His Surprise Son

by Allie Pleiter

  Jean was a mother? She had said “family obligations,” hadn’t she?

  It shouldn’t have surprised him—Jean had always been the type to want marriage and a family. She’d worked in a bridal shop all through college. She’d given an eager “yes” to his proposal. They’d planned on a family, eventually, once the business stopped eating his every waking moment. Things never got that far. And now she was a mother.

  But a single mother. A barrage of questions rose up in his mind as he crossed the street back toward the inn. For a guy who made his living on the internet, he’d been way out of touch with college friends. Did she marry? Whom? When? And what had happened to end it?

  It should have been him she married. Of course, he had no right to say that now, but there had been a time when he felt that way. They’d been madly in love back in college. His senior year, he’d been king of the world, watching everything in his life line up to launch him toward the stars with Jean beside him. Nothing was beyond his reach. His final semester was a blur of parties and congratulations and that one spectacular night spent with Jean reveling in his golden future.

  Things went too far after that night—and they both knew it—but they would have been making a new life together in San Jose, so it hadn’t felt like a mistake. In truth, he’d thought that night marked the end of her second thoughts about joining him in California. He was so full of himself back then that he’d simply assumed he’d won her over.

  She came to California, but she never really settled in. His relentless pace bothered her in ways it never had in school. She couldn’t seem to make friends, claiming Silicon Valley’s posturing grated on her down-home sensibilities. She grew so moody and distant that by the time news came of her father’s illness, they’d both used it as an excuse for her to disappear back east “just until things got better.”

  They never did.

  There were emails and phone calls, but the lapses grew longer as the flat-out scramble of a software start-up consumed his attention. He had always meant to call her but somehow never did. A part of him knew he’d have to face the wrong of that someday, he just didn’t count on it being here and now.

  He’d gradually shut down his connection to her, telling himself Jean was never really the kind of woman to take to West Coast life. It wasn’t that he couldn’t find her—he was a brilliant man with a fortune in technology at his disposal—he just never managed to follow through. He’d let her slip from his life, telling himself he didn’t regret it.

  Only he did regret it. And it felt like life was getting ready to show him how much.

  Chapter Two

  Josh paced his room while he waited for his chief of operations, Matt Palmer, to respond to his text. He’d asked, “Can you video chat right now?”

  His eyes wandered over to the Welcome to Matrimony Valley brochure lying on the nightstand. Smart but simple, it had a folksy appeal that people looking for this sort of place would probably love. Right down to the cheery welcome from “Mayor Matrim.”

  A ding from his laptop announced Matt on the line, and Josh clicked open the video chat function to see Matt’s face. “How’s the brother-of-the-bride gig going?”

  “Fine.”

  “Color scheme going according to plan and all that stuff?”

  Josh tried not to groan. “I don’t know. I think so. Violet’s getting what she wanted, and that’s what matters. She’s the boss, I’m just the bankroll.”

  Matt made a face. “Aw. Will you do that for me?”

  As Josh’s second-in-command at SymphoCync, Matt probably put in as many hours at the office as Josh. “I’ll take that one-in-a-million shot, sure. I really called you to help me untangle a...complication out here.”

  Matt sat back in his chair. “What’s up?”

  “Jean lives here. As a matter of fact, she doesn’t just live here, she’s the mayor here. She’s Vi’s wedding planner. She’s remade her hometown into this whole Matrimony Valley thing, and Violet’s her first bride.”

  “Jean—wait, Jean your ex? Your ex-fiancée is mayor of Matrimony Valley? Whoa. Good thing this has no chance of getting awkward or anything.”

  Josh gave Matt a look. “I knew I could count on you to be helpful.”

  Matt shook his head. “Didn’t she live in some place named after her family or whatever?”

