Moonlight Road

Chapter Two

While Aiden was staying in Virgin River, he rented one of Luke’s cabins. He actually paid the going rate, though Luke had a real hard time taking his money. But Aiden not only wanted his own space, he also didn’t want to impose too much on Shelby and Luke because he intended to stay all summer. And though the little vacation rental was about as lean as he’d lived since he’d been aboard ship, he liked it. Luke had graduated to satellite hookup for TV and Internet, but the cabins didn’t have phones yet. That didn’t bother Aiden; he’d e-mailed Luke’s home phone number to his contacts, revised the message including Luke’s phone number on his cell phone and could still pick up messages and texts in certain parts of the area out of the mountains. Besides, most of the people he was in touch with preferred the Internet. Every morning and evening he checked his e-mail.

When Noah dropped him off, he found a note taped to his cabin door. Come to the house right away. L.

Right away, Aiden decided, could afford him the time to take a shower. If Shelby had a problem with her pregnancy, they wouldn’t be waiting around for Aiden to finish what could be an endless hike.

When he got down to Luke’s house a mere fifteen minutes later, he gave a couple of short taps and walked in.

Shelby was sitting on the sectional with her feet up on the ottoman, a book balanced on her big belly. Luke was kneeling on the opposite side of that ottoman beside a large open box. He seemed to be looking through a few items spread out in front of him. He looked up at Aiden and said, “We got trouble.”

“Trouble? What’s up?”

Luke stood and handed Aiden a small stack of pictures, pages and envelopes. Aiden leafed through—second- and third-grade pictures, report cards, handmade Mother’s Day cards, memorabilia from his childhood. “So?” Aiden asked. “The problem?”

“Mom sent this—a whole box of it. Even that book I wrote in fourth grade—the one about the meaning of life for me? Which at the time was finding a way to kill all my brothers and make it look like an accident.”

Aiden chuckled. He remembered that. They still joked about it when they were all together. Ten-year-old Luke felt he had more than his share of responsibility and aggravation with four younger brothers, the youngest of whom was in diapers and followed him around relentlessly. “I guess we should all thank the Virgin you didn’t find a way. What’s the matter?”

“You got one, too. Colin got his box yesterday, but Colin just figured he’d been written out of the will because he doesn’t call or visit enough and that was Mom’s way of letting him know. I haven’t checked with Patrick. Or with Franci to see if a box was sent to her for Sean. Mom’s unloading her house.”

Before commenting further, Aiden ripped open his box. He pulled out an almost identical batch of pictures, papers, folders, and underneath it all was a shoe box. He opened it to find Christmas ornaments—the ones that he had made for the family tree when he was a child, as well as the purchased ones that were his favorites. He held up an old Rudolph ornament. “I loved this one,” Aiden said. “How does she remember the exact ones I loved?”

Shelby sighed and ran a hand over her belly. “I hope I’m that good a mother,” she said.

“Something bad is going on,” Luke said. “Either she’s dying or selling her condo and moving into a nursing home.”

Aiden chuckled. “Or moving into an RV with a retired Presbyterian minister. She’s been kicking that idea around since last Christmas.”

“She didn’t mean it, Aiden,” Luke said. “Not her. She was pulling my chain—revenge for all the years I wouldn’t get serious. This is Saint Maureen! If she’s doing that, she’s getting married, and she doesn’t know George well enough to marry him. Since they started talking last Christmas, he’s lived in Seattle and she’s been in Phoenix. She can’t marry him. Call her.”

“Why do I have to call her?”

“Because, Aiden—you’re the only one who can really talk to her.” Luke took a step toward his brother. “If she ends up marrying George, she might just get stuck with some old guy to nurse through Alzheimer’s or something. Call her.”

Shelby put down her book with an irritated moan. “Luke thought his mother was sitting up on lonely Saturday nights, looking through his grade-school pictures and report cards. Maybe she’s just sick of being a storage shed for your stuff—ever think of that?”

Something caught Aiden’s eye and he bent to pull out a small gold object: a little trophy with a swimmer on it. When he was in school, swimming was the geek sport. And he was a geek. “Aw, my only first place ever.”

Luke reached into his box and pulled out all his ribbons and tilted his head toward the box; the bottom was filled with trophies and plaques. Luke had been an athlete and won at everything he tried. “If I remember right, you got all the honor-roll stuff. I got sports.”

