“You can?” Erin said, eyes wide.
She nodded. “I was an E.R. nurse for years before midwifery, and then I was a midwife in a huge trauma center—we got the most complicated cases. A lot of our patients hadn’t had prenatal care and were in serious trouble. My first delivery was a woman arrested on felony charges and handcuffed to the bed, surrounded by police. My older sister, Joey, said I was an adrenaline junkie.”
“And then you came here,” Erin said. Mel had actually shared her story with Erin on her only previous visit when she had come looking for Marcie to bring her home. Mel had told Erin her first husband had been killed in a violent crime and she’d fled L.A. in search of a major change.
“The joke was on me,” Mel said. “I was looking for peace and tranquillity and ended up being hijacked out to a marijuana grow op to deliver a woman in a life-threatening childbirth situation. I was almost killed by a grower who broke into the clinic looking for better drugs than his pot. And my own baby was born out at the cabin Jack and I lived in, by candlelight, because a bad storm knocked out the lights and phone. A tree blocked the road and we couldn’t get to the hospital.”
“Really?” Erin said, her eyebrows lifted high. “You didn’t tell me any of that before.”
“You came to get Marcie and she didn’t want to be rescued,” Mel said. “I didn’t think it would help Marcie’s cause much. Anyway, so much for me giving up adrenaline. I have to admit, though—most days are peaceful. It’s just that when they’re not, they’re really not.”
“Frankly, I could do with a little excitement,” Erin grumbled. “I swear to God, if one more person sends me an e-mail about taking time to smell the roses…”
Mel just laughed at her. “Erin, don’t be talked into feeling a certain way. If working is what’s fun for you—then work!”
“You’re not going to lecture me on balance?” she asked with a smile.
“Don’t you have that? Family, friends, a getaway cottage in the mountains, an exciting job…?”
“Tax and estate law?” Erin asked, wide-eyed. “I think the fact that I find that exciting is one of the things that people think is most disturbing!”
“I wasn’t going to mention that.” Mel chuckled. “But if you find it exciting…”
Erin leaned toward her. “I’ve worked really hard,” she said earnestly. “I did the things I set out to do. I have a very large client base. You can believe the partners never suggest I’m working too hard. The firm takes a lot of their pro bono cases off the backs of my rich clients who are in trouble with the IRS. My client base is so valuable to them, I had to threaten to resign to get a leave of absence from the firm. I hadn’t taken more than a long weekend in ten years. Drew’s in residency and engaged to be married soon to a lovely girl. Marcie and Ian are very happy, and expecting their first baby at the end of the summer. The pressure is off! I can now relax and enjoy life more and I can’t think of one thing I want to do.”
“Oh. My.”
Erin leaned back. “It’s true. Don’t you dare tell anyone—but I haven’t been here two weeks yet and I’m so bored I can’t stand to wake up in the morning, facing another long, impossible, dull day! I’ve been putting in so many hours for so many years….”
“Law school then a busy practice…” Mel said. “That’s been a long haul, I’m sure….”
“It started way before law school. I was busy as a kid, needed to help at home.”
Mel frowned. “Marcie mentioned you girls lost your parents young….”
“Our mother died when I was eleven. Marcie was four years old. Drew was still in diapers.”
Mel thought for a moment. “You must have done a lot of babysitting….”
Erin laughed. “A lot? That was all I did. I hurried home from school to take over from the babysitter we’d hired, start dinner, wash and fold some clothes, get their baths, settle them down for the night. The sitter usually left things a mess and I didn’t want Dad coming home to that, he was already a wreck. Our dad tried, but he’d just lost his wife and it took him a good year to catch up with us.”
“It hasn’t just been ten years since you’ve taken a vacation, has it?” Mel asked softly.
“Dad died suddenly during my first semester of law school. I was still living at home, of course. Drew and Marcie were only thirteen and fifteen. It wasn’t a problem for me to have complete custody of them, at least.”
“At what? Twenty-two?”
