His Surprise Son

by Allie Pleiter

  “Stepsister,” Jean corrected. “They don’t have the same last name. That’s why I never connected the dots on this.”

  “Well, sure. I mean, who would think? There have to be thousands of Josh Tylers in the world.” Kelly cleaned leaves off the rose stems. “But he shows up here, now.” She offered Jean a sympathetic smile. “You sure you don’t want a croissant? I’d need three.”

  The tiny laugh that escaped Jean made this feel like the first lighthearted moment since this whole tense day began. “No. This and your sympathy are fine. And your discretion. I can’t let this get out—at least not yet.”

  Kelly put a hand to her chest. “Cross my heart. Wow. I mean, really wow. It’s crazy. But it could be crazy good, right?”

  “Or crazy bad. Josh was a workaholic in the third degree then. I can’t believe that’s changed much. He lived life at a hundred miles an hour back when we were together, and I got left in the wake. I don’t have any faith he can be a good influence on Jonah.” She swirled her spoon in the rich brew. “I’ve got to be really careful.” She considered telling Kelly about Bartholomew’s cruel offer, but opted against it. Why complicate an already complicated situation with a dead man’s cruelty that no longer mattered? “Most of the reasons I had for keeping this from Josh haven’t changed. Only now I’ve got to find a way to live with the fact that he knows.”

  Kelly narrowed her eyes at Jean, wiggling the scissors in her hand. “You don’t still... I mean...there’s nothing between you two after all this time, is there?”

  Jean put her coffee down with enough force to spill a bit, and Jonah looked up. “Absolutely not!”

  “Okay,” Kelly said. “Just asking. He looks rich and handsome.”

  Jean gave Kelly a look.

  “...And he’s a jerk. We don’t like him or trust him. Got it.”

  “I don’t know him, Kelly. I kept out of his life. I wasn’t the kind of person who could stand up to him then. So I just shut down that part of my history.”

  “You didn’t look him up on the internet now and then? Weren’t curious who he turned out to be? I’d be cyberstalking the guy if I were you.”

  “Dad got sick, and my attention had to be here.” That wasn’t anywhere near a complete answer, and she was glad Kelly didn’t press the point.

  Jonah finished coloring one page and began leafing through the book to find another, humming to himself in the strange, off-key rhythm of his that Jean always found so fascinating. How did humming feel when you couldn’t hear it?

  I don’t regret the way I brought him up. I don’t regret my choice. I left because I knew what I might want would never stand up against Josh’s big plans. But now that it’s come back to face me like this, I’m filled with fears and doubts, Lord. I need way more wisdom than I have. I need Dad, and he’s not here. You can be my guide here, can’t You, Lord?

  “How are you letting them meet?” Kelly’s question pulled Jean from her silent plea.

  “Not as father and son, like I said. None of us are ready for that.”

  “So how do you do that?” Kelly asked.

  “Milkshakes.”

  “Milkshakes?”

  “Marvin’s. At two thirty. It was the best I could do on a moment’s notice.”

  “Well,” replied Kelly, returning the now-full vase to the cooler. “It’s as good a plan as any, I suppose. We’d better start praying now, and I don’t intend to stop all afternoon.”

  Jean hugged Kelly. “Thanks. I’ll need it.”

  Chapter Five

  Marvin’s Sweet Hearts Ice Cream Parlor looked frozen in time, as if Josh were on some midcentury movie set. Most of the “old-fashioned” ice-cream parlors he’d seen were shops dolled up to look nostalgic. This was nostalgia—and not by design, but by definition: the drugstore soda fountain, right down to the black-and-white floors and the red vinyl counter stools.

  “What’ll it be?” asked the grandfather-aged guy in a white apron behind the counter, his scoop at the ready.

  “Oh, give me a minute or two—I’m waiting for someone.” He nodded toward Violet, who was out front on a park bench sharing her entrée decision with Lyle on the phone. He was grateful the groom had called; he needed a minute to collect himself before Jean and Jonah walked through the door. He was going to have to tell Vi at some point, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it just yet, and the multiple levels of weird happening at this “innocent” meeting had him spinning like a hamster wheel. I’m about to meet my son. But not as his father. And I don’t know how to talk to him. I’m dying here, how do I do this?

