The Wishing Tree in Irish Falls

by Jen Gilroy

  “She still does and she’s—”

  “Not going to be able to get up to be at work at five thirty tomorrow morning if she doesn’t get a move on.” Annie cut Tara off and picked up her purse from beside the chair.

  “Hannah?”

  “Mom.” Hannah did her eye roll.

  “You have school tomorrow,” Annie said.

  “My kids and I do too.” From the far side of the living room, Rowan got out of the club chair that had belonged to their dad.

  Hannah and her cousins groaned in unison.

  “Shouldn’t things ease off now the school play is over?” Annie studied her sister.

  Rowan was the youngest sister and worked as a fifth-grade teacher at the local elementary school.

  “I wish.” Rowan’s laugh had a bitter note. “But I got roped into helping organize the end-of-year carnival and I’ve picked up some outside tutoring too. Somebody has to put food on the table.”

  And that somebody wouldn’t be Rowan’s ex-husband. Annie bit back a sigh and glanced at her mom, who had a worried pucker between her eyebrows.

  “I also have a radio show to do early tomorrow morning.” Seth’s smile was directed at Annie’s mom. “It’s been a pleasure, Maureen, Duncan.” He included Annie’s stepdad. “Thanks for your hospitality.”

  “Our pleasure.” Duncan smiled. “Jake was a fine man. You’ve got big boots to fill.”

  “So I hear.” Seth picked up the guitar case. “But I hope people come to respect me for myself, not only as Jake’s nephew.” When he turned to Annie, his smile changed. Although the warmth was still there, it was shaded with a darker, more sensual edge. “And not hold being a city guy against me.”

  Annie tried to smile back, even as her stomach flipped. When she’d been Hannah’s age, she’d had her life planned out. She’d make it as a singer, and she’d find a city guy who’d be her passport to a bigger and more exciting world than Irish Falls. She’d found the guy, but, thanks to him, she’d lost her singing career, her college education, and a father for Hannah. Then, just like a homing pigeon, Annie had ended up right back in the small-town world she’d started from.

  She already liked Seth way too much for comfort. Only by thinking of him as that kind of city guy could she stop herself from liking him even more.

  Chapter 6

  “You still look rough, buddy.” Just after noon the next day, Brendan met Seth outside the studio door and handed him a black coffee. “If you aren’t used to it, getting up so early can be a real killer, especially on Mondays. It gets easier, I swear.”

  Seth took a sip of the piping hot brew. “Compared to when you start your morning, four thirty is late.” Even when he’d slept, he wasn’t used to getting up at four thirty but this morning, all he wanted was to get through the show, close the door on Jake’s apartment, and get out of town. Except he couldn’t do either of the last two because he and half the town were stuck on one side of the flooded Black Duck River, and the road out of town was on the other side and also flooded.

  “I’ll cover for you for a few hours if you want.” Brendan still studied him. “If you can handle the afternoon talk show, the other guys should be able to get in for the suppertime and evening slots.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but you run a bakery. You’re not a radio announcer.” Seth set the coffee mug aside and stared out one of the windows into the pouring rain.

  “And you are?” Brendan quirked a red-blond eyebrow. “I’ll make you look even better, won’t I? I dabbled in radio back in high school. Jake showed me the ropes. I covered slots before when he was short-staffed and nobody complained.” He flashed a masculine version of Annie’s smile. “At least not too much.”

  “Is anybody listening in this weather?” He’d been on the air for more than six hours today and wondered more than once if he was talking to himself.

  “This is when people listen to local radio most. The power’s off outside town, and this station’s a lifeline. They can manage without me at the bakery for now. Get some sleep. You look like you could use it. I’ll keep Dolly here so she doesn’t wake you. She’s already real attached to you.”

  Like he was already real attached to the mutt. “Thanks.” He gave Brendan a thumbs-up. “I owe you.”

