Worth Fighting For. Molly O'Keefe

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.