Читать книгу Worth Fighting For - Molly O'Keefe - Страница 8

JONAH HAD SAT THROUGH more than his share of tough negotiations. He could sit unfazed through the heaviest, stoniest of silences, smiling slightly until the opposition cracked.

It was a skill he’d picked up from the many hours Aunt Sheila spent with him playing Stare Down during that chicken pox incident.

But even he had to admit that lunch was rough. Rough in the way the Nuremberg Trial was rough. Rough like the South surrendering to the North. Civilized on the surface but only one wrong word away from an all-out brawl.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Mom asked, resting her head against his shoulder, while linking her arm through his. He was walking her from the lodge to her cottage across the clearing that was filled with the electric-green of a new spring. He slid on his sunglasses against the blaze of the sun.

He had to admit, much like the meal he hadn’t eaten and the room he didn’t eat it in, the place was nice.

That was all he was going to admit.

“It was pretty bad.” He laughed, putting his hand over hers and holding it tightly.

“Well, you didn’t help,” she chastised him. “Sitting there like some kind of—”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Tough guy.”

“I am a tough guy,” he protested.

“Please,” she said. “You barely said two words.”

“They talked plenty,” he reminded her. Had they ever. Alice and Delia, the redheaded Texan, could talk paint off a wall. They were like two birds—bright and pretty but chattering constantly. He’d tuned them out until one of them mentioned Daphne, then like some kind of radar, he tuned right in.

Idiot, he thought.

“Max and Gabe barely said two words,” she said, seeming preoccupied.

“Gabe said enough,” he assured her. Gabe, when everyone was occupied with passing dishes and spooning out salad and cooing at the black-haired, squashed-face baby, had turned to him, eyebrow arched in a way Jonah completely understood and said, “Dirty Developer?”

He’d pushed away from the table for one wild moment, ready to put his fist in Gabe’s smug face but Max put a hand between them and said, “It would break Iris’s and Dad’s hearts if you fought.”

It had been the appropriate bucket of cold water. But still, Jonah felt that anger in his stomach. The anger remarkably similar to the one that had fueled him for years on the playground when kids called him shrimp or tiny tunes or baby.

But he did hope that before he left he might get a chance to have a quick conversation with Gabe Mitchell. The kind of conversation that might end in a bloody nose.

“So, are you satisfied?” he asked, glancing down at her. “Family reunited so we can all get on with our lives.”

She stopped and stared at him, her dark eyes like spotlights on his grimy little soul. “I know this is hard for you, Jonah—”

He laughed and tugged her into motion. “No, it’s not hard at all,” he clarified. “It’s not hard because I have no expectations, Mom.” He knew this was going to hurt, but she’d clearly gone slightly delusional since coming here over the winter. Maybe it was grief and stress over Aunt Sheila’s battles, but his mom wasn’t thinking clearly. “I have no attachment to these men.” When he saw her shaking her head, he spun her to face him. He took off his glasses so she could see how serious he was. “These men don’t mean anything to me. And they are never going to. I don’t want anything from them, or need anything from them.”

She searched his eyes and he let her. This was his truth. “You are what matters to me,” he told her and she smiled. But it was one of her sad smiles.

“Oh, honey.” She sighed, cupping his cheek. “You’re what matters to me, too. That’s why I want you here. Why I want you to stay.”

“Mom—”

“Look,” she interrupted. “Everyone in there was having a real hard time not asking you about that article in the Times last week.”

“You saw it?”

“Of course I did. It was the New York Times. Everyone saw it.”

Of course. Everyone. Even out here. The lovely Daphne had already proven that. Thinking of her watching him through the windshield of his Jeep, her eyes so damning, made his skin tight.

He bristled in reaction to the unbidden thought of her. It had been a long time since his thoughts had been so caught up in a woman. Especially to one who so clearly hated him and who he was never going to see again.

“Why don’t you just tell them,” Mom suggested. “Explain—”

“There’s nothing to explain,” he said, walking again, trying to shake the remembered sensation of Daphne’s eyes judging him.

“Jonah—”

“There is nothing to explain,” he repeated, enunciating clearly so she’d get the idea that the conversation was over.

“Well, if you won’t stay for me,” she said, “if you won’t stay in order to get to know your own father—”

He rolled his eyes at her and she smacked his arm. “I am your mother, Jonah. You will not roll your eyes at me.”

“Sorry, Mom,” he said, truly abashed.

“Like I was saying, if you won’t stay for me, or to get to know these truly wonderful men—these kind and generous and complicated men who are your family—at least stay until that Dirty Developer thing blows over.”

Ah, his mom. So smart.

He sighed. “If you are asking me, I will stay.”

“I know, but I get tired of asking.”

“You never ask,” he cried, laughing. “I have more money than I know what to do with and you refuse a penny. I try to take you on trips. I tried to buy you that new car—”

“My car is fine.”