  His own father gave him nothing to go on—their last few conversations had all been arguments, and he wasn’t exactly swimming in happy father-and-son memories. Josh didn’t know anything about being a father, except that he didn’t want to be like his father. Jean had always talked lovingly about her dad. She had a model to work from, and it seemed Jonah had the advantage of a loving grandfather. Don’t muck that up, his gut told him. Try not to undo all the good Jonah’s had. Only...how?

  Violet hung up with Lyle, a dreamy-eyed smile lighting her face as she pulled open the shop door. She looked around, the same “is this place for real?” wonder he’d felt upon entering visible in her expression. “Don’t you love it?” she continued. “It’s like some fifties movie.”

  The guy behind the counter chuckled. “I get that a lot.” His face brightened. “Hey, you’re our bride, aren’t you?”

  Violet beamed. “I am.”

  “Well, sugar, your shake’s on the house, then. This the lucky groom?”

  “No,” said Josh and Violet at the same time.

  “He’s my brother,” Violet explained. “My husband-to-be is in the navy, and he’ll get leave just before the wedding. Until then, Josh is a stand-in and helper. We’re meeting Mayor Jean and her son in a few minutes.”

  “Jonah,” said the man, whose classic plastic name tag identified him as Marvin himself. “Sweet kid. I made sure ‘which flavor’ were the first words I learned to sign, you know?” Marvin demonstrated as he spoke. “Well, that and ‘chocolate,’ since I knew that’d be his answer.”

  I like chocolate, too, Josh mused. But so did lots of people—it wasn’t genetic. The thought of someone carrying his genetic traits still sent him reeling.

  Marvin spoke to Violet, demonstrating the signs again. “So, which flavor?”

  “For me?”

  “You’re the bride. What flavor milkshake will make you a happy bride?” He pointed up at a sign that listed a dozen flavors.

  Violet laughed. “Do you have a flavor that won’t add to my waistline? I’ve got a wedding gown to fit into, you know.”

  “I can do any flavor in my special no-calorie formula,” Marvin boasted with a wink. It was hokey, truly, but with a kind of down-home charm Josh couldn’t help but like.

  Violet planted her hands on her hips. “You’re pulling my leg, Marvin.”

  Marvin spread his hands wide. “I am. Have one anyway.”

  As Violet and Marvin debated milkshake choices behind him, Josh looked out the window. A shock went through his chest as Jean and Jonah stepped out of the flower shop a few doors down and onto the street.

  Jean. His mind cast back to another frozen moment in time, locked in his memory at age twenty-two. They were so young. The wind played with her blond hair and her eyes sparkled as she said “yes” to his proposal on the front steps of SymphoCync’s brand-new office. She was still strikingly beautiful, but with the shades of harder years showing on her features. Her spunk had settled into a strength that struck him as a different kind of beauty. He’d loved the girl—well, as much as he could love anyone back then while he was scrambling to grab the world by the tail—and now he was staring, fascinated, at the woman.

  What if? What if she’d stayed? What if he’d followed her here? What if she’d t
old him?

  His brain raced down that maze of possibilities without his permission. It was a dangerous and unhelpful place to go; what-ifs served him in technology, but they could derail him in life. While Josh didn’t know what he wanted from this encounter, he knew he didn’t want to walk away from this with any kind of regret. This was going to be the start of his being in Jonah’s life, not the end. He just had no idea how to make any of it happen.

  And then there was Jonah. He bounced along the sidewalk like any five-year-old, hands going a mile a minute in what Josh figured must be little boy deaf chatter. Jonah must have said something funny, because Jean threw her head back and laughed.

  Jean used to have this amazing laugh—a bells-and-wind-chime kind of laugh no one ever forgot. She still did, he guessed, although he couldn’t hear from this distance. He used to go out of his way to do something silly just to make her burst out in giggles and feel the way it tingled in his chest. He watched Jean lean over and poke Jonah’s nose the way parents do, all amusement and affection.

