But he could play Scrabble. It wasn’t much. But it was something.
“Triple word score,” Iris bragged, competition always making her feisty. The low light from the table lamp beside them erased some of the lines on her face, cast her skin in gold so she looked luminous. Young. He hoped that it did the same to him.
“That’s not how you spell pigmy,” he protested, just to get her going.
“Are you challenging?” Her black eyebrow lifted like a delicate wing and he wanted to kiss her so much, his lips hurt.
“No,” he said. “But I am calling you a cheater.”
“Tough words, Mr. Mitchell,” she teased him right back, her eyes glowing. She was so lovely. Every inch of her.
Painfully aware of the bed behind them—their new marriage bed these past few days—he tried to concentrate on the tiles in front of him. Three T’s and no vowels.
Always his luck.
She scribbled her score on the pad at her elbow and he rested his hand against hers. He could play Scrabble all night if she wanted him to, but he couldn’t do it without touching her. She smiled at him, her shiny silver and black hair against her cheek.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered.
“You’re trying to distract me because you’re losing,” she said.
“I always lose this game to you,” he said. “Doesn’t change how pretty you are.”
She stood, crossed the small distance between them to slide herself into his lap, curling her body into his chest the way she always used to.
“I don’t want to play games anymore,” she whispered, her eyelids heavy, her gaze on his mouth.
“Thank God.” He groaned before pulling her as close as he could and swooping in to touch his lips to hers. To find her tongue, the soft damp secrets of her mouth. The smell and taste of her that he never tired of. She arched to him, a tidal wave all down his body.
“Mom?”
Jonah’s voice was like a crack in the night. Patrick and Iris jumped. They were startled but couldn’t move, as if time had stopped and they were paralyzed. And when Jonah opened the door, poked his head into the cabin, he found them.
Sitting like lovers, their lips damp from kissing.
Jonah blinked at them, his face unmoving, so still it was eerie. Iris jumped off Patrick’s lap.
“Jonah,” she whispered, her hand out as if he was a deer she was trying to tame. “I’m—” But the expression on his face—part horror, part blame—was a brick wall and she stopped. Her hand fell and she turned her face aside as though she couldn’t meet her son’s eyes anymore.
Shame ran out of her body like sand from a bag and Patrick nearly gasped, glad he was sitting down, or he’d be on his butt from shock.
How could she feel that way about him? Patrick’s stomach rolled at the thought that what was between them had been shameful to Iris. That’s why she didn’t want Jonah to know. It wasn’t about Jonah being hurt, it was about her being ashamed.
Patrick felt dirty, sick that she had felt that way about his touch. That his kisses had made her cheap.
“What are you doing, Mom?” Jonah finally asked.
“I’m trying to be happy,” Iris said, lifting her chin, but the look in her eye belied that gesture. And Patrick realized that Iris only felt ashamed in front of Jonah—as if the two of them understood she should know better than to be with Patrick.
Now Patrick was ashamed.
“For how long?” Anger was beginning to make an appearance in Jonah’s voice, the red flush of his skin.
Patrick stood. “Jonah—”
“I’m talking to my mom!” Jonah yelled, not bothering at all to hide his rage. “How long, Mom?” he asked, controlling himself slightly while talking to Iris. “Has he made you any promises?”
“This is between your mother and I—” Patrick didn’t get to finish because Jonah leaped from the doorway, grabbed Patrick’s shoulder and smashed him against the wall.
“You broke her heart!” Jonah yelled right in his face. “You ruined her life and I am supposed to stand by and let you do it again?”
Patrick saw stars and he couldn’t breathe for a second.
“Jonah.” Iris pulled on Jonah’s arms but he only shook Patrick harder.
“She suffered for you, Dad.” His use of the word was a curse. “We both did. She worked three jobs to keep me in school. Did she tell you that?”
Patrick shook his head. The giant wall he’d built around his regret and his shame and his responsibility started to crumble. And the distance he liked between him and Iris, the distance that kept him safe, shrank.
“My grade school principal wanted to date her,” Jonah said. “He’d come over every Saturday night with flowers and movies for us to watch. Like a family. Like a real family. And she’d send him away and spend the rest of the night crying. This went on for a year. Did she tell you that?”
“No,” Patrick whispered. He wondered if Jonah knew there were tears in his own eyes. Jonah’s grief was a punch in his gut, a knife that twisted.
“All my award ceremonies and graduations that she went to by herself because you would have nothing to do with us. Those nights by my bed when I was sick or hurt. The hospital trips when we were both so scared, we cried for you. Both of us. We prayed to God that you would somehow know that I was sick and she was scared and we were so broke we didn’t know how we were going to pay the bills. We prayed that you would show up. But you never did. All those years we waited for another letter. A change of heart. Something that would let us be a family. And it never came. Did it?”
“Jonah,” Patrick breathed, wanting this river of words to stop because he was drowning in everyone’s grief. They were all drowning. Tears were seeping down Jonah’s cheeks and Patrick, desperate for any connection, any touch, tried to pat Jonah’s shoulders. “I didn’t know, Jonah. You have to believe me. If I had known, I would have been there. I wish I had been there.”
