Home to the Riverview Inn

by Molly O'Keefe

  Jonah opened the door and found the old man, his hand on the girl’s shoulder.

  The little girl, wearing head to toe purple, looked tortured, but she still managed to give him the evil eye. He swallowed a crack of laughter.

  “This is Josie,” Patrick said, his gaze flicking between them. “And she has something to say.”

  Jonah wanted to roll his eyes, call out the old man for this useless display of what…manners? Honor? Jonah didn’t believe a moment of it. Patrick wouldn’t know honor if it had bitten him on the ass.

  “I’ve been spying on you,” Josie said, gesturing limply to the window.

  “And…?” Patrick prompted.

  “And—” she rolled her eyes “—I’m sorry.”

  Jonah nodded at her and her tortured expression changed slightly. She craned her neck to get a better look inside his cabin.

  The girl was stubborn, and Jonah understood stubborn.

  My kind of kid, he thought.

  “You go see what Chef Tim has for you to do in the kitchen,” Patrick told the girl and she scowled.

  “Again?”

  “You got caught,” Patrick said, shaking his head, “again.”

  “But—” She looked at Jonah then Patrick, and Jonah realized that she didn’t want to leave the old man alone with him, maybe suspecting Jonah would add Patrick to the pile of bodies in the river.

  “I knew you were out there,” he told the little girl. “I made that up about the bodies.”

  “Really?” she asked, eyeing him shrewdly and again he almost laughed.

  “Really.”

  He felt Patrick’s gaze on him, hopeful and surprised. Yes, Jonah wanted to snap at him, the Dirty Developer has a sense of humor.

  But he didn’t want Patrick to know anything about him.

  She hesitated as if to say she didn’t believe him but then she nodded. “Okay. But if Patrick goes missing, I’m an eyewitness. I’ll testify.”

  Jonah blinked, stunned slightly by the legal vernacular.

  “Get going,” Patrick said, bodily turning the girl around and giving her a push toward the lodge.

  Josie sighed heavily and stomped off, leaving Patrick and Jonah alone. Jonah realized this was the moment Patrick had been waiting for since he’d arrived.

  Josie hadn’t been the only one haunting the outside of his cabin.

  “Josie and her mother were in a scrape with the law last winter,” Patrick explained. “She saw and heard some things she shouldn’t have and spent some time in court this spring testifying. She caught on to the lingo.”

  Jonah watched the girl go until the door of the lodge shut behind her.

  “Why don’t you come on out?” Patrick said. “I’ll give you a tour. Take you down to the river.” His tone seemed casual, but he couldn’t control the hope that rolled off him, nearly suffocating Jonah.

  “I’m working.”

  Patrick sucked in a quick breath but kept his smile intact. The man wasn’t going to budge.

  “Your mother—”

  “Don’t try to use my mother to get me to do what you want me to do,” he said. “It won’t work. In fact, it will make me like you less. Not that it’s possible.”

  Jonah tried to shut the door but Patrick got his hand in there before he could. Jonah was stunned briefly by the sudden sharpness in the old man’s eyes, the sudden anger.

  “I didn’t know about you,” Patrick said. “Your mother never told me. If I had known, I would have done anything to get you back.”

  Jonah knew that, of course. His mother had made very sure that he understood that Patrick had not rejected Jonah. He’d only rejected his wife. Banished her from her own family.

  “Is that supposed to make me forgive you?” Jonah asked.

  “I don’t understand what you are angry with me for.” Patrick truly looked lost. Clueless and that told him even further what Iris meant to this man.

  “I’m angry,” he said clearly, making sure nothing would get misunderstood or forgotten, “because you never signed those divorce papers. You kept her chained to you for thirty years like she didn’t matter. You broke my mother’s heart. I’m angry because I grew up with a mother who every day tried to hide the fact that she was unhappy.” Patrick’s face crumpled, his fire extinguished. “And, no, there is nothing you can do to make me forgive that.”

  With that, before the old man could say anything more, Jonah shut the door in his face.

