His Surprise Son. Allie Pleiter

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СКАЧАТЬ word of Jonah from Josh.

      Here we are. Stand, Jean. Stand and face it head-on. She could almost hear her father’s words from somewhere deep inside.

      “Why don’t you come inside, Josh.”

      He didn’t move. “Is he?”

      She hadn’t expected him to blurt it out like that—as if the question hurled out of him beyond his control. Then again, she’d lived with the certainty for nearly six years, and he looked as if he’d lived with the possibility all of six minutes.

      Jean pulled in a slow breath, gathering her strength and willing calm into her voice. “Come inside, Josh.”

      He came through the doorway, stopping to stare at a photo of Jonah she kept on the hall table. It was one of her favorite photos of her son, bobbing up with glee out of the water at the swimming hole, all wild hair and bright eyes. Josh stared at it, hard, his whole body on edge. He picked up the photo. “Is he? Mine?”

      How many years had she pondered her response to the huge moment that question was asked? “Yes, Josh, he’s ours.”

      He held the photo up toward her. “Ours? He’s not ours, he’s yours. How could you sit there and call him ours if you never even bothered to tell me?”

      “It’s complicated. Come into the kitchen and let’s sit down.”

      He followed her into the kitchen, still clutching the photo. “I have a son. This boy...is...my son.” He turned in a slow circle, raking his free hand through his hair before he sank into one of the chairs at her kitchen table. Not because she’d asked him to sit down, she felt, but because the power of the moment wouldn’t allow him to stay standing.

      “I’ve known I was going to have to tell you one day,” she said as she took the chair opposite him. “I just planned on having a bit more time to figure out how to do it right.”

      “Right?” he snapped at her choice of words. “Doing it right would’ve been, how about—I don’t know—six years ago.”

      “He is five. And I am sorry.” She owed him that much. She owed him an explanation and an apology for what she’d done, even though she doubted he’d accept it at the moment. “California was a mistake. We were caught up in something that wasn’t strong enough to last. We became different people once everything started for you out there.” That seemed true for him, from her perspective. Had she changed as well without realizing it? Or had Dad’s illness just realigned her priorities? “We weren’t ready to be married to each other, and not at all ready to be parents. Not the way your life worked out there.” You were consumed with work, she thought, but chose not to say.

      “Are you kidding me? Everything was starting for us. You came out there with me. You said you’d marry me.”

      “I loved you. I loved who you were in school, back when all the success was bright and shiny. Once it became reality—the twenty-hour workdays, the crazy social circles—you had to know that wasn’t ever really me, even back then. I knew I’d be alone. Married, but alone.”

      “That’s not fair.”

      “Maybe not, but when Dad got sick...the Josh I knew in school would have been worried and cared and asked me about how I felt. That wasn’t who you were when he got sick. You were too busy to care. I know you didn’t mean to be that way, but you were. And once I found out I was pregnant while back here...” She sighed. “I knew it wouldn’t work. You’d think you were capable of it all, of being there for everyone.” She ventured a glance into his angry eyes. “But all I wanted was someone who would be there just for me.”

      “So sure of my faults, were you?” Josh’s words were cold and sharp.

      She put her hand to her forehead. Give me better words, Lord. I can’t botch this. “Of course I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure of anything except that I was unhappy. Dad was...I don’t know...sinking...and suddenly I had this baby to think of. Here you were, the son of this powerful judgmental father, and I was just this girl from a tiny town in the mountains. Then I got sick and Dad was getting worse, and...it seemed a better choice to stay here where I knew I had support than to be out there fighting for your attention.”

      That last part seemed to bristle through him. “That’s what you think of me?”

      Jean met his angry eyes. “Dad needed me here. You needed to be in California. I couldn’t be in both places.”

      “So you decided how I’d react. And then you lied to me.” He squinted his eyes shut. “This isn’t how...this isn’t the you I remember... Did I even know you at all?”

      “I accept that I hurt you in this. But making a go of it alone with Dad felt easier than having to beg you for time and attention.” She steeled herself to tell him all of it. “Or fight off your father’s idea of what should be done.”

      She watched the words hit him, felt her spine stiffen as Josh stood up. “What do you mean, ‘my father’s idea of what should be done’?” The words were dark and dangerous.

      She drew in a breath, willing the distance of the years to calm her words. “I don’t know how he found out,” she began.

      He wasn’t interested in preamble. “What did he do, Jean?” The words were sharper and louder this time.

      “He came here a month after Jonah was born. He offered me a great deal of money never to contact you. I think he worried that if you ever found out, we’d be in your life.” She’d never forget that afternoon when Bartholomew Tyler had shown up on her doorstep. The man was horrible. “He saw me—and Jonah—as beneath your potential. A liability best kept out of your life.”

      Josh put his hand to his forehead. “Of course he did. It’s how Dad looked at everything.”

      “It made him furious that I wouldn’t take the money, even though things were really tight then. But really, how could I live with myself if I had? He stomped out, swearing to find another way. A week later a very legal-looking document was delivered to our door, declaring I lacked the resources to properly care for someone like Jonah, and that he would sue for custody and have Jonah placed ‘in a suitable boarding school’ if I ever tried to let Jonah into your life.” She shivered, remembering the disgust in Bartholomew Tyler’s eyes—such a contrast to the loving way her own dad gazed at Jonah. “I think he wanted to make sure his faulty and illegitimate grandson was kept out of your shining future, and if I wouldn’t see to it, he would.” She made no attempt to keep the bitterness from her voice.

      Josh drew both hands into fists and closed his eyes. “My father has been gone eighteen months. He died over a year ago. Why didn’t you contact me then?”

      “I didn’t know he was gone.”

      “You could have known. You would have known, if you’d just told me any of this. Five years, Jean. Five whole years.” Josh walked over and leaned up against the kitchen counter. Her heart ached for him—this was so much to take in all at once. Much of that had been her doing; she was paying the price right now for not telling him in all these five years, instead watching him stagger under the blow of the things she’d just revealed.

      “I’d like to say I’m surprised at my father,” he said with a sigh. “I’m shocked, but not surprised. It sounds exactly СКАЧАТЬ