His Surprise Son

They never did.

There were emails and phone calls, but the lapses grew longer as the flat-out scramble of a software start-up consumed his attention. He had always meant to call her but somehow never did. A part of him knew he’d have to face the wrong of that someday, he just didn’t count on it being here and now.

He’d gradually shut down his connection to her, telling himself Jean was never really the kind of woman to take to West Coast life. It wasn’t that he couldn’t find her—he was a brilliant man with a fortune in technology at his disposal—he just never managed to follow through. He’d let her slip from his life, telling himself he didn’t regret it.

Only he did regret it. And it felt like life was getting ready to show him how much.

Chapter Two

Josh paced his room while he waited for his chief of operations, Matt Palmer, to respond to his text. He’d asked, “Can you video chat right now?”

His eyes wandered over to the Welcome to Matrimony Valley brochure lying on the nightstand. Smart but simple, it had a folksy appeal that people looking for this sort of place would probably love. Right down to the cheery welcome from “Mayor Matrim.”

A ding from his laptop announced Matt on the line, and Josh clicked open the video chat function to see Matt’s face. “How’s the brother-of-the-bride gig going?”

“Fine.”

“Color scheme going according to plan and all that stuff?”

Josh tried not to groan. “I don’t know. I think so. Violet’s getting what she wanted, and that’s what matters. She’s the boss, I’m just the bankroll.”

Matt made a face. “Aw. Will you do that for me?”

As Josh’s second-in-command at SymphoCync, Matt probably put in as many hours at the office as Josh. “I’ll take that one-in-a-million shot, sure. I really called you to help me untangle a...complication out here.”

Matt sat back in his chair. “What’s up?”

“Jean lives here. As a matter of fact, she doesn’t just live here, she’s the mayor here. She’s Vi’s wedding planner. She’s remade her hometown into this whole Matrimony Valley thing, and Violet’s her first bride.”

“Jean—wait, Jean your ex? Your ex-fiancée is mayor of Matrimony Valley? Whoa. Good thing this has no chance of getting awkward or anything.”

Josh gave Matt a look. “I knew I could count on you to be helpful.”

Matt shook his head. “Didn’t she live in some place named after her family or whatever?”

“She did. If it had stayed Matrim’s Valley, I might have seen this coming. As it was, it was all I could do to not trip over my own feet as we walked down Aisle Avenue in Matrimony Valley”

Matt kept laughing. “Aisle Avenue. Matrimony Valley. Seriously?” Matt wiped his hands down his face and attempted—rather unsuccessfully—to be serious. “So how’s Violet taking this new wrinkle?”

Josh picked at the tassel fringe of one of the pillows in the mound around him. “She doesn’t know. Jean and I...well, I think we hid our initial shock pretty well, and we’re sort of pretending it’s not there. She made like she didn’t know me, and I did the same.”

Matt gave Josh a dubious look. The man was a master of them. “You know that’s not gonna work, don’t you?”

“Of course I know that. But I don’t want to mess this up for Violet, either. She’ll get all weird about it, and believe me, she’s high-strung enough already with the wedding. I’ve just got to get Jean alone to hash out how we’re going to handle it.”

Josh saw Matt pivot to another corner of his desk and begin typing. “Matt, would you mind finishing with me before you look up Jean Matrim online?”

Matt paused. “Hey, I’m just looking up where you are in case I need to airlift you out of there.” After a second, he said, “Aw, look, there she is standing by the Welcome to Matrimony Valley sign.” Josh heard more tapping and yelled at himself for not paying closer attention to Violet’s plans before now. “She always was pretty,” Matt commented. “Looks like she’s held up better than you have. Little boy’s cute, too, in an aw-shucks kind of way.”

Josh picked up the brochure on the table beside him. The photo on it was just of Jean. “Little boy, huh? Someone told me she was a single mom, but I haven’t seen a photo of her child.”

“There’s a photo of her with her son on one of the website pages. Third tab, lower left corner.”

Josh swiped over from the video chat and pulled up MatrimonyValley.com, clicking through the website’s pages until he landed on the picture of Jean with her hand on the shoulder of a boy.

He was expecting a toddler, but the boy looked older than that. Five or six, if he had to guess. He stared at the boy.

A boy about six years old. Josh stared harder.

A ball of icy lead landed in his stomach and stayed there.

“Matt, I gotta go.”

* * *

Jean swallowed her exasperated sigh later that afternoon as she held the phone away from her ear. Her nerves were strung tight ever since the whopping surprise of Joshua Tyler’s arrival. Josh Tyler, here, in front of her, in front of everybody. Why, Lord? Why him? Now? No matter how many times she prayed with her questions, answers failed to arrive.

Thankfully, picking up Jonah from school gave her an excuse for a quick exit not too long after Violet was handed off to Hailey at the inn. She counted it as pure grace that she was able to exit before Josh came back across the street from Watson’s Diner.

