"They're very smart and beautiful," she told him.

"Can I... Will you let me meet them?"

"You can visit for an afternoon when I'm not working," she said. "Even though you're my father and we've been talking for a couple of weeks, I'm not ready to leave you unsupervised with them, so that's the best I can do. I work a lot. I'm not close to Stanford-I'm in Humboldt County. A little town called Virgin River. There are a couple of motels on the coast a good half hour away, but no guest room and no bed-and-breakfast."

He sniffed loudly. "Don't worry about that. Tell me when I can come. I'll take time off. Oh, Nora, thank you for telling me. Thank you for giving me a chance."

"Yeah, don't screw up," she said. "I've somehow survived one really mean parent. The first time it looks like it's going down that road with you, it's over."

Chapter Six

Nora rode to the orchard with Tom and said, "I'm going to let Jed visit for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon while I'm there."

"Jed?" Tom asked.

"It might be quite a while before I call him Dad."

"But you're going to let him meet your daughters...?"

She laughed lightly. "I'm not going to give him my daughters, I'm just going to let him see them. And let them meet him. I think it's the right thing to do."

"Want me to be there? Just in case you get nervous?" Tom asked.

She smiled at him. "I could have sworn you found me annoying... ."

"Well, maybe I did. At first. But you're not a bad kid."

"I'm not a kid," she said with patience. "And I'm a little unsure of him, but I'm not afraid of him. My memories of him are good. Reverend Kincaid has checked him out-I guess Jed's telling the truth about everything."

"Does it feel like the truth?" Tom wanted to know.

"It does, but I'm not relying on that. I don't think I quite trust my instincts about truth versus lies. I've been wrong too much. How do you think I ended up just about penniless with two little kids and no husband or partner?"

Tom surprised her by pulling the truck to the side of the road. "As a matter of fact, I've been wondering. I didn't think it was polite to ask. But since you brought it up..."

"Curious, huh?" she said.

"I won't say anything to anyone," he said. "And if you don't want to talk about it-if it's none of my damn business..."

"It probably isn't," she said. "Your business, I mean. But, six months ago I could hardly talk about it at all. Noah has me slowly coming out of my shell. I'm starting to put things into perspective, giving myself a break sometimes. I was so hard on myself at first, but-well, here's the thing-I was a college freshman, away from home for the first time. I had only had a couple of very brief boyfriends up to that point. I never had dates or anything. I wasn't one of the popular girls in high school, so..." She shrugged. "So-I went with some friends to a baseball game. They knew a couple of the players because they'd been on the local college team and had their eyes on going to the big league. But first, the minor league. And one of them, a real handsome, athletic, talented guy flirted with me. And boy-I just bit the dust. I fell for him. Bam! Five months later, before the start of my sophomore year, I was pregnant and he was traveling with the team." She looked down and gave another shrug.

"And?" Tom said. "Then what happened?"

"Well, I held my stomach in till he was back in town. I was living in a campus apartment at UC Berkeley and I guess I thought he'd marry me or something, take me with him. But he said, *You'll have to get your mother to look out for you-I'm on the road all the time.' So he went with me to my house. And my mother went crazy. She started throwing my stuff out the front door. She told me to get out. She said if I thought she was taking on a baby while I went to college, I was crazy. Everything went out the door, on the lawn."

"What stuff?" he asked.

"I'd already moved into my campus apartment so there wasn't a ton of stuff left at my house. But my mother said there wouldn't be any more money for school or anything. She said I was obviously not smart enough for college anyway. So, we threw it all in Chad's trunk and backseat and he said he knew a place I could stay." She made a face. "It was a terrible place, but I guess there was a part of me that felt like I deserved it-I'd made a terrible mistake in judgment. So, I moved into this awful motel in a bad section of town. I went to social services for help and medical benefits and...and Chad went back to his team. I didn't hear from him for months."

"Really?" Tom said. "He didn't call you or anything?"

"He called a few times, but it seemed like he wanted to know about other people, not me. Like a couple of his friends who lived around there. But they weren't really friends-they were guys he got pot from." She met his eyes. "Before I found out I was pregnant, which by the way I found out right away, we used to smoke a little pot. That's something I'm sure you never did..."

Tom laughed. "Oh, of course not-not a good old boy from Humboldt County! Where we grow our own."

"You mean you did?" she asked, stunned.

"You should keep that to yourself. Maxie wouldn't be too happy about that, even though I was just a stupid kid."

"Seriously? You did?"

"I was not a pothead, all right?" he said, somewhat indignantly. "I was a kid, a boy. There might've been a little beer, a joint. I never got in trouble." He shook his head. "Maxie would kill me. Even now."

She laughed at him. "Your secret is safe with me. And that describes my dabbling exactly. I realized I was pregnant with Berry and there hasn't been any of that since. Not anything. But Chad? I had absolutely no idea, but he was a sinking ship. Since I never saw him, how would I know? But when he came back later, when I was pregnant with Fay, his appearance had changed. He'd gotten so thin-his teeth and skin were terrible. He said they were working him to death, and I believed it, but that wasn't what it was. I found out too late-he had fallen headlong into all kinds of drugs, had been kicked off the team, was doing some dealing to cover his own habit. He was not the same guy who rang all my chimes at a baseball game when I was nineteen." She looked at Tom and just tilted her head. "I was young and dumb, no experience. I didn't know anything. And I didn't have anyone to lean on."

"And then what happened?" Tom asked.

"Then?" she said.

"Well, you have two kids... ."

"Oh," she said. "Well, by the time I realized what was going on I had a one-year-old and was pregnant, living on assistance in a hovel with my useless boyfriend living off me. I was twenty-one, broke, had no family and no money and Chad said we were coming to Humboldt County because he had found work, but Fay came before. It was winter in the mountains and he left me with a newborn baby and a toddler in a house that didn't even keep the wind out. If it hadn't been for the kindness of strangers, I don't think we would have survived."

"What work did he come here to do?" Tom asked.

"He said he got a job with a farmer," she said with a rueful laugh and a slight flush. "I don't think it was your regular kind of farmer-it was Christmastime! Do farmers hire hands at Christmas when the snow is four feet deep? I think it was a grower and I think Chad either got fired or ran or maybe even robbed the guy before he ran. He abandoned us, but he came back about six months later looking for money and the men in town caught him trying to shake some money out of me. Jack, Noah, Preacher. Mike V., the town cop, was there, the sheriff was called and Chad is now in jail. He's going to be in jail for a while. Hopefully long enough to forget about us."

Tom had turned in his driver's seat. His arm was rested on the top of the steering wheel; he balanced it on his wrist. The other arm was stretched out along the seat, toward her. He just stared at her for a long moment. Finally he said, "You've had a tough time."

She took a breath. "I wish I'd made better choices."

"You were young."

"I had girlfriends who were as young, but protected themselves much better."

"Yeah? I had friends who were better at lots of things than me. But I can grow a real pretty apple." And then he tucked a stray lock of her hair behind her ear.

"I am very impressed with your apples," she told him.

"All those things you didn't feel you had the best instincts for before? You'll be so much better at that now," he said.

"I had a very sweet maternity nurse when Berry was born," Nora said. "She was a grandmother, she said. And she felt so sorry for me that my mother wanted no part of Berry's arrival-she wouldn't have missed her daughter's delivery for the world. And she said, *You will do so much better than that. You will.' And when she put Berry into my arms she said, *Congratulations. This is your new best friend for life.' So now it seems like more than one person I admire believes in me."