  Josh couldn’t muster up a single memory of his father doing that to him.

  He stared hard at them, wildly ping-ponging between fascination and terror. That’s my son. The words both pinned him to the ground and vaulted him to the skies. And took him everywhere in between. How on earth was he going to play this cool and casual, just an ice cream between friends?

  And there was the whole complex issue, right there: Could he be friends with Jean Matrim? They’d once been far more, but those days were long gone, right? Now their relationship had to be defined by the grinning brown-eyed boy with the Tyler family wavy hair and long fingers who currently scampered for the shop door.

  Violet was tapping him on the shoulder. “Hey, Josh, he’s asking you what flavor you want?”

  Josh couldn’t take his eyes off Jonah as the boy peered through the glass door, grinning and waving his mother forward. “Huh?”

  Violet ducked down into his vision. “What flavor milkshake do you want?” She overenunciated the words, as if Josh had momentarily forgotten English.

  “Oh, uh, chocolate. Chocolate’s fine.” His heart was pounding. Josh had faced down multimillion-dollar negotiations and not been this unsettled.

  As Jonah burst through the door, Josh caught Jean’s eyes over the boy’s head. Half a dozen things passed between them in a single second. Pride, nerves, questions, doubts, pain...he couldn’t even begin to list the myriad of emotions zinging between them.

  Thankfully, no one else seemed to notice. Violet told Marvin to make a chocolate milkshake, while Jonah shot right past Josh. He turned to watch the boy scramble up on the counter stool behind him as Marvin said “Hiya, Jonah!” in a loud voice while his fingers waved in strange shapes. He assumed the signs also meant “Hi, Jonah,” but how could he know?

  How to do this? Sign language, he could learn. He’d picked up four different coding languages; sign would just be like adding another. But the being a dad thing? In this completely foreign context, with nothing to go on? He turned back to Jean, feeling as out of control as he could ever remember feeling. She just held his eyes, compassion and challenge warring in her expression.

  “Marvin, show me that sign for ‘hi,’” Violet was saying behind him.

  Josh turned back to watch Marvin touch his extended hand to the side of his head and wave it forward, in a sort of vertical salute.

  As if it were the easiest thing in the world, Violet turned to Josh, saying a cheerful “hi!” while she repeated the sign.

  Jonah looked up at her curiously for a second, then signed “hi” back.

  Violet looked at him. “C’mon, Josh, say hello.”

  Josh felt the heat of Jean’s eyes from behind him. He took a deep breath, duplicated the sign and choked a bit on the words “Hi there.”

  I’ve just said hello to my son. I’ve spoken my first words to my son. His brain still felt like it was spinning.

  “Two chocolate men. My kind of guys.” Marvin’s hands danced again in what Josh guessed to mean “chocolate” and got to work. “So that’s a strawberry banana for the bride-to-be, two chocolates and, of course, mocha for Mayor Jean.”

  Mocha. The image sprung to life in his mind of Jean dumping chocolate milk into her coffee in college, of her ordering mocha after mocha at the corner coffee shop in San Jose. He used to know so much about her, but now he felt like he knew nothing at all.

  Jean stepped over to the counter next to Jonah. “Jonah,” she said as she signed, “these are my new friends, Miss Violet and...” She hesitated just a fraction of a second before she said, “Mr. Josh. Miss Violet is getting married here soon. I invited them to join us for milkshakes, okay?”

  Jonah nodded, then slid off the stool to go sit at the four-seat table by the window. He has no idea! Josh’s brain was shouting. He couldn’t, at that moment, decide if it was better or worse that Jonah didn’t know his identity. The whole thing was coming at him way too fast.

  Jean reached into her purse and pulled out a pair of toy trucks, the kind that switch parts to become robots or whatever, and placed them on the table in front of Jonah. The boy’s eyes lit up, and he immediately began working the intricate little pieces. Josh remembered that fascination with how things worked together. It was part of what made him so good at what he did, stringing together bits of code to do amazing things with data. Is that me? Is that me showing up in him? It seemed a ludicrous thought to have.

  “He’s adorable, Jean,” Violet said as she and Josh sat down.

