Virgin River (Virgin River #1)(65)

she asked. “Her car’s out front.”

“I had Preacher take her home in the truck. Her first night in town she shouldn’t have to deal with those roads in the rain.”

“Oh. Thanks,” she said. “I’ll see you sometime tomorrow, then.”

“Mel?” he called. “Sit with me a minute.”

“I should go to Joey. She came all this way…”

“Maybe we should talk. About what’s been going on with you.”

She had been on this precipice for days, teetering on the fine edge of losing it. The only thing that seemed to take her mind off the violent event that changed her life was work. If she had a patient or an emergency, she could lose herself in it. Even the day with her sister, showing Joey the town, the lambs, the beauty, took her away a little bit. But it just kept coming back, haunting her. A picture of him lying on the floor bleeding out could float in front of her eyes and she’d have to pinch them closed, praying she wouldn’t break down. There was no way she could sit down and talk about it. What she needed right now was to get out of here, go home and have a good hard cry. With her sister, who understood.

“I can’t,” she said, her words little more than a breath.

Jack stood up. “Then let me drive you home,” he said.

“No,” she said, holding up a hand. “Please. I need to just go.”

“Why don’t you just let me hold you. Maybe you shouldn’t be alone.”

So, Mel thought. She told him! She closed her eyes and held up a hand as if to ward him off. Her nose became red, her lips pink around the edges. “I really want to be alone. Please, Jack.”

He gave his head a nod and watched her leave.

Mel went down the porch steps to her car, but she didn’t make it. It hit her before she could get there. She was nearly doubled over by the sudden crushing pain of memory, of loss. The emptiness came back, draining her of all good feelings and filling her up with the horrific unanswerable questions. Why, why, why? How can this happen to a person? Even if I’m not good enough to deserve better, Mark was! He should have lived to be an old man, to save lives and treat people with the brilliance and compassion that made him one of the best emergency room doctors in the city!

She had made it all day without falling apart, but now in the dark, in the cold night rain, she felt as though she was going to collapse to the ground and just lie there in the mud long enough to perish, to be with him. She stumbled toward a tree and grabbed the trunk, embracing it, holding herself up and holding on at the same time. The cries that came out of her were loud and wrenching.

Why couldn’t we at least have had a baby? Why couldn’t even that small thing have worked in our favor? Just to have a piece of him to live for…

Inside, Jack paced back and forth in the bar, feeling his own helplessness because he couldn’t do anything for her. He knew all about the crushing pain of loss; even more about the difficulty of getting beyond it. He hated that she’d left without at least letting him try to comfort her.

Frustrated, he opened the door to go after her. There sat her BMW, right in front of the porch, but she wasn’t in it. He squinted to look into the car, but then he heard her. Sobbing. Wailing. He couldn’t see her. He stepped out onto the porch, went down the steps into the rain. And then he saw her—holding on to the tree, the rain drenching her.

He ran to her, embracing her from behind, holding the tree with her, holding her against the tree. Her back heaved with her cries, her cheek pressed against the rough bark. The sound of her anguish broke his heart; no way could he let her go, no matter what she said about being alone. This crying made her weeping over baby Chloe look like a mere rehearsal. She was wracked. She started to crumble to the ground and he put his arms under hers and held her upright as the rain soaked them.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she howled. “Oh God, oh God, oh God!”

“Okay,” he whispered. “Let it go, let it out.”

“Why, why, why?” she cried in the night, her breath coming in jagged gasps. Her whole body jerked and shook as she cried. “Oh, God, why?”

“Let it all out,” he whispered, his lips against her wet hair. She screamed. She opened up her mouth, tipped her head back against him and screamed at the top of her lungs. He hoped she wouldn’t wake the dead, the sound was so powerful. But he only hoped she wasn’t heard so that no one would disturb them and stop this purging. He wanted to do this with her. He wanted to be there for her. The scream subsided into hard sobbing. Then more quietly, “Oh, God, I can’t. I can’t, I can’t.”

“It’s okay, baby,” he whispered. “I’ve got you. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Her legs didn’t seem to hold her up anymore; he was keeping her upright. He had the passing thought that no amount of emotion he had ever expelled in his lifetime could match this. It was almost phenomenal in its strength, this pain that gripped her. What had he thought? That his few days of brooding, a good drunk, had been demonstrative of his pain? Hah! He held in his arms a woman who knew more about gut-wrenching pain than he did. His eyes stung. He kissed her cheek. “Let it go,” he whispered. “Get it out. It’s okay.”

It was a long time before she began to cry more softly. Fifteen minutes, maybe. Twenty. Jack knew you don’t stop something like this until it’s over. Till it’s all bled out. They were both soaked to the skin when her breath started coming in little gasps and hiccups. It was a long time before she pushed herself away from the tree and turned toward him. She looked up at his rain soaked face, hers twisted with pain, and said, “I loved him so much.”