His Surprise Son (14 page)

Self-control whooshed from the sheriff like air from a blown-out tire. “You dumbass,” he said. “
I’m
pretending? Where the hell have you been? What family did you create? Obviously, you know about Eli, so the only words that ought to be coming out of your mouth are
thank you for stepping in when I was too selfish or indifferent to give a crap that I got a girl pregnant and
—”

The remainder of his dressing-down was lost as Nate’s fist connected with Sheriff Neel’s mouth. It didn’t take but a second for the larger man to strike back with a punishing sock to the gut and then an attempt—but only an attempt, Nate was later proud to remember—to pull Nate’s arms behind his back.

The next minute was filled with the men circling each other, getting in as many shots as they could, spitting both blood and accusations and generally behaving in a fashion that would later make them supremely grateful they were having this fight at two in the morning on a deserted street.

* * *

Rocky road brownies, banana cream pie, four-cheese lasagna, Texas chili and corn bread, meat loaf... Biting her thumbnail, Izzy surveyed the buffet spread across her kitchen counter or bubbling on the stove and wondered what else she could make.

“Lemon-blueberry mousse.” She headed to the pantry. Eli loved her lemon mousse. Light, fluffy and sweet-tart with tiny local blueberries, it would be just the thing to welcome him home from camp the day after tomorrow. Along, of course, with all the other Eli favorites she’d been making almost since she walked in the door last night.

She wasn’t kidding herself. She knew teenage boys were different from PMS-ing women, who could be distracted by clever culinary maneuvers. Cooking gave her something to do with her nerves.

Exhausted, she piled ingredients onto the tiny slivers of counter space that remained. Even Latke, who typically stood by to gobble any morsel that fell to the floor when Izzy was cooking, had trudged off to her dog bed hours ago. The kitchen was a shambles, and so were Izzy’s emotions.

Where did she stand with Nate? She had no idea. All she knew was that at two, no—she glanced at the kitchen clock—two
forty
in the morning, fear seemed more real than comfort.

Nate hadn’t wanted to talk, hadn’t wanted to listen, either. All she could do was wait for his next move. Clearly, they were not going to be bosom buddies, conferring lovingly on all things Eli. Not yet, at any rate.

“I’m going to go to bed. I am,” she muttered to herself. She already had enough food for Eli and Trey and a bunch of their friends. And other than identifying fear, she couldn’t make heads or tails of how she was feeling.

Guilty?
Yes, darn it.

Angry?
Well, yeah, sort of.
She hadn’t cornered the market on bad decisions in this scenario, after all. Nate and his parents had a few bozo moves on their balance sheet, too. She swiped at a dusting of flour on the sink tiles.

Put the food away and go to bed, even if you don’t sleep.
Her nighttime thoughts were rarely clear and even more rarely helpful.

When the doorbell rang, she nearly dropped several pounds of lasagna.

Abandoning the glass pan in the kitchen, she hustled to the living room, her imagination already conjuring disastrous news about Henry or Sam or—

When she looked through the peephole and saw Derek, her heart turned over.
Eli.

Flicking on the porch light and yanking open the door, she began to pepper him with questions. “What happened? Why were you called? Where is— Oh, my God.” She peered closely at Derek’s face, then exclaimed, “What happened to you? Your eye is—”

“Not as bad as his.” Derek jerked his thumb toward the right. Nate stood on the porch, too, one eye almost completely shut, a cut on his cheek and several buttons ripped off his shirt. And he was handcuffed.

Izzy’s jaw fell at the sight. She looked at Derek. “Why is he—”

“May we come in?” Derek’s tone dripped sarcasm.

She backed up. Derek entered, followed by Nate, who looked angry enough to kill something once the handcuffs were removed.

Derek sniffed the air. “You baking?”

She nodded.

“So we didn’t wake you up.”

“No.”

“Good.” He jerked his head toward Nate. “Your friend has a bad temper.”

Nate’s injured eye started to pop open. He winced. “
I
have a bad temper? Look who’s talking.”

“Unless you want me to take you to a cell, shut it.”

“Sure, take me to jail. It’ll give me a chance to work on the police brutality charge I’m planning to file.”

“Listen, you jackass—”

“Stop!” Izzy insisted, her nerves already raw. “You both have cuts that ought to be looked at.” All she had on hand was antiseptic and a selection of drugstore bandages. No gauze or tape or anything. “I think you might need stitches,” she told Nate.

“No, I don’t,” came the instantaneous, belligerent reply.

He lurched forward, shoved from behind. “Be polite,” Derek growled.

“Derek,” Izzy protested. Nate objected more colorfully to the push. “Will someone tell me what is going on here, please?”

“I found him loitering in front of the hardware store.”

