by Jan Thompson
Yes, listening ears were valuable in her work.
Work?
I’m not at work.
Logan had tried to remind her earlier that work had robbed her of her family time. Could that possibly be true?
Marie wondered if Logan had been really trying.
Ah, they would never be able to get along.
It’s only for one week, Lord Jesus. Help me through this week.
Marie couldn’t wait to fly home to…to…
Where was home?
Marseilles was her parents’ home. Not hers.
In the last eighteen months she had been traveling everywhere. Home had been a suitcase and a bed, sometimes in a palace, but often in a dingy motel or a safe house.
Someday, she’d find a home. A real home.
When she swiped her iPad to get back to her emails, she saw that Logan had sent her a text message.
He wanted to know how Jonas was doing.
He’s fine!
Marie didn’t like his sort of inquiries at all. Was Logan questioning her motherhood? Chaining a guilt trip on her? She had been gone for almost half of Jonas’s life, but she considered herself no different from a deployed soldier who had to leave her family behind for months at a time.
Logan should not hold that against me.
“Did you get my text?” Her ex-husband was standing at the end of her lounge chair. He was wearing a simple white shirt and a pair of crumpled canvas shorts.
“I didn’t have time to respond,” Marie said. “Can’t you see we’re busy here?”
“Sure you are. I can see you’re doing more than nothing.”
Marie pointed to the kiddie pool. “He’s fine.”
Mrs. Ping was talking to some other adults there. Jonas was laughing with the other kids. Then he rubbed his eyes.
“See that?” Logan tipped his sunglasses. “Past his nap time.”
“I hate to take him away from his new friends.”
“I’ll do it then.” Logan walked toward the kiddie pool.
Marie chuckled as Logan talked to Mrs. Ping instead of to Jonas directly.
Coward!
Logan walked back. “Told Mrs. Ping to give him five more minutes, and then he needs to shower and take a nap.”
“Good.”
“What’s that smirk? You’re laughing at me.”
“I’m not.” Marie kept a straight face.
“Are you questioning my parenting skills?”
“No comment.”
Logan’s jaw dropped. “Did you realize something?”
“What?”
“We’re talking to each other.”
Marie had to agree with him. “Because of Jonas.”
“Our son.”
Marie blinked. In the distance, Mrs. Ping was gathering Jonas’s brightly colored towel and flip-flops.
“Take a walk with me?” Logan asked quietly. He looked like he expected Marie to say no.
She decided to surprise him. “I can’t do it now, but how about after dinner tonight?”
“All right. It’s a date then.”
“Not a date,” Marie countered. “We’re trying to get along so we don’t ruin our son’s life.”
“Okay, a business meeting then.”
“If you put it that way.” Marie put down her iPad. “Maybe we can discuss what excursions we want to do the rest of the week.”
Five days seemed like an eternity now that she thought about it.
“That’s easy. Whatever Jonas wants to do, we do,” Logan said.
“Ah, child-directed parenting.”
“Is that the name for it?”
Jonas and Mrs. Ping walked toward them. Jonas looked awfully tired.
“I guess the ice cream has worn off,” Marie said.
“Either that, or it’s the after-sugar effect.” Logan laughed.
“What’s that?”
Logan shrugged. “Don’t know. I’m just making up hyphenated words, like you did.”
“That’s supposed to help our non-relationship?” Marie snapped.
Oh, why did I do that?
“Ah, irritable. Maybe you need a nap too,” Logan said.
“Mommy.” Jonas tugged at Marie’s arm. “Will you stay with me in my room?”
“Sure.” Marie talked to Mrs. Ping. “Take the afternoon off. Go to the spa. Get your hair done. Or something. Have fun.”
“Good idea,” Logan added. “Don’t worry about the bill. Tell them I’ll take care of it.”
“Wow. Thank you.” Mrs. Ping’s eyes brightened. “I’ll get him showered and dressed for nap time, and then I’ll go.”
Marie wasn’t sure if Mrs. Ping realized that she wouldn’t know what to do with Jonas at nap time, but she was glad not to have to ask for help with getting Jonas ready. Doing so in front of Logan would only make him think the worst of her.
How could any birth mother give up her only child?
Marie had her reasons.
Certainly, God had sent Mrs. Ping to fill in where Marie had been unable to fulfill her job.
Oh how she longed to be Jonas’s mother again.
Truly be. Not from a distance, but there, right there with her own son.
Something I need to pray about.
Chapter Eight
Walking in the moonlight on one of the decks of the cruise ship sailing across the waters could have been romantic, but not for this pair with their irreconcilable differences.
Which, Logan was certain, had been primarily due to their geography and career choices. They had clearly failed in their long-distance marriage. Marie wouldn’t leave her job in Europe, and Logan couldn’t leave his job in Atlanta, Georgia.
Other than that, they had produced a gorgeous child—when he wasn’t trying to manipulate his parents into giving him everything he wanted.
Case in point: this birthday cruise.
“If we keep giving him what he wants, we’ll run out of ability or means to do so before he’s twenty-one,” Marie said.
