His Surprise Son

by Allie Pleiter

  “Success is fun,” he admitted. “I can buy myself anything I want.”

  She looked him up and down. “Clearly.”

  “Okay, so at times I can clean a guy’s inventory out just for the fun of it. But it’s a different kind of fun with Violet. I’m having a good time giving her the wedding of her dreams with all the bells and whistles, you know? Indulging her.” He drew back the line and cast it again. “She doesn’t know I booked one of her favorite country music artists to play the wedding reception. What’s the point of owning the industry’s favorite music app if you can’t pull a stunt like that for your sister?”

  “You always did love to show off.” She nodded toward Josh’s box of flies, where he’d lost two of the lures already without landing a fish. “You’ve got a ways to go in the fishing department, though.”

  Jonah, on the other hand, had landed two, but informed Josh with great seriousness that fly fishermen didn’t keep their catch. Fly fishing was a catch-and-release sport—something Josh still couldn’t quite get his mind around. How does a fisherman not end a fishing day with fish?

  “Hey,” Josh replied. “I’m just letting the little guy win.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Even you can’t manipulate a fish catch.”

  “I know,” he said. “I think that’s why I like it. You can’t optimize it if no one’s keeping score.”

  “Bill might argue with you there. He’s always saying better equipment makes a better fisherman.”

  “Me and my three-hundred-dollar waders were bested by a five-year-old in green rain boots. I’m not buying it.” When he realized the inadvertent pun, he laughed. “Well, actually I did buy it—all of it—didn’t I?”

  When their laughter settled, she turned to him. “I want to ask a favor of you.”

  “Anything.” The ease with which he said that surprised him. In truth, he couldn’t think of a single request he’d deny her at the moment.

  “I’d like you to let Jonah pick a name sign for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you can spell out your name—” her fingers flew through the set of gestures he’d seen her use when she first introduced him to Jonah as Mr. Josh “—but eventually most people develop a single sign that means their name. Usually, it’s something about them, or something that sounds like their name, that sort of thing.”

  This was her way of saying Jonah would not be calling him “Dad” any time soon. She’d told him that, and he’d agreed, but the creation of a name sign seemed to underscore the point in a way that stung more than he expected.

  “Sure,” he agreed, less casually than he would have liked.

  “I don’t know what he’ll come up with,” she warned.

  It made Josh wonder if this was some kind of test. “I’m good with whatever he chooses.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  The moment hung awkward between them until Jonah yelped and jumped, his fishing rod bending under what looked like a sizable catch.

  “What’s the sign for whopper?” Josh asked.

  Her reply was almost too obvious. She spread her hands wide, then made a swimming motion with one of them. “I’d go with ‘big fish.’”

  Josh waded over to Jonah, making the signs followed by a comically huge “thumbs-up.” He wasn’t surprised when he felt his own heart expand with the size of Jonah’s grin.

  Chapter Eight

  The afternoon seemed to wear Jonah out, so Jean and Josh shared a postfishing lemonade on her back deck as the boy napped upstairs. Bolstered by how Josh had just shared the news of Violet embracing Jonah’s identity, Jean had risked moving things further by suggesting Josh join them at a church function.

  It might have been going too far, for he stared at her as if she’d suggested visiting Mars. “A church potluck? Those still happen?”

  “Second Sunday of every month.” Given his reaction, Jean felt herself hesitate a fraction of a second before adding, “Right after the worship service.” Wanting Josh to attend was a long shot of a wish—one she was almost afraid to admit—but the fishing afternoon had gone so very well and he seemed so pleased at Violet’s acceptance. “It’s fun,” she added. “Well, maybe not the kind of fun you’re used to, but you’d be surprised.”

  “I’m just developing a taste for fly-fishing. Surprises aren’t surprising me so much anymore.” Josh stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Only, I don’t cook. Aren’t I supposed to bring something to a potluck?”

  She’d already thought of a way around that and nodded toward the pitcher on the table between them. “But you can mix lemonade.”

  Jean was pleased to see him grin. “Yeah, but...” His face grew a bit more serious. “Church service?”

  She’d wondered if he’d accept that part of the invitation. “They set up the tables on the church lawn right after. You don’t have to go if you don’t...feel comfortable. You can meet me and Jonah outside afterward.”

  Jean watched him ponder the possibility. “I haven’t been inside a church since Dad’s funeral.”

  She offered him the only persuasion she had. “It’s nice. Peaceful. I don’t think I could make it through the week without the grounding I get there.” The unmoored look hadn’t ever really left his eyes while he’d been here, and the vision of her standing in a church pew with Jonah on one side and Josh on the other called to her with a power she wasn’t ready to admit. “You might find you like it.” She wished she hadn’t said that. It felt silly and pushy. She turned and fiddled with a plant from one of the deck containers rather than let Josh see whatever pleading might be in her eyes.

  “What time?”

  She looked up. “Ten thirty. Lunch starts just before noon.”

  “And you’re sure stirring lemonade is enough to get me in without being a potluck moocher?”

  She’d have to pass that phrase on to the chair of the church social committee. “There are no moochers, just guests. There’s always enough food to feed twice whoever’s there anyways. You’ll just be helping to even out the ratio.”