  “Thank you,” Jean said. She touched Jonah’s shoulder to get him to look up from the trucks. “Miss Violet says she thinks you’re cute.”

  Jonah made the face any five-year-old boy would make to such a gushy comment, but tilted one hand, palm up, away from his chin and went back to his trucks.

  “That’s ‘thank you,’” Jean said. “Someday when he’s a teenager, I’ll be thankful sarcasm doesn’t quite translate in sign.”

  “Oh, the things I said to my mother,” Violet commiserated. She looked at Josh. “I suspect you were worse. Your dad told me a few stories.”

  Oh, you have no idea, Josh thought, a bit envious of Violet’s cheer. Things always seemed so simple to her, so easy, and right now his entire life felt complicated and impossible.

  * * *

  Jean sipped her milkshake, the treat feeling cold and choking instead of tasting like the creamy delight it usually was. This was so much harder than she’d thought it would be. She’d thought having Violet and Jonah here and unaware of the enormous nature of the moment would tamp down the awkwardness. Instead, it had done just the opposite; every second felt heavy and as though they were dangling impossibly off balance.

  Violet, cheerful as ever, suddenly stood up. “Hey, Marvin, will you indulge this bride with one last dollop of whipped cream before she diets like crazy to fit into her wedding dress?”

  “I think every bride ought to get double whipped cream,” Marvin said, brandishing the can as Violet walked toward the counter.

  Jonah seized the clear path between him and Josh to scoot one of his little trucks across the table to bump right into Josh’s milkshake. One of the little front sections snapped off at the contact. They came apart all the time—they were designed to disassemble, and that’s what Jonah seemed to like best about them.

  Her stomach tightened a bit as Josh picked up the small piece and the truck, examining them. He looked at Jonah, one eyebrow raised, but Jonah simply returned the stare. She watched the two of them, each with a truck, looking so much like mirror images that she felt a bit dizzy. Somewhere in the distance Violet was chatting with Marvin, but the whole world faded out of focus while she watched Jonah and Josh encounter each other. Father and son. Her son and his father. She’d imagined this moment a dozen different ways, but none of them ever looked or felt like this.

  Josh squinted a
t the truck, turned it over a time or two, and then replaced the piece in an entirely new way. Jonah’s eyes grew wide for a moment, and then Jean watched her son pull off a similar piece on the truck he was holding and reattach it in the way Josh had done.

  Josh’s face showed the same stunned awe she felt herself at this first “conversation” between father and son. How could a moment feel so small and so huge at the same time?

  With a rather overwhelmed grin, Josh sent the truck scooting back over the table to Jonah. Instead of doing the same, Jonah picked up both trucks and matter-of-factly slid over into the empty chair Violet had left. The moment Josh looked up at her with his son sitting next to him, Jean felt such a bittersweet tangle of joy and regret that breathing felt impossible. Had she done the right thing in keeping them apart? Or had it been a huge mistake?

  Jonah placed a truck in front of Josh and poked his arm in an unspoken “your turn.” She watched the moment of contact flash through Josh, pulling in his breath and widening his startled eyes. After a wonder-struck moment, Josh set to rebuilding the truck pieces in a zany way that made Jonah laugh.

  Jean was so mesmerized, she hadn’t even noticed Violet sitting back down next to her in the seat Jonah had occupied. “Boys and their toys. I know that look. Lyle and his buddies get like that when they have the hood of his car open.” She laughed and stirred her milkshake. “The universal male language of ‘let’s build something and take it apart again,’ huh? No words needed.”

  “I suppose,” Jean replied softly, feeling as if she’d tumble off the stool if she moved an inch. Violet, of course, had no way of knowing she was watching a life-changing moment transpire. Matrimony Valley’s first bride was just watching a cute moment between a man and a boy.

  Matrimony Valley’s mayor, on the other hand, was watching her son meet his father. And watching the man she’d loved and left—or who had left her; it was difficult to know which was which anymore—connect with the son he’d never known. Within the space of a minute, the two had become totally absorbed in the mutual construction of tiny plastic trucks, trying and trading pieces in silent but animated conversation.