  “She did. If it had stayed Matrim’s Valley, I might have seen this coming. As it was, it was all I could do to not trip over my own feet as we walked down Aisle Avenue in Matrimony Valley”

  Matt kept laughing. “Aisle Avenue. Matrimony Valley. Seriously?” Matt wiped his hands down his face and attempted—rather unsuccessfully—to be serious. “So how’s Violet taking this new wrinkle?”

  Josh picked at the tassel fringe of one of the pillows in the mound around him. “She doesn’t know. Jean and I...well, I think we hid our initial shock pretty well, and we’re sort of pretending it’s not there. She made like she didn’t know me, and I did the same.”

  Matt gave Josh a dubious look. The man was a master of them. “You know that’s not gonna work, don’t you?”

  “Of course I know that. But I don’t want to mess this up for Violet, either. She’ll get all weird about it, and believe me, she’s high-strung enough already with the wedding. I’ve just got to get Jean alone to hash out how we’re going to handle it.”

  Josh saw Matt pivot to another corner of his desk and begin typing. “Matt, would you mind finishing with me before you look up Jean Matrim online?”

  Matt paused. “Hey, I’m just looking up where you are in case I need to airlift you out of there.” After a second, he said, “Aw, look, there she is standing by the Welcome to Matrimony Valley sign.” Josh heard more tapping and yelled at himself for not paying closer attention to Violet’s plans before now. “She always was pretty,” Matt commented. “Looks like she’s held up better than you have. Little boy’s cute, too, in an aw-shucks kind of way.”

  Josh picked up the brochure on the table beside him. The photo on it was just of Jean. “Little boy, huh? Someone told me she was a single mom, but I haven’t seen a photo of her child.”

  “There’s a photo of her with her son on one of the website pages. Third tab, lower left corner.”

  Josh swiped over from the video chat and pulled up MatrimonyValley.com, clicking through the website’s pages until he landed on the picture of Jean with her hand on the shoulder of a boy.

  He was expecting a toddler, but the boy looked older than that. Five or six, if he had to guess. He stared at the boy.

  A boy about six years old. Josh stared harder.

  A ball of icy lead landed in his stomach and stayed there.

  “Matt, I gotta go.”

  * * *

  Jean swallowed her exasperated sigh later that afternoon as she held the phone away from her ear. Her nerves were strung tight ever since the whopping surprise of Joshua Tyler’s arrival. Josh Tyler, here, in front of her, in front of everybody. Why, Lord? Why him? Now? No matter how many times she prayed with her questions, answers failed to arrive.

  Thankfully, picking up Jonah from school gave her an excuse for a quick exit not too long after Violet was handed off to Hailey at the inn. She counted it as pure grace that she was able to exit before Josh came back across the street from Watson’s Diner.

  Only being saved from Josh hadn’t saved her from Wanda Watson. The woman must have been looking out her diner window waiting for the office light to turn back on, because the phone rang not three minutes after she got herself and Jonah settled back into her office.

  “Wanda, you met him.” Jean continued her attempts to appease the grumpy old woman. “He’s a nice person. Violet is a nice person. Her groom will be just as nice when you meet him. You’ll like the people who will come here to get married.” That felt like an outrageous promise to make—Wanda didn’t like lots of people.
How did two sourpusses like Wanda and Wayne Watson ever manage a restaurant full of people all these years?

  “I still don’t see what brides and grooms can do for sandwiches and meat loaf,” groused Wanda. “I don’t care what you say, not every business in town will benefit from your little scheme.”

  It wasn’t a scheme, and it wasn’t little. “The man just bought a sandwich from you, didn’t he? Everybody’s got to eat,” she assured the woman. “The day before the wedding, the day after the wedding, the day they drive into town. Weddings and wedding guests mean business. For you as much as for Kelly’s flower shop or Yvonne’s bakery.”

  “You’re banking an awful lot on this pipe dream, Your Honor.” Wanda’s harrumph practically spilled out of the phone receiver to douse Jean’s resolve.