  “Well.” He laughed. “When you put it that way, I don’t see how I can refuse.” He looked around the backyard. “You’ve got a nice thing here, Jean. A good place for a boy like Jonah to grow up.”

  His praise warmed her heart more than a hundred perfect wedding reviews. She needed him to understand what she was doing here, why it was so essential that the valley keep being the home it was. For her and for Jonah. That—not some need to launch a bridal empire—is what drove her to shed the family name off the valley and the falls. Could a man so steeped in enterprise and so bereft of family ties see that? Was he capable of appreciating such goals?

  “I need the valley to go on,” she said. “I need to know it will be here for Jonah. I suppose it’s how I hold up my piece of Dad and Grandpa’s legacy.”

  “Even without the Matrim name?”

  “It was never about that. I suppose that’s hard for you to understand.”

  “No,” he said, his expression warming. “I get it. I feel the same way about SymphoCync, actually. I love the product, and success is nice, but it’s the people inside the big shiny building that keep me up nights. I like what I’ve built, but I really like who I’ve built it with—if that makes any sense.”

  That surprised her. “Really?”

  He gave her a look. “Is that so hard to believe?”

  “Yes, actually.” She’d seen him make fast, efficient phone calls, verbal checklists devoid of the small talk and personal inquiries that made doing business in the valley such a pleasure. She remembered how achievements topped his to-do list far more often than relationships did. He had always lived at too fast a speed to foster any real connections. “I don’t see how you can do business at the speed of light like you do and pay any attention to people and their lives.”

  He flinche
d, with a dramatic hand to his chest. “Ouch. Stop holding back and tell me how you really feel, Your Honor.”

  She crossed her arms. If she’d stepped out onto this thin ice, she was going to walk on it until it cracked. “How many people work at SymphoCync?”

  “Eighty-two. We still classify as a start-up.”

  It would take more people than that to pull off each wedding in the valley. Which was ironic, when Jean figured how much he likely earned compared with how small Matrimony Valley was, incomewise. Dad’s old comment about God’s economy turning the world’s economy upside down rang in her head. It was time to see if he really had changed. “Okay, then, name five of your employees’ children.”

  “Pete in accounting has two girls...one starts with an N... Hal’s wife had twins last summer—I remember we lost him right before a launch when he rushed out of the office in a state of panic when she texted she was in labor. And... Roger has two kids, maybe three. One of them is Roger Junior, I know that.”

  She could name every child in the valley, as could most of the residents. To her, that was the best part of the community—everyone knew everyone else. “I rest my case.” She tried not to let her voice show her disappointment.

  “Hey, just because I don’t hoard details doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

  “You may care, Josh, but details like that are the way you show it. It takes time and attention to care about people. People are complicated and inefficient. They mess with your timetables and—” she looked straight at him “—they show up out of the blue after years.”

  Josh huffed and scratched his chin. “I still can’t get over this. I mean, what are the odds?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know why God chose now to bring you back to the valley. I sure wouldn’t have picked this timing.”

  “Come on, we both know it was Violet who brought me to the valley. I’m not ready to sign on to the concept that I’m here by divine intervention. I mean, I’ll come to service because you asked and all, but...”

  “But what? Your stunning scientific brain can’t accept the idea of God moving in the world, of God bringing Jonah’s father into his life?” If the crazy set of circumstances that brought Josh into the valley didn’t show God’s hand to this man, what on earth could ever convince him? How could someone so brilliant deny something so clear?

  “You mean the idea of God doing what Jonah’s mother wouldn’t?” Josh’s words were cut with the sharp edges of that first day. The fact that he’d said “Jonah’s mother” instead of just saying “you” cut twice as deep.

  The idea that Josh’s arrival was indeed a conviction of that mistake had kept her up more than one night. Was God doing what she wouldn’t? The fine line between providence and punishment felt sharp enough to slice her heart in two. She had no right to pass judgment on who Josh was now, but he had every right to hold her silence against her. Could they ever get past all the hurt in their history to give Jonah two real parents? What were “real parents” anyway? Given the present circumstances, could she and Josh even come close?

  Maybe step one was to own up and apologize. Jean took a deep breath. “Keeping Jonah from you was wrong. I know that, now. Maybe someday you can forgive me for what I thought was a good decision at the time. For Jonah’s sake, if not for mine.”

  Josh got up and walked to the edge of the deck. “I don’t want to fight, Jean. This is hard enough without you and me going at each other.”

  That’s why I need to go to church, she wanted to say, but stayed silent. This situation was so wrought with the need for grace and mercy, she couldn’t imagine wading through it without the faith that God knew the outcome.

  “Please come,” she said quietly. “It will mean so much to Jonah. He’s chosen a name sign for you, and he wants to use it to introduce you around at the potluck.”

  The news had the effect she’d hoped; Josh’s face softened. “What is it?”

  “That’s not for me to say.” She ventured a small smile. “But I think you’ll like it.”

  He held her eyes for a moment, and the connection renewed her spark of hope that this could all work out. Maybe they could get to the place where they could forgive one other for the hurts they’d each inflicted. Maybe she could trust that God knew just what Jonah needed even better than she did.