“Loitering,” Nate scoffed, shaking his head.

“I said, shut it,” Derek ordered.

“Up yours.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Izzy went to get bandages while the men argued in her living room. She had never known Nate to get into a fight; nor had she ever heard him speak so rudely.

As for Derek, he had a distant history of getting into trouble but had been a veritable Boy Scout for nearly two decades. He even corrected Eli if her son used the word
stupid
.

Returning to the living room with bandages and disinfectant, she found Nate and Derek seated on her sofa, surly expressions on each of their bruised faces. Nate sat with his cuffed hands folded tensely on his lap.

“Derek, take the handcuffs off,” Izzy requested.

“When I’m assured
your friend
can keep his hands to himself and after I’ve decided whether he needs to visit the jail for a spell or can be released on his own recognizance.”

Nate rolled his eyes. “As if you know what
recognizance
means.”

“And away we go,” Derek said, reaching for Nate’s arm.

“All right, obviously we are all in the midst of a tense situation,” Izzy interjected.

Derek snorted. “Tense?”

“Can you define
tense
for him, too?” Nate suggested.

Derek growled, “How about we define
contempt for the law
, you arrogant—”

“That’s enough, both of you!” Izzy set the first-aid items down
hard
on the coffee table. It was difficult to believe these were the rational men she’d loved.

“Derek,” she said, “Nate just found out that Eli is his son. Obviously, he’s feeling conflicted, at odds—”

“I know what
conflicted
means,” Derek bit off.

“I know you do. And I’m sure you’re feeling—” she almost said
vulnerable
, but neither of them was going to cop to that right now “—a lot of things, as well. You’re involved in Eli’s life—this affects you.”

It was impossible to miss the resentment that filled Nate’s expression.

“It’s not going to be easy for any of us to figure out the new normal,” she said, “but we have to, for Eli’s sake. Whatever happened before now, whatever any one of us is feeling, Eli’s needs have to come first. Can we agree on that?” When neither man spoke immediately, she put her hands on her hips. “Because if we can’t, you are both welcome to leave. I mean it. History or no history. Future or no future.”

The reprimand silenced them both. She pointed to Nate’s hands. “Uncuff him.” Derek released Nate and Nate rubbed his wrists. The requested silence reigned, highlighting the intense awkwardness of the situation. Whom, Izzy wondered, should she give first aid to first?

“Coffee? Tea? Lasagna?” she asked. Nobody answered and nobody smiled.

Derek stood. “I’m on duty.”

Okay, Derek first. “I’ll look at that cut on your face before you go.”

“I’m fine.” He headed to the door.

Oh, man, how long before they would be normal with each other again? Izzy followed him. “Derek,” she said softly as he stepped onto the porch, “nothing will change between you and Eli, or you and me.”

His mouth worked as if he wanted to say something, but in the end, his lips pressed into a thin smile. “Night, Izzy.”

She remained on the porch until the squad car’s headlights came on and Derek pulled away from the curb. Sad and confused about how to handle any of this, Izzy went back inside and shut the door.

Alone again with Nate.

Chapter Fourteen

S
itting on the couch, in Derek’s vacated spot, Izzy soaked a cotton ball in antiseptic and touched it to Nate’s forehead, slapping his hand when he tried to push the cotton away.

“If you’re man enough to fight, you’re man enough to suffer the consequences.” When he looked at her, surprised by her matter-of-fact attitude to his injuries, she added quietly, “That’s what I would tell Eli.”

Nate was quiet for a moment. “Has he ever gotten into a fight?”

“Once.” She continued to work on him as she shared the first of many stories she would likely tell him about his son. “He was eight, just finishing the second grade. He’s always loved school, but that year was particularly hard for him because Reid Stoltz, who’d been his best friend since preschool, decided he couldn’t play with Eli anymore. And he was very clear about why.”

Nate’s right brow rose above his swollen eye. “Why?”

This, Izzy realized, was one of the things she’d felt so much trepidation about telling him. Shaking her head at her own faintheartedness, she forged ahead. “By third grade, the kids in Eli’s class were starting to notice and care about who was ‘different’ and who was ‘normal.’ Reid decided he wanted a normal friend.”

She reached up to put a bandage on the cut above Nate’s eyebrow, but he stopped her.

“Explain that.” He was watching her intently.

Izzy looked Nate straight in the eye. “Eli is deaf. He has assistive technology that helps him perceive some sounds, and an interpreter to help him in school, and he does really well. A’s and B’s in all his subjects. But in the schools he’s gone to, he’s always been the only kid with a serious hearing impairment. He stands out. That was especially tough when he was younger.”

