A Season Of Miracles

by Christine Michels

  And now, despite it all, Geoff was back .alive. Her eyes diank in the sight of him, observing the tilt of his head, the set of his shoulders. And Tyler, so like his father in many ways, was still clinging to an anger she didn’t understand.

  “Nothing came of the counselling?” Geoff asked, stirring Devon from her thoughts.

  She shook her head. “It didn’t do any good. Tyler wouldn’t talk to him The counsellor told me that, in his opinion, Tyler was probably angry with his father for dying and angry with me for the confrontation he’d witnessed between us.” She shrugged. “I’d figured that much out for myself. What I needed to know was how to reach him. Nobody could tell me that. ‘Be patient,’ the counsellor said. ‘We each have to work through our grief in our own way.’ ” She sighed and raked her fingers through her bangs, lifting them off her forehead “I have to confess that my patience is wearing pretty thin ”

  “Do you want me to talk with him?” Geoff asked.

  Devon went still. It was not a question she’d been expecting, and yet she knew she should have. Geoff was Tyler’s father Was she ready for him to assume a more prominent role in the children’s lives so quickly? She was afraid that she might start to rely on him, to need him in their lives, and she knew she wasn’t ready for that yet. Then again, his primary reason for returning to Kelowna was to try to reclaim his life, and involvement with his children was part of that Could she deny him that because of her own fears?

  Finally, she nodded. “If you want to.”

  “I think we need to find out where that anger is coming from. Don’t you?” His intense green-eyed gaze held her captive for a moment before her gaze drifted to the table where he was fingering the handle of his coffee cup.

  Devon swallowed, for she doubted in her heart that Geoff’s talk with Tyler would accomplish much. But he was his father, and somehow he was at the root of Tyler’s anger. Perhaps... “You’re certainly welcome to try. I have some laundry to finish up anyway as soon as Britanny and I are finished with the dishes.”

  “Sure,” Geoff said as he rose. He sounded absent, as though his mind had already moved beyond this room.

  Chapter 10

  Geoff paused in the hall outside his son’s room The door was open and he could see Tyler sitting at a student’s desk situated in front of his bedroom window. He was leaning on his hands staring from the window into the yard next door rather than working.

  Geoff knocked on the door frame Tyler whipped around as though prepared to quarrel, but arrested in mid-gesture when he saw who it was “May I come in?” Geoff asked.

  Tyler stared at him a moment, and then seemed to recover. “Why?” he asked suspiciously

  “I thought you might like to talk ”

  “What about?”

  Geoff decided to regard that as an invitation to enter the room, and he moved In to sit on the foot of the bed, facing Tyler. Meeting his son’s fractious gaze, he said simply, “Whatever you want. About me maybe. About school. About cleaning your room Whatever.”

  “Cleaning sucks.” Tyler scowled and turned back to look out the window

  Geoff followed his gaze to see an attractive blond girl in the neighboring yard. She was sweeping the thin layer of snow that had fallen that day off of a cedar deck. “Who’s she?”

  “Brandi MacNeil.”

  Geoff nodded. “Nice. You’ve got good taste.”

  “Yeah,” Tyler said. And then, apparently realizing what his agreement betrayed, he shrugged and added in a nonchalant tone, “She’s okay for a girl, I guess.” He picked up a pencil and began tapping the desk with it as he stared out the window.

  Geoff doubted that the boy actually saw anything; his mind was elsewhere. “So, do you want some help cleaning up?” he asked, wondering even as he did so if his help would be rebuffed.

  Tyler took a quick survey of his room, then shook his head. “Naw. I can do it.” He was silent a moment, and then asked a question that revealed another direction of thought entirely. “How can a person get hit on the head and forget everything?”

  Another doubter. Only this time it was important that Geoff find a way to explain the situation. “Have you ever hit your head really hard?” he asked. “So hard that you see little dots of light dancing in your head for a second?”

  Tyler nodded. “Kinda. I got hit in the head with a baseball last year It knocked me out for a second. But I didn’t forget nothin’.”

