Virgin River (Virgin River #1)(72)

“Yeah. I don’t think it threatened their marriage, not really. He’d get absorbed in his work and miss entire conversations. She said she sometimes thought she was talking to a wall. But of course, Mark being Mark, he’d apologize and try to make it up to her. I’m sure if he hadn’t died, they’d have stayed married for fifty years.”

“Come on, Joey,” he said. “Didn’t he drink too much, smack her around, cheat on her?” he asked hopefully. So hopefully that it made Joey laugh.

She dug around in her purse, pulled out her wallet and flipped through the pictures until she came to one of Mel and Mark. “This was taken about a year before he died,” she said.

It was a studio portrait, husband and wife. Mark had his arm around her and they were both smiling—carefree. Her eyes twinkled; so did his. A doctor and a nurse midwife—brilliant, successful people—they had the world by the balls. Mark’s face was familiar to Jack, having seen the picture beside her bed. But he looked at this with new eyes, knowing what he knew. Mark was not bad looking—and this was the only context under which Jack would allow himself to make such an assessment of another man. Short, neat brown hair, oval face, straight teeth. He would have been thirty-seven in the picture, but he looked much younger—he had a baby face. He did not look unlike many of the young marines Jack had taken into battle with him.

“A doctor,” Jack said absently, staring at the picture.

“Hell, don’t be intimidated by that,” Joey said. “Mel could easily have been a doctor. She holds a bachelor’s in nursing and post-grad degree in family nurse practitioner with a certification in midwifery. She’s got a brain bigger than my butt.”

“Yeah,” he said. That Joey’s butt wasn’t big was not the point she was making.

“They had as many arguments as any couple,” Joey said. “Vacations brought out the worst in them—they never wanted to do the same things. If he wanted to golf, she wanted to go to the beach. They usually ended up going somewhere he could golf while she lay on the beach, which might sound like a reasonable compromise, except for one thing—they weren’t spending the vacation together. That used to piss her off,” she added. “And Mel, pissed off, is unbearable.

“And,” Joey went on, “he was lousy with money. Paid absolutely no attention. His focus had been purely on medicine for so long, he’d forget to pay bills. Mel took over that job right away to keep the lights from being turned off. And he was pretty anal about tidiness—I’d eat off the floor of his garage in a second.”

Such urban, upper-class problems, Jack found himself thinking.

“Not an outdoorsman, I guess,” Jack said. “No camping?”

“Shit in the woods?” she laughed. “Not our man, Mark.”

“Funny that Mel would come here,” he said. “It’s rugged country. Not too refined. Never fancy.”

“Um, yeah,” Joey said, looking into her coffee cup. “She loves the mountains, loves nature—but Jack, you need to know something…this was an experiment. She was a little crazy and decided she wanted everything different. But it isn’t her. Before Mark died, she must have had subscriptions to a dozen fashion and decorating magazines. She loves to travel—first class. She knows the names of at least twenty five-star chefs.” She took a breath and looked into his kind eyes. “She might have a fishing pole in her trunk right now, but she’s not going to stay here.”

“Rod and reel,” he said.

“Huh?” Joey asked.

“Rod and reel, not a fishing pole. She really likes it.”

“Take care of your heart, Jack. You’re a real nice guy.”

“I’ll be okay, Joey,” he said, smiling. “She’ll be okay, too. That’s the important thing, isn’t it?”

“You’re amazing. Just tell me you understand what I’m telling you. She might have run from that old life, but it’s still inside her somewhere.”

“Sure. Don’t worry. She was good enough to warn me.”

“Hmm,” Joey said. “So, what do you do for vacation?” she asked him.

“I’m on vacation everyday,” he said, smiling.

“Mel said you were in the Marine Corps—what did you do then? When you had leave?”

Well, he wanted to say, if I wasn’t recovering from some wound and we were in country, I’d get drunk with the boys and find a woman. A far cry from flying first-class to the islands to tan on the sandy beach or snorkel in the bay. But he didn’t say that; it was another life. One he left behind. People do that, he thought briefly and hopefully; leave another life behind and move on to something new. Different. “If I had a long leave, I’d visit the family. I have four married sisters in Sacramento and they live for the opportunity to boss me around.”

“How nice for you,” she said with a grin. “Well, you have any more questions? About Mel? Mark?”

He didn’t dare. More information about the sainted Mark might do him in. “No. Thanks.”

“Well, then, I’m going to get going—I have a long drive and a plane to catch.”

She jumped off the stool and he came around the bar. He opened his arms to her and she happily gave him a robust hug. “Thanks again,” she said.