  Your Honor. Wanda never meant it as a term of respect whenever she said it. Jean put her elbow on her desk and rested her head in her hands while Wanda went on about some other complaint—the woman seemed to have a never-ending list of them.

  Jonah looked up from his coloring sheet across the desk from her, catching his mother’s action and expression. “O-K?” The small fingers of his right hand formed the letters in sign language. His open hand moved toward his mouth, his thumb touching his chin in the sign for “Mom?” One little dark eyebrow furrowed in worried inquiry.

  She smiled at him and made the sign for “fine” and “tired.” Then, with what she hoped was a playful smile, she added the sign for “hungry.”

  “Me, too,” Jonah’s signs replied. His smile was as sweet as the grandfather he was named after. “Home soon?”

  “I hope,” she signed in return, grateful Wanda couldn’t hear any of the conversation. “Our first bride is here for a visit, Wanda,” she said into the phone. “Let’s all welcome her the best we can.” They’d had some version of this conversation nearly every week since last fall, when the town council approved Jean’s proposal to change the town’s name and become a wedding destination.

  Was it extreme to change the name of the town, the streets and half the businesses? It was, but so was the rate at which the tiny town was suffocating under a dying economy. Tobacco was long gone, the mills had slowed and then closed, and nothing had ever replaced them. Something had to be done before there was no town at all. Weddings were what she loved, what she knew, so when the idea came to her she ran with it. Because that’s what Matrims did.

  Jean looked up at the portraits of her father and grandfather as Wanda droned on. I did what I had to do to make everything work out, Grandpa. Grandpa Jake had founded Matrim’s Valley in the early 1900s, opening up the textile mill that transformed the loose collection of mountain tobacco farms into a bustling mill town. He even became Matrim’s Valley’s first mayor. “Built his mill and this town out of sheer grit and an unwillingness to ever admit defeat,” Dad used to say of Grandpa Jake.

  Her father, Jonah Matrim, had taken over the mill, and later the mayor’s office, not long after her mother’s death from an infection when Jean was in her teens. But even Matrim grit couldn’t outrun a failing economy, and eventually the mill had closed the summer Jean graduated and moved to California with Josh. Dad tried mightily to keep the valley together, but it was as if something inside him that had started to die when Mom did continued to die with the mill. As if his own health depended on the town’s. Her new residence clear across the country hadn’t helped, either.

  Josh proposed the day SymphoCync officially opened its offices that July, and for a while they were happy. Still, Silicon Valley’s excess quickly began to taste sour in light of her beloved valley’s demise. Dad had given his all as Matrim’s Valley’s mayor, and here she was, thousands of miles away, doing nothing she could count as important. Her dad loved her, doted on her, needed her, while in San Jose she was fortunate to get fifteen minutes of Josh’s attention.

  At first, Jean thought she was homesick. Or at least missing her dad. Dad and home called to her with a stronger and stronger voice until she finally went “for a good long visit.”

  She never returned to California, even when she discovered she was pregnant. The life inside her seemed to give Dad hope, helping him to improve. Dad loved Jonah in a way Jean had come to doubt Josh ever could. Especially when he was born, and maybe more so when they learned Jonah couldn’t hear three months later. She never told Josh about his son, for reasons he’d now have to learn. Life was full of hard and painful choices. And even though such regrets drew her to finally discover the faith her father had, they still haunted her.

  Failing health, like a failing economy, won out once more over Matrim grit. The pleasure Wanda’s husband, Wayne, took in stepping in as acting mayor when Dad’s health forced him to step down always bothered her. Still, with a toddler and an ailing father, it wasn’t as if she could do anything but thank Wayne for his willingness to serve.

  Except that Wayne’s “service” had been a disaster. His single inept two-year term felt like one long stretch of everyone bickering while waiting around for things to get better. Someone needed to call a halt to the complaining and motivate people to do something. She was the last Matrim in Matrim’s Valley. So when she dreamed up a solution—a drastic one, yes, but a solution—she bolstered up her courage and ran for mayor on a “Matrimony Valley” platform.