“Your car is a mess!”

“I don’t need your money, or your trips or cars.”

“Clearly.”

“I need you. Here. For two weeks.”

He felt himself strain and push against that promise he’d made. He’d never guessed, being so young and so suddenly on top of the world, that his mother would ever ask for something he didn’t want to give. The one thing, actually, that he didn’t want to give her.

“Were you unhappy?” he asked, blurting out the question that had been churning in his brain since he saw her smile at Max and Gabe. “All those years with me…did you wish we were with them?”

Tears filled her eyes, turning them to black pools. He was sorry that he made her cry. He was always sorry for that. But it hurt to think that he was second best all these years.

“I wanted to be with you,” she said fiercely. “Wherever you were that’s where I wanted to be.”

He smiled at her. He knew a hedge when he heard one. A half-truth. She’d asked him once if he wanted to know his father and he’d said no. Absolutely no.

At the time his six-year-old brain thought it might mean sharing his mother. And he hated that.

His thirty-year-old brain wasn’t all that different. But he did recognize what he did to her when he’d told her no. The wall he’d built. He made it impossible to try to have both—her husband and sons all together.

Of course those letters Patrick had written telling Iris he didn’t want her, those letters put up quite a wall, too. Jonah didn’t like the idea of her here chasing after the man who’d rejected her. Hurt her so much. There was far too much potential for more pain for his mother here.

“Mom, why do you want this so bad?” he asked. “The guy told you no.”

“And then he said yes.” Iris shrugged. “We both made mistakes.”

It was a terrible answer, in Jonah’s book. Patrick changing his mind about having Iris come back didn’t erase the thirty years that his mom missed the man.

She’d pretended she didn’t, but Jonah wasn’t blind.

And it made him very nervous. Mom was walking toward a freight train of pain and he needed to pull her out of the way.

“If I don’t stay, if I say no, will you go back home?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Will you come to New York for a visit?” he asked.

And his mom, who knew him so well, shook her head again. “I want to get to know these men,” she said. “I’ll stay for a while.”

There was a buzzing in the back of his head, a sense of impending doom.

“Mom,” he whispered, wishing so badly she didn’t feel anything for Patrick.

“I know,” she said, holding up her hand. “But I wouldn’t change it if I could.”

He would, he thought. He’d change everything about the damn situation if he could.

Well, crap. He was going to have to stay. Maybe he could derail the freight train.

Daphne’s green eyes were there in his head and he slid his sunglasses back on. Perhaps he would be seeing her again.

“I’m at the Athens Motel tonight,” he said. “I’ll check into the Riverview tomorrow morning.” He saw her relax. Melt a little, as though whatever pins had been keeping her shoulders up around her ears, whatever stress was making her lips tense, her fingers clench slowly faded away.

He kissed her lightly on the forehead.

Love, he thought, was just a disaster waiting to happen.

DAPHNE TOED OFF her mucky galoshes and stepped into her kitchen in her bare feet. The rainy spring had done wonders for her asparagus and between that and her trouble finding reliable delivery guys, her mornings were insane. She woke up at dawn and ran a marathon by 8:00 a.m. Luckily her mother, Gloria, had been coming over in the mornings to help Helen get ready for school.

“Hi, Helen,” Daphne said, tugging her daughter’s long ponytail and taking in her ensemble. Helen’s fashion sense this morning involved the top of a genie costume that she’d worn in a school musical two years ago. It was pink, sparkly and showed about an inch of her little girl’s belly.

Damn teen pop stars and MTV and hormones in meat and milk or whatever was making little girls grow up way too fast these days.

“You’re not wearing that to school,” she said, point-blank.

“Mom.” Helen groaned.

“Sorry, kiddo. Go on up and change.”

Helen cast one more pleading gaze at her grandmother, who only laughed. “I told you, you wouldn’t get away with it,” Gloria said. Helen flounced up the stairs, the spangles on her shirt twitching and twirling.

“I swear she’s seven going on seventeen.” Daphne sighed, taking the mug of coffee her mother slid across the counter at her.

“It’s not much different than when you were a kid,” Gloria said, arching one dark eyebrow. Daphne did not take after her petite, dark-haired Italian mother, despite how much she wished she had. Instead, she was the spitting image of her lying, cheating, Swedish father. Blond hair, broad shoulders and a fierce temper. She was a genetic delight. “The clothes are just smaller.”

Daphne smiled and tried to drink as much caffeine as she was capable in the few minutes she had before driving Helen to school. Mornings were still chilly these days and she warmed her palms around the Del Monte seed mug.

“She asked for two sandwiches in her lunch again today,” Gloria said and Daphne frowned.

“Didn’t she have breakfast?” she asked. Helen’s appetite usually hovered around birdlike, except for the occasional growth spurts in which case her appetite approached don’t-get- in-my-way territory.