  Geoff nodded. “Most people don’t. But sometimes when a person hits their head really hard, it hurts the brain. That’s called a concussion. If the brain swells too much, people sometimes die because of the pressure in their skull. The doctors say that that’s almost what happened to me. Even though I lived, my brain didn’t quite heal itself so it doesn’t work exactly the way it used to. Do you understand?”

  Tyler considered. “Kinda, I guess ” Then he frowned. “No, not really.”

  “All right, here’s an example. The first time I saw a truck, I knew what it was, but I didn’t know if I knew how to drive it or not. I couldn’t remember ever driving But, as soon as I sat in the driver’s seat, somehow I knew what to do. How to start it, how to put it in gear, and how to drive. And it works the same for a lot of things—using a computer, dancing, cooking, and so on It’s like those memories are intact, but stored in a different place and I have to learn how to find them.”

  Tyler’s eyes widened as though he’d finally heard an analogy that he could understand. “Like a computer hard drive that got kinda scrambled by a power surge?”

  “Exactly.”

  He frowned. “So how come you don’t remember people when you meet ’em?”

  Geoff sighed inwardly. “Well, I don’t understand it totally myself. Even the doctors don’t know everything about how amnesia works. But, from what I understand there are a couple of different kinds of memory. I haven’t been able to find my personal memories yet, the memories that tell me who I am.”

  “They still scrambled?”

  “Maybe,” Geoff acknowledged with a nod Or erased. But he didn’t want to voice that fear. Not yet

  Tyler started twisting the pencil in his hand. He was silent for a long tune, and then he murmured without looking up, “My dad said he’d be back in a week. He promised me he wouldn’t leave us. But.. he did. He left us.” There were tears in those quietly spoken final three words.

  A lump rose in Geoff’s throat. Since Tyler wanted to talk about his father in the third person, he’d go along with it. Anything to get the kid talking “You talked to your dad before he left?”

  Tyler nodded. “After him and Mom had that fight.”

  “And that’s when he promised you he was coming back?”

  Again Tyler nodded.

  “Did your dad break a lot of promises?” Geoff asked quietly.

  “Yeah, sometimes,” the boy whispered. And then he appeared to reconsider “But only at the end cause he’d forget. Before that he almost never did.”

  Geoff frowned. More evidence that he’d been under some kind of intense strain in his last few months. What the hell could have happened? “Do you think anything could have made your dad break his promise not to leave you if he’d remembered it?”

  The boy was silent for a long moment. His throat worked as he swallowed, and then he shrugged and said, “I dunno,” in a sullen tone barely above a whisper. “He was mad at us a lot I asked him why, but he wouldn’t tell me.”

  Geoff considered the boy and felt tears sting the backs of his own eyes All this time Tyler had been blaming himself for his father’s death, thinking that he’d done something to make his father angry enough to leave them. Jesus! Geoff swallowed What the hell had he done to this family before his accident? No wonder Devon wanted some assurance that it wouldn’t happen again. And how, now, did he explain to this young man, the son he didn’t remember having, what might have been wrong?

  “Tyler, do you know how sometimes when you’re really angry with one person it makes you so upset that ever
yone around you knows that you’re angry?”

  Tyler thought about that for a second and then nodded a bit hesitantly. “Yeah,” he murmured “Sometimes when I’m mad at Mom, Britanny knows and comes to talk to me to try to make me feel better about it.”

  Geoff nodded. “Are you nice to Britanny when she does that?”

  Tyler shrugged and looked toward the window.

  “What do you think Britanny would think if you were rude to her and she didn’t know that you were angry with your mother?”

  Silence, and then, “I guess she’d think I was mad at her.”

  “Would she be right?”

  Tyler shook his head and then slowly turned to look at Geoff. “Do you think that’s what happened with my dad?”

  Geoff nodded. “Yeah, I do. I’m sure he wasn’t angry with you, or anyone in the family But something bad was bothering him.”

  “Then why didn’t—” Tyler broke off as his voice broke and he battled back the emotion. “Why didn’t he come home like he promised then?” he finished in a whisper.