  It took a while and lots of convincing, but eventually enough of the valley voted to support her. It seemed if she was willing to go so far as to swap out her family’s name to give the valley a new chance at survival, everyone was willing to give it a try.

  Well, almost everyone. “Did you hear me?” Wanda’s sharp tone startled Jean out of her thoughts.

  “I’m sorry, Jonah was asking for something.”

  Another snort of disapproval from Wanda. “A child playing in the mayor’s office. Honestly. Wayne never did that sort of thing.”

  The “mayor’s office” had been Wayne’s idea, and consisted of a walled-off corner of the civic building that served as library, town hall, utility office and police station. I will not be the Matrim who lets this valley die on my watch. She would have liked to run the mayor’s office out of the front room of the Matrim family home like Dad and Grandpa did—it certainly would make life as a single mother easier—but Wanda had talked the council into keeping the “improvements” Wayne had implemented. And in all honesty, this office was the safest place for Jonah to be next to his own home. Everyone here looked out for him.

  Dredging up her last shred of diplomacy, Jean offered, “Thank you for taking such good care of Mr. Tyler. You know, Violet mentioned her groom was looking for somewhere to hold a casual get-together for his groomsmen before the wedding. Should I tell her yours would be the best place to feed a bunch of navy sailors?”

  Wanda’s tone softened. “I suppose I could manage that.”

  That was likely as close to cooperation as Wanda would ever get, so Jean chose to take it. She put a smile on her face and gave Jonah a “thumbs-up” sign. He grinned and gave her one right back.

  Jonah. The joy of her life. She wanted him to have a valley to come home to, just as she had. He was the reason she fought to keep all this family heritage up and running.

  As Jean ended her call with Wanda and packed up the beautiful felted wool bag she used as her “mayoral briefcase,” she looked out the window. Tomorrow, she would deal with the tangle of Josh Tyler and how it might complicate the valley’s first wedding. She would find a way through this, because even though this was no longer Matrim’s Valley, she was still a Matrim.

  So was Jonah. Taking her son’s hand, Jean and her son blew a kiss to her father’s and grandfather’s portraits as she led him out of the office. Lend me your strength, she pleaded to the men who’d served before her. As she headed out into the evening air, Jean sent the same prayer up to her heavenly Father, as well.

  It shouldn’t have surprised her that Josh Tyler was standing in the middle o
f the street waiting for her. Patience had never been Josh’s strong suit. He stared long and hard at Jonah. Josh’s brain at full speed was an almost visible thing—his whole body nearly hummed with energy when his thoughts whirred into action. It had been one of the things that drew her to Josh, and it startled her that she could pick up on it so strongly after so many years had passed. It was as if her own heart could feel the chronological calculations going off like grenades in his head.

  “Twenty-four Falls Lane,” she said to him, pointing down the avenue. “The house with the green shutters. He goes to sleep at eight, so come by at nine.”

  “Jean...” he started to say, but she shook her head.

  “No, not now.” She turned as quickly as she could, heading Jonah toward home, feeling the rush of history as strongly as the fierce current of the falls.

  Chapter Three

  A soft knock came on her front door at 8:55 p.m.

  She’d always known this day was coming. It had to come. Josh had a right to know he had a son, and Jonah had a right to know his father. She hadn’t been strong enough to face up to the situation back then, and she was sorry for that. But she was a different person now, a stronger woman. The question was, was Josh a different man?

  Lord, I sure hope You know what You’re doing. I couldn’t feel less ready to do this, but I’m going to trust You. Guide my words. Guard his response. He’ll be angry. He has a right to be. But Josh is here, now, and I want to believe I’m strong enough to make this turn out okay for Jonah.

  As she opened the door, his eyes told her immediately. He knew. Regret and remorse pushed down on her shoulders, a sudden weight that made her grieve over the choice she’d made back then to withhold 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.”