“I was mature,” Erin said dismissively.
“I’ll bet,” Mel agreed. “And now, having done a lifetime’s work in a third of a lifetime, you’re feeling a little put out to pasture? Like you don’t have a purpose anymore?”
“Oh my God,” she said. “I couldn’t put it into words, but it’s like I have to take the summer to figure out how to be alone, and happy and content alone, because what I am now is alone.”
“And you’re how old now? Thirty-five?”
“Thirty-six.”
“Erin, my darling—you’re thirty-six and you’ve been a mother for twenty-five years. You’re going through empty-nest syndrome.”
“What?”
“We make so many sacrifices to parent…we give up so much. Willingly, of course. It’s what most of us want to do—to have a child and make that commitment. Sometimes it comes as a blow when they say, ‘Okay, I’m all grown-up now. Back off and let me make my own decisions.’”
“But…but I talk to Marcie every day, and Drew at least a couple of times a week. We’re still very close.”
“Well, of course! They love you! But at long last they’re on their own. They don’t need you. You have all this time to make a new life…. Because your old life is over…”
“But I have women friends who load up a suitcase full of books or tapes or needlework and head off for a week of solitude and love it. Or go on these enormous walks through Ireland or hike the Grand Canyon and—”
“Erin, for one thing—they didn’t start at age eleven. You’ve been dancing as fast as you can for twenty-five years, just trying to stay one step ahead.” She leaned toward Erin and grabbed her hand. “You were just a kid when you had to start being a mother to your siblings. And there’s a difference between getting away and feeling cast away. Besides, I bet you never had the luxury of finding great, fulfilling hobbies!”
And Erin thought, I couldn’t try out for cheerleading, not that I could walk and chew gum at the same time. But there was after-school practice, and after school was dedicated to the kids. I could be on student council, but I couldn’t go to student-council camp. Well, Dad said I could, but the look on his face said it would be a huge burden and he’d worry about the kids without me there.
But she’d never cared about that. Had she?
“Yeah, my dad depended on me,” Erin said. “I was going to do that up here. Find a great fulfilling hobby of some kind. So far I haven’t thought of a thing.”
“You’re still trying to cope with the loss. The empty nest.”
“Really?” she asked. “You think that’s all it is? Empty nest?”
“All?” Mel asked. “Erin, that’s a lot of loss. It’s a little death. Some women just blow it off. When their kids go off to college or get married, they just close the vents in their children’s rooms or turn those spaces into dens and sewing rooms. Other women really struggle and feel a lot of emotional pain. You were awfully young when you started mothering them.”
“Huh,” she said. She took a drink of her cola. “Well, what am I supposed to do for fun now?”
“Gosh, I don’t know,” Mel said. “There’s bound to be a period of adjustment. You’ve probably been going through a period of grief already and maybe you’re not quite done with that. Something will come to mind.” The door to the bar opened and a man in rough-sewn work clothes wandered up to the bar. Mel looked over her shoulder. Then back at Erin. “Can you tend bar?”
Five
All the way home, Erin thought about what Mel had said. Of c
ourse she was right. The empty feelings had started when Ian and Marcie moved into their own home. She’d been so happy for them, but she also had that empty, lost feeling inside. And shortly after that, Marcie had told her she was pregnant. She had hosted a dinner to celebrate that event—Ian was absolutely lit from inside, he was so alive and excited, but her feelings were a mixture of excitement and emptiness.
It wasn’t just the empty nest. She was also grieving that lost childhood, the lost young womanhood, and the fact that she was thirty-six and had never put any energy into a lasting relationship or children of her own. And how was she supposed to do that? Given a choice, there was no way she could have cast Marcie and Drew to the wind and told them to do their best while she worked on her personal life. Instead, she had helped nurse Marcie’s disabled husband, Bobby, helped Drew study for the MCAT to get into med school and worked her ass off to build an impressive clientele that pumped money into her firm, into her bonuses, and helped pay for med school, which cost the earth.