  Geoff swallowed the lump in his throat. “There is nothing on this earth that could make me break a promise to you if I’d remembered it, son. Nothing! You have my word on that.”

  Abruptly Tyler lifted his head to level a narrow-eyed look at Geoff. “My dad died. That’s why he didn’t come back. My dad wouldn’t forget me. Ever! He wouldn’t!” He flung himself around in his chair until he was facing the window again. “Just go away,” he said more quietly now. “You’re not my dad. You can’t be.”

  Geoff considered Tyler for a moment, wondering which direction to go from here. Finally he said, “I’ve always been your father, Tyler Even when I didn’t remember. And I’ll be your father for the rest of your life. I’d like to be your dad again too—if you’ll let me.” Rising, he moved toward the door

  “Dad—” The word was hoarse, barely audible, but it was enough to stop Geoff in his tracks. Slowly, he turned to face his son. The boy was standing now, facing him with eyes that begged for understanding, eyes that shimmered with emotional pam.

  Sensing that fear of rejection kept Tyler from making the first move, Geoff opened his arms and took a step toward his son. His heart was in his throat, and for a moment he feared that he would be the one to be rejected. And then, as though his gesture was the signal that Tyler had been waiting for, the boy sobbed and flung himself across the room, into Geoff’s arms. Geoff closed his eyes and simply held his son. The silent quaking of Tyler’s shoulders told him how much his young son had suffered in his absence. It wasn’t fair! None of what this family had endured was fair. And, if it was the last thing he did, he was going to find out what or who had been behind it all.

  Standing in the hall outside Tyler’s room, Devon clutched the basket of laundry and swallowed the painful lump that had risen in her throat She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but when she’d heard the nature of the exchange within, she hadn’t been able to help it. And, she’d heard enough of what had been said to know that her son had just taken his first step toward bridging the emotional chasm that had separated him from everyone else during the past two years.

  “Are you sure you don’t want some help cleaning up?” Geoff was asking now. “I actually got pretty good at cleaning up after living by myself for a while.”

  There was a pause. “Okay,” Tyler said. “But I got to give you something first.”

  There was a moment of silence. “The Life of Tyler Geoffrey Grayson,” Geoff read. “Thank you, son. It means a lot to me.”

  “Sure. You’re welcome.” Devon heard the nonchalant shrug in her son’s voice and recognized it for what it was—male pride.

  The sound of toys being put into boxes followed and Devon was about to continue on to Britanny’s room to put her daughter’s clothing away when Tyler suddenly asked, “Did you ever get lonely?”

  “All the time, son. All the time.”

  Me too, she thought, dragging herself away. Me too.

  It was Tuesday. She and Geoff had spent the previous evening taking inventory of the items in his home office. This morning, with the Christmas weekend over and business getting back to normal, they’d made arrangements for the private phone line in that office to be reconnected, and then she’d taken him to the industrial park where Future-Tech maintained its offices and warehouse, and reintroduced him to his company. He’d seemed to get along well with the employees he met, though she’d seen more than one considering glance cast his way when his back was turned. Nobody seemed to know quite what to make of him now Least of all her brother, Winston, who still worked in the programming department of Future-Tech.

  Winston had asked Devon about the new coldness in Geoff, the sense that he held himself apart from everyone around him. But, what could she tell him? Yes, she sensed it, too. No, she didn’t know where it came from. Somehow the accident had done more than rob Geoff of his memory; it had changed his personality, creating a man more comfortable with aloneness, with holding himself apart from those around him, than the Geoff they knew had ever been.

  But, she and Geoff had gotten through the first day of his reintroduction to his past life, and no one had raised the specter of possible criminal charges. She’d had to leave Geoff for a time while she went in to her own office to take care of some of the business that had piled up in her absence and to make arrangements for her assistant to continue holding the fort as much as possible. She and Geoff had agreed to meet back at home for dinner.

  Now, she pulled onto the interlocking stone dnve and halted her Jeep Cherokee without bothering to pull into the garage. Sitting there for a moment, she studied the house, viewing her home through new eyes.