  “No, you don’t.” Brendan’s smile broadened. “My wife likes hearing me on the radio. It makes her real affectionate. She sent me up here to help you out. You’re doing me the favor.”

  “Rub it in, why don’t you? I’m single, remember?” Seth slapped Brendan’s shoulder. “I’ll be back by three, unless we slide into Irish Falls before then.” A distinct possibility, given the river of mud behind the station and the rain that still pounded against the windows.

  He moved down the short hallway and opened the door to Jake’s apartment. His chest tightened. To the right of the sofa, the pine dresser was as he’d left it with the bottom drawer half open. And Jake’s letter still sat on the dinette table. He bit his lip and stood in the small foyer, shifting from one foot to the other.

  “Seth?” Annie’s voice came from the half open door behind him, and he jerked his head around. “I brought you some food. You were on the air for hours so you must be starving.”

  He moved toward her and took the tray she held out. “Thanks, I—”

  “What’s wrong?” Annie took one look at him, shut the door, and came into the apartment. “Have you had bad news from your son?”

  “No.” Because Dylan wasn’t talking to him. “He’s fine.” He had to be. Somebody would have called Seth if he wasn’t. He set the tray on the dinette table with a hollow thud.

  “Then what is it?” Annie pulled out a chair and pushed Seth into it.

  “Nothing.” Only that as soon as he’d started to get a handle on things, the world had caved in on him again.

  “Yeah, right. I live with a teenage girl. I know when someone is lying to me.” Annie took the cover off a bowl and fragrant steam rose off it. “I made my stick-to-your ribs chicken soup with dumplings. You might not want to talk, but you still need to eat.”

  “You must be real busy at the bakery.” Although Tara had come up first, followed by Holly, and then Brendan, he’d missed Annie—even though he didn’t want to consider why.

  “It’s quieter now, but we had people lined up outside the door earlier.” She slid a plate of thick-sliced soda bread next to the bowl of fragrant soup. “Thank goodness Tara and my mom live on this side of town so they could come in. Since Rowan’s school is closed, she’s here as backup. I even called Hannah to help because her school bus didn’t run.”

  Seth scooped up a spoonful of soup, and the warm broth soothed his throat, raw from emotion, as well as all those hours he’d been on the air.

  “So apart from what some folks are calling the flood of the century, what happened between last night and this morning?” Annie sat across the table from him. Instead of a Quinn’s apron and her hair tucked up in a net, she wore jeans and a blue sweater, and her hair tumbled in loose waves on her shoulders—a wholesome, fresh-scrubbed look he hadn’t expected to find so appealing.

  “Why do you think something happened? I did the show and more, didn’t I?” He flinched as the building shook in the wind.

  “You’re a pro, city guy. Like Jake. He’d be proud of you.” The tenderness in Annie’s smile ripped at Seth’s heart.

  He dropped his spoon with a clatter, and soup splashed onto the table. “You all think Jake was so perfect, but he wasn’t.”

  “I don’t understand.” Annie’s smile slipped. “He had some rough times before he came here. Maybe he did things he wasn’t proud of, but—”

  “He sure did.” Seth shoved the soup bowl away and grabbed Jake’s letter from beside the tray. “Last night after I came home, I went through the drawers of that dresser ove
r there you gave me the key to. The top one was full of music stuff. Songs he wrote and information from clubs he must have played at. The middle one had bank statements and bills. But the bottom drawer . . .” He let out a harsh breath. “Along with a bunch of pictures of me as a little kid, I found this.” He waved the single sheet of white paper toward her. “He must have written it right before he went into the hospital.”

  Annie twisted her hands together. “He was dying and maybe—”

  “Don’t excuse him.” He spat out the words because what Seth had read in that letter made him want to die too, except he wouldn’t give the lying bastard the satisfaction. “Read it.” He dropped the letter on the table between them.

  She picked it up and fingered the heavyweight paper. “It’s private.”

