“And your confidence?”

She chuckled softly. “This is the best totally accidental move I’ve ever made. Not even two full months and I have friends, a great job, a good man in my life and I have a much better feeling about myself. Mom, I didn’t realize how Greg’s expectations of me hammered my self-esteem until I broke away from Grants Pass entirely! We were supposed to both be playing on the Greg Adams team, getting him all the things he wanted in business, in the city. And then he expected me to be the perfect ex-wife and wanted me to continue to play on his team. In fact, if he had things his way, it would be a bigger, stronger team—one including his new wife and their baby!”

“Phhhttt,” Candace said in disgust. “He was always like that. He was such a pain in my ass while we planned the wedding, I wanted to knock his block off!”

“He was?” Leslie asked.

“Oh, Lord! As if it was all about showcasing him!”

Leslie wrinkled up her forehead as she tried to remember the details.

“You know,” Candace went on. “We had to run about five suggested venues by him before we found one that was good enough for him! Your father finally asked him if he was picking up the tab, because his family certainly wasn’t stepping up—they don’t have a pot to piss in!”

“Mother, I’ve never heard such language from you! I mean, I can swear like a truck driver but you’re usually—”

“Greg Adams doesn’t bring out my best behavior,” Candace said with a definite curl of the lip.

“But, Mom, you were one of many people who said I should let go, move on!”

“Yes, sweetheart. And do you know how hard it was not to say you caught a break when he walked out on you?”

Leslie choked. “I thought you loved Greg!”

“Leslie,” Candace said, leaning toward her daughter, “you loved Greg. Therefore I couldn’t say anything negative about him.”

“Not even when he cheated on me and left me for another woman?”

“You still loved him. You were in terrible pain. How could I say you were crazy to love that weasel in the first place? Saying something like that makes you look foolish, and you are not foolish. At least not about most things. I have to be honest, I always thought you saw more in Greg Adams than there was.”

Stunned, Leslie took a moment to absorb this. “You did?”

“He was never good enough for you.”

Oh, God, life was strange, Leslie thought. All that time she’d had the feeling she wasn’t good enough for him, it was the other way around? But that was her mother—mothers always felt that way. “You should have said something....”

“I couldn’t. Marriage rule.”

“Huh?” Leslie asked.

“You know. I can call my husband an idiot and ass**le but no one else can. It’s a rule. It’s almost a law.”

“There is that....”

“Besides, you wouldn’t have listened. And you would’ve gotten mad at me,” Candace said.

“Possibly. But okay, in the future, will you please risk it? Because I spent so much time…”

Candace was shaking her head. “I don’t know, my angel. I was at odds with so many of your decisions and really, you blew me off. Like the whole idea that Greg’s political career—” And right there a bark of laughter came out of her petite mother’s mouth, and she covered it with her hand. “Hmm. That his political career was so important you’d decided not to have children so you could focus on that. You, who had always said an only child wasn’t a good idea, and when you got married you’d have at least two, maybe three, maybe even four. And what political career?”

“He thought he was going places. He was the Chamber of Commerce president and aspired to—”

“Phhhttt,” Candace said with a wave of her hand. “Your father was president of the Chamber, the Rotary, a dozen city organizations. And I’m no slouch—I headed the Junior League for three years! In fact, I was asked to run for City Council but I just didn’t have the time.”

Leslie mentally checked her memory book. That was all true. Her parents had had more political influence before she married Greg than Greg had to date. Was I in some kind of romantic fog?

“I never put these things together,” Leslie said. “I thought he was wonderful for such a long time.”

“He had his fine points,” Candace said. “When you first met and were first married, he fussed over you. He definitely romanced you and treated you like the First Lady he wanted you to be. Of course he also treated you like his administrative assistant. Give Leslie a call and ask if I can squeeze that in. Check with Leslie and ask if we can make a donation. Leslie will know if I can speak at that event.”

“God! He did!”

“It was so annoying!” Candace said. “We had a fight once, you know.”

“You did? You and Greg?”

Candace nodded. “I didn’t want you to ever know. It was not my finest hour. You know how we had to split holidays with his family? One of us got Christmas Eve and the other got Christmas day? And it was every other Thanksgiving? And the Adamses always had first choice. Well, I always had a problem with that whole idea—I didn’t know why we couldn’t all be together. I welcomed his mother and father and even his no-account brother and that whole crew. But I called your house, and he answered when you weren’t home yet. I told him I wanted to nail down the holiday schedule, the plans for when we’d get to host. He very sweetly told me that you were managing his schedule because he was in such demand that he didn’t even know which days were free, and you were the manager of his ‘events’ calendar. What a load of crap—all he did was go to meetings and dinners and play golf with potential investors.”

“That doesn’t sound like a fight....”

