Worth Fighting For

“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.