  Patrick stared at the closed door.

  Heartsick, he battled nausea and chest pains. Confusion and grief made his head fuzzy and light.

  What am I supposed to do?

  He watched Max walk out of the lodge into the woods and thought about calling out to him. Trying to talk to him about this mess with Jonah. But his boys weren’t invested. They wanted him to protect himself, not get involved. Gabe in particular wanted him to let it go.

  Even Max, last night, had said if Jonah wasn’t interested in bridging the gaps then maybe it wasn’t meant to be.

  Patrick couldn’t believe that this family wasn’t meant to be.

  Against all odds, Jonah was here. In cabin five.

  Patrick simply needed to figure out how to get Jonah out of cabin five.

  He knew that if he asked Iris to help him, to force the boy’s hand since he’d do anything for his mother, some of this heartache would be avoided.

  But Patrick didn’t want her help. He wanted to feed the small fire of his grudge against her.

  What she’d done was unforgivable. Despite the fact that he understood the whys and the reasons, he couldn’t forgive her.

  She’d left them, him and the boys. Walked away in the middle of the night thirty years ago and had stayed away for three months before writing Patrick a letter asking to come home. He’d told her no. He’d been angry. Spiteful and hurt and he had no way of knowing that she was pregnant and her terrifying erratic behavior before she left had been caused by depression brought on by the pregnancy.

  She wrote again, nine months later when Jonah must have been a few months old. By that time Patrick had his life in a rhythm. Something that worked. It wasn’t perfect and often it wasn’t pretty, but he was raising his boys and he’d decided that life was easier without her.

  He’d been wrong, of course.

  When he’d sent those letters to her, telling her not to come, that they were doing fine without her, he’d been thinking of himself and the boys.

  He’d been thinking about Iris’s depression and the way it could make his life terrifying.

  Happiness—hers, his, the boys—he hadn’t thought of. Now he wished he had. Staring at the door of cabin five and knowing his son was in there, blaming Patrick for things that weren’t all his fault, he wished he could have seen the future. In order to prevent this itchy heartache in his chest, he wouldn’t have kept his wife away.

  He could have had his son.

  Like a magnet, he found himself pulled in the direction of Iris. He wanted to remind her of the mistakes she’d made, the mess she’d made of their lives—the years they’d wasted.

  It was, after all, her fault.

  He’d been trying to keep his distance from her since her return a few weeks ago. He liked to pretend that he didn’t know this woman who looked like an older, sadder version of the woman he’d fallen in love with on a vacation to the Jersey Shore. He wanted to pretend that the years and the betrayal had changed their core.

  Now, however, he walked to the gazebo where he knew she’d be.

  And there she was. Bouncing, loving and generally hogging baby Stella as she had since her arrival.

  Their first grandchild. The thought caught him in the throat and he couldn’t breathe. He just watched Iris with Stella and ached.

  It was a milestone they should have celebrated together—arm in arm, in love, proud and happy.

  She robbed him of that.

  She didn’t hear him approach, thank God, all of her energy focused on the pink bundle in her
arms.

  A tiny hand came up out of the blanket and patted Iris’s mouth, reaching for the dangling earrings she wore.

  “Pretty soon, Stella,” she cooed, touching her nose to the baby’s. “Pretty soon you’ll have your hands on everything.”

  The hot mix of emotions built in him, filling his chest and his head. He couldn’t make sense of them. Couldn’t put a name to everything that made him want to grab her and shake her. Touch her.

  Oh God, how could he want to touch her so bad when she’d lied to him? Kept his son from him? Why did he want to hold her and ease the pain he saw in the weary set of her shoulders, the bowed curve of her neck as if the whole world was pressing on her?

  It didn’t make sense. But anger made sense. Anger worked. So he concentrated on that.

  He started to put words together, hurtful words telling her exactly what she’d done to him.

  “Patrick,” she said, interrupting his mental tirade, not even turning to look at him. “I was wondering when you’d come looking for me. Things aren’t going well with Jonah?”