For a second, the briefest moment of hope, Jonah looked on the edge of caving, all the hate and anger and rage in him wavered and Patrick saw the hurt kid in there.
Jonah lowered his head, as if it was too heavy and he rested it against Patrick’s chest.
Oh, son. Patrick couldn’t breathe through the pain, but he lifted his hands and touched his son’s head, stroked his hair.
Jonah pressed his head hard against Patrick, as if he could break through the skin, through the muscle and bones. To the beating heart of his father.
“I’m sorry, son,” Patrick whispered.
And Jonah jerked away.
Patrick talked fast, hoping to hold him, to keep that moment. “I’m sorry for what you went through as a kid. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to teach you how to stand up for yourself and help—” Jonah looked at his mother, betrayed.
Patrick wished he could suck back every word.
“I don’t need your apologies,” Jonah finally said, through gritted teeth. “I don’t need you. This is about my mother. About what you are doing to her.”
Jonah pushed him against the wall once more with restrained violence, as if he was barely stopping himself from pushing Patrick right through the drywall and logs.
“Did he make you promises, Mom?” Jonah asked Iris, the tender change in him so dramatic that it took a moment for Patrick to register what the boy was saying. And once he did, dread filled him. Patrick was damned by his own cowardice. His own stupidity.
Iris shook her head. “He didn’t,” she whispered.
“Have you forgotten how hard it was?” Jonah asked. “How much he hurt you? Us?”
“Not for a minute,” Iris said, her black eyes bright.
“Then what are you doing?”
Iris’s smile was so sad, so resigned. “I don’t really know, Jonah. It’s just been so nice—” she swallowed “—to pretend.”
She touched Jonah’s face, stroked the hard planes of his jaw, and the wildness in the boy was tamed. The boy’s shoulders slumped and his face relaxed
, almost melted into a look like grief. “Happiness isn’t free, Jonah,” she said. “To be happy you have to sacrifice something.”
“He makes you happy?” Jonah asked, as if the very thought was horrific.
Iris nodded, serene and calm, and Patrick felt lifted by something. Some feeling that was too big to name, too strong to see.
“Do you love him?” Jonah asked her, his voice breaking. “After everything he’s done?”
Iris glanced at Patrick and he could feel her love, all the love he’d been ignoring since they’d started sleeping together. He leaned back against the wall, suddenly without strength.
Iris didn’t say anything, didn’t face her son, instead she looked right at Patrick.
I love you, her eyes said. I love you with all your mistakes. All your pride. Are you brave enough? Are you strong enough for me? Because I love you and I am here.
“I love you, Mom. But you’re a fool,” Jonah said and left.
Acid flowed through Jonah’s veins and he wanted to go back there and smash Patrick’s nose in. He wanted to beat the man bloody for even knowing what he seemed to know about Jonah’s childhood. But mostly Jonah wanted to kill him for what he was doing to Mom, again.
Jonah should have grabbed her, pulled her out of there and gotten her away from Patrick, back to reality where she’d see that she was only going to be hurt in the end.
Happy? he thought, incredulous. The acid bubbled and his stomach churned. What does happy have to do with anything? And how long could it possibly last? Happy wasn’t real. Who made decisions based on happiness? Who put themselves at such risk, such personal peril just to be happy for a few minutes?
But she was an adult. Mom knew what she was doing and that somehow made it all worse—that she stood there willingly, ready to take the pain that would no doubt come.
His body shook and he wanted to put his fist through the wall. God, it would be great if Gabe were here. Just showed up out of the blue and Jonah could finally punch something.
He stopped, braced himself against one of the cottages. The rough wood digging into his hand, the cool night air filling his lungs.
Drying his wet face.
Christ, he’d been crying.
He rubbed his face against the cotton of his shirt sleeve. Why had he admitted those things? Good God. He’d told Patrick he used to pray for him to arrive, like some kind of angel in his hospital room?
He barely remembered doing that. Strange that the memory had just been sitting there, waiting.
Jonah rested the top of his head against the building, feeling a terrible weakness, a breathlessness fill him. Reminding him of those nights as a kid when there wasn’t enough air in the world for his starving lungs.
Great. Just what I need.
His inhaler was in the Jeep. He tilted his head, trying to get past the moment. Into the next moment. He thought of water.
But his chest got tighter. His breath shorter.
Jonah looked up at the stars and struggled for air. He’d thought he was over it. That he’d buried all of his hurt feelings and foolish hopes for a father in the past, where they belonged.
But he’d seen his mother kissing Patrick and everything had rushed back.
Breath rattled and stalled in his chest. He gasped, his lungs filling with cement. His throat closing.
Water. Air. Daphne.
He thought of Daphne. He thought of those black gloves. Her sweet smile. He thought of the touch of her hands, the weight of her head against his shoulder. He thought of her laugh.
And the moment expanded. He sucked a shallow breath.
He thought of her standing up to him. To her ex-husband on behalf of the kids. He thought of her drinking champagne. Eating oysters one-handed.