  “Then I’ve got to come,” he replied.

  * * *

  A clanging tone startled Josh awake that night. The room was dark and unfamiliar, lit only by the screen of the laptop open on the bed beside him. He blinked at the cheerful man in the video sign language course on the screen, his half-awake brain straining to remember his surroundings. The phone clanged again, and the irritating collection of electronic tones sent Josh scrambling through the linens until he found his phone where it had fallen on the floor.

  “Tyler here,” he groaned into the phone as he righted himself from the contortions needed to reach down from the high antique bed.

  “What is going on out there?” Matt’s voice held a touch of alarm. “You send me an email saying you’re staying out there and don’t call?”

  “Hey, Matt.” Josh sat up, squinting his eyes to see the 2:00 a.m. eastern time signature on his computer screen. He’d expected this call much earlier after the message he’d sent, now regretting the slightly cowardly tactic of opting for email instead of a phone call or text. “It’s the middle of the night here, you know.”

  “It’s only eleven here, and you get no points for consideration at the moment. I was starting to think my airlift joke from the other day wasn’t so funny. What’s going on? Taking the weekend? You don’t take weekends. We’re two weeks into a launch, you have that big speech on Tuesday—the next ten days are huge for us. What’s with the sudden need for R & R?”

  Josh snapped on the light and reached for the half-empty glass of soda on the nightstand. “Everything going okay?”

  “The launch is going fine, actually, but that’s not an excuse to disappear on me.” Matt had every right to be annoyed, but his words also held an air of concern. “Don’t pull a stunt like this. What’s going on? What’s with a three-sentence email saying you’re staying the weekend instead of coming home?”

  Letting his head fall back against the high carved headboard, Josh replied, “Well, how much time you got? This has about a three-hour explanation.” The familiar creak Josh heard told him Matt was settling back in his desk chair. “You’re still at the office.”

  “We’re in launch mode. I’m spending my Saturday night sleeping at the office because the other member of upper management seems to have gone fishing.”

  If only Matt knew how spot-on he was. “I’m sorry to leave you hanging. This is all just a bit...weird...right now.”

  “Weird? You mean with Mayor Jean?”

  The issue of Mayor Jean seemed almost simple compared with the whole, newly complicated, picture. “That’s part of it.”

  “And what’s the other part?”

  “The boy. The one on the website.” Josh swallowed. “He’s my son.” The three words still felt like they were made of concrete every time he forced them out.

  There was a stunned silence on the other end of the line, followed by keys tapping, then a low whistle. “The kid...is yours? Oh, man, I can see it now. He does look like you. But that doesn’t mean for sure. There are tests for that sort of thing, Josh.”

  “Jean isn’t lying to me, Matt. Jonah is my son.”

  “You never knew? Really? Why on earth wouldn’t she tell you?”

  He thought about what she’d said earlier this evening. Yes, he disagreed with her choice, but he also knew he’d given her plenty of reasons to doubt him. After all, she’d come back here even before she knew she was carrying his child. Besides, did it really make sense now to try to place blame? “There’s a lot to it. There are complicated reasons.”

  “What do you mean?
”

  Josh recalled the mother-bear fierceness in Jean’s eyes. He’s not broken, Josh. He’s perfect the way he is, just different. “Jonah is deaf.” He felt compelled to add, “He’s not defective. He’s amazing.”

  “So you’ve met?”

  “Not as his dad. Jean isn’t sure he’s ready for that quite yet. But I spent some time with him Friday, and I went fishing with him today...” He yawned with another glance at the clock. “...well, yesterday.”

  “You’re kidding. So the fishing crack—who knew? But, um, do you know how to fish?”

  Josh managed a weary laugh. “I do now. I also know how to say fourteen different things in sign language I didn’t know yesterday.”

  “You should have told me. I should have known this was happening.”

  It had been a foolish move not to call Matt and talk it out. This whole business had messed with his head. “I’m sorry. And believe me, I’d be no good to you right now. My brain is in knots. I’ll get on a flight tonight.” The words tasted sour in his mouth. His reluctance to get on that plane stunned and worried him. “I just... I needed another day or two to figure this out, you know?”

  “You’re a dad. I’m sitting here, staring at the photo, and I still can’t get my head around it.”

  “Try it from my end. I don’t know what to do here, Matt. I don’t know how I’m supposed to act or what I’m supposed to say or how I tell him who I am. But I want him to hear it from me. Well, from Jean and me I suppose, but I want to say the words to him. Or sign the words, or however you do this...” The whole situation seemed to swallow him like the utter black quiet of the night out here.

  “Hey” came Matt’s voice. “I know it’s big, but I’m sure you can handle this.”

  Josh let his head fall back against the bed. “I’m not.”

  “Well, yeah, you just left your second-in-command hanging without an explanation. So maybe you don’t have it figured out quite yet. But you will.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Look, I get that you’re a bit thrown by this, but you know what’s at stake out here. Tuesday’s presentation is going to set our whole next year. This is launch, Josh—crunch time for you to be out there selling SymphoCync. You can’t do that from some tiny mountain town, you’ve got to be here.”