Paradise Valley (23 page)

“My friends got a search party going back in Arizona, but after two weeks of not being able to find me, they all gave up the search. They assumed I’d wandered off and died in the desert. But at some point, again in a total blackout, I found myself back in the desert of Arizona—alone. A park ranger found me and picked me up. The story goes that I wandered off from our camp and hallucinated due to dehydration, but that isn’t what happened.”

“Maybe it did,” Rick said.

Jerry shook his head. “I wasn’t dehydrated. And after weeks of being missing in the desert, my clothes weren’t damaged. Not torn or dirty or anything.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve researched—mine is not the lone account of such a thing. I’ll be glad to give you what other details I can remember at the end of our next session, if you’re interested.”

Rick sat back in his chair and just stared at the guy. “How often does this spaceship trick work for you?”

Jerry grinned. “Every time.”

“You’re going to get real tired of this,” Rick said.

“Get? I’m already tired of it. ’Course I wouldn’t be if you weren’t so angry with me for God knows what.”

“I’m not angry with you, Jack. It’s the situation.”

“Well, that’s good to know,” Jack said. “Tomorrow—9:00 a.m.”

“Actually, I need to come in now. Talk to Preacher.”

“By all means,” Jack said. And he thought—why the hell can’t you talk to me?

The big man was working in the kitchen. Paige was sitting at the workstation, holding Dana, now nine months old. “Well, hey,” she said, grinning broadly when she saw Rick enter. With baby in her arms, she went to him, embracing him. “I wondered when I was going to see you. How are you feeling?”

Rick’s hand automatically wandered to little Dana’s head, smoothing over her thin cap of brown hair. “I’m okay, Paige. I wanted to apologize for the other night. To you and Preach.”

Preacher lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “No problem, man. Jack said you were worn out and the leg was hurting.”

“I have to double apologize,” Rick said. “That wasn’t it. I just couldn’t take on the town, Preach. I’m sorry. Maybe I can run into them one at a time. But a big gang like that—I didn’t feel like I could do it. I wasn’t sure how I’d act.”

“Oh?” Preacher asked.

“Ah, how can I explain? Nah, I can’t explain. It’s like I’m not always in charge of how I behave. Sometimes I say mean things, ungrateful things. Do things it isn’t like me to do. And sometimes I break down and it’s embarrassing. That’s the best I can do for an explanation.”

“Got it,” Preacher said. “Still real rocky, getting on with things. Yeah, I been there.”

“Huh?”

He lifted a bushy brow. “Jack ever tell you about how I got hurt in Iraq and cried like a baby, calling for my mother?” He shook his head. “Wasn’t like me either, and my injury was minor.”

“It was major enough that I had to carry you over my shoulder for a long damn stretch,” Jack said.

“I wasn’t even in the hospital after,” Preacher said. “So, I know the best way to fix your situation. Marines back from war are always comped around here. ’Course, you’d be comped even if you hadn’t gone to war, but since you did, you eat and drink on the house here, just like cops, doctors, firefighters. You know—like we’ve always done. You serve the town, Jack serves you. You must be getting some serious cabin fever sitting around your grandma’s. Walk down here sometimes, just to say hello. That’ll get you back in touch. One at a time, like you want.”

“Maybe,” he said. “I gotta warn you—I’m not great company. Ask Jack.”

They all looked at Jack. “I’m hoping it gets better. After some adjustment. Maybe we should go out to the river….” He grinned yet his eyebrows frowned in a menacing way, as though he was thinking of drowning Rick rather than catching fish.

Rick almost smiled. Jack was a real good guy, but he wasn’t good at taking shit, and Rick had given him a real load of it. “See?” he said, looking back at Preacher and Paige.

“Well, try this,” Paige said, pushing the baby on him. “She puts everyone in a good mood.”

“Is that a fact?” Rick asked, taking Dana into his arms. “Where’s the little guy?”

“Chris is in school. He’s in first grade now.”

