A Case for Forgiveness

by Carol Ross

  “What? Of course you can—we almost had one.”

  “We made one, yes. But that was the easy part. The difficult part, for me, was holding on to it.”

  Jonah’s expression revealed he didn’t comprehend what she was saying. Understanding, then concern and sorrow followed, showing all over his face and Shay felt a sob forming within her. Tears began to well in her eyes and she blinked rapidly, forcing them away. Why couldn’t she get over this?

  “After the miscarriage I saw a doctor—a specialist. He said I would probably never be able to carry a baby to full term.”

  “Probably?”

  “Most likely,” she clarified. “But it doesn’t matter because I could never take that risk again.”

  “But, Shay—”

  “Don’t you see, Jonah? It was my fault our baby died. There’s something wrong with me, and I could never knowingly do that again to a man who loved me—or risk the life of an innocent baby that I helped to create.”

  * * *

  JONAH FELT HIS head spinning. The sensation worsened as the significance of Shay’s words sunk in. Shay not having children seemed too cruel and impossible to believe, like some kind of beautiful flower not ever being able to bloom.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Her voice held a note of sorrow. “When would I have told you, Jonah? We had broken up, remember? You were away at law school. Then you moved to Chicago. I’ve seen you a handful of times in ten years and our only real conversation was a disaster.”

  Jonah raised his face toward the sky. He peered upwards for a moment before lowering his gaze back to hers. This was going to hurt but he had to say it.

  He kept his tone as gentle as he could manage. “Maybe if I would have known you were pregnant at the time, Shay, instead of finding out later the way I did, things would have been different. Maybe they would be different between us now. Have you ever thought of that? That you were wrong in not telling me that you were pregnant until the baby was already gone?”

  She didn’t answer. Only stared. Like a statue—a beautiful, lovely, wounded statue.

  It hurt to look at her, so he tore his eyes away and muttered, “I never should have listened to your stupid brother when he told me I couldn’t see you...” He looked at her again. “When had you planned to tell me?”

  Shay’s voice sounded strong, but Jonah’s heart ached to see the tears streaming down her face. “When you came home for Thanksgiving—I was going to tell you then because I hoped it would be too late for you to withdraw for the semester. You had just started at Yale, Jonah. That was your dream. I didn’t want you to come back home just because I was pregnant.”

  Jonah fought hard to keep his composure. Finally, he looked up and absorbed her pain-filled expression like a blow. “I see.”

  She blew out a loud breath. “I’m glad—that you understand, Jonah, because it felt like the right thing to do—”

  She seemed so relieved by the out she’d perceived that he was giving her that he nearly shouted with frustration. What she’d done hadn’t been fair to him. Yes, he’d screwed up, but so had she.

  “No, no,” he said. “That’s not what I mean. I’m still angry. You should have told me sooner, Shay. It was my baby, too. And as selfless as that decision felt to you at the time—you were being selfish, too. You don’t get to decide how someone else might feel or think or react and then make decisions for them. You always think you know what’s best for everyone else...”

  Jonah felt himself choking up at the stricken look on her face, but he forced himself to finish the thought.

  “That’s what you did, Shay. You made a decision for me instead of allowing me to make it myself.”

  * * *

  SHAY LISTENED AND took the hit and was too tired of fighting the tears. They felt hot though and stung her skin, so she wiped at them with a frustrated hand.

  Jonah was right; he’d had every right to know.

  And she had done that—made that decision for him. Why should he make this easy on her? She’d never done that for him. In fact, she’d been so blinded by her own pain that she’d never really stopped to consider how he might feel. How many times over the years had she called him selfish? She prided herself on being accepting and not judging others, but that’s exactly what she’d done. She’d judged the man she loved more than any other person in the world—and she’d judged him the harshest.