Only being saved from Josh hadn’t saved her from Wanda Watson. The woman must have been looking out her diner window waiting for the office light to turn back on, because the phone rang not three minutes after she got herself and Jonah settled back into her office.

“Wanda, you met him.” Jean continued her attempts to appease the grumpy old woman. “He’s a nice person. Violet is a nice person. Her groom will be just as nice when you meet him. You’ll like the people who will come here to get married.” That felt like an outrageous promise to make—Wanda didn’t like lots of people. How did two sourpusses like Wanda and Wayne Watson ever manage a restaurant full of people all these years?

“I still don’t see what brides and grooms can do for sandwiches and meat loaf,” groused Wanda. “I don’t care what you say, not every business in town will benefit from your little scheme.”

It wasn’t a scheme, and it wasn’t little. “The man just bought a sandwich from you, didn’t he? Everybody’s got to eat,” she assured the woman. “The day before the wedding, the day after the wedding, the day they drive into town. Weddings and wedding guests mean business. For you as much as for Kelly’s flower shop or Yvonne’s bakery.”

“You’re banking an awful lot on this pipe dream, Your Honor.” Wanda’s harrumph practically spilled out of the phone receiver to douse Jean’s resolve.

Your Honor. Wanda never meant it as a term of respect whenever she said it. Jean put her elbow on her desk and rested her head in her hands while Wanda went on about some other complaint—the woman seemed to have a never-ending list of them.

Jonah looked up from his coloring sheet across the desk from her, catching his mother’s action and expression. “O-K?” The small fingers of his right hand formed the letters in sign language. His open hand moved toward his mouth, his thumb touching his chin in the sign for “Mom?” One little dark eyebrow furrowed in worried inquiry.

She smiled at him and made the sign for “fine” and “tired.” Then, with what she hoped was a playful smile, she added the sign for “hungry.”

“Me, too,” Jonah’s signs replied. His smile was as sweet as the grandfather he was named after. “Home soon?”

“I hope,” she signed in return, grateful Wanda couldn’t hear any of the conversation. “Our first bride is here for a visit, Wanda,” she said into the phone. “Let’s all welcome her the best we can.” They’d had some version of this conversation nearly every week since last fall, when the town council approved Jean’s proposal to change the town’s name and become a wedding destination.

Was it extreme to change the name of the town, the streets and half the businesses? It was, but so was the rate at which the tiny town was suffocating under a dying economy. Tobacco was long gone, the mills had slowed and then closed, and nothing had ever replaced them. Something had to be done before there was no town at all. Weddings were what she loved, what she knew, so when the idea came to her she ran with it. Because that’s what Matrims did.

Jean looked up at the portraits of her father and grandfather as Wanda droned on. I did what I had to do to make everything work out, Grandpa. Grandpa Jake had founded Matrim’s Valley in the early 1900s, opening up the textile mill that transformed the loose collection of mountain tobacco farms into a bustling mill town. He even became Matrim’s Valley’s first mayor. “Built his mill and this town out of sheer grit and an unwillingness to ever admit defeat,” Dad used to say of Grandpa Jake.

Her father, Jonah Matrim, had taken over the mill, and later the mayor’s office, not long after her mother’s death from an infection when Jean was in her teens. But even Matrim grit couldn’t outrun a failing economy, and eventually the mill had closed the summer Jean graduated and moved to California with Josh. Dad tried mightily to keep the valley together, but it was as if something inside him that had started to die when Mom did continued to die with the mill. As if his own health depended on the town’s. Her new residence clear across the country hadn’t helped, either.

Josh proposed the day SymphoCync officially opened its offices that July, and for a while they were happy. Still, Silicon Valley’s excess quickly began to taste sour in light of her beloved valley’s demise. Dad had given his all as Matrim’s Valley’s mayor, and here she was, thousands of miles away, doing nothing she could count as important. Her dad loved her, doted on her, needed her, while in San Jose she was fortunate to get fifteen minutes of Josh’s attention.

At first, Jean thought she was homesick. Or at least missing her dad. Dad and home called to her with a stronger and stronger voice until she finally went “for a good long visit.”

She never returned to California, even when she discovered she was pregnant. The life inside her seemed to give Dad hope, helping him to improve. Dad loved Jonah in a way Jean had come to doubt Josh ever could. Especially when he was born, and maybe more so when they learned Jonah couldn’t hear three months later. She never told Josh about his son, for reasons he’d now have to learn. Life was full of hard and painful choices. And even though such regrets drew her to finally discover the faith her father had, they still haunted her.

