His Surprise Son

by Allie Pleiter

“And that will cost me.”

  He’d found the exact knife edge between realization and decision, hadn’t he? On the one hand, her prayers had been answered—Josh had realized the value of his son and the role he could have as Jonah’s father. On the other hand, he stood at the apex of her greatest fear—that he would still choose something else over that role. It was their whole relationship—and their biggest issue—wrapped up in five words.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot since Braddon made that offer. About what I want, and what I’m willing to pay to get it. And, I suppose, what’s worthwhile.”

  “Those are big questions.” Certainly ones that had weighed on her in recent days.

  “I’m sorry for what happened to our relationship. It’s more than the collateral damage of a dynamic career, although I’m sure that’s how Dad would have put it.”

  “True,” she admitted. She certainly felt like Bartholomew Tyler viewed her and Jonah as expendable complications.

  Josh looked into her eyes. “It’s my fault. I ignored you. I took your love and loyalty for granted. I gave you reasons to leave and reasons to think you couldn’t come to me with Jonah. I’m not expecting you to forgive me just because life’s thrown us back together.”

  He looked away for a minute, as if he were uncharacteristically gathering courage for whatever he would say next. Jean felt her heart do a flip in her chest. “Braddon’s offer feels like it might cost me everything. Like it would cost me what it would take to earn your forgiveness and my place in Jonah’s life.”

  Yes, her heart seemed to chime with the truth of his words and how much she’d needed to hear them. He really is coming to understand.

  “That’s why I can’t figure out what to do. That’s why I’m here.”

  “But we’re talking about it, talking through it,” she offered. “I never gave you that chance. I took that chance away by leaving because it felt easier. I wouldn’t have to see my fault in things if I put all the blame on you.” She said what felt like the most important thing of all. “We’re going to both need to forgive each other if we stand any chance at all.”

  That brought his eyes up to burn into hers. “Do you want us to have a chance?”

  She held his gaze, even though it seemed to hollow out her chest to do so. “A you-and-I ‘us’, not just a Jonah’s parents ‘us’?”

  He reached for her hand. “I don’t think I want to walk away from this a second time. I can’t ignore that the world’s given us another chance at this.”

  “God’s given us another chance at this,” she corrected. No matter what she was starting to feel, no matter how the thought of redeeming their history tugged at her heartstrings, Jean didn’t want to build a life with a man whose own life couldn’t include the faith that held her and Jonah together.

  She waited for him to pull his hand away at her correction, but he didn’t. Instead, he intertwined his fingers with hers. “You know, I’m surprised by how easily I can think that. Here, that is.”

  She looked at their joined hands. “God isn’t only in North Carolina, Josh.”

  “Let’s not make the same mistakes as last time. Let’s work this out together, you and me.” He closed his eyes for a second. “Only it’s not just about you and me, is it?”

  “You mean Jonah?”

  “Jonah, too, but it’s even bigger than that, Jean. Those eighty-two people who work at SymphoCync—it’s their careers on the line, too. I walk away from this deal with Braddon, and they’ll feel it as well as me. It’ll take me years to put together another deal this good, and in that time we could slow our growth—which is as good as death in my world. You don’t just waltz away from an offer like Hal Braddon’s.”

  They’d never talked over issues like this back in California. He’d never really let her into his world. “You make him sound like a mafia boss. There’s no such thing as ‘a deal you can’t refuse’—is there?”

  Josh shook his head with a dark laugh that let her know that’s just how he saw it—emotionally if not logically. “Not like that. But those people—the ones who work at SymphoCync—they put in long hours, too. They’ve made lots of sacrifices to get us where we are now. I can’t just suddenly decide it’s okay to be here and let them down.” He gazed at her. “Any more than you can decide it’s okay to let the valley down.” After a long moment, he said, “We can’t ignore that people depend on us.”

  She knew at that moment that he did indeed feel what she felt—a rekindling of the feelings that had brought Jonah into the world in the first place. Only this time it wasn’t so one-sided. It wasn’t just her riding the tail of his brilliant comet—there was an equality to them that had never been there before.

  And now that equality might be the very thing to keep them apart. They’d each succeeded. Separately. Which meant he had a vast enterprise bent on tugging him away from her while she had roots and dreams binding her here.

  Yes, he was here now, and they were finally dealing with the things that had damaged their relationship earlier. But he couldn’t change who he was any more than she could change who she was. Hal Braddon’s offer shackled him to SymphoCync. She could see now that he’d try hard to find some way to be in both worlds, but it wasn’t really possible. Even if it worked for a short while, it would never last. Not for what Jonah would need or what she knew her own heart would want.

  “People do depend on us,” she said, feeling her heart gain a sharp, deep crack, “and maybe that’s why we can’t always have what we want.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The next morning was filled with wedding business tasks—making follow-up phone calls to the Asheville wedding planners who had expressed an interest, ordering direction signs to be placed out for Violet’s guests, and solving an argument between the church and the inn over where to keep the rented chairs before they were set out the morning of the ceremony.