  “Not anymore. Go ahead. Read.” Seth swallowed the anger that rose up in his throat and threatened to choke him. It wasn’t Annie’s fault. All she’d done was give him the key to unlock something he might have been better off not knowing. The anger was at Jake and even himself. Deep down, maybe he’d always known the truth, but he’d avoided it.

  When Annie looked up from the letter, the shock and sadness in her eyes hit Seth like a kick to the belly. “I swear, I didn’t know. None of us did. That you’re not . . . you’re his—”

  “I’m Jake’s son, not his nephew.” His voice cracked, right along with his heart. “I told you my dad was out of the picture. The truth is, I never knew him. My mom never mentioned him, and I was too young to ask many questions. When I got older, I asked my grandparents but if they knew something, they wouldn’t tell me. There’s always been this big hole in my life, as if a part of me was missing.” He tried to steady his raspy breathing.

  “Your mom . . . she didn’t . . . on your birth certificate?” Annie reached for Seth’s hand and curled her stiff fingers around his.

  “Nothing on my birth certificate. Nothing anywhere.” Except for that big aching emptiness where his dad should have been. “Maybe my mom thought she had more time and she would have told me eventually, but she didn’t. And her folks were her only family.”

  “I’m sorry.” Her hand was warm on his, and he was glad she didn’t say anything else.

  “How could Jake do it? When my mom died, he left right after the funeral. He said he couldn’t stick around and that I’d understand when I was older, but he was my father. I was seven.”

  Annie’s grip on Seth’s hand tightened. “I can’t imagine,” she said, her voice thick. “You must have felt so lost and alone.”

  More than he could ever tell her or anyone else. And part of him still felt like that seven-year-old boy in the black cowboy boots. Those boots had been his mom’s last birthday gift to him, before leaving him all on his own in a big and scary world.

  “In this letter, Jake says that after he got his life together, maybe he should have fought for me and insisted on a paternity test, but at the time, he thought Mom’s parents could give me the good home he couldn’t. He didn’t even try, though.” And so, he’d relegated Seth to a loveless upbringing—the kind he’d been determined to not replicate with Dylan. His heart clenched as new pain rolled in to mix with the old.

  “Was your mom close to her parents?”

  “No. She left that so-called ‘good’ home as soon as she turned eighteen. They must have reconciled before her death—she wouldn’t have granted them guardianship of me otherwise—but there wasn’t a lot of love for her there. Or me, either.”

  His eyes stung, and he crumbled a piece of bread and tried to eat it. This kind of pain went beyond anger and superficial hurt to go deep into his bones and become part of who he was. “Mom waitressed and sang in clubs because she didn’t want to live on her parents’ money or be who they wanted her to be.”

  The wind buffeted the building again, but Annie’s gaze never left his.

  Seth rubbed the back of his free hand across his burning eyes. “Your family was like his family, but all along he had his own family. Me. Dylan. He never even bothered to get to know his grandson.”

  Annie disentangled her fingers from his, got up, and came around the table to sit beside him. “Why didn’t he say something to us? If he had, maybe I could have—”

  “What? Tried to make it right? What would you have said?”

  “I don’t know.” Her eyes were troubled. “The Jake I knew wasn’t the kind of man to abandon his child. I loved him. I trusted him.” Her voice was as raw as his. “What would you have said to him if he’d come back into your life when you were a teenager? Or if he were here now?”

  “I don’t know.” Seth dropped his head into his hands. Right now, he’d be more inclined to take a swing at the guy than talk to him.

  “He says he loved your mom. Do you think that’s true?” Her words were halting and laced with pain.

  Seth raised his head. “I was only a kid, but from the way he looked at her . . . yeah, I guess so, at least whatever love meant to him. And Mom, she . . . I never remember any other guy in her life but Jake. I knew he wasn’t her brother because she didn’t have siblings. I guess I thought Jake had something to do with my dad’s family.”

