Читать книгу Worth Fighting For - Molly O'Keefe - Страница 9

THE RIVERVIEW INN had wireless Internet, Jonah could get a cell phone signal, his mother had been bringing him coffee and food. So despite having been forced to stay, he was doing a very good job of not leaving his cabin.

Jonah had been at the inn for exactly twenty-nine hours and he’d managed to avoid seeing anyone but his mother. It helped that he was busy. At least it gave him an excuse for his mother when she tried to persuade him to join her for a walk.

“We passed the second soil testing with flying colors,” Gary told him. “We’ve got the green light to keep building.”

“Excellent news,” Jonah said, though he had not expected anything less. “We’re ahead of schedule. I’ll contact Herb and we’ll get crews in there next week.”

“Okay, but do you want to do anything with the newspapers?”

“Send the press release like you always do,” he said, jotting “call Herb” on the pad at his elbow.

“But those press releases don’t go anywhere. We never follow up and maybe with this bad press we’ve been getting—”

“No explanations, Gary.”

“I’m not saying we explain. I’m saying we clear the air. We tell the world what we’re doing and maybe get some wheels greased for Haven House.”

“The world isn’t going to help us with Haven House.”

“Donations would help and a little good press would make me sleep easier.”

“We don’t need good press, so why pander?”

“You are the most stubborn man I’ve ever met, Jonah. I’m your partner. And I’m telling you—I’m actually saying it loud and clear so you understand—you’re making a mistake. We need to talk to the papers. I know at least four journalists who would love to interview us.”

Ouch. He and Gary didn’t often disagree but when they did, it had been proven time and time again that Gary was right.

Jonah liked to pretend that wasn’t the case, but facts didn’t lie.

“Fine. They can interview you.”

“I’m not the Dirty Developer,” Gary said. “I’m the Dirty Developer’s associate.”

Jonah knew it was practically a done deal before he even agreed. Gary was tricky that way. Tricky and smart. “Fine. Get in touch with them and e-mail me the details.”

Jonah glanced at the window and saw the little girl duck again, just out of sight. The bushes rustled and he heard her whispering to someone or into a tape recorder. The redhead—Jonah would guess she was about ten—had been out there for most of the day, spying on him. The spy had astounding stamina and determination. He’d only been working and even he was beginning to find that dull.

He smiled, remembering doing a similar thing to Sheila after finding out she was a full-blooded Hopi Indian. He’d followed her hoping to see some scalping. But she only grocery shopped and walked her dog. The disappointment had been sharp so he decided to give young Mata Hari a thrill.

“Gary,” he said, watching the window from the corner of his eye. “Listen carefully. We’re going to put the bodies—”

“Bodies?”

“Right. The dead bodies. The dead bodies we killed.” He winced at his redundancy but the bushes were unnaturally silent. “We’re going to put them in the river.”

Something fell outside his window. A bush rustled and the little girl yelped.

“No mistakes,” Jonah said, smiling, straining to try to see the girl. “Or I’ll kill you, too.”

“Jonah, you should come back to the city,” Gary said. “All that clear air is making you crazy.”

Jonah heard the little girl talking to someone then heard the deep rumble of Patrick’s voice and his smile vanished. “Send me that e-mail,” Jonah said, distracted by the sound of Patrick and the girl walking up the sidewalk outside his cottage.

Great. Visitors.

“Got it,” Gary answered and hung up as a knock sounded at the door.

Jonah opened the door and found the old man, his hand on the girl’s shoulder.

The little girl, wearing head to toe purple, looked tortured, but she still managed to give him the evil eye. He swallowed a crack of laughter.

“This is Josie,” Patrick said, his gaze flicking between them. “And she has something to say.”

Jonah wanted to roll his eyes, call out the old man for this useless display of what…manners? Honor? Jonah didn’t believe a moment of it. Patrick wouldn’t know honor if it had bitten him on the ass.

“I’ve been spying on you,” Josie said, gesturing limply to the window.

“And…?” Patrick prompted.

“And—” she rolled her eyes “—I’m sorry.”

Jonah nodded at her and her tortured expression changed slightly. She craned her neck to get a better look inside his cabin.

The girl was stubborn, and Jonah understood stubborn.

My kind of kid, he thought.

“You go see what Chef Tim has for you to do in the kitchen,” Patrick told the girl and she scowled.

“Again?”

“You got caught,” Patrick said, shaking his head, “again.”

“But—” She looked at Jonah then Patrick, and Jonah realized that she didn’t want to leave the old man alone with him, maybe suspecting Jonah would add Patrick to the pile of bodies in the river.

“I knew you were out there,” he told the little girl. “I made that up about the bodies.”

“Really?” she asked, eyeing him shrewdly and again he almost laughed.

“Really.”

He felt Patrick’s gaze on him, hopeful and surprised. Yes, Jonah wanted to snap at him, the Dirty Developer has a sense of humor.

But he didn’t want Patrick to know anything about him.

She hesitated as if to say she didn’t believe him but then she nodded. “Okay. But if Patrick goes missing, I’m an eyewitness. I’ll testify.”

Jonah blinked, stunned slightly by the legal vernacular.

“Get going,” Patrick said, bodily turning the girl around and giving her a push toward the lodge.

Josie sighed heavily and stomped off, leaving Patrick and Jonah alone. Jonah realized this was the moment Patrick had been waiting for since he’d arrived.

Josie hadn’t been the only one haunting the outside of his cabin.

“Josie and her mother were in a scrape with the law last winter,” Patrick explained. “She saw and heard some things she shouldn’t have and spent some time in court this spring testifying. She caught on to the lingo.”