  He shook his head, the mix of emotions making words impossible. I’m mad, he wanted to howl.

  “You want to take that out on me?” she asked. “Yell at me? Make me feel worse than I already do?”

  Yes!

  Finally she looked at him, her black eyes a well of hurt. Of regret. But she would let him do it. She would let him yell and rage and blame her for all the misery at the inn. But it wouldn’t add to the pain in her eyes. The burden she carried on those strong, elegant shoulders.

  I can’t make her feel worse than she does, he realized.

  “No,” he whispered. He shook his head, weary suddenly as the emotions that had fueled him dissipated like fog in the sun.

  Stella fussed, a little cry that turned Iris’s attention to the little girl. “Hello, there. Hello, little love,” she whispered and he felt that bit of nonsense, that soft breath of air from his wife’s mouth enter his tortured self and calm him down.

  He and Stella both stopped fussing.

  “She’s a lot like Max was as a baby,” Iris said, with the familiar ribbon of the Hudson River behind her. A careful truce was offered in her eyes, the merest hint of a question. Will you let it go? her eyes asked. Please, for both of us, let it go. “He didn’t like sleeping, either. Wanted to be in the middle of the action all the time.”

  Patrick felt the memories creep through him. Images of the boys’ early years when they were a family—memories he’d sequestered and quarantined.

  I can’t do this. I can’t pretend everything is okay. I can’t.

  But he wanted to.

  “Remember?” she asked.

  Don’t make me let go of my resentment.

  “He was a busy guy,” he said, giving in, knowing it was a useless battle. He let the memories out. The happiness of those days. The peace and kindness whirled through him. “I thought he’d never sleep through the night.”

  “Unlike Gabe,” she said. “He slept through his first six months.”

  “Six months? More like six years.” Patrick smiled at the memories.

  “Slept and ate, that’s about it. Remember when we went camping that summer?”

  Patrick laughed, knowing exactly what she was thinking of, the incident conjured up by her voice as if it had happened yesterday. “He slept through that big storm.”

  “Not just the storm,” she said, swaying slightly when Stella began to fuss. “He slept through the tent collapsing and all of us running around trying to fix it.”

  Iris brushed her fingers over the little girl’s face and Patrick could feel that touch as if it were his flesh Iris stroked. These feelings entered with the memories, unwanted hangers-on.

  “I pulled in as much of the tent as I could and ended up balling up the rest and sleeping on it.” Patrick cleared his throat and stared at his hands. “One of the worst nights of sleep I ever had. I was sore for months.”

  “Remember in the morning, Gabe woke us up to tell us the tent fell down. Like we didn’t know.” Iris laughed. “Oh my Lord, that boy could sleep through anything. Jonah was the same way.”

  At the mention of their youngest son’s name, the air between them changed. Became heavier, darker.

  “He’s not talking to me,” Patrick murmured. “He won’t even come out of the cabin.”

  “Jonah doesn’t want to be here,” Iris told him what he already knew. “And he can be very stubborn.”

  “What do I do?” Patrick asked, sitting in one of the wrought-iron chairs. His bones felt sore, taxed to their limit just by holding him up.

  “You be patient with him,” Iris said. “He’s stubborn but his heart is so good.”

  “The Dirty Developer?” Patrick asked, the name tasting gross on his tongue.

  “If I explained his business to you, he would never forgive me,” she said. He glanced at her and he could see her strength. Hard-won in Arizona, raising a boy without him. She was like bedrock and she wasn’t going to budge on this.

  Admiration—one more thing he didn’t want to feel for her—seeped into the mysterious whirl of feelings he was trying to ignore.

  A breeze came up from the Hudson and sent her earrings into motion and Stella reached again for the silver. “But you have to trust me—”

  He laughed. He laughed before he could help it. He was sore and raw and he did trust Iris. He could see what the years had done to her, the regret she lived with.

  But he laughed because he hurt so much and he wanted her to hurt a little, too. It was cruel. And sick.