She was dressed modestly in a dark purple dress. Cruise dinners used to be rather formal affairs, but today’s cruises no longer required its patrons to dress up in tuxedos and gowns before they entered the main dining room. While the dress code wasn’t golf casual, no one needed to show up looking like they were attending a wedding or a funeral.
Logan liked Marie’s simple dress. She had on strapped heels, but the dress was long-sleeved.
He wondered now if she was cold. She hadn’t brought her cardigan.
“Right?” Marie waited.
“I hear you, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” It was the best answer Logan could think of at this point. He wished that—
He didn’t know what he could wish for. He wanted to be the best dad ever for Jonas, but he had so much work to do at the office that he had left the parenting to Mrs. Ping most of the time.
Although Marie had been an absentee mother, Logan hadn’t done much better, even though he was in town and lived in the same house as his own son.
One could be in the same house and be distant, be strangers, be out of touch with the rest of the family.
Lord, I don’t know how to be Jonas’s dad.
“You’re going to get there sooner than you think,” Marie said.
Logan stopped walking. They were standing across the deck from more lounge chairs. On the other side of the railings were lifeboats.
“Me?” Logan asked. “I thought you said we earlier.”
“We’re not together in this. I’ll go back to Paris soon, and you’ll have to raise Jonas on your own. You have full custody. Remember that expensive court battle I could not afford?”
“I’m not sure if I want to do this alone anymore,” Logan said. “I’m thinking I need to start dating.”
“You don’t need my permission.”
Marie’s French accent slipped out. It was then that Logan knew she was bothered by his declaration.
How could she be?
We’re divorced.
“It gets complicated when we marry other people.” Logan waited for Marie to respond.
Yes, he wanted to know what was on her mind.
They began walking again.
“Life itself is complicated.” Marie shrugged, as if she had on a mask. “When you have a blended family, it adds to the complexity.”
“I’m trying to simplify my life, but I hate being alone.”
“Me too.” Marie’s eyes widened even as she said it, as if it had been a mistake.
Another slip of the tongue?
“You too?”
“I take that back.” She stiffened. “My life is so busy. I don’t have time…”
“I hate to wake up one day when I’m seventy, and find out I missed out on life and love,” Logan said.
Marie leaned against the railing.
Logan joined her.
A number of decks below, the Pacific Ocean swooshed against the hull of the massive cruise ship. Sparkles of moonlight glittered on the deep, deep ocean.
The horizon was dark, morphed into the steel-gray night. In the sky, the moon shone down. There were some stars sparkling in the distance.
Moon and stars and the sky that God had made. Signs that life went on.
Life went on in spite of Marie and me.
Logan breathed in deeply. There was nothing he wanted to ask of her. Not anymore. Their life, as they had known it, was over. Now they had to do whatever they could to make things work out for Jonas, so that he too could grow up, out of these ashes, into a beautiful and productive life.
“We need God’s help. His mercy. His grace,” Logan said.
“Yes. His everything.”
“You know what’s funny?” Logan chuckled. “Marriage and parenting are harder than getting an MBA, and running a business.”
“Or chasing…” Marie paused.
“Chasing? Chasing what?”
Marie didn’t say. Instead, she said something else. “Apart from Christ, we can do nothing.”
“John 15:5.” Logan knew that verse by heart. His mom had made him memorize it as a child. “‘ I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without Me ye can do nothing.’”
Marie nodded.
Logan left his earlier question unanswered. When she wanted to talk, she could talk. No point pressuring her to be transparent with him. They were no longer married.
The more important thing right now was for their family—their son, primarily—to be in God’s perfect will. Logan’s pastor at Midtown Chapel back in Atlanta had said that God could restitch all these torn sections of the tapestry.
Logan feared it might be too late for Jonas. They had already ruined his young life. Still, he felt that he and Marie had made some progress—what little progress this might be. “Would you…”
Marie looked at him.
“Would you walk with me again before this cruise is over?” Logan asked.
Ask not, get not.
“Why not? We’re pretty much stuck together until Saturday,” Marie said.
“After dinner tomorrow night?”
“An excuse to stuff ourselves with Baked Alaska and so forth?”
“It’s the meringue,” Logan explained. “Light and fluffy it might be, but it has devastating effects.”
Marie grinned. “That’s one thing I like about you.”
“Just one thing?”
“Don’t push it.”
“And what might be that one thing, pray tell?”
“You make life sound easy,” Marie said. “My job is difficult and dangerous. You provide the counterpunch.”
Dangerous? “What’s dangerous about being a translator? I can’t imagine…”
“Any job can be dangerous, metaphorically speaking.”
She had backtracked.
“Uh-huh.” Logan didn’t like what he heard, but he wasn’t about to spoil the night. He didn’t know why he had asked her to walk with him again.
And she had said yes.
Let’s not ruin future moments.
Marie said nothing else, and neither did Logan ask her any more questions, as they spent the next moments looking out to sea in silence.
Chapter Nine
Marie held one of Jonas’s hands, and Logan held the other, making their son as happy as a bee, as they walked from the tour bus to the picnic area outside Juneau, where the aroma of smoked and grilled salmon mingled in the air, weaving in and out of the large crowd waiting for the lunch this Monday.
