He watched her gaze bounce between himself and Jonah for a moment before Jean said, “I think it’s time.”
Josh’s stomach flipped. “Right now?”
“I think today’s big enough already. I’m booked all morning getting ready for Violet’s arrival. But tomorrow afternoon is the last chance I’ll have any free time before the wedding. Let’s take an hour and go fishing. We can release a ‘Big Fish’ for a better one.”
He’d been a father for five years. He’d known he’d been one for only two weeks. And now tomorrow, he’d become a father to his son in the way that mattered most of all.
Chapter Fifteen
Jean found she understood now about how Josh had been unable to concentrate at work. She’d made it through the rest of Wednesday and all of this morning’s frantic preparations, but her mind was elsewhere. It was fixed on this hour, on this time as they stood in the creek and fished. At the spot where Josh would forever change in Jonah’s eyes. It was another perfect day, warm and sunny with a perfect breeze and fluffy clouds. She took the ideal weather as God’s blessing on the huge shift about to happen.
Josh waded out of the water holding up his “prize fish.” They were in shallow enough water that simply boots would have sufficed, but Josh once again appeared in his complete fisherman’s ensemble, the canvas bucket hat cocked comically to one side. The only nod to the man he was elsewhere was a brightly colored SymphoCync T-shirt under the straps of his hip waders.
“Look at how big he is!” he boasted with ridiculous pride. A mediocre-sized trout, it would have been a perfectly ordinary catch for any of the valley’s residents, but Josh’s delight was amusing. He was having fun this afternoon, but she could tell he was on pins and needles until she did what they’d both come here to do.
On the bank beside her, Jonah alternated between applauding enthusiastically and signing “hooray!” while jumping up and down. She loved that his excitement for Josh was as large as his excitement over his own first fish had been. Jonah’s heart was huge—he loved everyone instantly and without hesitation. The connection he’d made with Josh, however, exceeded even that gregarious nature. Even before the bond that the Jonahphone had brought, they knew each other in a way only blood could explain.
“So big! No keep?” Josh signed to Jonah with a face of exaggerated disappointment.
Jonah’s enormous laugh and his “never” sign made Josh clutch at his heart and retaliate with repeated “big fish” signs. Clearly, Josh believed any man whose name sign was “Big Fish” could catch no “small fish.”
Big Fish. It was maybe the last time he’d use that name. Heavenly Father, watch over this moment, Jean prayed as she watched Jonah and Josh release the flapping fish back into the water. It’s so important for all of us.
She caught Josh’s eye for a moment and nodded before she signed and voiced the words, “Jonah, honey, come sit down for a bit. I have something important to tell you.”
Josh set down his rod, taking a nervous breath. It warmed her heart and bolstered her confidence that he wanted this so much. He would find a way to be more than a temporary or fringe fixture in Jonah’s life, wouldn’t he?
Jonah plopped down on the blanket she’d spread out, wearing a reluctant “aw, Mom” expression over the fact that she’d halted the antics with his new friend. That wouldn’t last long. Josh settled carefully down opposite them.
She’d rehearsed this speech dozens of times, but all her carefully chosen words seemed to fly out of reach. How did you say something so large to someone so small?
She had planned to keep her eyes on Jonah, voicing her signs so that Josh could be part of the conversation, but Josh tapped her on the elbow. “I know the sign. I’ve practiced how to tell him. Lead up to it however you want, but please, Jean, let me. Let me tell him who I am.” His voice cracked on the final words.
How could she deny him this moment? After all he had already done for Jonah? She nodded, then returned her gaze to Jonah. Despite her earlier peace, her heart hammered against her ribs now that the moment had arrived. She was grateful Jonah couldn’t hear the shaking in her voice as she began. “Big Fish has become a good friend, yes?”
Jonah’s oversize “yes!” sign made her pounding heart glow.
“You like him very much, and he likes you very much.”
Jonah looked over at Josh, who smiled and signed, “Yes.”
“Well,” Jean continued, “Big Fish is an important person in your life. More important than you know. He’s always been a person in your life, actually.”