  “I’m sorry.” He knew his baffled heart showed in his eyes. “It’s just hard.”

  “Trusting me?” she asked quietly.

  “You walked away from me and I know you were sick, but—” He took a deep breath. “It’s easier to hate you.”

  “It’s easier to hate you, too,” she said and his head snapped toward her. “You told me you didn’t want me. You rejected me. Twice. Do you think it’s easy for me to swallow my pride and be here now?”

  He hadn’t thought of that.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t suppose it is.”

  “He was sick,” she said and his body went on alert. He had told Iris he didn’t want to know anything about Jonah, that he wanted to learn everything on his own. But his methods weren’t working and he was thirsty for information, for details about his son. “For so long. Pneumonia and asthma and fevers. We thought the chicken pox was going to kill him. But he was so tough.” She smiled, looking at the baby.

  I should have been there, he wanted to scream, his anger and resentment surging like high tide. You should have told me. I should have known. I would have helped. I would have sat by his bed with you. I would have worried and cried and—

  “Jonah would kill me for telling you this, but you have to understand where he’s coming from,” Iris said, staring at the river. “Jonah was always an outsider. He was too small and too sick most of the time to play outside with other kids. And just when he’d get better, something else would happen and he’d be back in the hospital or on bed rest. So, he didn’t have many friends. He had me and he had Sheila. When he was little I used to hear him playing in his room and he would pretend that he was in the Boy Scouts or at summer camp. He would make up stories about his father and his six brothers.” She held the baby tighter as the breeze from the river blew through the gazebo. “He’d pretend you were all lumberjacks. Or policemen. Or firefighters. Something strong and big. Manly.” She glanced at him over her shoulder. “You don’t have to be a psychologist to understand why.”

  Patrick shook his head. Nope. He didn’t. And his heart broke for that little boy, so alone and sick.

  “He found the letters you sent,” she said. “We had a tiny apartment and I thought I’d hid them carefully but when he was getting over the chicken pox, he found them. And everything changed.” She shook her head. “After that illness he wasn’t sick like that anymore. He got stronger. He got he
althier and as he got older he seemed to want to protect me. And that’s why he’s here.”

  “Protecting you from what?”

  “You, Patrick. He’s protecting me from getting hurt again by you.”

  The breeze was suddenly too cold and he felt every year he’d spent alone like a wall crushing him.

  She sat beside him, not touching him, but close enough that his skin could feel hers. He could smell the spicy, sweet scent of her perfume and it made him dizzy.

  “What are we going to do?” he asked, staring at the river.

  Touch her. Hold her. Make it better.

  Oh God, he wanted to. He wanted to be comforted. And he wanted to comfort her, even while he was the one hurting her.

  “Well,” she whispered, lifting Stella away from her chest and handing him to her. “I’ll tell you what I do. I come out here every day and I hold this little girl.”

  Patrick’s arms accepted the precious weight of his grandchild and the heaviness lifted momentarily from his chest.

  “And I forget about the past,” Iris told him. Her hand brushed his shoulder, a fingertip grazing the flesh of his neck. His whole body flooded with blood and sensation.

  He concentrated on Stella and waited for the feelings to recede. It took a while, considering how long he’d been ignoring such things. Iris sat beside him, gazing out at the water and the land, breathing deeply of the air and sighing as if everything she wanted was right here. Despite the pain. Despite the past.

  She sat as though there was nothing else to want in the whole world.

  5

  Jonah stopped running and stared at the For Sale sign nailed on the broken wooden fence. Wiping the sweat from his eyes he climbed the small embankment beside the gravel road and peered over the overgrown hedge at what was for sale.

  Land. Lots of it.

  A giant farmhouse with three outbuildings, one of them falling apart.

  His heart, pounding hard thanks to his six-minute miles, pounded harder.

  Few people knew it and no one really would believe it, but Jonah put a lot of stock in signs. Signs from God, signs from the planet, signs from his better sense.