If Izzy was honest with herself, she’d been wondering for years how Nate would react to the news that his child was deaf. She noticed everything now—the lowering of his brow, the clouding over of his expression as questions raced through his mind. She saw him swallow. And then the question she realized she’d been dreading for over a decade:

“Was he born deaf?”

Izzy had worked through the guilt and the if-only’s a long time ago. Such thoughts were useless in helping Eli move forward, so she’d relegated them to the late-night hours. She’d known, though, perhaps instinctively, that if Nate ever asked that question, the shadowy feelings would return.

“No. His hearing was normal.” Rising from the sofa, she crossed to a bookcase, where several large photo albums nestled side by side. Pulling one off the shelf, she resumed her seat and opened it on her lap.

“This is Eli at a year and a half. He’d been toddling around for a few months already. He went on his first pony ride and loved it. And this—” she pointed to another photo “—is when we went berry picking on Sauvie Island. He ate so many blueberries his tongue was purple for hours.”

Nate looked hungrier for the sight of his son than Eli had been for the berries. The certain knowledge that he had no intention of walking away without meeting Eli settled on her. And if he met Eli, he would want to remain part of his life; she knew it. The awareness was a relief and a worry.

“We lived in Portland his first couple of years. I got my GED, then worked as a waitress and took classes at Portland Community College.”

Nate lifted his eyes from the photos to her. “And took care of a baby. That was a helluva lot on your shoulders.”

She smiled. “Apparently, shoulders have a lot of muscle. The more you use them, the stronger they get.”

Nate did not smile. “It was hard going.”

“Some times were harder than others. I moved to Portland while I was pregnant. I lived with a friend of Henry’s, who got me a job at a preschool that was in the office building where she worked. It was a perfect job, except I seemed to catch every bug the kids brought in. When Eli got sick the fall after we picked the berries, the diagnosis was congenital CMV. It’s a virus I caught at the preschool and probably passed on to him while I was pregnant. No one knows exactly what happened, but the speculation is that his immune system fought it until he was twenty months. Then the virus began to manifest, and over a few months’ time, he stopped talking, stopped responding the way he had been. He used to react to everything. There was nothing anyone could do. When he was two, he had almost total hearing loss.”

Pain tightened Nate’s features. “That must have scared the crap out of you.”

She nodded. “Yes. Yes, it did.” At one point, she had barely slept for two weeks. There was no point, however, in telling him that. She’d have given anything to have a hand to hold at night, someone who grieved as much as she that Eli could no longer hear a blue jay announce the dawn. There were people who had cared, but no one who’d shared the parenting moments with her.

“For a long time,” she confessed, “I blamed myself. I even wondered if other people would blame me.” She flapped a hand. “You know—idiotic teenage mother didn’t know how to keep her baby safe. And if I messed up so early in his life, how on earth was I going to get through the rest of his childhood? There was one particularly bleak night when I even told myself I should have gone through with the adoption plans, because then I wouldn’t have worked at the preschool and maybe he’d never have gotten sick.”

He took her hand and squeezed hard. “You know that’s not true.”

She nodded. “Yes, I do know.” But it was good...it was very, very good...to have Nate tell her, his eyes intent and sincere, his hand warm and strong around hers. If they had stayed together, if he had wanted to become a parent with her, those shoulders would have carried half the worries. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she murmured, “except that I’ve never said it out loud before.”

The photo album was lying across both their laps now, half on her left thigh and half on his right. Their clasped hands rested on top of a photo of Eli sitting on the back of a giant stuffed lion she’d found at a yard sale.

“How did you make your way back to Thunder Ridge?” Nate asked.

“I was still living with Joanne, Henry’s friend, but she was getting ready to retire and planned to move in with her sister in Idaho. I was too busy and too stressed to make plans to find my own place. Henry and Sam cleaned out a room in their house and gave me my old job back with an offer to make me the manager as soon as I felt I could take on the extra responsibilities. So I came back and got a job and a place to live and babysitters. Lots of babysitters. All their support freed me up to advocate for Eli in every way I could.”

The hand holding hers tightened again. “You were a rock star.” His voice was rough, ragged. He meant it.

“How do you know?” she asked softly.

He raised their hands. His lips touched her knuckles. “I know, because I know you. I know—” He swallowed heavily. “I know you said yes when I said no. Thank you for doing that. Thank you for raising our son.”

She nodded
you’re welcome
. Hope kindled, hope that he was not going to view Eli as damaged, but simply unique.

The moment of connection between them was profound and bittersweet. It was the moment they might have shared in the hospital as they marveled at the brand-new life they’d taken part in creating. Over the top of their baby’s head, they would have held gazes as they were doing now. And they would have kissed.

Their faces were so close it wouldn’t have taken more than an accident for their lips to touch. Someone must have moved back, though—Izzy wasn’t sure whether it was she or Nate—because the moment of soul-aching intimacy ended with a spurt, not a spark.