Gloria nodded. “She ate all her yogurt. But that’s every day this week she’s asked for an extra something.” Strange. Daphne checked her watch. She’d have to ask

Helen about it on the road.

“Helen is also turning into a gossip columnist,” Gloria said, wiping off the last of the breakfast dishes and setting them back in the oak cabinet.

Daphne nearly choked on her coffee. “I wonder where she gets it?” She cast a look at her mother who, as the resident gossip queen, had given up amateur status and gone pro a few years ago. Gloria took “news” very seriously.

“Very funny. But she’s all wound up over what’s happening down at the Riverview. Thanks to her friend Josie, she’s an expert on Patrick’s youngest.”

“Jonah,” Daphne said, trying to hide behind her coffee cup, so her mother wouldn’t pick up the blushes she couldn’t control. Mom was like a drug-sniffing dog when it came to those sorts of things. She could take a wayward glance or a blush and turn it into a torrid love affair in less time than it took Helen to change her clothes.

“Sounds like quite a guy.” Gloria pretended to be nonchalant but “why don’t you marry him and give me more grandbabies” was written all over her. She did this whenever a young man got within dating distance.

“That’s one way of putting it,” Daphne hedged. Utterly inappropriate or a low-down scumbag were a couple of others. She checked her watch. “Helen! Let’s go, slowpoke!” she shouted, wanting to flee the kitchen before her mother started into her biannual monologue about men, ticking clocks and loneliness.

A real laugh riot, that monologue.

“Sweetheart?” Gloria said. Daphne groaned and just laid her head on the counter, like a woman at the guillotine. “Would it kill you to date?”

“Yes,” she said into the yellow Formica. “It would kill me.”

“I’m being serious,” Gloria insisted, pulling Daphne up by the back of her shirt. “This Jonah fellow is a young man, single, apparently attractive—”

“And leaving, Mom. He’s not sticking around. He’s probably already gone. Which wouldn’t matter because he’s the last person in the world I would date.”

“Apparently every man within a thirty-mile radius shares that status.”

“Mom—”

“You didn’t even fight for Gabe Mitchell!”

Daphne rolled her eyes. Her mother could not let go of the brief relationship she had with Gabe. “There was nothing to fight for, Mom. The man was in love with his ex-wife. What was I supposed to do?”

Gloria’s face became a mix of pity and pleading and Daphne hated it. “You’re too young to spend your life covered in mud. You used to be so carefree and spontaneous. You used to be fun.”

“I’m still fun, ask Helen.”

“Grown-up fun. Sex fun.”

Daphne groaned and held up her hand. “I am too busy to date. I am too busy for—” she dropped her voice, uncomfortable even saying the word “—sex fun. I am raising Helen and trying to expand my business—”

“Excuses,” Gloria interrupted, her eyes flashing, her short brown hair practically bristling. Gloria had finally found love again with a high school English teacher who lived twenty miles away. They dated, went to movies, traveled. They weren’t married, didn’t live together and the relationship was, for Gloria, perfect.

And that perfection gave her a license to harangue Daphne on the subject of second chances on a regular basis. “You’re too scared to even try.”

A charged stillness filled Daphne, like the air before a lightning strike. Her mother was right. She was scared. Scared of being hurt. Of being rejected. Of being left behind all over again.

“You are so beautiful and strong. Any man would be lucky to have you.” Her mother’s soft voice was tempting, but reality was reality and that’s where Daphne parked her butt these days.

“You’re my mother, you are supposed to say that.” Daphne brushed crumbs from the counter into her hands, looking anywhere but at her mother. “But my track record speaks for itself.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means—” she swallowed, the words wedged behind her pride and reluctant to come out “—men don’t want me. Not permanently.” She dumped the crumbs in the garbage by the sink, wishing she could do the same with this conversation.

“Oh my God!” Gloria cried, spinning Daphne around. “How can you say that?”

“Well, for one, Dad—”

“Your father wasn’t cut out to be a father. His leaving had nothing to do with you.”

“I was seven, Mom. I went to bed and had a father but when I woke up he was gone. Trust me, that feels pretty personal. And Jake pretty much confirms it.”

Gloria sighed. “Well, you barely gave Jake a chance to be a father. Or a husband.”

“Jake wanted to leave,” Daphne insisted. “You think I pushed him out the door, but trust me, he doesn’t see it that way. I gave Jake his freedom.”

They heard Helen’s footsteps upstairs, a signal to stop before she heard them.

“Not every man leaves,” Gloria said.

“You’re right,” Daphne agreed. “Just the ones I love.”

Helen tromped in wearing a far more appropriate red T-shirt with a big yellow flower on the front, looking like the quirky funny seven-year-old she was, rather than a young hooker in training. “Mom, everybody in school wears shirts like that,” she said, grabbing her bulging book bag and brown bag lunch.