  “You’re right, Jonah. I’m sorry. I should have told you about the baby when I was pregnant, not after I had lost it, but you had so much on your plate. We both did. I was grieving over Grandpa and I had just inherited the inn. I was reeling from the idea of running my own business and terrified about having a baby without you, and absolutely heartbroken over our break-up, but still, it was wrong of me to keep it from you.”

  Jonah stared at her.

  “I’m a control freak. I know that about myself and that it’s not pretty. I don’t know why I try to control everything.”

  Shay wished she could read his mind. His exquisite blue eyes were wide and serious and filled with something that looked like pain and...pity? She didn’t want him to pity her. Which is partly why she’d never told him—why she’d only told so few that she couldn’t carry a baby to full term. She didn’t want pity and she didn’t want her failing as a woman to be a topic of conversation. Only a handful of people knew—Janie, Tag, Bering, the requisite medical professionals, and Hannah—whom she’d only recently told in light of Hannah’s own struggles.

  Then, like a shooting star, something he’d said flared brightly through her brain. “Tag said you couldn’t see me?”

  “Yes, but looking at things from his perspective I would probably have done the same thing. And Shay—if I would have been stronger, if things hadn’t already been so messed up between us—I would have just shoved your brother out of the way and barged through the door. I was scared and I didn’t know what you would do—”

  “Door? What door?”

  “The hospital door.”

  “The hospital...?”

  “I went to the hospital, Shay. I flew home after you called me and told me you’d lost the baby. I called Janie. You didn’t know?”

  Something cracked open inside of her—the tightly sealed container where she’d kept so many emotions secreted away all these years. She felt forgiveness begin to bloom; Jonah had come to see her?

  She’d always had this vision of him laughing and talking with his law-school friends without a care in the world, walking the campus paths of Yale, too busy to think about her or what she was going through—or to mourn the tiny life they’d created out of so much love and then lost. She’d imagined him filled with relief that he wasn’t saddled with her and an accidental family back in the small town he despised.

  “I didn’t know,” she whispered.

  “I came back to Rankins, missed a couple weeks of class—thought I was going to flunk out, tried not to call you every day, moped around and felt utterly helpless. I called Janie instead to see how you were.”

  “I can’t believe you were there,” she repeated. The idea that he had been in Rankins—that close to her for all of those days that had turned into weeks, trying to muster the energy to go on without him and without their baby—her last link to this man she’d loved with all of her soul. Thinking of that time, even now, was almost more than she could bear. He could have held her and comforted her and made everything so much better.

  “I was.”

  Shay’s chest felt so tight she could hardly breathe, barely speak. “Janie told me you called, but she never said you were in town.”

  “She probably didn’t know—I never told her. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want to see anyone except you. Gramps knew of course, but he kept it to himself at my request.”

  Shay let out a strained chuckle through her tears. “That was quite a feat to pull off in Rankins.”

  Jonah smiled and his face was a mix of pain and affection. “Tag also told me tha
t you said you hated me.”

  “Did he?” Shay asked. She looked at Jonah and placed a hand to her forehead for a few seconds. “That might be true. I was so confused I probably did. Those hormones are brutal. I hated everything there for a while—myself included. If I hadn’t had to pick myself up to run the inn I don’t know what I would have done.”

  Jonah shrugged the pack off of his shoulders and lowered it to the ground. He stepped toward her and took her in his strong arms. And she let him. Again. She turned her head to rest her cheek on his broad chest and she cried. Again. She cried for the impossible circumstances that had resulted in their break-up, the excruciating pain of losing their baby, and for the cruel fact that she’d never be able to have another. The thought slipped out that if she could only have Jonah it would make that last one so much easier to bear. She instantly felt guilty because she knew she could never do that to him, deny him a family.

  Jonah kissed the top of her head and whispered into her hair, “When I think about how things were between us during the years we were together—how happy we were, and I compare that to then? And to now? I don’t get how we managed to make such a mess of things.”

  Shay lifted her head and stared up at him. “I didn’t hate you, Jonah. I’ve never hated you.”