“Luke, Mom said she was going to do this,” Aiden reminded him. “She asked everyone if anyone wanted the dining room set, the old quilts, the china…”

“I’m getting dishes,” Shelby said with a smile. “I’m scared to death of them—they’re very old. I told her I would probably pack them away and guard them with my life because they’re so precious. She’s also sending some crystal—I’m not sure what it is. Franci is taking on Great-grandma Riordan’s silver. No one else wanted anything, I guess,” she said with a shrug.

“I thought this was just a test,” Luke said. “I didn’t think she was really serious about giving away all her stuff.”

Aiden tapped the box. “Not her stuff, Luke. Our stuff. And stuff that belonged to the great-grandmothers. Stuff she doesn’t feel like taking care of anymore. Come on, lighten up here.”

“Call her,” he insisted. “Maybe she’s losing her mind or something.”

Aiden gave a sigh and went to Luke’s phone. Picking up the cordless, he punched in the numbers to his mother’s condo and while it rang, helped himself to a beer from Luke’s refrigerator. Before he had popped the top, however, he got the recording. “This line has been disconnected…” He tried not to let the surprise show on his face while he listened to the whole recording. Then he clicked off and said, “No answer. I’ll try the cell.…” And he punched in some new numbers. It didn’t take long for Maureen to say hello. “Well, hello yourself,” he said with amusement ringing in his voice. “You running from the law or something?”

“Oh, Aiden,” she said. “I was going to call you, but I’ve been so busy.”

“Yes, packing up and shipping all our childhood treasures back to us. Luke thinks you’re dying.…”

“Luke probably wishes I was dying,” she said wryly. “Hardly. No one wants my old-lady furniture, so I packed up all the heirlooms spoken for, along with all the stuff I’ve saved since you boys were little, and put the rest in storage. Since I have that cell phone you got me, I thought it was okay to shut down the computer and disconnect the landline. One of my friends has a recently widowed sister who needs a place to rent while she looks around for something to buy. I’m going to let her move in here. We have a six-month agreement.”

Aiden reached into the refrigerator and got his brother a beer. He handed it to him, and into the phone he said, “And after six months?”

“Obviously I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t expect to fall in love with this lifestyle, traveling around, seeing the sights and the family. George will be here tomorrow with a brand-new motor coach. I’ve seen pictures of it and I can’t wait to see it in person. He’ll help me oversee the packing and moving of my household, which is all arranged. Then we’ll be off. Of course, we’ll head straight to Virgin River, but it might take us a while to get there—we’re going through Sedona, Oak Creek Canyon, Flagstaff, the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam and maybe a stop off in Las Vegas. Can you believe I’ve never seen Sedona or the Grand Canyon, though I’ve lived in the same state for years?”

“You must be looking forward to it,” Aiden said. “Luke wants to know if you’re getting married.”

Luke choked on his beer and began to violently shake his head.

“Actually, not that I know of. George is very considerate—he said if it was important to me to do that, he would certainly understand. But I think we’ll just wing it.”

Aiden laughed sentimentally. “Have you ever winged anything in your life?” he asked his mother.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “And if you’d asked me a year ago if I ever would, I would have said no. Emphatically no. But here we are. Aiden, how is Shelby doing?”

“Big as a house,” he said, winking at his sister-in-law. “She says she’s feeling good and is very excited about the dishes. Oh—and Luke says that if things don’t work out with George, he just wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if you didn’t agree to come and live with him.”

Luke shot to his feet, his eyes as big as dinner plates. His cheeks actually reddened and he shook his head again.

“Tell him I’ll go to a nursing home first—he’s a pain in the butt even to visit, much less live with!”

“This is very unlike you, you know,” Aiden said with a kind of tenderness he reserved only for his mother.

“I know. Isn’t it perfect?”

“As long as you’ve thought it through,” he said.

“Of course I have, Aiden. Now, don’t hesitate to call if you want to discuss it further.”

“I won’t. And would you like Luke to call if he has concerns to discuss?” he asked, lifting one dark brow toward his brother.

“Actually, no. But thank him for the offer. Luke is not exactly the man I’d take relationship advice from, although he has certainly landed on his feet. Hasn’t he?”

“Absolutely. And yet you’re willing to discuss it with me?” Aiden asked her. “I haven’t hit any home runs lately.”