Failing health, like a failing economy, won out once more over Matrim grit. The pleasure Wanda’s husband, Wayne, took in stepping in as acting mayor when Dad’s health forced him to step down always bothered her. Still, with a toddler and an ailing father, it wasn’t as if she could do anything but thank Wayne for his willingness to serve.

Except that Wayne’s “service” had been a disaster. His single inept two-year term felt like one long stretch of everyone bickering while waiting around for things to get better. Someone needed to call a halt to the complaining and motivate people to do something. She was the last Matrim in Matrim’s Valley. So when she dreamed up a solution—a drastic one, yes, but a solution—she bolstered up her courage and ran for mayor on a “Matrimony Valley” platform.

It took a while and lots of convincing, but eventually enough of the valley voted to support her. It seemed if she was willing to go so far as to swap out her family’s name to give the valley a new chance at survival, everyone was willing to give it a try.

Well, almost everyone. “Did you hear me?” Wanda’s sharp tone startled Jean out of her thoughts.

“I’m sorry, Jonah was asking for something.”

Another snort of disapproval from Wanda. “A child playing in the mayor’s office. Honestly. Wayne never did that sort of thing.”

The “mayor’s office” had been Wayne’s idea, and consisted of a walled-off corner of the civic building that served as library, town hall, utility office and police station. I will not be the Matrim who lets this valley die on my watch. She would have liked to run the mayor’s office out of the front room of the Matrim family home like Dad and Grandpa did—it certainly would make life as a single mother easier—but Wanda had talked the council into keeping the “improvements” Wayne had implemented. And in all honesty, this office was the safest place for Jonah to be next to his own home. Everyone here looked out for him.

Dredging up her last shred of diplomacy, Jean offered, “Thank you for taking such good care of Mr. Tyler. You know, Violet mentioned her groom was looking for somewhere to hold a casual get-together for his groomsmen before the wedding. Should I tell her yours would be the best place to feed a bunch of navy sailors?”

Wanda’s tone softened. “I suppose I could manage that.”

That was likely as close to cooperation as Wanda would ever get, so Jean chose to take it. She put a smile on her face and gave Jonah a “thumbs-up” sign. He grinned and gave her one right back.

Jonah. The joy of her life. She wanted him to have a valley to come home to, just as she had. He was the reason she fought to keep all this family heritage up and running.

As Jean ended her call with Wanda and packed up the beautiful felted wool bag she used as her “mayoral briefcase,” she looked out the window. Tomorrow, she would deal with the tangle of Josh Tyler and how it might complicate the valley’s first wedding. She would find a way through this, because even though this was no longer Matrim’s Valley, she was still a Matrim.

So was Jonah. Taking her son’s hand, Jean and her son blew a kiss to her father’s and grandfather’s portraits as she led him out of the office. Lend me your strength, she pleaded to the men who’d served before her. As she headed out into the evening air, Jean sent the same prayer up to her heavenly Father, as well.

It shouldn’t have surprised her that Josh Tyler was standing in the middle of the street waiting for her. Patience had never been Josh’s strong suit. He stared long and hard at Jonah. Josh’s brain at full speed was an almost visible thing—his whole body nearly hummed with energy when his thoughts whirred into action. It had been one of the things that drew her to Josh, and it startled her that she could pick up on it so strongly after so many years had passed. It was as if her own heart could feel the chronological calculations going off like grenades in his head.

“Twenty-four Falls Lane,” she said to him, pointing down the avenue. “The house with the green shutters. He goes to sleep at eight, so come by at nine.”

“Jean...” he started to say, but she shook her head.

“No, not now.” She turned as quickly as she could, heading Jonah toward home, feeling the rush of history as strongly as the fierce current of the falls.

Chapter Three

A soft knock came on her front door at 8:55 p.m.

She’d always known this day was coming. It had to come. Josh had a right to know he had a son, and Jonah had a right to know his father. She hadn’t been strong enough to face up to the situation back then, and she was sorry for that. But she was a different person now, a stronger woman. The question was, was Josh a different man?

Lord, I sure hope You know what You’re doing. I couldn’t feel less ready to do this, but I’m going to trust You. Guide my words. Guard his response. He’ll be angry. He has a right to be. But Josh is here, now, and I want to believe I’m strong enough to make this turn out okay for Jonah.

As she opened the door, his eyes told her immediately. He knew. Regret and remorse pushed down on her shoulders, a sudden weight that made her grieve over the choice she’d made back then to withhold word of Jonah from Josh.

Here we are. Stand, Jean. Stand and face it head-on. She could almost hear her father’s words from somewhere deep inside.

“Why don’t you come inside, Josh.”

He didn’t move. “Is he?”

She hadn’t expected him to blurt it out like that—as if the question hurled out of him beyond his control. Then again, she’d lived with the certainty for nearly six years, and he looked as if he’d lived with the possibility all of six minutes.

Jean pulled in a slow breath, gathering her strength and willing calm into her voice. “Come inside, Josh.”

