Without missing a beat she said, “Put Mel on.”
“Sure,” Jack said. “You okay?”
“Great. Can I talk to Mel, please?”
Jack held the phone toward Mel, who, with a perplexed look on her face, got off the couch and went to him. She took the phone in confusion; she said hello.
“Listen,” came Brie’s stressed voice. “I need you to tell him for me, because I can’t talk to him about this yet. Tell Jack—Brad left me. Left me for another woman. He hasn’t even taken his clothes, which tells me he might already be moved in.”
“Brie?” Mel said in question. “What…?”
“My best friend,” she said, rage dripping from every word. “Christine, my best friend. I never knew. Never even suspected.”
“Brie, when did this happen?” Mel asked, and that question spoken into the phone brought Jack back to the kitchen, hovering.
“It’s been almost a week since he told me he’s been fucking her for a year! We were talking about babies—he said he wanted a baby. We’ve been having sex like mad, and he’s been having it like mad down the street.” She laughed bitterly. “You suppose she wanted a baby, too?”
“Ah, Brie…” Mel tried.
“He wants to come back for his things. I’m thinking of burning everything on the front lawn.”
“Brie…”
“He’s seen a lawyer already. He knows better than to face me without a really good lawyer. He wants a divorce—fast.” She laughed. “Maybe she’s pregnant or something. Wouldn’t that be rich?” And then her voice broke for a moment.
Mel had only known Brie a short time. For that matter, she hadn’t known Jack all that long. But of Jack’s four sisters, she felt closest to Brie; they were around the same age and Brie was Jack’s pet. The baby of the family.
Jack and Mel had just been to Sacramento—it was where they were married. Unless she was completely blind and distracted, it had looked to her as if Brad and Brie were the most loving, the most openly affectionate couple out of his four married sisters. This didn’t seem possible, a few short weeks later.
“Tell Jack for me, okay? He thinks all the brothers-in-law are true brothers. This’ll go down hard. You tell him—”
“Brie, stop!” Mel insisted. “Come to us. Take a week off and come up.”
“I can’t,” she said, sounding suddenly deflated. “I have a big case building. Brad knows all about my case,” she said. “He broke it to me now, when my defenses are down, when I have nothing in me to fight with.” She laughed bitterly. “Do you fight for a man who’s been sleeping with your best friend for a year?”
“I don’t know,” Mel answered, her heart sinking.
“Mel, tell Jack I’ll call him in a while. Tell him I don’t want to talk to him about this yet. Please…”
“Sure, honey. Whatever you want. You have someone to lean on? Your sisters? Dad?”
“Yeah, I’m leaning like crazy. But I have to be strong through this—strong and mad. If I talk to Jack, he’s going to make me cry. I can’t afford to fall apart yet.”
And then abruptly, Brie hung up, leaving Mel holding a dead phone with a completely shocked expression on her face.
“What is it?” Jack asked.
“She asked me to tell you Brad moved out. Asked her for a divorce.”
“No,” Jack said. “He couldn’t have.”
Mel nodded. “And she said, please, she doesn’t want to talk to you about it right now. Later. She’ll call later.”
“Bullshit,” he said, grabbing for the phone.
“Shouldn’t you respect her wishes?” Mel asked, even as Jack punched in numbers.
He stood with the phone at his ear for a long time as it rang. Then, apparently Brie let the machine come on, because he said, “Pick up, Brie. Come on—I have to hear your voice. Goddammit, pick up! I can’t do this—waiting around like this. Brie—”
Mel was close enough to hear Brie say, “You absolutely never do as you’re told, do you?” And Jack sighed heavily. Mel left the kitchen.
The cabin was very small, so going as far as the living room didn’t really afford Jack much privacy as he stood by the kitchen sink, but he turned his back and talked in soft tones for a long time. There was plenty of quiet to indicate he also listened, something Jack was pretty good at, for a man.
Mel looked at her watch a couple of times. It was more than thirty minutes before he put the phone down and sat beside her on the couch. “You make her cry?” she asked him.
He nodded. “’Course I didn’t mean to—I just had to know about this, that’s all. I want to talk to him. She threatened to kill me if I call him.”
She ran a finger under the bruise on his cheek. “I had no idea, when I married you, how much you’re in everyone’s business.”
Jack stood and left the room. He went to the empty bedroom where he stored boxes of things he’d brought from his quarters behind the bar. He had a dusty, framed black-and-white photo in his hand and rubbed the sleeve of his shirt over it, cleaning it off. It was Jack, age sixteen, holding Brie, age five. Jack held her on his hip, her arms around his neck. He was looking off, pointing at something; she was laughing, her golden curls lifted by the wind. “She was always like my shadow,” he said. “I couldn’t shake her. When I went into the Marines she was only six. All the girls got sloppy about me leaving, but Brie was heartbroken.” He took a breath. “I know she’s a big-shot prosecutor. I hear she’s one of the scariest prosecutors they have—a real killer. But it’s hard for me to think of her as anything but my baby sister, little Brie. I wanna do something….”
“You should let her tell you what she needs,” Mel advised. “Don’t get her all mixed up in your agenda.”
“My agenda…” he said absently.
