Seventeen

It took Leslie almost four hours to drive back to Virgin River, and during that time she thought a lot about her years with Greg. He’d wanted so much more than she had since the day she met him. Then he’d traded her in for a prom queen, but boy did he get a tiger by the tail. Not only had Allison dumped him, Leslie had no doubt the word was out—he’d been cast aside. Chucked. Humiliated.

Greg would never be a mayor. He might not even be elected to City Council. But she wasn’t worried about him—he would land on his feet. He’d find another woman because he wasn’t good at being alone—he needed reinforcements, needed an audience. Now this whole business of wanting to be friends with her—it didn’t matter anymore. She could afford to be charitable. She wasn’t angry. In fact, she was grateful. If Greg and Allison hadn’t driven her out of Grants Pass, she might’ve never found Conner.

She asked herself if she should have doubts about whether Conner would turn out to be a bad choice, but she just couldn’t summon any. In fact, while she wasn’t a religious person, she found herself uttering a little prayer. Please, please keep him safe!

And her cell phone rang.

“Are you out to dinner with the fun couple?” he asked.

“I was just thinking about you! No, I’m driving home. I did what I went to Grants Pass to do, felt much better about everything and decided to go home. Tomorrow is my day off and I want to spend it in the yard. If there’s time, I might drive my neighbor, Nora, into Fortuna just for fun.”

“And what did you go to Grants Pass to do?” he asked.

“Well, it was a very interesting day, now that you ask.” And she told him all about her visit with Allison and the conclusions she had come to. At the end of her story she said, “I feel a kind of peace about my divorce that I just didn’t feel before.”

“I understand,” he said. “I totally understand.”

“If I could just have your trial over and you back here, there wouldn’t be a tight nerve in my whole body.”

He laughed deep in his throat. “I really enjoy the job of loosening up those tight nerves of yours.”

“You’re very good at it, too. What’s on the agenda for you tonight?”

“We’re taking the boys to a pizza joint that will be crazy with loud kids and games and life-size singing puppets. We’re having a party because I’m headed for Sacramento in the morning. If there’s a God, it won’t take too long and I can do what I have to do and come home.”

“Aw. You think of this place as home....”

“I think of you as home, baby. You.”

His words wrapped around her like his arms had, and she knew she was more in love than she’d ever been. Her feelings had been quite real when she’d met and married Greg, even though she’d been so young, but with Conner, love had taken on a new dimension. It was grown-up love, steady and deep. Leslie didn’t have to worry about holding on to Conner by meeting his expectations. This love she felt for him, that she felt from him, was bigger than the biggest love she had ever imagined.

She embraced his pillow while she was falling asleep, inhaling his special scent, that woodsy musk with just a dash of his sandalwood cologne. They had talked for almost an hour as she drove, talked until his nephews were pulling at him and telling him to come on, come on, come on.... He had talked about how he not only wanted a life with her but a different kind of life than the one he had before, that life that had been drenched in hard labor and only punctuated by short breaks of leisure time with his family. Until this visit he had never spent more than a day with them. He’d rarely taken a weekend or evening off away from the store—they had been open almost 24/7. After the trial was over, he was in search of more balance. And that balance included her in a major role.

When he gave in to his nephews’ urging to hurry up, he said, “All right, all right. I love you, baby. I’ll call later.” And in the background Leslie heard a small boy’s voice say, “What baby do you love, Uncle Danny?” followed by Conner’s deep, sexy laugh.

She was dreaming about him when somewhere deep in the night she was awakened by a noise. At first she thought it was a cat, then she realized it was crying. A baby was crying and crying. There was the sound of a door slamming, more crying from at least one baby or small child, then a shout. And another shout.

She sat straight up in bed. Another slam, but she wasn’t sure where it was coming from. And then there was a pounding at her front door and she hoisted herself out of bed and she ran. Without thinking, she threw the door open. There stood Mrs. Clemens, looking tinier than ever, wrapped in a very old, faded blue chenille robe, her white hair all springy and misshapen from sleep.

“He’s back,” she said with a small cry. “That man is back and I think he’s hurting her!”

“Who?” Leslie asked.

And before Mrs. Clemens could answer, Mrs. Hutchkins came sprinting down the street. She was wearing a gray sweat suit with a hoodie, and flip-flops on her feet. “Adie,” she yelled. “Go get someone right now! Go get Preacher or Nick Fitch or Ron from the Corner Store. Hurry!”

And with that, Martha Hutchkins ran right up to Leslie’s house, through the flowers that bordered the yard and grabbed the rake from the side of the porch where it had been leaning. “Hurry up, Adie!” Martha headed back through the flowers, the rake in hand.

“It’s Nora,” Adie said. “That man’s hurting her!” And then she shuffled at her fastest speed down the street and away in search of help.

Leslie shook the cobwebs out of her head. She heard another scream—these houses must be made of paper! The baby was crying her lungs out. She ran back inside and grabbed her broom and thought, I need a baseball bat! She put some power in her stride to catch up with Mrs. Hutchkins. “Did you call anyone?”

“I called Mike V, our town cop, but he’s at least ten minutes out of town. I’m not waiting for him, but he’s our closest law enforcement.” And with that, she moved quickly up the walk to Nora’s front door, which stood open. Mrs. Hutchkins pushed her way right inside, Leslie close on her heels.