“Everyone but you, Helen,” Daphne said sweetly, ushering her out the door toward the truck. “Everyone but you.”

They drove down the driveway toward the road into town and Daphne unrolled her window, the morning finally warming up. The breeze, warm and smelling like pine and manure from Sven’s farm, curled through the cab.

The For Sale sign was still posted and she hadn’t heard a word about her offer. She stuck her tongue out at the ramshackle old house as they drove by just to make herself feel better.

“Hey, Mom, guess what I heard?” Helen asked, turning bright eyes to Daphne. Her still chubby cheeks were pink and the wind teased hair loose from her braid to whip it around her face. Daphne smiled, loving her daughter so much sometimes it was like a physical pain. Budding gossip columnist or no.

“What did you hear?” she asked like a woman on the edge of her seat. She shouldn’t encourage this or Helen would turn out worse than Mom, but she was too darn cute not to.

“Josie said Jonah moved into the inn and Josie was trying to spy on him but her mom caught her and made her do dishes with Chef Tim.”

“Jonah moved into the inn?” Now Daphne really was on the edge of her seat.

“That’s what Josie said yesterday on the playground.”

“When did he move in?”

“Yesterday morning. Josie said she watched him unpack his bags and talk on the phone. She said he talks on the phone a lot.”

“How long is he staying?” Daphne asked and wished she didn’t care. She wished her cheeks weren’t hot at the mention of his name. Wished she could stop interrogating her seven-year-old as if she were the sole witness to a crime.

“I don’t know,” Helen said. “I’ll ask Josie.”

Daphne told herself that she was just curious about a man so utterly different from her. Still, she had to bite back a long list of questions she had about the man.

When is he leaving?

Why is he such a jerk?

Why does he look so good in blue jeans?

Is he married?

“You want me to ask if he’s married?” Helen asked and Daphne nearly drove off the side of the road.

“What?” Good God? Am I talking out loud? “Why?”

“So, you can date. Josie said he’s really cute.” Helen waggled her eyebrows, something Daphne did as a joke and it was about a million times funnier on her seven-year-old daughter.

“Have you been talking to Grandma?” Daphne demanded.

“No,” Helen said. “I told you I was talking to Josie and she can totally find out if he’s married.”

“Even if he was single, I’m not going to be dating him,” Daphne told her daughter in all seriousness, hoping to end this conversation.

Helen harrumphed and looked out the window, pulling blond hair out of her eyes. Daphne had known that the little cocoon of Athens Organics, the country she’d created of Daphne and Helen, wouldn’t last forever. Helen was bound to get interested in things outside of the farm and her mother, but Daphne had never really suspected it would be her love life.

“Is it because Daddy’s back?” Helen asked. “Is that why you don’t date anyone?”

Oh God, Daphne had feared this would happen when Jake came back around. She’d suspected Helen would get her hopes up and start thinking that they’d be a family again. The divorce wasn’t so hard the first time around— Helen had been so young. But this time, when Jake left—and he would, he was a leaver—his absence would ruin a seven-year-old’s high hopes and fantasies.

“Honey, Dad and I aren’t getting back together,” Daphne said clearly. She decided to slow down, deliveries be damned, and pull over to the side of the road so she and Helen could really talk. “We’re just friends and we’re going to all these parties to help him with his new job.” She put the truck in Park and let it idle.

“I know,” Helen said, and Daphne wondered if she was just saying what Daphne wanted to hear. “But it would be nice if we were all friends. And I think Daddy loves you.”

“No, honey, he doesn’t.” She stroked her daughter’s cornsilk hair. He never really had. Not the real her. And certainly not enough to make it work. “But he loves you like crazy,” she said, smiling and tugging on Helen’s ponytail. Soon Helen would want to cut off that long hair, wear something cooler than a long braid like her mommy. Daphne dreaded the day.

Helen smiled, some of the seriousness leeching from her face, only to be replaced by the quicksilver joy of a seven-year-old. “He’s taking me to the drive-in tonight. A double feature.”

Daphne steered the truck back onto the road. It was Friday and Jake’s night with Helen. She’d convinced herself at some point in the past eight months that this one night a week Jake had with his daughter was a blessing for all of them. He got to know his daughter. Helen got to know her father in a very small way. A small, very regulated way that would hopefully keep her protected when he reverted to his leaving ways. And during those few hours Daphne got some work done.

On Friday nights.

When the rest of the world was dating or watching movies as families or fighting or making love or putting their children to bed. She was walking asparagus fields.

It didn’t feel like a blessing.

It felt lonely.

She dropped Helen off at school, glad her little girl wasn’t too old or too concerned about being cool to forgo the kiss goodbye.

And only when she was halfway to her first delivery did she realize she never asked why Helen needed extra food in her lunch.