Candace looked down briefly where her hands with the perfectly manicured nails were folded in her lap. “I told him to kiss my ass. And then I just called you at the office.”

Leslie laughed with delight. “Really? That’s awesome. I wish I’d known that.”

Candace was quiet for a moment. Finally she said, “It was a long eight years of you promoting him, Les. He knew how to choose restaurants, music, order from the menu, and his plans for his future were a priority. Not your future, but his. Your dad and I sometimes wondered if we’d have to have you deprogrammed.” She shook her head. “He must have been some kind of wonderful in the sack.”

A burst of laughter shot out of Leslie, not because her mother had been so candid but because she’d been so wrong.

“How would you have felt about us if our marriage had lasted?” Leslie asked her mother.

“Leslie, it doesn’t matter how other people feel about your spouse! Don’t you see? You chose him, you had to live with him, he was your package to adore or be fed up with! Once you made your choice, I didn’t have a right to an opinion. Your grandma Petruso never much cared for me and she let me know it—I learned a very important lesson from that. And I made a vow never to be that kind of mother-in-law.

“But he’s not my son-in-law anymore and I don’t have to pretend to have any hero worship. All I care about is that you find the happiness in life you deserve.”

Leslie felt her eyes mist. “Every time I saw him with Allison it felt like a knife. I wonder how long I would have suffered like that if I hadn’t decided to leave Grants Pass....”

“It was obviously a good decision,” Candace said. “And I dreaded it so much....”

“It’s temporary,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll be back eventually, and in the meantime we’ll visit. I’ll admit something, Mom—I was thinking of coming up for a weekend and I hated the thought of not spending my time off with Conner!”

Candace ruffled Leslie’s curls. “Speaking of Conner, we don’t want to keep him waiting. Go tame your wild hair—your dad should be back any second.”

When they were all seated for lunch at a table in Jack’s bar, Leslie’s parents first asked Conner where he was from and whether he had any family. Right after that Leslie redirected the conversation before it could turn into Twenty Questions.

“Mom, tell Conner about your last cruise and the friends-for-life you made.”

Candace was only too happy to comply, and now, at the age of thirty-two, Leslie was rediscovering her mother. Candace was not the least bit wrapped up in herself, despite allowing the conversation to revolve around the activities of this retired couple. In fact, she gave Leslie a little wink before she embarked on a description of their Alaskan cruise.

Candace used the excuse to talk as a way of not having an opinion about Conner. And Conner asked questions. “Did you fish while you were in Alaska?”

“No, but we definitely ate some of the best fish imaginable. We nearly had to fight bears for it. We went to an outdoor restaurant built along a river where the bear fish!”

“You can see that here all summer,” the eavesdropping Jack said while delivering drinks to the table.

“Is that a fact?” Robert asked.

And of course Jack hung around a while to extol the scenic virtues of Virgin River. And while he did so, Conner slipped his arm around Leslie’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze.

After lunch, Leslie asked her parents if they couldn’t stay through the weekend.

“Not this time, honey. But if you get some furniture for that second bedroom, we’ll happily come back. I wouldn’t mind learning to fish if there’s a bear sideshow to go with it.”

After lunch, the Petrusos left Virgin River, and Conner went back to Leslie’s house. Once there, he pulled a shovel and stakes out of his truck.

“Paul ordered cement for your drive and I asked him to let me get it ready. I’m going to trench it out so he can have it poured this week.”

“I’ll help,” she offered.

“Nah,” he said, giving her a kiss on the forehead. “Go find something relaxing to do. Read a book. Knit. Do you knit?” he asked. She shook her head, and he laughed. “Take a nap, then. I’ll be about two or three hours. Then I’ll grab a shower and make you a burger on the grill later, if you’re interested.”

“Always interested,” she said. “Why did you take this on?”

“I heard him mention it to Dan and I said I’d be happy to do it. I didn’t have plans. I guess there’s going to be a little building here, too. He wants to add on a covered carport with a storage closet. You knew that, right?”

“I knew that,” she said. “I didn’t know it would fall to you.”

“It didn’t, babe. I asked for the job. Now go find a way to kick back.”

So for the next three hours, while Conner sweated in the driveway, digging a wide path for concrete, Leslie sat on the porch with her feet propped up on the rail and a book in her lap. She didn’t get much reading done. She found herself watching Conner more than the book she held. And she smiled a lot. Because despite all their proclamations of finding themselves and working out their issues without becoming too involved, there was one thing she knew in her heart.

He was hers.

Nine

As Brie walked into the bar in the midafternoon she found her brother had removed all the glasses and liquor bottles and was giving the mirror and glass shelves a good cleaning. This was the sort of chore Jack liked to do during the time of day there were few patrons.

“Sparkling up the place, Jack?” she asked.

“Hey,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“I had to drop a load of old clothes off at the church. They’re getting ready for another rummage sale.”