What Leslie saw next was terrifying. The baby was on the couch, crying and wildly kicking her little legs. Berry was nowhere in sight, and some tall, skinny ugly guy held Nora up against the wall. Her hands were locked on his forearms, trying to push him away, and her legs were in motion as if she was running in the air.

While Leslie took in the scene frozen in shock, Mrs. Hutchkins wasted no time. She turned the rake around in her hands, holding on to the edge with the prongs, walked right up to the man and, with all her might, whacked him in the head with the handle of the rake. He dropped Nora to grab his head.

Nora slid to the floor, gasping in fear, while the man whirled around and, with eyes blazing, snarled at Leslie and Mrs. Hutchkins.

Leslie, feeling a little late to the party, pointed the handle of the broom at him, hanging on to the business end. “All right, back away from Nora!” she commanded. “The police are on the way!”

He laughed, and when he did, Leslie caught sight of rotting teeth. Who was this? Not the good-looking, badass baseball player, surely? This looked like a vagrant! His holey jeans hung low on his hips, the sleeves were torn off his T-shirt, his curly hair was long and dirty, and he didn’t exactly have a beard so much as hadn’t shaved in quite a while. And he had very scary-looking sores on both arms.

He reached right out and grabbed both the rake handle and the broom handle and shoved them away. In an act of fantastic cowardice, he settled his attention next on his small, white-haired attacker, advancing on Mrs. Hutchkins, giving her a slap and a hard shove that sent her tumbling backward and to the floor. And then he turned on Leslie.

Baseball player, was he? She assumed the batting position, broom handle over her shoulder, rocking back and forth. Behind him, Mrs. Hutchkins was slowly getting to her feet, and Nora was crawling away from the action, still looking terrified. She appeared to have a nosebleed and she wasn’t yet standing.

The man approached Leslie, and she took her swing. He intercepted the broom handle easily and gave it a hard tug to either wrest the broom from her or bring her close enough to hit.

Mrs. Hutchkins whacked him on the back of the head with her rake again. Leslie marveled. Martha was fearless! He whirled on her, and Leslie whacked him in turn with the broom handle. And now the growl that came out of him was enraged and a little crazed. He was done fooling around. He whirled on Leslie, grabbed the broom out of her hands and flung it aside with very little effort. He advanced on her fast, and she did the only thing she could think of—she kicked him in the balls. He never saw it coming; he dropped to his knees, grabbing himself in the crotch. He looked up at her with watering eyes that made it clear he was going to kill her.

He rose slowly. Slowly and as menacingly as possible while still clutching himself. Behind him Mrs. Hutchkins was scrambling around, looking for something else to hit him with. Leslie braced herself; she’d never get off another kick. With one big, meaty, dirty hand he circled her throat, hit her in the jaw with the other hand in a hard fist and lifted her clear off the ground.

And then he was gone. An arm appeared around his neck and pulled, and she fell from his grasp.

She shook herself, trying to clear away the stars, as she watched Pastor Noah Kincaid wrestle the man out the door of the house.

Leslie ran to the front door in time to see the good pastor rolling around on the front lawn, a lawn that was more dirt than grass, trying his best to stay ahead of the bad guy. She watched the pastor take a slug to the jaw, then return one. Nora was suddenly beside her, pressing the baby close. “He’s high,” she rasped out. “He’s going to be hard to subdue.”

“What’s he high on?” Leslie asked.

“Meth. Look at the sores on his arms. Meth sores. Oh, no!” she said suddenly. “Adie! Leslie, intercept her and take her to your house or something!” And sure enough, there was Adie, walking up the street in her old chenille robe, headed right for the fistfight on Nora’s front lawn.

Leslie turned around and scanned the little living room. “Where’s Mrs. Hutchkins?”

“She’s kneeling on the other side of the couch, trying to talk Berry out. Berry has been hiding behind the couch. Did someone call the sheriff or something?”

“Mrs. Hutchkins called Mike Somebody.” She looked back outside and saw Adie taking up a position behind a big tree. This was turning into an old lady military campaign.

A big, jacked-up truck came screaming down the street and screeched to a halt. Jack and Mike Valenzuela jumped out and ran to assist Noah. And then, just as Nora had predicted, it took all three of them to subdue him. He was so wired on meth, he had the strength of five men.

Adie came quickly to the doorway of Nora’s house. The three of them—Nora, Adie and Mrs. Hutchkins—all worked at comforting the children while Leslie couldn’t pull herself away from the front door. For the first time she noticed there were other neighbors with lights on in their houses, a couple of them looking out windows and opening their doors.

Eventually, Mike and Jack trussed Chad up like a roped calf. He was laid on his belly, his hands tied behind his back with a rope strung to his bound ankles. And he was still yelling and rolling around, trying to get loose.

Dr. Cameron Michaels showed up by the time the suspect was tied up and administered first aid in the form of ice packs and bandages to those who needed it. The sheriff’s deputy had been called, but, as the folks in this town had grown accustomed, he wouldn’t get there real fast. He had a lot of territory to cover.

“Nora, did you open the door for him?” Noah asked her.

She nodded and held both Berry and the baby close. Tears welled up in her eyes as she fought the feeling of being completely responsible for so much damage. “He said he’d break it down. I told Berry to hide behind the couch, put the baby on the couch and prayed he wouldn’t hurt anyone but me. Pastor, he could’ve gotten in anyway. I didn’t know what else to do. He wanted money. I gave him what I had, but it was only sixteen dollars. And it made him so mad!”