“You’ve suffered a loss, too, Jack. It’s a real tight family you have—I saw that. This is going to shake up everyone. Just try not to make your loss taxing on Brie’s emotions. She has enough hurt. Okay?”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Yeah.” He sat back on the couch, the picture resting on his lap. The expression on his face darkened. “I thought of him as a brother,” he said. “I trusted him with the care of my sister. I don’t think I’ll ever understand how he could defect like this.” He grabbed his wife’s hand. “You know, in the middle of all that, while Brie’s trying not to cry, she says to give Paige her phone numbers. To tell Paige she’s prosecuted batterers and knows all their tricks. Mel, I usually understand the things that men do. Right now men don’t make any sense to me.”
Paige called Brie and one of the recommended lawyers. Brie advised her to be prepared for contact from her husband—it was probable he’d get in touch. Argue, maybe threaten, try to use their child as leverage. “I know,” Paige said. And peaceful sleep through the night was impossible, even though John assured her they were locked up tight and he wouldn’t miss a sound.
She was jittery and distracted; the smile patrons had grown accustomed to as she served and cleaned up was missing. She looked outside a lot, scanning the area. Every time the phone rang, she tensed. “John, if he called here, you would tell me, wouldn’t you?” she asked.
“Of course. But he has your lawyer’s name—he should really call him.”
“But he won’t,” Paige said.
Mel tried to cheer her up, lure her out. “Have you been outside in the past three days?” she asked Paige.
Paige leaned close. “I’m fighting the urge to load Chris in the car and run for cover.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Mel said. “With any luck, the lawyers will battle this out quickly and settle.”
“That would be a miracle.”
“I’m going to walk across the street and watch the afternoon soap with Connie and Joy. Come with me—laugh a little.”
“I don’t know…”
“Paige, you haven’t seen the sky in three days. Come on. It’s just across the street. We’ll look both ways.”
Preacher, overprotective, walked out onto the porch at the bar and watched them cross, noting nothing out of the ordinary on the quiet main street. But when the soap was over and the women were returning, Paige’s worst fear was waiting for her, right in broad daylight, right on the street. Parked alongside of the bar was an SUV, and leaning against it was a man. Mel didn’t even notice. She was chattering about the older women’s running commentary on the soap opera when Paige stopped walking.
“Oh, God,” she said in a breath. She tugged at Mel’s sleeve, stopping her in the middle of the street.
He was positioned between them and the bar, one leg lazily crossed in front of the other, hands in his pockets as he watched them, a satisfied smile shaping his lips.
“No,” Paige whispered.
“Is it him?” Mel asked.
“It is,” she said, drawing a fearful breath.
He pushed himself off the car and walked toward them, slowly and leisurely. Mel instantly put herself between Paige and the man. “You can’t be here,” Mel said. “There’s a restraining order.”
He pulled a large, folded document out of his back pocket, kept coming and said, “There’s also a court order for Paige to return my son to Los Angeles for a custody hearing. I’m here to pick him up. Paige,” he said, “who do you think you’re screwing with, huh? Come on, we’re going home!”
“Jack!” Mel yelled, shielding Paige from his approach. “Jesus. Jack!”
“No—” Paige said in a near cry.
As Paige continued to back slowly away, moving in the direction of the store, Mel held her ground. While the man approached, although he had a sinister twist to his mouth, he was clearly no match for the men waiting just inside the bar, waiting to protect Paige. This preppy man in his pleated pants and Florsheim Chester loafers was not like the big Virgin River men. How could he inflict so much power, so much damage? He was smaller than Jack; so much smaller than Preacher. Goodness, he was about Rick’s size! Not quite six feet with short, moussed, spiky brown hair. A pretty boy from the city. He was going to be very surprised.
Mel caught a glimpse of Jack coming onto the bar porch just as Paige turned and broke into a run. Wes Lassiter shoved Mel roughly out of his way to give chase. Mel stumbled backward and fell. Her fleeting thought was, Oh, Jack will have seen that. She could hear Jack’s heavy tread into the street before she could refocus and watch his running approach. She glanced over her shoulder to see that he wasn’t fast enough to save Paige. Lassiter caught up with Paige, grabbed her by the hair on the back of her head and threw her to the ground. In a blur of unreality, Mel watched as he drew back his foot and kicked her, shouting, “What the fuck do you think you’re gonna do, huh? Leave me?”
Jack glanced down at Mel and she glanced up at him briefly as he ran on to Paige’s rescue.
Just as Lassiter drew his foot back to deliver another kick to Paige’s stomach, Jack hooked an arm around his neck, lifted him clear off the ground and away from Paige. He whirled him and threw him from his victim; he landed a few feet away.
Preacher, who had no doubt been in the kitchen when Mel screamed, was the next one out of the bar, Rick on his heels. A glance at Paige found her struggling to sit up, a hand covering her face, her nose bleeding from her head-first plunge onto the ground. Mel crawled the short distance toward Paige as Jack was trying to help her sit up, when Preacher came running into the street.
Preacher saw that Mel and Jack were with Paige and he went directly to Lassiter, who was still down. Preacher bent at the waist, grabbed the man under his arms and lifted him straight up, clear off the ground. They were face-to-face, Lassiter’s feet swinging in the air. For a moment, a look of sheer terror showed on Lassiter’s face as he stared into Preacher’s enraged eyes.