“I suspect you just haven’t been up to bat enough, sweetheart,” she said with a laugh. “Now, I have to run. Give everyone my best and I’ll see you in a week or ten days, something like that.”

“Please be careful, Mom.”

“Have you ever known me to be careless? Now, enjoy yourself until I get there and turn the whole family upside down with my wild ways.”

He laughed as he said goodbye. Then he looked at Luke, who seemed to be fuming.

“I can’t believe you told her I wanted her to live with us,” Luke said.

“Listen, if you’re going to tell her how to live, you have to be prepared to be responsible for her living conditions. Big step, Luke. Lucky for you, she’s not interested.”

“I can’t believe this,” Luke said. “Our mother, who was almost a nun, living in sin with a retired Protestant minister?”

Aiden cocked his head to one side and shrugged. “She’s sixty-three and he’s seventy. There’s probably not nearly as much sin involved as they’d like.”

There were a number of things in addition to a terrible headache that put Erin in a cranky mood. Like the fact that they had shaved a little bit of her hairline in the middle of her forehead to put in three tiny stitches. She wasn’t planning on going anywhere except her hideaway in the woods, but still! She was very particular about her hair. Now she had the opposite of a widow’s peak—very ugly.

And she didn’t feel like spending the night in a hospital, wearing a hospital gown. Gown? They should not insult high fashion by calling this rag a gown. Her absolute worst painting clothes were nicer.

And she had a roommate. The roommate, who had had a hysterectomy and was staying two nights, had visitors. She was staying two nights, lived ten miles away and her entire freaking family had to come to the hospital to visit her? And there was apparently no rule about how many visitors one could have.

If she ever saw that vagrant again, she was going to bean him with a flowerpot.

By now she had been informed by a very testy emergency-room nurse that he wasn’t exactly a vagrant, but rather a man who had just left the navy and was visiting a relative in Virgin River. So he was a perfectly respectable bad-smelling, horrible-looking, out-of-work man with nothing better to do than impersonate a serial killer, sneak up on her and scare her to death.

It was possible that she was crabby in general. The whole escape-to-the-mountains-alone-for-the-summer idea was probably not the best one she’d ever come up with. At the time she’d thought of it, it had seemed the most logical thing to do. Erin was a woman who had never learned how to achieve that serene, Zen-like acceptance of what the universe tossed at her, and she had reason to believe she’d better figure that out. A summer on a beautiful isolated mountaintop, out of the Chico, California, heat, away from all the pressures of her professional life, should show her how to slow down, learn to relax and enjoy doing nothing. It was time to develop a strong sense of autonomy and remind herself that hers was the life she chose. And she was in a big hurry to get all that nailed down. Besides, it was cheaper than going to Tibet.

There were very logical reasons Erin was wound a little tight; the habit of overachieving could take its toll. When Erin was eleven, her mother died. That left her the woman of the house, with a grieving father, a four-year-old sister, Marcie, and a two-year-old brother, Drew. She wasn’t solely responsible for them; her dad was still the parent, albeit a little less conscious right after his wife’s death. And there had to be a babysitter during the day while Erin went to school.

But Erin rushed home from school to take over and had a ton of chores in addition to child care. She felt it was up to her to be the mother figure in their lives whether they liked it or not. As a matter of fact, as her siblings got older, she concentrated harder on their needs and activities than her own, from soccer to piano lessons to making sure they got good grades and didn’t live on junk food. She rarely went out, never seemed to have a boyfriend, skipped all the high-school events from football and basketball to the dances. She did, however, always make the honor roll. She had decided at an early age that if she couldn’t be f-u-n, she would be s-m-a-r-t.

She was twenty-two, a new law-school freshman, and still living at home so she could keep an eye on the kids who were then thirteen and fifteen, when their father died during a routine knee-replacement surgery. Erin was again in charge. Not that much had changed, besides missing her dad dreadfully. But technically, she was even more in charge than before, because being over twenty-one, she actually had custody.

Friends and colleagues were in awe of all she’d been able to accomplish. After her younger sibs had survived their teen years, she’d helped her sister, who was married to a marine who had been wounded in Iraq and had lingered in a vegetative state for years in a nursing home before he died. She’d gotten her younger brother through college and medical school. And during this time she’d built herself a sterling reputation as an attorney in a very successful firm. The local paper wrote some sappy article on how she was one of the most amazing and desirable single women in the city—the head of a household that depended on her, brilliant in tax and estate law, gorgeous, clearly the woman to catch.

