His Surprise Son. Allie Pleiter

I’d reject you and our child.” It stabbed at him that she could think such a thing.

      “Not reject.” Her jaw worked, as if she was hunting for the right words. “You’re brilliant, and when you’re captivated by something, it’s astounding. I felt astounded by you in school.” She sighed. “But it was never about balance, Josh. I didn’t truly realize that until SymphoCync. You were captivated by work, not me. I don’t even think you noticed how unhappy I was. You can’t be that way with Jonah. Jonah requires—deserves—lots of attention and patience. I didn’t want to have to go begging for those things from you.” Evidently, her talent for prickling his temper by hitting too close to the bone hadn’t faded with the years.

      “That’s not fair,” he retorted. But she wasn’t wrong. He hated the fact, but she wasn’t wrong. Silicon Valley, his valley, worshipped obsessive, workaholic people like him. Success out there demanded 150 percent of a man. He was just coming to recognize the cost of that—he was working on that with Violet now that she was the only family he had left—but he had a long way to go. “It doesn’t change that I had a right to know. You had no right to keep this from me.”

      “I accept that, but Josh, am I really that far off? Do you know how many days you took off during the time I was out in California with you? Three. You proposed to me on the front steps of your office building.”

      He planted his hands on the table, rocking it a bit with the force of his gesture. “We were sharing our success together.”

      “No. You were enjoying your success. I was just grafted in. Has it changed?”

      “What do you mean?”

      “Tell me, when’s the last time you took a vacation? How many nights this week did you sleep at the office? Violet’s been telling me how hard it was to get you involved in this.” She looked right into his eyes. “I chose to give Jonah the gift of not being ignored or sidelined by a long-distance man too busy to be a father. That’s not a life for a child.”

      “I loved you, and you kept this from me. You never gave me a chance to keep loving you. You let my father win.” The memory of what he felt for her rose up with a force just as strong as his freshly roused hate for his father.

      “I believe you loved me,” she said, her voice soft, “but I don’t think you ever really knew what that meant. You thrilled me when you paid attention to me, Josh. But it was too rare. And I tried to tell you how unhappy I was, only you didn’t hear it. You never really acknowledged how sick Dad was getting. It made me realize I could never really be the center of your attention. And then I couldn’t risk that the baby wouldn’t be the center of yours, either. Or become some pawn of your father’s. So I chose what gave Jonah the best chance at happiness, and that’s here in our valley.”

      Her accusations pulled at him like an undertow. “Were you ever going to tell Jonah? Or me? I mean, if I didn’t show up here today, would he or I ever have known who we are to each other?”

      * * *

      Who we are to each other. The words landed heavy with significance.

      “I meant to,” she began. “Someday. I never set a deadline or anything, but I knew Jonah would eventually grow up and ask questions. I think I was waiting until Jonah showed signs of wanting to know.”

      She rubbed her hands together. She’d always known this conversation would be hard, but in reality, it was excruciatingly painful. “That week, when one of your top engineers was out for a week with a sick child, do you remember what you said? You said families could be a distraction for a man bent on success.”

      “We were late for a deadline. I was frustrated.”

      “But even I could see it was how you felt. And really, isn’t it the only kind of fathering you’ve known?” Oh, Father, she prayed, seeing his expression, this is such a tangle. Only You can fix this for all of us.

      “But Jean—five years?”

      She didn’t have an answer for that, except to say, “Secrets get harder to reveal the longer they stay hidden. Dad always used to say we think they’re staying hidden, but they are really just piling up damage, gathering weight and pain to release when they come to light.” Gathering weight and pain. Oh, Dad, how right you were. How right you always were. “I wanted to be in a strong place when I told you. To be standing on my own two feet because I had no idea how you would react. I still don’t. Do you want a family—a real family, Josh?”

      “I don’t know. I wouldn’t classify what I had as a real family. I hardly remember Mom. I just know Dad and his weapons-grade wielding of expectations.”

      She couldn’t argue with his assessment. Josh’s father had been alone since Josh’s mother died in a car accident when Josh was ten. He’d never remarried—until he met Violet’s mother sometime in the past five years. Bartholomew Tyler was the furthest thing from what she knew a father to be, the furthest thing from the loving acceptance she’d known from Dad.

      “I could have helped,” Josh offered. “I would have helped. You had to know that. I can still help. I’ve got access to all kinds of technologies, adaptations...”

      And there it was. Already. A glimpse of what she feared. “Helped?” she questioned. “Or tried to fix? This is exactly what I meant. You hurl solutions at a problem until it surrenders. That’s who you are, what makes you successful, but that’s not how to love a child like Jonah.” She picked up the frame and held it toward him. “We know what technologies are out there. We see a specialist in Charlotte twice a year. But Jonah isn’t a problem to solve, Josh. He’s a boy to love.”

      “I get that.”

      “Do you? Do you really?”

      She got up and picked up an old little wind-up truck that sat on the counter. “Roma Tompkins—she owns the antique store in town—she gave this to Jonah for his first birthday.” She wound it up, and it made the wild buzzing that always made Jonah laugh. “It tickles his palms, and he laughs. His laugh is one of my favorite sounds in the world.”

      She set the toy down in front of Josh. “It’s not slick or fancy or even new. But Jonah loves it. To you, it may look like Matrimony Valley may lack for a lot of things, but people here love us. For who we are. Can you do that?”

      “I deserve the chance to try, don’t you think?”

      Do you deserve the chance to break my son’s heart? she thought. I don’t know yet. “People here have learned sign language just so they can talk to Jonah. The church set up a class and all kinds of people came.” Jean remembered being moved to tears at the standing-room-only sessions. She may be a single mother, but she was never alone here. She knew, even then, that she’d have been far more alone surrounded by strangers in San Jose.

      “The kindergarten teacher here has a sister who is deaf, so she’s fluent in sign language. He doesn’t need a special class or an interpreter—do you know what a blessing that is?” she went on. “Jonah finds a way to talk to everyone, and everyone manages to find a way to talk to him. He’s not lacking for anything, really.”

      “Except a father,” Josh said, sounding as if someone had just pulled the rug out from underneath his perfectly engineered life. She supposed, in some way, that’s exactly what she’d just done.

      “Jonah has a father,” she replied. “He’s just never had a daddy. Are you ready to change that?”

       Chapter Four

      Josh stood next to his stepsister at the foot of “Matrimony Falls” the next morning. The site was as beautiful as Jean had described back on those starlit evenings lying on a blanket on the college lawn. As he stared at the sheets of water tumbling urgently down the endless staircase of stones, it was easy to see why she spoke of them with such awe. The