He sucked in another breath. And another.
He thought of her on that bed. Asking him to explain his feelings. He thought of how he’d talked to her, made love to her with his eyes wide-open.
Air trickled down his throat, and he took careful sips, until his world opened up past the rattle and kick of his faulty lungs.
Oh, Daphne. Thank you.
Disoriented momentarily by the adrenaline surging through him, it took him a second to locate his car and stumble to it. It took three tries to open the glove box. Finally, he got to his inhaler. Took two puffs and slowly felt the iron bars that lived in his chest relax.
The moon crept out from behind clouds, and suddenly he could see so much clearer. His life, before coming here, stretched out like a familiar road before him.
I don’t have any reason to stay here anymore.
He pulled out his cell phone, stared at it as if it was a loaded weapon.
There was no one to protect. Iris was making her own bed to lie in. There was only Daphne and that was never meant to last. They both knew that. Understood that.
He flipped open the phone.
Daphne would be hurt. They both would be. But it would pass, in the end, because—
“We weren’t meant to last,” he whispered as if saying it out loud made it more official.
Tonight, his mother, Patrick, were proof of that, right? Love didn’t last. Happiness was fleeting.
He pressed the phone to his mouth, feeling it against his teeth. Had that gut-wrenching mix of satisfaction and lust and delight he’d experienced with Daphne been happy?
It wasn’t anything he’d felt before, but maybe he’d never been happy before.
For a moment in the cabin, with his mother, he’d recognized the look on his mother’s face. The light that had shone from her, changing her. Changing the circumstances from something sad and tawdry into something redemptive and clean.
He’d seen that look on Daphne’s face when he’d made love to her in the shower, doing unbelievable things to her, pushing both of them past friendly sex into something darker.
Her expression had been angelic. And he’d felt an answering glow on his own face.
Last night, watching Daphne sleep, her mouth open, her face relaxed, he’d felt brighter, sharper. As if he’d taken a drug that made the world more real, somehow. And his place in it more comfortable, as if his life before Daphne had never fit properly, like a suit that was too big.
Jonah wondered, briefly, if he would ever feel that comfort again.
Shaking his head, he amputated the thoughts. Forced them away. Incinerated them.
He and Daphne weren’t meant to last. Life went on. Happiness was fleeting. And in the end, they’d had great sex. That’s all.
He called Gary. “I’ll see you at the office tomorrow. I’m coming back.” He disconnected and looked up at the sky through the window of his Jeep. He counted stars until his eyes stopped burning.
Now all he had left to do was pack.
And say goodbye to Daphne.
14
“Well?” Iris said after Jonah had left and Patrick still could not lift himself from the wall. Without the wall at his back Patrick was pretty sure he’d crumple. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he finally asked. “About the money and about—” he swallowed “—the principal.”
“Because,” she said, her chin up. He couldn’t look at her directly because her pride burned so bright. So he glanced at her, taking small mental samples, then had to look to the ceiling. The floor. Anywhere but those eyes that were scourging him. “Those were my decisions. Not dating that man, working those jobs instead of asking for help from you were the decisions I made.”
Her words, so angry and sad, were like a knife at his throat. He could barely speak.
“And,” she continued, “I take responsibility for those decisions.” She paused, and he was aware that something was happening here, something he’d been running from. Reckoning had come and she was lethal.
“What about you?” she asked.
“What about me?” he asked, jumping slightly at the tone in her voice. Accusation had crept in and he didn’t like it. He’d nearly been bea
ten by his son tonight, the last thing he needed was to be called to task by a woman who had walked out on him and his boys in the middle of the night. He felt that grudge rebuild the walls around his sense of righteousness.
She left, he thought, gaining strength. She kept my son a secret.
“Do you take responsibility for writing those letters?”
“Of course,” he said. “And I told you, it was the right thing to do, at the time.”
Her lips trembled slightly and she pressed them together. “Okay. I understand that. You wanted to punish me for leaving you but I didn’t make you stay celibate. I didn’t keep you from moving on. I sent you divorce papers. You didn’t sign them.”
“I married you in front of God,” he said through clenched teeth. He didn’t like where this was going. She’d left him. He had nothing to feel guilty about. Dammit. “Papers don’t change that.”
Tears filled her eyes and Patrick felt his stomach bottom out. He hated to see her cry. Always had. They didn’t need to do this, hash out this old business. Not when things were so good right now.
“Baby—” He reached for her and she held up her hand, stopping him.
“Then is this punishment?” she asked. “Are you sleeping with me and hating me at the same time?”
“No.” He gasped, feeling her pain like a punch to the gut. “No, honey, no. It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?” she cried. “Why didn’t you let me go when you had the divorce papers? Why did you wait for me to come to you again, after all these years? I’ve slept with you every night and asked for no promises. I’ve kept this our secret, but I don’t know what you’re thinking.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to take responsibility. So we can move on.”
“Move on to what?” he cried. A future? It seemed impossible. It was impossible. Jonah made it impossible. The past made it impossible. Patrick’s own fears, his constant, nagging, paralyzing fear, made it impossible.
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