  Josh had requested Jean stop by the inn before picking Jonah up from school. When she met him in the front parlor, he was holding a small black box. “There were a dozen other projects I was supposed to be working on back in San Jose,” he said, “but I couldn’t stop working on this.” Lifting the lid, Josh produced something that looked similar to Jonah’s handheld gaming device: a little larger than a smartphone, with chunky grips on each side suitable for little hands. It had a large screen. It didn’t look mass-produced. Instead, it looked like something Josh had made himself.

  “Why did you wait until now?” she wondered aloud. He’d made no mention of this last night, and he had always been impatient to share new toys or gadgets.

  “It wasn’t quite perfect. And...” He paused for a moment before lowering his voice to say, “...I wanted yesterday to be about you and me.”

  That skittered down her spine. “What is it?” she asked, just to keep the conversation on safer ground.

  He held it up and pointed to the label that read Jonahphone. When she raised an eyebrow, he held it closer and said, “I fabricated this just for Jonah. There isn’t another like it in the world.”

  Jean’s heart both warmed and pinched at his efforts. “Jonah can’t really use a cell phone, Josh. He can’t hear, and he can’t read enough to text.” Not that those facts had stopped Josh when he did take the time to communicate with Jonah. In fact, Josh and Jonah had somehow managed to have amusing—if cryptic—“conversations” totally in emoji over the tablet he’d given her son earlier.

  “I know that,” replied Josh. “This isn’t that kind of phone. It’s more like the gramophone kind. It’s for music.”

  That sounded like an even worse idea. “Music?”

  “Watch.” Josh took the device and turned it on. “I’ve set it to my SymphoCync account and the Wi-Fi here at the inn, but I can show you how to set up your own account and link it to the network at your house. Or download songs so Jonah can play them anywhere.”

  Jean
wasn’t sure how to respond to this attempt to drag Jonah into Josh’s world of music. It wasn’t really possible—not in any way that made a difference. Then again, Josh Taylor was always the kind of man to take “impossible” as a challenge rather than a barrier. Maybe he really was capable of breaking down Jonah’s personal “sound barrier” when it came to music.

  “You still love ‘Obladi Oblada’?” Josh asked.

  She’d always loved Beatles tunes—still did. The first night she realized she was in love with Josh, they had danced in her dorm room to “Something.” Josh had sung it in her ear, sending tingles down her spine. For a man who made his career in music, he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but that charmed her all the more.

  “Sure,” she replied, rather unsure of where this was going.

  Josh tapped his way through a simple menu of icons that appeared on the screen, selecting the song title from a short list. “And Jonah’s favorite color is green, right?”

  She allowed herself a small surge of admiration that he remembered. “It is.”

  Josh tapped a few more times on the screen, then handed her the device. “Hold it on either side, where the grips are.”

  She followed his instructions, watching as an animated countdown flashed “3...2...1,” and then the device launched into action. The music came from the speakers, yes, but so many other things happened. The notes buzzed in her palms—high and light or low and harder, alternating between grips, wondrously letting her hands “feel” the music. At the same time, amazing shifting shapes that somehow managed to mimic the song bounced across the screen. She was experiencing the song—its rhythm, its volume, even somehow the flow of the lyrics—in multiple ways other than just sound. It was nothing short of astounding.

  “It’s music for Jonah. The program will take any song and transform it into sensation and visuals. Later, when he can read, I can upgrade it to show lyrics, but he won’t need that for a while, I guess.”

  The intensity of his eyes and the brilliance of his “I made this” grin made it hard to breathe. She’d had Jonah put his hands up to stereo speakers or let him watch the soundboard readouts at a radio station, but nothing came close to what she now held. “Josh, it’s...amazing.”

  “I couldn’t stand the idea of not being able to share SymphoCync or music with Jonah. I kept thinking there had to be a way. So I just kept fiddling until I came up with this. If you knew how behind I was on a ton of projects because I couldn’t seem to stop building this...”

  Jean wanted to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him for what he’d done. It stunned her how easily she could slide back into that person, that woman who watched Josh Tyler take on the world and win. He’d taken that genius and wielded it, unrelentingly, on behalf of her son.

  On behalf of his son.

  For a fragile moment, she could feel both of them teetering on the brink of going back there. To being those people, those two hearts joined as one. It hummed between them as fiercely as if it were playing out of the Jonahphone.

  “Can I show it to him?” Josh finally said, looking all too much like a kid eager to play with his own toy—or in this case, let his son play with the toy he’d invented. “I felt like I ought to ask you first.”

  The Josh she’d known rarely asked anyone for permission to do anything. He’d always been a “do first, get clearance later” kind of man. Had he really changed? Or had she come off as that fiercely protective where Jonah was concerned?

  The smile she gave him radiated up from a grateful heart. “I think he’ll love it. Let’s go show him now.”

  His smile widened. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  * * *

  Josh’s heart couldn’t seem to decide if it was pounding or swelling. Probably both. His job lately involved so many hours staring at spreadsheets and readouts that he’d forgotten the sheer joy of making something. Of inventing and creating. It was hard to beat the unique zing of putting something into the world that wasn’t there before.