  “I know,” he said and his eyes were all soft and smoky. And then his gaze traveled down toward her lips, and suddenly his mouth was lowering toward hers. A thousand thoughts, wants, needs, protestations, started to tumble around in her brain, but they all dissolved the second his lips touched hers. His kiss was sweet and gentle and created a painful stab of longing within her. She wished it didn’t have to end, because like all those years ago, and then the other day at Agnes’s funeral, being in his arms made it seem that everything would turn out okay.

  He pulled away, but held her face for a few long moments. “That,” he finally said and kissed her again quickly, “feels like progress.”

  * * *

  “WHICH FLY YOU gonna start with—a little hairy caddis?” Caleb had asked as they started walking along the trail.

  “I was thinking a prince nymph.”

  “Ha, good—you use that and I’ll use an elk-hair caddis and we’ll see who has better luck.”

  “Deal,” Doc said.

  And then, when they’d been on the trail a while with no chance of being overheard, Caleb waited for the inevitable question.

  It didn’t take long. “Caleb, you purposely left that expensive camera of hers on that rock, didn’t you?”

  “Desperate times, Doc. Desperate times...”

  Doc emitted a heavy sigh. “There wasn’t even a bear down there, was there?”

  “Well...probably.”

  “You didn’t see a bear though, did you?”

  “When?”

  “Caleb!”

  “Darn it, Doc,” Caleb said with a chuckle. “Do I need an attorney here?”

  * * *

  THE INEVITABLE CONFRONTATION went down much more smoothly than Shay had anticipated it would.

  Shay and Jonah had caught up to Caleb and Doc, who were hooking one fish after the other and then arguing about everything from who caught the most to who caught the biggest. Then they all trooped to the lake where Bering and Tag were waiting for them as planned.

  Tag pounced on the first opportunity to talk to her alone. She stood at the edge of the lake after rinsing her hands of fish scales in the ice-cold water.

  “So, I heard you guys had to hike back down to find your camera?”

  She nodded. “Yep.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Tag, you never told me Jonah came to the hospital.”

  “I didn’t?” He looked truly confused and Shay knew he was telling the truth.

  “No, and you also told him I hated him.”

  “Well, that you did say.”

  “I was hormonal, Tag. I hated everything.”

  “So...you don’t hate him?”

  “No. And you should probably lighten up—maybe even apologize. There were some misunderstandings.”

  Tag frowned and said, “I won’t let him break your heart again.”

  Shay wished there was a way he could keep that promise. “You don’t have to worry about that, okay? We aren’t getting back together. He’s returning to Chicago. I’m staying here.” She didn’t clarify that she could never be with Jonah, knowing she couldn’t give him the children she knew he wanted.

  Tag reached over and took her wrist and squeezed gently. “I love you, you know that, right?”

  She grinned and responded the same way that she had hundreds of times over the years to that very same statement. “Me, too. Always have, always will.”

  They exchanged a smile and then she asked, “Tag, was the window really broken?”

  “Yes, but that isn’t why I came on this trip.”

  She felt a stab of love for her overprotective oaf of a brother. “You really are the best brother in the world.”

  “I am,” he said soberly. “I only wish you were a better sister.”

  She punched him hard on the shoulder.

  “Ouch,” he said, rubbing the spot as he walked over and picked up his fishing rod.

  Bering kept a couple canoes at the lake. He rowed Gramps and Doc out in one, while Tag and Jonah went out in another, presumably exchanging a series of one-word sentences and grunts that would pass as apologies and explanations. Shay opted to stay on shore and fish around the lake, where she did more thinking than she did fishing.

  She realized that Jonah was right—they had made progress, a lot of it really, when she thought about it. And even though the kiss had been a mistake—a case of getting carried away in an emotional moment—she realized that they had managed to slay the biggest monster that had prevented them both from reaching a place of true forgiveness.

  Something profound had changed inside her as well because Jonah had, after all, come home.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “SHAY, BEFORE YOU get too upset, let me explain.”

