Sunrise Point

frowned. “You and Warren met on the orchard, married and you got pregnant right away?” she asked.
    “Oh, heavens, no! I showed up looking for work with what you young women now refer to as ‘the baby bump.’ I was destitute, stranded, pregnant and alone. I tried to conceal my pregnancy for as long as I could. Back in my day, you couldn’t get away with illegitimacy. Single, pregnant women were hidden away and their babies were given up or taken away. It was Warren’s mother who hired me.” She chuckled. “This was not funny at the time—it was terrifying—but Warren’s mother said to her husband, ‘I’ll throw you out before I’ll throw this poor girl out! Can’t you see she needs to support herself and her unborn child?’” Maxie shook her head, but she laughed.
    Nora was completely confused. She had to concentrate to close her mouth.
    “That’s right, darling. I followed some useless logger from Idaho. Well, he let me come along, I guess you could say. And I lived in a logger’s camp with a few other women while my logger alternately ignored me and visited me. I was just a foolish young girl who thought the right man would make everything better.”
    “And he was killed,” Nora remembered.
    “God rest his soul,” she said. “We’re not to speak ill of the dead, but if he hadn’t gotten himself killed in a logjam, I can’t imagine what would’ve become of me. As it turned out, I couldn’t stay in the camp without his sponsorship, so to speak. I had to go looking for work. So I walked and hitchhiked all over this county and came upon the orchard at harvest time, just like you did.”
    “And fell in love with the owner’s son… .”
    “To be fair, I tried very hard not to. Poor Warren—what was he thinking? I had another man’s baby in me!”
    “He must have been thinking how much he loved you.”
    “He was the most beautiful man. We had such a good time. He could bring me out of a bad mood just by saying, ‘Maxine, you’re probably right but you’re so damn loud!’ He was a little older than me—twelve years. And we were married over forty years. We married just before my baby was born. We’d planned to have a lot of children, but it turned out we were only going to have that one. When I cried and cried and apologized that I couldn’t give him his own, he shushed me and thanked me for making sure he had at least that one. ‘This is my son,’ he said to me. He was a wonder. Warren took after his mother, I think.”
    “And your son, Tom’s father, died in a plane crash,” Nora recalled.
    Maxie inhaled sharply and gave a nod. Her eyes closed for a moment, proving you never get over burying a child. “Our children are not our possessions, Nora. They’re loaned to us to raise and to be set free. From the time he could look up, he was determined to fly high and fast. I wasn’t put on this earth to stomp on a young man’s dreams. Although…there were times I had to ask myself if I’d have been happier if I had discouraged him in every way, even if it meant having an unhappy, bitter man alive long enough to harvest many, many years of apples. Surely not. Surely not.”
    Nora wanted to be her. She had to brush away a tear.
    “What? You’re crying? Stop at once—I’ve had my setbacks, but I’ve had the best life of anyone I know! I can’t find a person I’d trade places with, and believe me, I’ve been looking!” Then she paused for a minute of reflection. “Maybe Penny, about once a year. Every Christmas her son gives her a ten-day cruise, anywhere in the world. I could stand a cruise, I think.”
    Nora sniffed back a laugh. “If I could, I’d give you a cruise. Don’t worry, Maxie—I won’t ever tell anyone.”
    She gave a huff of laughter, a quiet laugh as Fay’s mouth opened around the nipple on the bottle and her head lolled back, asleep. “Nora, this is a small town. The biggest mistake I could’ve made was trying to pretend to be something I’m not. Those people who were around back then knew I showed up in Virgin River pregnant, married the lord of the manor at eight months, raised a logger’s son as Warren’s… . Those people told the ones who came later, I expect. At least until my son’s young wife gave me their baby and he died shortly thereafter…and all that became more interesting news. Nora, there aren’t many secrets here. At least not for long.”
     
    * * *
    Tom spent some quality time with Nora at the picnic; he introduced