Jonah’s eyebrows scrunched up as he made the sign for “how?”
“Big Fish and I were friends...very good friends...long before you came along. He’s been a special part of your life since before you were born, only you didn’t know it. He didn’t know it, either, for a bunch of grown-up reasons you don’t need to worry about. Because you’re both here, now, together, and all of us will be part of each other’s lives from now on.” She said that last bit while looking straight at Josh, casting it as the promise she’d demanded it be before she’d ever tell Jonah what she was about to tell him.
“You see, Big Fish has a different name, a special name, one that’s important to you. And it’s time that he got to tell you what that is.”
Jonah followed Jean’s gaze to Josh, his small eyes wide with curiosity. “What?” he signed.
Slowly, with a heartwarming seriousness, Josh spread his fingers wide and touched his thumb to his forehead. “I’m father.” After a second, he expanded, adding the signs for “I’m your dad. You’re my son.”
Jean’s throat tightened at the emotion in Josh’s tone as he voiced the life-changing words. An excruciating pause hung in the air as Jean watched her son absorb what he’d heard. His small eyebrows furrowed together, and then his gaze bounced back and forth between her and Josh a few times. Both she and Josh nodded in acknowledgment of his silent query. She wanted to grab hold of every detail—from the green of the leaves to the way the sunlight slanted into the clearing to the sound of the creek behind them and Josh’s nervous, shallow breaths across from her.
“You father?” Jonah signed to Josh. “My father?” Jean thought the sight of her son’s hand on his chest, small fingers splayed against his heart in the sign for “my,” might stay pressed against her own heart forever. She took a breath to translate, then fell silent, realizing Josh needed no translation.
There were days where the silence of the valley felt holy to her. The silence of this moment felt twice that—celestial, eternal, as if all of Heaven had peeked through the clouds to watch.
“Me.” Josh’s one-word reply was a broken, breathy sigh, followed by “Your father,” signed with determined fingers. For some people, it took a long time before they could effectively convey emotion in sign. Josh had already mastered it.
“Really?” Jonah signed, mouth open and eyes wide.
“A little help here?” Josh asked nervously, nodding at the unfamiliar sign.
“He’s asking ‘really?’” she explained as a tear slid down her cheek. She wanted to both laugh and cry at the same time. The moment felt so big, it ought to hold twelve emotions, not just those two feelings.
“Yeah,” Josh said as he repeated the sign back to Jonah with a heartbreakingly encouraging expression. “Really.”
“Big Fish really is your father,” Jean signed, failing to keep her own voice from catching with the tears that filled her eyes at the important words. “And he’ll always be your father, from now on. You have a daddy now, Jonah. Are you happy about that?”
There was a hushed moment, the tiniest of pauses as she and Josh watched Jonah continue to absorb the enormous fact. She had never, until this moment, let herself consider that Jonah might not accept the news. Might resent it, even. He was so young, and he’d already been through so much in losing his grandfather—the only fa
ther figure he’d ever known, and barely known at that. Despite his bubbly personality, expressing his feelings had always been hard for Jonah. After all, he was so young, and emotions didn’t always follow logic. She needed to make space for him to be upset instead of happy if that’s what he needed, but she had no idea how. Was she helping her son? Or hurting him? Oh, Lord, tell me—have I done the right thing?
“Jonah...” Josh moaned the word, his agonized tone telling Jean that he felt all the same worries that gripped her heart. Josh had been so dismissed or pressured by his own father that it would rock him to the core to be rejected by his son. It struck her, at this moment that seemed to stretch on forever, that Josh would be a great father because it would crush him to repeat the faults of his own father.
It started as a small bubbling, a sparkle in Jonah’s eyes that began slowly to ripple out through the rest of him. Jonah put his hands to his cheeks—his favorite show of amazement—with wide eyes and an open mouth. It was like watching a tiny fountain of joy surge and overflow its banks.