Gently Nate released Izzy’s hand so that it rested again on the scrapbook. Then he ran his free hand through his hair and asked, “How does Eli communicate? How will I talk to him?”

How will I,
not
if I.
And so they moved into a new phase of their relationship: an informed truce.

She explained about the cochlear implant Eli had at age eleven and about how frightening the change had been, even though they had welcomed it.

“I want to get to know him before he finds out I’m his father.” Nate appeared to be deep in thought as he said this. “I want to be able to ask him questions, get the answers without filters.”

“Okay. I understand wanting to get to know him without the pressure of trying hard to make it work. But I don’t think we should wait too long. Teenagers really don’t like secrets, unless they’re the ones keeping them.”

Nate nodded. “A couple of meetings. Can you help me learn to sign language?” He looked at her with such open need, like a brand-new father asking how to hold the baby.

Working as a team, they strategized how to introduce Eli to Nate, and Izzy taught Nate a couple of super simple signs and the finger alphabet. As they pored over the scrapbook together, she signed as well as spoke her descriptions of the photos.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, sitting back at one point and simply staring at her.

She’d just signed and said, “I love Eli’s face in this photo.”

Nodding at his compliment, she murmured, “I know. He has a perfect nose, doesn’t he?”

“I meant the signing,” Nate said, sipping the coffee she’d made. “The way your hands move—it’s beautiful. I like watching you.”

She blushed, but happily. “You don’t
have
to use ASL, you know. He can hear decently now, and when he can’t understand something, he reads lips. It’s still hard for people who don’t know him well to understand his speech, and I think it’s easier for him to sign certain things. Plus, signing is his first language, really. That’s a hard thing to give up.”

“I’ll learn it. I want to.”

Izzy stared. Finally, she whispered, “I was scared.” It was a discovery as much as an admission, which Nate seemed to understand, because he waited while she gathered her thoughts. “There have been times...like when he went into surgery for the implant...that I wanted to phone you. I wanted to tell you about Eli so badly, even if you decided not to pursue a relationship with him. But I was too scared.”

* * *

He nodded, looking down at his clasped hands. “Okay. I’m trying to understand that. You didn’t know how I’d react, I could have walked away again... I’m trying to understand all that, but it’s hard, damn it. It’s hard to accept your reasons—anyone’s reasons—for not telling me.”

She nodded, knowing she couldn’t change how he felt, that it wasn’t even her right. But truth was important, so she continued, “That’s not the only thing I was afraid of. With Eli, I had a family for the first time. Real family. I didn’t want to lose it.”

He looked surprised.

“I was selfish,” she admitted. “What if you or your parents did change your minds and wanted Eli in your lives?” She stopped short of adding
and you didn’t want me
. She didn’t have to say it. “I didn’t want to share. I didn’t want to lose him.” Her voice cracked, even though she was less afraid now, because she trusted that Nate wasn’t going to take Eli away. She was still afraid, however, of the changes in store. “It was wrong of me. I should have told you I kept him. I
am
sorry.”

Lowering his head, Nate covered his face with his hands, then pushed them through his hair. “Me, too. You’re not the only one who was scared. I couldn’t imagine any future but the one I already had planned. I’m sorry I walked away and sorry my parents lied. You deserved better. You deserved a hell of a lot better.”

“Well, that future of yours looked pretty darn good, even from the cheap seats.” She gave him a smile tinged with self-deprecating humor. “I don’t like that your parents lied, but if Eli became a father at eighteen...” She took a deep breath, blowing it out hard. “I’d probably think I knew what was best. Maybe I’d even let the end justify the means.”

She closed the scrapbook they’d been looking at and set it atop the two others on the coffee table. “I’ve certainly been playing God with Eli’s life and yours and mine.” Her smile turned weary. “I’m willing to stop.”

“What do you mean?”

What
did
she mean?

Looking at Nate the man was superior, she realized, to looking at Nate the boy. Sheer physical beauty had turned into something more complex, as if he’d been broken and put back together again even better. A little rougher around the edges, a little battered in spots that had once been perfect. But through those worn bits, she could see his soul, and it looked good.

“I mean I trust the right thing to happen if I let go. And by letting go,” she hastened to add, “I do not mean you can take him to Chicago with you tomorrow. I’m just saying it’s time to be honest and to see where it takes us. See where it takes you and Eli. And me.”

Nate leaned toward her, his eyes at once sober with gratitude and shining with anticipation. “If he’s anything like you, I’m a lucky man.”

Izzy tried to ignore the knocking of her heart and the way her gaze seemed to want to fasten on his lips. She cleared her throat. “Eli will be home the day after tomorrow. Come to dinner on Friday?”

“Absolutely.”