She stood up. “I can walk just fine.”

He gave a smirk. “I’m headed for town, Nora. I’ll give you a lift. And it might be a good idea to ask around if anyone is going your way, hitch a ride. You could meet Buddy—he’d be more than happy to—”

“We shouldn’t encourage Buddy. And I don’t mind walking,” she insisted. “I make good time.”

He held the back door open for her. “If you run into a mountain lion, you’ll make even better time, too.”

She stopped in her tracks and looked up at him. “Funny.”

He just lifted one brow and smiled.

“See you Monday, Maxie,” she said.

“Have a nice weekend, Nora,” the woman returned.

Chapter Three

Nora hated to part with overtime pay by taking the weekend off. Overtime sounded delicious—her budget was beyond tight. But she took her girls to the gym set at the elementary school, pushed Fay in the baby swing while Berry played on the slide and rings. She consoled herself that there would be more overtime coming her way when she was healed enough to take it without crippling herself for life.

It was so early that she was surprised to see Noah Kincaid coming her way. “Hey,” she said. “Out for a morning walk?”

“Kind of,” he answered, flashing her that handsome grin. “I was looking for you.”

“Me?”

“Maxie called me this morning—she’s an early riser. She said they were picking this weekend and you’d been refused overtime because of job related injuries. She suggested I might check on you, see how you’re doing.”

She sat on a swing next to the baby swing. She stopped pushing the baby and gave a little laugh and held out her gloved hands. “It’s true. And as much as I hate to admit this, Tom Cavanaugh probably did the right thing. My hands are sore. I’m nursing some blisters from doing work I’ve never done before, not to mention sore muscles from picking for hours. My right shoulder was on fire. Don’t you dare tell him this, but the blisters on my feet were probably even worse than on my hands, but that stuff he gave me for my hands, that goop, wow. I’m almost as good as new.” She turned her hands over a couple of times so he could see the latex over gauze. “This is a pretty amazing cure.”

“The shoulder?”

“Better. Ice packs, anti-inflammatory and a little downtime does the trick.” She tsked. “It killed me to give up the money.”

Noah leaned against the side of the jungle gym next to Fay, belted in and safe between them. Berry ran around crazily, up the stairs on the slide, down the slide, a swing on the ropes, singing and talking to herself the whole time. But Berry was not the least bit interested in Noah. She was a little on the antisocial side, Nora feared.

“We started to talk about this a couple of times before,” Noah said. “Do you have family who would be available to help you get over this rough patch? I mean any family at all?”

“We didn’t get far on that subject because there were too many immediate issues, like the fact that a few months ago my drug-crazed ex-boyfriend showed up here looking for money, attacked me and everyone who was trying to protect me. And that was a situation I got myself into at the age of nineteen.”

“Well, he’s in jail and out of the picture, thankfully. Family?” Noah asked again.

“There’s no one,” she said.

“As in…no one? Or no one you’re not too proud to call on?”

“I told you—I got myself into this mess and—”

“I know, we don’t have to go over all that again—I’m up to speed on Chad and pregnancy and getting mixed up with the wrong crowd. You probably think you’re the first person to ever carry that load, but you’re not. I’m interested in knowing more about your family—parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, et cetera. Someone you trust who loves you or at least has enough sense of responsibility to lend a hand.”

She took a deep breath. “My father left us when I was six. My mother, who was abandoned and stuck with me, struggled for years to make it on her salary alone. We lived from paycheck to paycheck. Right there you have several reasons why she was angry and very bitter. The great irony is, she earned her living as a—are you ready? As a counselor. And when I went home from college to confess I was in trouble in a million ways and needed help—I was flunking out, pregnant, had played around with pot and beer with the boyfriend—she told me to get out and never come back. That’s where we left it. She threw everything that had my fingerprints on it out the front door onto the lawn, Chad drove me away and stuffed me into a flea-bag motel where he left me. I went to Student Services who sent me to the county welfare office and…” She gave her shoulder a little lift—half a shrug.

“But you stayed with him?”

“No,” she said softly. “Not really.”

“But there’s Fay,” he said.

She nodded but couldn’t meet his eyes. She finally looked up, but all she could muster was a hoarse whisper. “He came and went. And I was so lonely and vulnerable after Berry was born. Chad was manipulative. Sometimes he gave me money, for which I was so stupidly grateful, but I didn’t know until I was ready to have Fay that he’d been thrown off his professional baseball team over a year before.” She shook her head. Then she glanced at Fay and said, “But how can I regret her?” And on cue, the baby gave them a brilliant, toothless smile and Nora nearly cried.

Noah couldn’t resist touching Fay’s pudgy hand. “Where did the abuse begin in your life, Nora?”

“According to my mother, it began with my father, but I don’t remember anything about that. I was already six when he left, but my memory of life before that is pretty spotty, which my mother said is typical. She says I have buried memories.”

“And you were in therapy for this?”