Marie almost talked over Jonas’s head, but she’d have to shout to be heard. Besides, she didn’t want to be the first to talk to Logan. So far, he had initiated conversations with her.
Whatever had happened between them still simmered below the surface. They could have tension at any time. Why instigate that?
Logan was on the phone now, and Marie could clearly hear the conversation. If she could advise him, she’d tell him not to discuss multi-million-dollar acquisitions on an unsecured cell phone in a tourist spot with at least a thousand people waiting for their baked wild Alaskan salmon.
Then again, Logan hadn’t asked for her opinion.
He had never once asked for her thoughts on anything other than where to eat out on the Friday evenings he let his personal chef take the night off.
Perhaps in his mind, Marie was nothing more than a translator. A businesswoman she might not be, but she sure knew how to be discreet, right?
There was so much Marie wanted to tell Logan about what she really did in real life. But he wouldn’t believe her nor understand. Perhaps he wouldn’t even care. After all, he hadn’t bothered to find out the truth. Or he hadn’t tried hard enough.
That private investigator that Logan had sent… There was no way he’d find out anything beneath the surface.
She had told him the truth about her name, her hometown, and her day job. Yes, she had earned a master’s degree in linguistics. Yes, she was a certified translator. However, she also had other training.
Other…things.
“Right, Mom?” Little Jonas tugged at her blouse.
It reminded her of when he had been a baby, clinging to her shoulders and chest as she carried him everywhere on her hip.
She missed those days of motherhood.
How many more years of Jonas’s life would she miss?
Would Jonas grow up remembering happy moments with her at all, or would he always think of her as the mother who had left him.
My boy is growing up faster than I can keep up with his life.
Soon, she’d head back to France, to her undercover work, and this dream family vacation would simply be a memory marker, a vapor once again.
“What is it, love?” Marie asked gently, not wishing for her moment with Jonas to end. Maybe if she could remember this time, she wouldn’t feel too bad later.
“I can eat a whole fish!” Jonas said. It seemed to be a repeat of something Marie had missed hearing. “Right, Mom?”
“Depends on the size of the fish. Some fish are so huge that they could feed many people.”
“Wow. Can God make such a big fish?”
“God made all fish, love,” Marie said. “He is the Creator of all. He also created you and me.”
“And Daddy too,” Jonas added.
Marie nodded. “And Daddy too.”
Logan pocketed his iPhone. “And Daddy what?”
Marie didn’t answer.
“God gave me Mommy and Daddy,” Jonas said.
Logan grunted as his iPhone pinged again. He was back on it, swiping, tapping, disappearing into his business zone. Pretty soon, he let go of Jonas’s hand.
The look on Jonas’s face pulled at Marie’s heart.
In the distance, another tour bus disgorged more people. If they didn’t hurry, there would be no place for the Urquhart family to sit anymore.
They had to find three empty seats at any table before lunch was served. One paren
t had to stay with Jonas while the other parent went to get drinks and plasticware. Mrs. Ping wasn’t with them because she had opted to check out the Mendenhall Glacier instead. And Logan wasn’t helping.
Marie felt like she had to…
And she did.
She stepped in front of Logan and peeled that phone off his ear. She turned it off, and slid it into her own purse. “Your son is more important.”
Logan looked stunned.
Positively stunned.
Chapter Ten
When they rode the tour bus to go to their other excursion today, Logan was reconciled with his phone. Suddenly, his brain could function again.
Lunch hadn’t taken very long, but he was glad that Marie had hinted at his helpfulness. All he had done was secure three seats at a table and carried lemonade for everybody. Hardly anything earth-shattering like the new business deal he was trying to sort out.
Once again, his cousin Jared had done it. While in London visiting his girlfriend and their child, Jared had played golf with one Colm Cargill, who had known him through mutual friends in Savannah, Georgia. It had turned out that Cargill Internet Communications would like to open a new branch in the United States, and was looking for investors.
Now Jared wanted Urquhart Enterprises to drop the steel merger in favor of software.
Earlier, at the salmon bake, Logan had been in the middle of texting his thoughts to Jared, when Marie yanked his phone out of his hands. Now that he had gotten it back, Logan realized that it was almost seven o’clock in London, and Jared was at dinner with his girlfriend.
Across the bus aisle, Marie and Jonas sat together. It was way past Jonas’s nap time, but they weren’t going back to the cruise ship docked at the port of Juneau until later this afternoon. So there he was, his head on Marie’s lap, taking a power nap. His knees bent, shoes pushed against the wall of the bus at the window sill.
Logan was glad that Jonas had decided to sit with his mom instead of with him. He had to catch up on all the emails he had missed the last ninety minutes they had been at the salmon bake.
There was so much to do.
His corporate attorney was waiting for his reply. He wanted to send an email to his cousin. He had to find out more about the Cargills. Of course, Logan’s cousin would have his Ruttledge Yamada Urquhart Commercial Properties build the new Cargill-Urquhart software buildings in the USA.