loud tears. Cries so loud that she thought the neighbors would hear and call for help.

Rather than just telling his picture that she loved him, she began carrying on long, one-sided conversations with his flat, lifeless face. She would tell him everything she’d done all day and it would inevitably end with, “I still love you, damn you,” she would exclaim harshly. And urgently, “I still love you. I can’t stop loving you and missing you and wanting you back.”

Mel had always thought that Mark was the kind of lover, the kind of husband, who would find a way to contact her from beyond, because he was so devoted. But there had never been any evidence that he’d crossed back. When he went, he went all the way. He was so gone, it left her feeling desolate inside.

She woke up crying three days running. Jack had asked her if anything was wrong, if there was anything she wanted to talk about. “PMS,” she told him. “It’ll pass.”

“Mel, have I done anything?” He wanted to know.

“Of course not. Hormones. I swear.”

But she was starting to think that the brief reprieve she seemed to have experienced lately was now officially over and she was on her way back to the darkness of grief and longing. Back to the stark loneliness.

Then something happened to jar her out of it. She returned from her short walk to the corner store to watch her soap with Joy and a recovering Connie to see a rented car in front of Doc’s. When she went inside she was face-to-face with her sister’s bright smile. Mel gasped, dropped her bag and they swooped together, lifting each other off the ground, laughing and crying at once. When the crazy moments had passed, still holding Joey’s hand, Mel turned toward Doc to make a formal introduction. But before she could, Doc said, “Kind of scary, there being two of you.”