  What did Geoff see when he looked at it?

  Flanked by scores of pine trees, the two-story stone and cedar house perched on a rocky bluff overlooking Kelowna and, beyond the city, the winter gray waters of Lake Okanagan. It wasn’t the spectacular view David enjoyed from his waterfront condo, but it wasn’t bad either. She loved it here. Geoff had once, too. But he’d changed so much in the two years they’d been apart that she was no longer certain how he’d feel about it. In Kelowna, he wouldn’t find the kind of solitude that he’d enjoyed in Northridge.

  With a weary sigh, Devon gathered up the auto body estimates she’d had done for the repairs on the Jeep and collected the stack of mail she’d retrieved from the group mailbox at the end of the lane, before striding toward the house. It was a warm afternoon in late December. Another mild winter in the Okanagan. In just a few months, the valley would be redolent with the scents of fresh greenery and fruit trees in bloom. The start of the new year was only two days away. It was a good time for a fresh outlook; a new lease on life.

  She hoped.

  She entered the house through the side door from the garage directly into the kitchen. The smell of freshly made popcorn permeated the air and the distinctive rhythm of rap music drifted down from the second floor indicating that her two children had made a snack. Gayle, the seventeen-year-old neighbor girl that Devon arranged to stay with the kids on holidays and after school on the days that she couldn’t be there, began packing up her things in preparation for heading home.

  “How were they?” Devon asked as she dug in her purse for the money she owed the girl

  “They were good,” Gayle assured her as she tucked the money into her pocket. “Thanks. Call if you need me tomorrow Bye.”

  “Bye,” Devon said, and then looked toward the stairs “Britanny, Tyler, I’m home,” she called as she dropped the bills on the desk in the corner of the kitchen where they joined a small stack of their counterparts. She wrinkled her nose as she realized that it was almost time to sit down and do the monthly bill-paying. Short of scrubbing toilets, it was her least favorite household task.

  “Hi, Mom,” Britanny’s voice wafted down to her A moment later the child peered over the oak banister bordering the upper hall and Devon felt a tug of maternal pride. “Grams is coming over to get Tyler and me
We’re having dinner at her place, then she’s taking us to a movie. Tyler and I are going to stay over at her place again tonight if it’s all right with you.”

  Devon stared up at her daughter in confusion. “Why? You just spent a week with Gram.”

  Britanny shrugged. “She said she wants to spend some more time with us while we’re on Christmas break and that you and Dad need some time to talk.”

  “Oh.” Well, she guessed she couldn’t argue with that. “All right, dear. Where’s Tyler?”

  Britanny shrugged. “He’s in his room, I think.” And then she was winging her way back to her own room on flying feet. The child never walked anywhere.

  Devon contemplated going up to check on Tyler and thought better of it Their confrontations just kept getting worse as her twelve-year-old son strained against the bonds of parental guidance. Devon had no wish to provoke more dissension between them.

  She checked her watch. She had a little time before she needed to begin dinner preparations, since it would be just her and Geoff for dinner tonight. Just her and Geoff! Uh-oh! Suddenly she desperately wanted to keep the children home, a buffer against emotions she wasn’t prepared to face. But she couldn’t. Not without revealing too much of her inner turmoil to her too-perceptive mother, and to Geoff. So, she’d just have to concentrate on other things. Like work.

  Going into the workroom she’d had constructed behind the garage, she retrieved her sketch pad, charcoal pencils and pastels from a shelf, and moved into the living room where she always found her conceptual creativity performed best. Besides, sometimes work helped to clarify the confusion of her personal life more than countless hours of deliberation could. She had a little more than an hour to devote to beginning work on a new, very promising stained-glass contract and she intended to make the most of it.

  Her clients, a wealthy couple from Hong Kong, had a beautiful home with massive two-story windows overlooking a spectacular view. Rather than curtains, the Lings wanted something different for their windows. Something that wouldn’t block the light, but enhance it A stained-glass design in panels on electronically controlled tracks which allowed them to slide over the standard windows would be perfect.