  “Hannah,” she said carefully, “are there or are there not goldfish in five of our guest’s bathtubs?”

  “No...”

  Shay had turned her phone on as Jonah drove past the inn and pulled up in front of her house, which was a mere hundred yards away from the inn’s front door. She’d discovered three texts from Hannah asking her to come straight to the inn when she returned from the fishing trip. She’d had Jonah turn around and drop her at the inn. Hannah was working at the front desk, so she’d stowed her pack behind the counter and waited until the guest Hannah was helping departed.

  So, here she was, three days without a shower, still in her hiking clothes and undoubtedly oozing an aromatic combination of fish, dirt, bug spray and sweat while learning a valuable lesson; three days away from the inn could, in fact, result in consequences as bad as she’d feared—and apparently even some that she could never have dreamt up.

  “Then why—”

  “Shay, we call them koi—remember?”

  “Hannah!”

  “Yes! Yes, there are koi in some of the guest rooms, but I don’t want you to worry—everything is fine.”

  “Fine?” In all of her worrying and wild speculation she had never anticipated this one. Fire, earthquake, flood (unlikely, she knew, but she’d still considered it), but not guests sharing their rooms with live fish. She prayed no one had called the health department. She should have known better than to leave.

  “Shay, don’t worry. The koi are all fine. We didn’t lose a single one. We had to work really fast. Thank goodness Adele grabbed some of those big bins from the kitchen that we store vegetables in.”

  Shay made a mental note to place an order for new vegetable bins—and to thank Adele for her quick thinking.

  “Anyway, I called Mr. Takagi and he told me I did the right thing. He left a portable aerator in case of an emergency, which we are moving from tub to tub, so the koi are getting plenty of oxygen. And thankfully, Mr
s. Milner will be ready for the fish to be delivered tomorrow. We don’t want to stress them out any more than they already have been. Tomorrow—isn’t that great? I’m excited for them all to have a permanent home.”

  “That is...great.”

  “I know. Mrs. Milner’s pond is spectacular.”

  “But, Hannah, where are the guests that are supposed to be in those rooms now?”

  “Oh, right. Two of the people don’t mind sharing their bathrooms with the koi until we can get them out, two of the couples are at Abigail’s Bed & Breakfast, and one guy hasn’t shown up yet.”

  “Now please explain how this happened.”

  “Before I do that I need to tell you the bad news.”

  If Hannah was inferring that the fact that there were valuable ornamental fish being housed in the inn’s bathtubs as “good news,” she didn’t think she even wanted to hear the rest.

  “What?”

  “Well, you know Mr. Weird-Sheets?”

  “Mr. Konrad?”

  “Yeah, the jerk-face might be suing us.”

  “Suing us? Hannah, you didn’t—”

  “No, I didn’t do anything to him, Shay. Bear with me—it all ties in. But I feel I need to preface this story by pointing out something that you obviously already know—we have warnings posted all over the place about getting too close to the wildlife. There’s even one on the paper that guests sign when they check in. This whole unfortunate incident was totally his fault. We should sue him for the pain and stress he’s caused us and the koi.”

  Wildlife? Shay couldn’t even conjure up a visual of what Hannah could possibly be referring to. She gestured impatiently for her to continue.

  “So, Mr. Konrad was out at the pond looking at the koi and photographing them. Probably that’s the only wildlife he’s seen at this point—the jerk—”

  “Skip the director’s commentary for now.”

  “Okay. Clara came in with her calf.”

  “No.”

  “Yep, probably looking for a cool drink for her and the baby—that calf is so funny...” She nodded once as if to get herself back on track. “Anyway, Mr. Konrad gets all excited and decides to take some photos of her and the calf—close-up photos. You can see where this is going, right? I can tell by the look on your face that you can. He got too close to the baby and Clara charged. He tried to run, but the pond was in the way. Toppled right into it, Clara went in after him—or the front half of her did anyway—stomping feet and thrashing.”