“Aw, jeez, was he in that bus accident?” Rick asked. “Jack told me about it.”

Paige shook her head. “He was home that day. I kept him home because of the nasty weather. If it weren’t just first grade, I probably would have sent him. Now, till I get my confidence back, I drive him.”

“I rode that bus for years. Must have scared you to death,” Rick said, and sniffed the baby’s neck while she patted him on the cheek.

Preacher smiled and exchanged glances with his wife. “Scared everyone in town, Rick,” Preacher said, not wanting to draw attention to the fact that Rick was caving in to the baby’s softness, sweetness. “How about a sandwich? I’m just making up some for lunch. And I want you to see the new house Paul built on the bar for me and Paige—it’s amazing. Turned that little apartment into a real house.”

“That’d be great,” Rick said, and then he actually laughed as Dana pressed her forehead against his and blubbered her lips in a spitty noise.

Jack just wandered into the bar. But he smiled to himself. It was true, he wasn’t patient. But all he had to see was one ounce of recovery and it gave him some hope to hang on to.

This sort of thing didn’t happen in Jerry’s practice as often as one might think it would, given the size of the towns. He’d been counseling Liz since right after her baby was stillborn. He had a nice contract with the county school district. There were school counselors in both Eureka and Fortuna who liked his work and made referrals to him. And after Rick had been wounded in Iraq, Liz came back to him. After all, he’d been able to help before and they had history, so he was a logical choice.

If Rick and Liz talked about it, they would find out that he was counselor to both of them, but they wouldn’t learn it from him. And information he got from them about each other didn’t factor in his therapeutic work, though it was pretty impossible not to be aware. Therefore enlightened, he hoped.

Even though he felt a lot closer to Liz, and knew her much better, it hadn’t taken him long to feel a certain attachment to Rick. Here were a couple of kids who had been to hell and back. And while they loved each other, they were in a bad enough place that they might not get through it together. In fact, Jerry knew they were already apart. The one thing he couldn’t do was fill in the blanks for them—it would be a breach of ethics. If he were in a place where more PhDs were available to counsel, it would probably be wise to push one of them off on another counselor. If they were a married couple seeking individual as opposed to marriage counseling, he would be forced to. Otherwise, it would be a conflict of interest.

They needed him. And he was confident he could counsel them without prejudice.

Jerry came around his desk and went to the chair facing Liz. She came by his office every Friday after school on her way to Virgin River to help her aunt in the store. She had been for a couple of months now. “How was your week?” he asked her.

She shrugged. “Not great,” she said. “I’m worried I might be sliding backward.”

“Go ahead and tell me about it, Liz,” he said.

“Well, I had myself toughened up a little. Like I’ve told you before, I started concentrating on school more, so Rick would be proud. But then I liked it. Liked that I could get the grades when I tried. Liked that I already got an acceptance into community college. It was for me. And I hung in there pretty good, even though Rick wouldn’t take my phone calls or anything. But then I finally saw him and talked to him. Last Friday night. I had to go to him, of course, even though he knows exactly how to find me. He made it real clear—he wants us to break up. He’s through with me. All week I haven’t been able to study at all. And I have finals coming up.” She swallowed a couple of times, as if trying to keep her tears in check. “All of a sudden, I don’t care anymore.”

“What don’t you care about?” Jerry asked.

She shrugged. “Not much of anything.”

“Does that mean, it’s not just schoolwork that’s been affected?”

She scooted forward on her chair. “Here’s the thing, Jerry. I knew this all along. I’ve known it since I read the pamphlets with Jack in Germany. He’s breaking up with me for my own good. He said as much.”

“Can you remember what he said?”

“That with him there was one bad thing after another, and they were always his fault. Which is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. But I read in all the stuff they gave us and the stuff I found online, some wounded military guys go through this kind of thing. They feel as if it’s their fault or something. As if they don’t deserve to be loved. What the hell is that? Why doesn’t he blame me for all the stuff that’s gone wrong since we’ve been together? Why don’t I blame me?”