Lost in her thoughts, she put the dinner she had brought home from Jack’s in the refrigerator for later.
She took a low-fat yogurt and spoon out onto the deck, sat in her chaise looking out at the magnificent view and began to softly cry. She was thinking about the prom, of all things. She had picked out a prom dress one year, but she hadn’t been asked. And why would she have been asked? She was never available for the social things. No one knew she was alive. Fuck the Prom, she thought. I didn’t care about the fucking prom. Which is why I’m actually crying!
“I should’ve gone on a goddamn cruise with a bunch of goddamn old people,” she muttered, giving a sniff and a hiccup.
Suddenly, a head covered with dark hair and a full red beard peeked around the corner. “I didn’t know you were home,” Aiden remarked. “I didn’t hear a car.”
Erin’s eyes grew round, she gasped, and then instinctively dug her heels into the chaise to push herself away from him. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He came around the cabin and stood in front of the deck. He was wearing his uniform of fatigue pants, T-shirt and boots and held a rake or something in his hand. “I thought you’d left. Given up and gone back to the city or something. But then I saw stuff, like the plants and pots, but no potting soil or fertilizer. I was trying to think of something to give you to say I regretted the head injury. I’m not taking responsibility for it, you understand,” he said, putting up a hand. “But I was going to get you a plant or something, and then I noticed the garden. Uh, well, it was sort of a garden….”
Erin wiped impatiently at her cheeks, trying to be nonchalant about it. “It turns out gardening isn’t my thing….”
“Yeah, I got that impression, but I thought maybe—” He bent at the waist and peered at her, frowning. “Are you crying?”
“Of course not!” she slammed back. “I have a little cold, or allergies, or something. My nose is runny, that’s all.”
“Oh. Sure. So I got to thinking, maybe you just needed a little help getting started. It’s been a while, but when we were kids, my mom kept a garden and made us all help, so I…” He squinted at her. “Allergies, huh?”
It was then that she noticed the plants she’d bought were now potted and sitting in the corners of her deck. “You potted the plants?”
“And got your vegetable garden going. It’s a little late, but with the right amount of fertilizer and water, you’ll get some stuff. Tomatoes if there’s enough sun. I put some flowers around the border. I planted sunflowers because they’re fun—you can almost see them grow. You could use a border of flowers along the front of the cabin. They’re on sale right now. I thought I’d run over to the nursery sometime this week and get you some, if you don’t mind. You can take it from there.”
She put aside the yogurt and stood up. “And if I just pack up and leave?” she asked.
“You thinking of doing that?”
“It’s possible I’ll be needed at work,” she lied.
“Well, I don’t have anything better to do than check on your garden now and then. Maybe you’ll be back in time to harvest a tomato or two.”
She walked over to the edge of the deck to look into the backyard. There was a perfect square, the soil tilled and rich-looking, staked markers showing where things were planted. There was no mistaking tomato plants, much larger “starters” than she had begun with. The whole thing was bordered by a short metal-mesh fence and marigolds. She had read that much—marigolds would keep some of the bugs away.
“You put a fence around it?” she asked.
“It won’t keep the deer away, but it might discourage the bunnies. For deer, you should pee around the edges.” Then he grinned. “That’s what I hear. There’s an old woman who stops by the bar in town who has a garden about the size of a small farm—she swears by a human-pee border for deer.”
“You hung up the hammock?”
“I probably should’ve asked,” he said. “I saw it on the deck and I wondered if you just couldn’t figure it out.”
“I couldn’t,” she said. “I thought I needed parts.”
“Nah, it’s all there. Maybe you had another couple of trees in mind?”
“No. That’s perfect.”
“Listen, I don’t mean to pry, but are you recently divorced or widowed or something?”
“No,” she said, frowning, shaking her head. “Why would you ask that?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, also shaking his head. “Plants and pots, no potting soil…hammock, no screwdriver or wrench…vegetable plants and flowers, no hose or adult-size gardening tools. It’s like the stuff the husband remembers to pick up.”