  But to be inventing and creating a way for his own son to hear the music that formed his world? Well, that was a whole new kind of zing that made everything else on his desk—everything else in the world, truthfully—look tedious. He’d made million-dollar presentations and not been as excited—and anxious—as he was as they stood outside Jonah’s school.

  Jean picked up on his tension, and touched his hand that held the box he’d shown her earlier. “He’ll love it. It’s wonderful.” Those impossibly blue eyes of hers always could speak calm to him in ways even Matt had never achieved. Matt calmed him with facts and tactics—and that was useful—but Jean could calm him just by being Jean.

  How had he not realized how much he missed that? How had he not noticed how he hadn’t been calm for years? The constant frantic pace of his life he’d come to think of as normal wasn’t supposed to be normal. There was another way to live. Oh, sure, he could construct some semblance of a slower life in California, but it would be lacking Jean and Jonah. So it would never feel whole. It sounded stupid to his practical nature, but making this device for Jonah made him feel whole. It closed some circle in his life he hadn’t even realized was left hanging open.

  A woman walked Jonah out of the school, signing at a rapid rate with him. “That’s his teacher with the deaf sister, Gina. Gina signs very well, but we also get an interpreter in to help two days a week. We’re hoping it will be five when he starts first grade. Gina’s such a blessing—we’d have to go to a school forty minutes away without her.”

  Josh watched Gina’s fingers fly, wondering if he’d ever get to that level of proficiency.

  He would. He’d put in the effort, find the time. Jonah was worth it.

  “A great day, Jean,” Gina said while signing. “Smart kid you’ve got here.” Watching Jonah wave, Gina asked Jonah, “Who’s this?”

  Josh felt Jean tense beside him—when was it going to be easier to answer that question?

  “My friend Big Fish,” Jonah signed. The sign for friend both pleased and irritated Josh. He was ready to be more than a friend to his son. Still, that timetable was Jean’s to decide. If he was honest with himself, he hoped today’s gift would move things along in that direction, would help to demonstrate whatever commitment Jean needed to see to be ready to tell Jonah who he really was.

  Gina laughed at the unusual name. “Hello, Big Fish,” she said while signing the greeting. Jean had explained that Jonah used “signed English” because of his place in a hearing world. American Sign Language, what Jonah would eventually use as he became older, was a completely different language. There were so many hurdles to this. Maybe that’s why the Jonahphone felt like such an important first step.

  “Miss Gina, this is Josh Tyler,” Jean said, hesitating just a moment before adding, “a friend of the family.”

  A friend of the family. It was better than “an ex from California,” but not by enough.

  “See you tomorrow, sport,” Gina said, signing “goodbye” and heading back toward the school.

  “Big Fish brought something for you,” Jean said and signed, nodding toward a bench a short ways away. “Something really special.”

  Jonah’s eyes lit up in the way any kid’s would with the promise of a present. He stared at the box as they walked toward the bench. Josh loved how Jonah sat down right next to him, practically climbing on his lap in eagerness. He caught Jean’s eye, feeling the communication gap loom large again. “I’m gonna need your help here. I don’t know the right signs to explain it.”

  He went through the same short explanation he’d given Jean, but in terms Jonah could understand, about wanting to share his music in a way fit for Jonah and about how he built it, delighted at Jonah’s giggle at the name Jonahphone.

  “Will it work out here? There’s no Wi-Fi,” Jean whispered as Josh showed Jonah how to turn it on.

  “I downloaded �
��Obladi Oblada’ so it’ll play anywhere. We can add songs he likes later.” Did Jonah have songs he liked? Could he? He would, if the device worked the way Josh hoped it would.

  Josh’s pulse seemed to thud in his ears as he positioned Jonah’s hands over the grips. They fit perfectly—he’d made it just the right size. He didn’t even have to tell Jonah to push the large green circle that appeared on the screen. When the animated countdown began, Jonah squealed with anticipation—a sound that rang through Josh’s chest.

  Jonah’s eyes popped wide as the song began to play and send vibrations to his palms. He laughed as the shapes and forms flowed across the screen in green and other colors. When his head began to nod in time with the music, Josh heard Jean gasp. He’d remember this moment for the rest of his life. Millions of people enjoyed music through SymphoCync, but none of them mattered more than the small, ecstatic person currently bouncing beside him.

  He hadn’t even realized he’d put his arm around Jonah until he felt Jean’s arm rest atop his. Complete really was the only way to describe it. People called him successful all the time, and he was, but none of that ever felt like this.

  When the song drew to a close, Jonah put the Jonahphone in his lap, looked up at Josh with wide, excited eyes and banged the fingers of one hand resolutely in the palm of the other. Josh knew that sign. “Again, huh?”

  Jonah repeated the sign—and the song—four more times until Jean gave a laughing moan and said, “I think we’re gonna need a bigger repertoire.”

  Josh joined her laughter. “You can turn off the audio.”

  “No,” she said, her eyes glowing just the way Josh had hoped they would at this moment. “More songs sounds better.”

  He almost hated to ask, “Does he have favorites?”

  “He couldn’t,” she replied softly. Josh felt his heart break wide open when she added, “until now.” Her eyes glistened as she whispered, “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  I do, he thought, but dared not say. This had to be her call.