“Wow!” Jonah barely formed the sign as he flung himself at Josh, hugging and laughing and erupting in wildly happy sounds. The two fell backward, Josh’s elated laughter holding the sounds of relief and more than a hint of tears.
“That’s the sign for ‘wow,’” she said over the noise, feeling her own fountain of tears surge and overflow.
“Wow,” Josh repeated from somewhere inside the tumble of Jonah’s arms and legs. “Wow.” The world had tilted; something had forever changed. We just became a family. So what if it didn’t look like the one she’d had or ones others had? Despite a host of complications and uncertainties, Jean felt less alone. The pang of abandonment she’d felt since Dad’s passing eased up just a bit. Jonah had another champion in his corner—and a powerful one at that.
She let them tumble about in their father-son glee, reveling in the moment. Thank you, Father. Thank you for this. It felt as if her very bones offered up the gratitude. She felt her own wet lashes against her cheeks as her eyes closed, new tears sliding down her face.
Suddenly, the warmth of Josh’s hand wrapped around hers, squeezing it tight. She opened her eyes to look at him and found she couldn’t actually tell if Josh was laughing or crying. Did it really matter which? Still on his back, Jonah clinging atop him, Josh kept his hand tightly around Jean’s while his other arm pressed his son to his chest. Jonah was still giggling, his small forehead pressed against Josh’s so that their brown hair tumbled together. They looked so much like each other. They were so much like each other.
A sob of something too big for happiness or relief burst out of her, and she wiped her cheeks with one hand because Josh still had not let go of the other. Josh reacted to the sound, twisting his head to look at her with eyes that reflected everything she was feeling. Jonah picked up on the reaction, scrambling upright once he caught sight of his mother.
“Why cry?” he signed, scooting over to look at her quizzically.
“Happy,” she signed. It seemed perfect that the sign was made with upward strokes from the heart. Her heart did feel as if it had fluttered upward, had lifted outward somehow. “I’m happy,” she said for Josh’s benefit as she repeated the sign.
“Happy, too,” Jonah signed. He turned to Josh. “You?”
“Happy,” Josh said.
“Daddy,” Jonah signed, his hand touching his forehead where the sign was made.
“Yeah,” Josh said and signed. “Daddy.” Then, as if losing his nerve, he looked at Jean and said, “Tell him he can still call me Big Fish if that feels more comfortable to him. I don’t want to force this.”
She didn’t realize she had been waiting for a signal that Josh would put Jonah’s needs before his own. But it was there, in that single statement and the affection filling Josh’s eyes.
“You get to choose,” she signed to Jonah, voicing so that Josh could hear. “You can call him Big Fish or Daddy, whichever you want. This is new, and you don’t have to decide now.”
The “aw, Mom” look returned. “Daddy,” Jonah repeated with a tiny little “no-brainer” face that made Jean laugh.
Jonah then made a sign that made Jean’s heart still in wonder. She lost her voice for a moment, amazed at the ease with which Jonah embraced his new world.
“What’s that?” Josh asked, watching Jonah’s fingers.
Jean smiled into Josh’s eyes. “That’s the sign for ‘family.’”
She watched as Josh duplicated the sign, bringing his fingers around to join each other in a sort of circle. Then he and Jonah did it together.
When she joined in, so that all three of them made the sign simultaneously, she understood why circles were complete, even when they weren’t perfect.
Chapter Sixteen
The wedding was here.
Or, more precisely, the bride was about to arrive.
Josh had helped Jean and everyone in the valley as much as he could, grateful for something else to think about other than the looming issue of Hal Braddon’s offer. Matt checked in—impatiently—every day, and so far Braddon hadn’t retracted his offer and even showed a tiny glimpse of impatience when Matt informed the man Josh was busy giving his stepsister away at her wedding.
Now, as he picked Violet and her maid of honor, Lucy, up from the airport, Josh felt surprisingly settled despite the nuptial whirlwind that was about to start.
