Whispering Rock (Virgin River #3)(60)

“Right after which, she glows,” Jack agreed.

“Nothing more beautiful than a pregnant woman,” Paul said.

“Oh, brother,” she said.

“You do good work,” Paul said to Jack.

“Yeah… And if I ever find out who gave her those shoes…” Jack added with a laugh, which earned him a dirty look that amused both men beyond good sense.

The mammogram RV showed up in Virgin River on a Monday morning and was set up in Doc’s clinic. All the women Mel had contacted came in early in a big crowd, some dragging kids along and all bearing food and drink. They gathered in the waiting room and held an all-day party, leaving one at a time for their mammograms. It was a long, exhausting and fulfilling day for Mel, and for Doc, too—if you looked closely enough his grimace almost looked like a smile.

The next day the truck went to Grace Valley to June Hudson’s clinic, where mammograms were provided for those women over forty and younger women who were at a high risk for breast cancer.

The following day was appointment day and Mel had three prenatals—the third being Vanessa Rutledge.

Mel wasn’t surprised her first two patients favored home births even though a hospital and epidural were available to them—they came from rural families that had been having home births for generations. But the one who really surprised her was Vanessa, who was by all accounts a city girl. She planned to have her baby in her father’s house, naturally. “Just three months to go,” Mel told her. “And you’re in absolutely perfect health. Now, how about a little trip to Grace Valley for an ultrasound? We should be sure right now that we don’t have any obvious complications. Do you want to know the sex of the baby?”

“That would be great—then I can tell Matt. He feels so left out.”

“How about next week?”

“There isn’t anything on my schedule,” she said with a shrug.

“It must be hard, having him so far away when you’re pregnant.”

“It is, but this seems to be the history in the Booth family. My dad wasn’t around for either me or my brother’s births. The military can really screw up the best of plans.”

“I don’t know how you do it,” she said.

“Wasn’t Jack in the Marine Corps for twenty?” Vanessa asked.

“A little over twenty—but I didn’t find him until recently. I came up here from L.A. to work with Doc Mullins when I met and married Jack. He was already retired.”

“And you had a baby right away!”

“Boy, howdy,” Mel said. She touched her still-flat tummy. “And guess what? He got me again.” She shook her head. “I’m going to have to put him in that little guesthouse out back.”

Vanessa laughed at her. “Listen, there’s something pretty special going on at our house tomorrow night—and we’d like you and Jack, Preacher, Paige and Mike to all be there if possible. Of course, Paul will be there, too. My dad got us signed up for some kind of program called ‘Voices From Home.’ We’re going to get an Internet call from Matt—real time, video cam from Baghdad. We’ll make a party of it—and after we all get a chance to talk, we’ll have a big dinner. Can you come?”

“Vanessa,” she said, touching her hand, “don’t you want him all to yourself?”

“There’s a part of me that does, but I’m thinking of Matt—he’s all the way over there and right here are some of his favorite people. You have no idea how much he talked about Jack, Preacher and Mike. And it will be almost as big a deal for him to talk to Paul as to me. I’m going to walk across the street right after leaving here to ask the boys. Say you’ll come.”

“Are you absolutely sure, honey? Because it’s understandable if you—”

“I’m sure! I just wish I knew the sex of the baby for that video conference. That would really top it off.”

Mel smiled. “Well, girlfriend, I can hook you up. I have some connections. Can you drive over today or tomorrow morning?”

Her face lit up. “I can! Can you really make that happen?”

“You bet. It’s the least we can do for you.”

On the day of the video conference with Matt, Tommy was on his way to his truck in the high school parking lot when Jordan snagged his arm. “Hey, man, where you been?”

“I’ve been around,” he said, not very happily. He’d been avoiding Jordan. After what Brenda had said about those rest-stop parties, he’d been curious. So he’d dropped in on one when she had other plans with a girlfriend. It was, as she had said, pretty out of control. There weren’t too many kids and the weather was cold, but stuff had been going on that he didn’t like. Jordan and his buddy seemed to be taking kids away from the crowd briefly; he couldn’t see what was happening, but they weren’t gone long enough to smoke a joint and there was a little too much delight in their expressions when they returned. He suspected some kind of score. Ecstasy, he thought. Or something a little more high-powered, like meth.

Tommy had a beer, headed for home…and his dad had waited up for him, smelled his breath. And he was in trouble.

“I haven’t seen you. Wanna come by the house? We got beer, we got fun times.”

“Nah, I’m not into that.”