Jerry smiled a little, tilting his head. “If you’ll remember, we worked through some of that.”

“We did, huh?” she said, suddenly reminded. She straightened. “Yeah, we did. I
did
blame myself before. I thought I’d done something wrong to make the baby die. Like I ate the wrong things or didn’t eat the right things. Or slept on my back or something. Yeah.” She actually smiled, though it was a weak and sad smile. “That’s right. But I never broke up with Rick because I thought I wasn’t good enough for him.”

“We went over some of this, too,” Jerry reminded her. “Everyone has an individual response to crisis, grief, et cetera. I don’t say this to you to influence the direction you take in your situation, Liz, but you do have to keep that in mind. He has many adjustments to make that might not make sense to you. Just like if you’d told him you were guilty, as if you’d hurt the baby, it might not have made sense to him. The important thing is that you understand
yourself.
”

She made a face, lowered her gaze. “Having a little trouble there,” she said.

“Hmm?”

“My feelings are so hurt. And I drove out of town, parked and cried. But before I even got done crying, I was so mad. I’m still so mad. Instead of studying like I should be, I just go into these mental arguments with him, yelling at him in my head.”

“Can you play some of those tapes for me?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What are you yelling in your head?”

“Oh, things like, Who do you think you are? You think you’re the only one who ever felt terrible and scared and alone? Who felt loss? Who felt you weren’t good enough? Don’t you think I’d have given up
both
legs if it could have saved the baby’s life? Things like that. I mean, I went through a real bad time with the baby, you know.”

“I do know. Did he help you with that at the time?” Jerry asked.

She was quiet a moment. Finally she said, “Totally. He did everything he could think of. Even though it hurt him just as much. I know it did. After the baby was born, when he was holding me and the baby together, he was touching his little-bitty hand and tears were falling on my hair and the baby’s head. But he held me. He came to Eureka almost every day. He called to see how I was twice a day…. And now…he won’t let me be there for him,” she added quietly. “He wants to do this alone. And he can’t.”

“Can’t?”

“When we went out to talk, we made love…. Well, not like we used to. He was a little nuts, grabbing me. I tried to slow him down a little, shushing him, kissing him softly, but he was just gone. That’s what makes me confused—he doesn’t want us to be together anymore, but he can’t control himself when he’s with me. Explain that to me.”

Jerry deferred. Instead, he said, “Did he hurt you, Liz?”

“Physically? Of course not,” she said, shaking her head. “He even said he was sorry while he was trying to get my jeans off. Like he was sorry he was so desperate or something. Because he didn’t stop.”

“And you didn’t stop him?”

“No, I didn’t care. He’s been away a long time, he’s been through so much, and I was missing him, too. I wanted him—that wasn’t the problem. The problem came after when he said, ‘See? We can’t be together.’ And I thought—what was that? That
was
together. I understand it—I read all the stuff. He’s pushing me away. But at the same time, I
don’t
understand it.”

“Now what?” Jerry asked.

“Now? Now nothing. From me, anyway.”

“Can you explain that, please?”

“I took him back to his grandmother’s house and told him to get out of my car. I reminded him that he knew how to find me. I’ve spent months reaching out to him. I don’t think it would be good for either one of us if I pushed on it anymore.”

“Think you’re going to be able to follow through on that?” Jerry asked.

Her lips pursed, her eyes watered, a trembling hand rose up to her chest and just as a giant tear rolled down her cheek, in a voice so soft Jerry had to strain to hear her, she whispered, “My heart hurts. Hurts so bad. I…I just don’t want him to see me cry anymore….” She hiccuped and blinked until her cheeks were wet. Jerry didn’t hand her a tissue; she knew where they were. She’d used up his supply several times. “If I didn’t love him so much, I’d hate him.” She swallowed and reached for a tissue. “My heart hurts so bad….”