“Lyle and all his family will be in later this afternoon. They rented a van to hold everyone. I can’t wait to see the look on his mother’s face when she sees where we are having the ceremony,” Violet gushed, all eager and bubbly. “You, too, Lucy. It’s gorgeous, isn’t it Josh?”
“Really beautiful,” Josh agreed, although he wasn’t even sure the two women heard him as they chatted happily over plans and details.
“Oh, and wait until you meet Mayor Jean. She’s the mayor of the town and she runs the weddings—can you imagine? She and Josh go all the way back to college, and we didn’t even know it until we visited earlier this month.”
Josh marveled at Violet’s ability to simplify what felt like a mountain of complicated history. “All the way back to college”? The way Violet said it made him feel rather ancient, despite that he wasn’t even yet thirty. Still, that gave him a reminder of what this wedding meant to Jean, as well as to his stepsister. Jean was going to give Violet a spectacular wedding, he was sure of it. It was fun to be cheering for everyone involved, right down to the florist, the baker and the church janitor, “Boss,” setting up the chairs.
No one ever called Boss by his real name, whatever it was, but he’d met the man getting breakfast one morning at Wanda’s and they’d taken an immediate liking to each other. Boss had invited him to come back to church on more than just Potluck Sundays. Jean had invited him to church. Pastor Mitchell had invited him to church. With that level of evangelism he ought to feel surrounded, but instead it just felt like a great big circle of welcome.
“Did you eat on the plane?” Josh asked as he turned off the highway to the road that led into the valley. Something happened to his pulse every time he made that turn. A surprising combination of quickening and slowing—a peaceful eagerness, if that made any sense. It came over him every time he entered the valley, as though he physically registered the absence of the place and his return to it. “We could swing by Wanda’s if you want, or I’m sure Hailey could send something up to your room.”
“Listen to him,” Violet remarked, “chatting about everyone like a local. He’s become hung up on the place, Lucy, I tell you.”
“Really?”
“Well, actually, he’s a bit hung up on the mayor. They were a thing back in college.”
Josh gave Violet a look that said “no more details” through the rearview mirror. Lucy and Violet had climbed in the back together so they could begin going over Violet’s enormous bridal notebook on the drive
. Honestly, he’d launched entire versions of software with less documentation.
“Really?” Lucy’s voice held more curiosity than Josh would have liked.
“Don’t press me for details—he’s not sharing.” That wasn’t exactly true, but it served as a good out for Violet. He gave her a grateful look and continued driving. “Let’s just go straight to the inn, Josh. I want to get unpacked before I take Lyle and his family out to the falls.”
Josh pulled up to Hailey’s Inn Love to see Jean standing at the entrance with a small bouquet of flowers. She was beaming. This was her big day, too, in many ways. Violet’s wedding was a victory for everyone in Matrimony Falls, and that gave him reason to smile with every check he wrote. Money was fun. He was good at making it. Lots of people he knew were good at hoarding it, but Josh loved using it. Watching the things it made happen, the experiences it brought him, the ways it changed people’s lives. This wedding was all that and Violet’s happiness wrapped up in one event. The extraordinary circumstances that had led him to this weekend in this valley? Well, that was all just icing on the wedding cake.
Or providence, depending on whom you talked to. Josh was becoming more and more comfortable with his new possible position on Team Providence. The smile on his face as he ceremoniously opened the car door for Violet seemed to spread all the way to his fingertips. Happy. People always used that word, but never with the meaning as deep as he felt right now. This is a happy time in a happy place. Does anyone here get how rare that is?
“Hello, Violet!” Jean enveloped Violet in a huge hug, with Vi hugging her right back. “I’m so excited you’re here!”
Lucy looked at him, surprised. He just shrugged, gave her a “yep, that’s the way it is around here” look, and popped open the trunk to fetch the bags. Silicon Valley CEO turned chauffeur—would anyone back at SymphoCync believe it?
Introductions took a few seconds, and then Hailey appeared on the steps to sweep Violet and Lucy up to their rooms. Josh was grateful for the brief moments alone with Jean—his last chance for a while, he suspected.
His Surprise Son Page 14