She let a small laugh go. “Just never had time for any of this stuff before. And you’re partly right—my sister and brother-in-law lived in my house for over a year. My younger brother—he’s twenty-seven—was there till last year. I was always working—if I brought home a bookcase or patio furniture or a hammock, one of them took care of assembling it. And if they didn’t, I knew who to call. Up here? Who do you call?”
“Well, maybe your friendly neighborhood vagrant,” he answered with a big smile. “I’ll get out of your hair.” And he turned, leaned the hoe against the deck railing and walked away.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
He looked over his shoulder. “Home.”
“Where’s home?”
He stopped and turned. “My brother has some cabins along the Virgin River. I’m renting one while I think about what to do next. I’m unemployed, remember?”
“How could I forget? But I was informed by a very crabby nurse that you’re actually not a vagrant, even if you look and smell like one. You’re recently discharged from the navy. Can I drive you home? As a thank-you for the gardening help?”
“I like to walk,” he said. “From home to here and back—a little over ten miles.” This was all true, except his car was parked at the bottom of the hill at an outlook point. Just out of sight of the house.
“Would you like some water?”
“I have water,” he said, bending over to pick up his backpack, which waited for him beside the garden. He also picked up the bow and quiver, machete and favored walking staff.
“Would you like a….a beer?” she tempted.
“You’re being friendly, this is a whole new you.” His white smile cut through the red beard.
“Well, you’ve done some nice things, and the E.R. nurse thinks you’re relatively safe. Thank you for putting up the hammock.”
“You’re welcome. Thank you for offering a beer, but I might smell like a vagrant. Or a gardener.”
Her smile was indulgent. “I’ll bring the beer out to the deck,” she said.
He chuckled to himself as he turned around and came back toward the cabin. But when he got to the deck in front of the pretty, open French doors, he didn’t choose one of the chaise lounges. He was dirty and smelly; he’d dug around in the garden for a while. His hiking boots were mud
dy, his hands dirty, he was sweaty and smelly in general. Instead, he perched on the step, leaning back against a railing, and stacked his things on the ground in front of the deck.
She brought him a beer and, surprise of all surprises, one for herself. And she was smiling. She was looking real good in her fitted khaki capris, white T-shirt and sandals. She obviously got up and did her hair and makeup every morning whether she had somewhere to go or not, but then he’d already established she was a dish. Prissy and feminine.
He rubbed his index finger at his hairline in the middle of his forehead. “It’ll grow back before you know it.”
Her finger went there, as well. “Looks pretty awful, huh? Well, I can’t do anything about it now, except be patient.”
“It doesn’t look bad at all.” He took a long pull from his beer bottle. “Nice,” he said. He held it away and examined the label. “Good beer.”
“My brother-in-law left it.”
“Your brother-in-law was here?”
“The hospital called my sister and brother-in-law and said they’d release me if I had a driver and wasn’t going to be alone all night, otherwise they wanted me to stay overnight in the hospital.” Erin shrugged. “Marcie knew I’d hate that. They drove up from Chico. Bailed me out.”
His grin was huge. “I heard you in the E.R., Erin. You really know how to throw your weight around.”
“I had a headache,” she said, looking away.
He chuckled. “Any more head pain?”
“No, it’s fine now.”
“Why are you here? At this cabin?”
“Vacation,” she said. “I haven’t had a vacation in a long time. Like years.” She smiled slightly. Twenty-five years, she thought. Until Mel said it earlier, she hadn’t really added it up.
“But why here?” he pushed. “Why not some spa in the islands? Or a resort somewhere exotic where there would be lots of singles to mix it up with?”
She shrugged. “Marcie, my little sister, age twenty-nine, is expecting her first baby, a boy. Our parents are gone, I’m the oldest, and this is the first baby, due the end of summer. I really don’t want to be too far away, just in case she goes early, but I still wanted to get away.”