Jonah watched the girl go until the door of the lodge shut behind her.

“Why don’t you come on out?” Patrick said. “I’ll give you a tour. Take you down to the river.” His tone seemed casual, but he couldn’t control the hope that rolled off him, nearly suffocating Jonah.

“I’m working.”

Patrick sucked in a quick breath but kept his smile intact. The man wasn’t going to budge.

“Your mother—”

“Don’t try to use my mother to get me to do what you want me to do,” he said. “It won’t work. In fact, it will make me like you less. Not that it’s possible.”

Jonah tried to shut the door but Patrick got his hand in there before he could. Jonah was stunned briefly by the sudden sharpness in the old man’s eyes, the sudden anger.

“I didn’t know about you,” Patrick said. “Your mother never told me. If I had known, I would have done anything to get you back.”

Jonah knew that, of course. His mother had made very sure that he understood that Patrick had not rejected Jonah. He’d only rejected his wife. Banished her from her own family.

“Is that supposed to make me forgive you?” Jonah asked.

“I don’t understand what you are angry with me for.” Patrick truly looked lost. Clueless and that told him even further what Iris meant to this man.

“I’m angry,” he said clearly, making sure nothing would get misunderstood or forgotten, “because you never signed those divorce papers. You kept her chained to you for thirty years like she didn’t matter. You broke my mother’s heart. I’m angry because I grew up with a mother who every day tried to hide the fact that she was unhappy.” Patrick’s face crumpled, his fire extinguished. “And, no, there is nothing you can do to make me forgive that.”

With that, before the old man could say anything more, Jonah shut the door in his face.

PATRICK STARED at the closed door.

Heartsick, he battled nausea and chest pains. Confusion and grief made his head fuzzy and light.

What am I supposed to do?

He watched Max walk out of the lodge into the woods and thought about calling out to him. Trying to talk to him about this mess with Jonah. But his boys weren’t invested. They wanted him to protect himself, not get involved. Gabe in particular wanted him to let it go.

Even Max, last night, had said if Jonah wasn’t interested in bridging the gaps then maybe it wasn’t meant to be.

Patrick couldn’t believe that this family wasn’t meant to be.

Against all odds, Jonah was here. In cabin five.

Patrick simply needed to figure out how to get Jonah out of cabin five.

He knew that if he asked Iris to help him, to force the boy’s hand since he’d do anything for his mother, some of this heartache would be avoided.

But Patrick didn’t want her help. He wanted to feed the small fire of his grudge against her.

What she’d done was unforgivable. Despite the fact that he understood the whys and the reasons, he couldn’t forgive her.

She’d left them, him and the boys. Walked away in the middle of the night thirty years ago and had stayed away for three months before writing Patrick a letter asking to come home. He’d told her no. He’d been angry. Spiteful and hurt and he had no way of knowing that she was pregnant and her terrifying erratic behavior before she left had been caused by depression brought on by the pregnancy.

She wrote again, nine months later when Jonah must have been a few months old. By that time Patrick had his life in a rhythm. Something that worked. It wasn’t perfect and often it wasn’t pretty, but he was raising his boys and he’d decided that life was easier without her.

He’d been wrong, of course.

When he’d sent those letters to her, telling her not to come, that they were doing fine without her, he’d been thinking of himself and the boys.

He’d been thinking about Iris’s depression and the way it could make his life terrifying.

Happiness—hers, his, the boys—he hadn’t thought of. Now he wished he had. Staring at the door of cabin five and knowing his son was in there, blaming Patrick for things that weren’t all his fault, he wished he could have seen the future. In order to prevent this itchy heartache in his chest, he wouldn’t have kept his wife away.

He could have had his son.

Like a magnet, he found himself pulled in the direction of Iris. He wanted to remind her of the mistakes she’d made, the mess she’d made of their lives—the years they’d wasted.

It was, after all, her fault.

He’d been trying to keep his distance from her since her return a few weeks ago. He liked to pretend that he didn’t know this woman who looked like an older, sadder version of the woman he’d fallen in love with on a vacation to the Jersey Shore. He wanted to pretend that the years and the betrayal had changed their core.

Now, however, he walked to the gazebo where he knew she’d be.

And there she was. Bouncing, loving and generally hogging baby Stella as she had since her arrival.

Their first grandchild. The thought caught him in the throat and he couldn’t breathe. He just watched Iris with Stella and ached.

It was a milestone they should have celebrated together—arm in arm, in love, proud and happy.

She robbed him of that.

She didn’t hear him approach, thank God, all of her energy focused on the pink bundle in her arms.

A tiny hand came up out of the blanket and patted Iris’s mouth, reaching for the dangling earrings she wore.

“Pretty soon, Stella,” she cooed, touching her nose to the baby’s. “Pretty soon you’ll have your hands on everything.”

The hot mix of emotions built in him, filling his chest and his head. He couldn’t make sense of them. Couldn’t put a name to everything that made him want to grab her and shake her. Touch her.

Oh God, how could he want to touch her so bad when she’d lied to him? Kept his son from him? Why did he want to hold her and ease the pain he saw in the weary set of her shoulders, the bowed curve of her neck as if the whole world was pressing on her?

It didn’t make sense. But anger made sense. Anger worked. So he concentrated on that.

He started to put words together, hurtful words telling her exactly what she’d done to him.

“Patrick,” she said, interrupting his mental tirade, not even turning to look at him. “I was wondering when you’d come looking for me. Things aren’t going well with Jonah?”

He shook his head, the mix of emotions making words 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.