She smiled. “Of course not. My mother is a therapist. I will tell you the truth, Noah—I went to talk with you on Mel Sheridan’s recommendation because you’re a minister. I have no experience with church and I had this idea you could somehow show me forgiveness for all the mistakes I’ve made. Although it was hard, I was open to the idea of charity. But I’ve learned to be wary of therapists. When you told me you were a licensed counselor before becoming a minister, I almost bolted.”

“What do you think of your mother’s decision to never put you in counseling for these so-called buried memories?” he asked her.

“I think she’s incompetent. And I’m not convinced I have buried memories, either. According to my mother, there’s no other family anywhere. No grandparents, aunts, uncles. But I think I have pretty screwed-up parents.”

He gave her a small smile. “Think we should explore this further?”

“Probably,” she said. “But the very thought makes me far more exhausted than picking apples for ten hours a day.”

He laughed. “Don’t worry, Nora. There won’t be that many hours of daylight before long—fall is here and winter is coming. The days are growing shorter.”

“Fortunately that leaves very little time for discussing my dysfunctional parents.”

“But would you like me to contact your mother?” he asked.

“God! Perish the thought. When we have several hours to chat, I’ll tell you all the details of my whole life’s story and all about my mother—she’s brutal. I spent my whole life being afraid of her, and surprised and so grateful during her brief affectionate or kind moments. I learned to step very lightly.”

“And your father? Would you like to know what’s become of him?”

She thought about that for a moment. “I’ve been curious, but not curious enough to look for him and certainly not enough to forgive him for leaving us the way he did. But there have been times I’ve wondered if he was dead… I have these snatches of memories of times with my father that aren’t scary or terrible. Not a lot, but a few. Like bowling—isn’t that a kick? A six-year-old, bowling? Learning to ride a bike with training wheels, doing dishes together with me standing on a stool at the sink, cutting the grass and planting flowers. My mother says none of those things ever happened—no bowling, et cetera. She claims I invented those memories just like children invent imaginary friends. But I have no dark or eerie or scary memories or dreams about him. I have warm memories. But if he was a good person, he wouldn’t have left me… .”

“I could do a little research,” Noah said.

“Could you find out if he’s dead? Without making me…”

“Vulnerable?” Noah finished for her. “You are always in control, Nora. If you tell me his name and last known address, I can probably find out if he’s alive or dead, where he is, if he’s remarried, if there are children, what he does for a living, that sort of thing. But there’s no reason he’d have to know you’re even involved.”

She thought about this for a minute. “Then okay,” she said. “I’d like to know if he’s alive. And maybe someday, I’d like to know why he ran out on me. I mean us.” She swallowed. “His name is Jed—Jedediah Crane. And he was a history teacher at UC Berkeley. My mother said he was fired and left us high and dry.”

“A professor?” Noah asked. “Did they divorce?”

“She always called him a teacher. Oh, of course they divorced—and it must have been bitter. As a girl, dangerously curious, I searched through files and stored boxes in the attic and even in my mother’s underwear drawer for some evidence of him, of them. Of us. Of anyone—even my mother with her family. There was not so much as a picture! If you’d known my mother as I had, you’d have expected at least a lot of photos with my father’s face cut out of them! And there were no documents of any kind—I don’t even have my own birth certificate.”

Noah smiled. “We’ll get that taken care of, as well. That’s a simple process and you don’t have to have the permission of your parents to get a copy.”

“Noah…” she said hesitatingly. “There’s something you should take into consideration before you walk down this path. My mother… Not everyone knows what she’s really like. She has friends. Not a lot, but some—she had things to do, although she mostly went to work and came home to spend the evening alone in front of the TV. She’s very funny. She could make people laugh. She fell out with the neighbors and they stopped talking years ago, which of course was their fault, but she had friends from work, from other places. People to talk to on the phone, that sort of thing. It used to amaze me how funny and charming she could be with some people and how completely insane she could act at other times. If you met her by some chance or investigated what kind of person she is, you’ll probably think I’m just a bratty, ungrateful kid. And I’ve admitted—I was trouble. Yes, I was—I made so many mistakes.”

“Where is she a counselor?”

“The community college in Berkeley. People Services. She helped students get through their crises, referred them, helped them get their lives together.” She laughed resentfully. “I wonder if she ever did it by throwing everything they owned on the front lawn. But then, I probably deserved it… .”

Noah smiled patiently. “I don’t think you need forgiveness, Nora.”

She laughed humorlessly. “You don’t have to be so nice. I know how many bad things I did.”

Noah ran a hand over Fay’s smooth, round head. The baby beamed at him. “I think you’ve redeemed yourself.”

* * *

One of the convenient things about living in a place that catered to hunters and fishermen from out of town, were the heavy-duty Band-Aids at the Corner Store for those sportsmen who were just breaking in their new boots. Armed with large canvas protection on her heels and palms, Nora lit out for work early Monday morning. She went down the road from Virgin River to 36, ready to take on another week.