It had made her laugh. She could count on one hand the number of dates she’d had in a year—all of them horribly dull.

Erin had accomplished what she’d set out to do. Her little sister was remarried to her late husband’s best friend, had moved into her own home in Chico and was pregnant with her first child. Her younger brother had completed medical school with honors and was an orthopedic resident in Southern California, a tough five-year residency that rarely let him loose. Drew was twenty-seven and lived with his fiancée; he would be a family man in another year.

Erin had fulfilled a great deal by the age of thirty-six; for herself and her brother and sister, this was exactly what she had worked so hard toward. Why, then, did she still feel like something was missing in her life?

Was this how it was supposed to feel when your life was really just beginning? Uncertain and as wobbly as a newborn fawn? Or was this, as she sometimes feared, the end of the road? Nothing much to strive for now? She felt more like a grandmother to Marcie’s expected baby than an auntie. She was a bit panicked and didn’t know where to turn. But of course, Erin had the best poker face in the profession of law and never let it show.

Marcie’s new husband, Ian Buchanan, had left behind a dump of a cabin that he held on to when he’d moved off the mountain and back to Chico with Marcie. Erin had seen it. It was a disgusting little shack with no central heat, no indoor plumbing, a small gas generator for a little lighting, and it was only one room. But it was on its own mountaintop and had hundreds of acres with a magnificent view. Marcie and Ian loved it. Though they admitted they’d love it a little better with indoor plumbing and electricity, which they could never afford, but that mountaintop was priceless.

Erin had a little money; she’d been working hard, plus she’d guarded and invested what her father had left in retirement, insurance and savings. She’d gotten bonuses from the firm and an impressive salary—all that had helped her get the kids through hard times and school. She thought it might be worth the investment to raze the old cabin and rebuild something nice—a summer place that could be in the family for decades. But Ian said, “Believe it or not, Erin, the cabin is solid. It could probably use a new roof, bathroom and electricity, but it’s in pretty good shape otherwise.”

So she asked him if she could have an engineer look it over and maybe fix it up. She didn’t say, Because I can’t stay even a weekend in that hovel. The way Ian had smiled at her when he replied, “Knock yourself out,” indicated she didn’t have to say it.

It turned out that Ian was right—the cabin was ugly, but well built. She got some remodel designs off the Internet and put the job out for bid to four local builders. A man by the name of Paul Haggerty gave her a competitive price, was able to work via e-mail and phone, and was willing to sign a contract promising the remodel ready on June 1 when Erin wanted to move in. And he had finished early!

She never even drove up once to look at the progress. That alone should have told her she was doing this for all the wrong reasons and it wasn’t going to work. But she had told Mr. Haggerty, “I’m a busy attorney with a full schedule until the first of June. Then I’m taking the summer off, my first vacation in over ten years. That’s why it has to be right and on time.”

It had been a crazy idea. Erin couldn’t seem to function without a full schedule and she didn’t know how to take time off. Every time she tried to take a day off, she was twitching by noon.

But she was determined. She was going to learn to unwind, damn it. She was going to learn to embrace solitude and kick this feeling that if she didn’t have far too much to do, she wasn’t worthy.

“Knock, knock,” she heard a small voice say. Erin had the curtains drawn around her bed to block out the hysterectomy patient and her extended family. The curtains parted and her redheaded sister’s smiling face popped in. “Are you decent?”

Erin sat up in the hospital bed. “What are you doing here?”

“The E.R. nurse called me—you named me as your next of kin. Y’know?” Marcie let herself into the tiny space. She bent close and narrowed her eyes at the bandage on Erin’s forehead. “Hmm. Not so bad,” she said. “How do you feel?”

“Ugly,” she said, plucking at the gown. “And I have a headache.”

Marcie laughed at her. “Not such chichi hospital attire, huh? I meant the head wound doesn’t look too bad. Small bandage.”

“Shaved head!”

“Less than a half inch, Erin. Take it easy, it’ll grow right back.” Marcie sat on the end of the bed and ran her little hands over her big, pregnant tummy. “Your doctor said if we spend the night with you tonight, we can check you out and take you home. I thought that was reason enough to drive up. I knew you wouldn’t want to be in the hospital. Have you ever been in a hospital? Like, in your life?”