  “Did he dump her because she was pregnant?” Annie slumped in her chair. “If he did . . .” Her voice broke.

  “Not that I know of. Jake always seemed to be there when we needed him. Before my grandmother came on the scene, he even lived with us for a while after Mom got sick.” Seth’s chest tightened and it was hard to breathe. “I found a picture, it must have been around the time I was born because it looked like it was taken in a hospital, and it was of Jake, my mom, and me. He was holding me wrapped up in this blue blanket and together they looked happy . . . like they were like a—”

  “Like a family?” Annie’s voice was almost inaudible.

  “Yeah.” He spoke around the lump of grief and anger in his throat. “I found a bunch of other pictures with the three of us together, too. Jake came in and out of our lives, but he always came back.” Except for the last time when he hadn’t.

  “From the little Jake told us about his life, he was mostly on the road before he ended up here. He wasn’t exactly a drifter, but from a few things he let drop, it sounded like he was drinking a lot, maybe even doing some drugs.” Annie looked at Seth’s uneaten food. “He was never a drinker when I knew him. He wouldn’t even have a glass of wine at Christmas, but he once told my mom that Irish Falls was his second chance.” She exhaled slowly. “Sometimes he’d get this sad, almost defeated look in his eyes. Certain times of year were hard for him, like early July and Thanksgiving. Most years he’d go off for a week around then and not tell anybody where he’d been.”

  “My mom passed on Thanksgiving weekend.” Seth’s tongue was stiff and made it hard to shape the words. “And my birthday is right before Independence Day. Do you think . . .?” He blinked.

  “I don’t know, but he still left his child. No matter what a mess his life was in, what kind of man does that?” She pressed a hand to her stomach.

  “Someone I don’t want to call my father.” Seth’s voice was flat.

  A tear rolled down Annie’s face. “He must have had regrets and a whole lot of guilt. Why would he have written this letter for you to find if he hadn’t?”

  “Too little, too late.” A bitter taste infused Seth’s mouth.

  “Still, he must have wanted you and loved you once. He wouldn’t have kept tabs on you all these years if he hadn’t.” She gulped. “I know it’s not much, but at least you have that.”

  “But I also have to live the rest of my life with a bunch of questions I can never get answers to.” He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck.

  “I’m not defending Jake, and I can’t know how you feel because it hasn’t happened to me, but what comes next is up to you.” The warmth in Annie’s voice seeped into his f
rozen heart and thawed some of the ice that had encased it since he’d read Jake’s letter. And along with indignation, the steadiness in her expression gave Seth hope.

  “You won’t tell anybody about him being my dad? I need some time to process all this.” Starting with a profound sense of not only disorientation, but betrayal.

  “Not a word.” She patted his forearm, her touch consoling.

  “Thanks.” The word came out in an embarrassing croak like a boy whose voice was changing.

  “You’re welcome. I’m guessing you also need some space, so I’ll go. Just promise me you’ll reheat this soup and eat.” As Annie pushed back her chair and got to her feet, her smile was more nourishing than the home-cooked food. “It sounds like the rain is letting up so the emergency crews will be back at the bakery to refuel with caffeine and sugar. I’m related to most of those guys, so I know what they’re like.”

  Seth stood and gave her a wooden smile. Jake could have gone to his grave and Seth would never have been any wiser, but instead, Jake had given him both the station and his paternity. And Annie was right. It was up to him what he did with both those things. “You’re a big part of this town, aren’t you?”

  “All those hours you spent on the radio today makes you a big part of Irish Falls, too.” She closed the small space between them and wrapped her arms around him in a hug.

  Without thinking, Seth hugged her back. She was soft and warm and smelled of gingerbread cookies. The top of her head fit under his chin, and the soft wool of her sweater brushed his forearms below the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt.

  She stepped away and a faint flush tinged her cheeks. “We’re staying open late because of the weather. Let us know if you need anything. Holly’s making pizza later.”