He came through the doorway, stopping to stare at a photo of Jonah she kept on the hall table. It was one of her favorite photos of her son, bobbing up with glee out of the water at the swimming hole, all wild hair and bright eyes. Josh stared at it, hard, his whole body on edge. He picked up the photo. “Is he? Mine?”

How many years had she pondered her response to the huge moment that question was asked? “Yes, Josh, he’s ours.”

He held the photo up toward her. “Ours? He’s not ours, he’s yours. How could you sit there and call him ours if you never even bothered to tell me?”

“It’s complicated. Come into the kitchen and let’s sit down.”

He followed her into the kitchen, still clutching the photo. “I have a son. This boy...is...my son.” He turned in a slow circle, raking his free hand through his hair before he sank into one of the chairs at her kitchen table. Not because she’d asked him to sit down, she felt, but because the power of the moment wouldn’t allow him to stay standing.

“I’ve known I was going to have to tell you one day,” she said as she took the chair opposite him. “I just planned on having a bit more time to figure out how to do it right.”

“Right?” he snapped at her choice of words. “Doing it right would’ve been, how about—I don’t know—six years ago.”

“He is five. And I am sorry.” She owed him that much. She owed him an explanation and an apology for what she’d done, even though she doubted he’d accept it at the moment. “California was a mistake. We were caught up in something that wasn’t strong enough to last. We became different people once everything started for you out there.” That seemed true for him, from her perspective. Had she changed as well without realizing it? Or had Dad’s illness just realigned her priorities? “We weren’t ready to be married to each other, and not at all ready to be parents. Not the way your life worked out there.” You were consumed with work, she thought, but chose not to say.

“Are you kidding me? Everything was starting for us. You came out there with me. You said you’d marry me.”

“I loved you. I loved who you were in school, back when all the success was bright and shiny. Once it became reality—the twenty-hour workdays, the crazy social circles—you had to know that wasn’t ever really me, even back then. I knew I’d be alone. Married, but alone.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Maybe not, but when Dad got sick...the Josh I knew in school would have been worried and cared and asked me about how I felt. That wasn’t who you were when he got sick. You were too busy to care. I know you didn’t mean to be that way, but you were. And once I found out I was pregnant while back here...” She sighed. “I knew it wouldn’t work. You’d think you were capable of it all, of being there for everyone.” She ventured a glance into his angry eyes. “But all I wanted was someone who would be there just for me.”

“So sure of my faults, were you?” Josh’s words were cold and sharp.

She put her hand to her forehead. Give me better words, Lord. I can’t botch this. “Of course I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure of anything except that I was unhappy. Dad was...I don’t know...sinking...and suddenly I had this baby to think of. Here you were, the son of this powerful judgmental father, and I was just this girl from a tiny town in the mountains. Then I got sick and Dad was getting worse, and...it seemed a better choice to stay here where I knew I had support than to be out there fighting for your attention.”

That last part seemed to bristle through him. “That’s what you think of me?”

Jean met his angry eyes. “Dad needed me here. You needed to be in California. I couldn’t be in both places.”

“So you decided how I’d react. And then you lied to me.” He squinted his eyes shut. “This isn’t how...this isn’t the you I remember... Did I even know you at all?”

“I accept that I hurt you in this. But making a go of it alone with Dad felt easier than having to beg you for time and attention.” She steeled herself to tell him all of it. “Or fight off your father’s idea of what should be done.”

She watched the words hit him, felt her spine stiffen as Josh stood up. “What do you mean, ‘my father’s idea of what should be done’?” The words were dark and dangerous.

She drew in a breath, willing the distance of the years to calm her words. “I don’t know how he found out,” she began.

He wasn’t interested in preamble. “What did he do, Jean?” The words were sharper and louder this time.

“He came here a month after Jonah was born. He offered me a great deal of money never to contact you. I think he worried that if you ever found out, we’d be in your life.” She’d never forget that afternoon when Bartholomew Tyler had shown up on her doorstep. The man was horrible. “He saw me—and Jonah—as beneath your potential. A liability best kept out of your life.”

Josh put his hand to his forehead. “Of course he did. It’s how Dad looked at everything.”

“It made him furious that I wouldn’t take the money, even though things were really tight then. But really, how could I live with myself if I had? He stomped out, swearing to find another way. A week later a very legal-looking document was delivered to our door, declaring I lacked the resources to properly care for someone like Jonah, and that he would sue for custody and have Jonah placed ‘in a suitable boarding school’ if I ever tried to let Jonah into your life.” She shivered, remembering the disgust in Bartholomew Tyler’s eyes—such a contrast to the loving way her own dad gazed at Jonah. “I think he wanted to make sure his faulty and illegitimate grandson was kept out of your shining future, and if I wouldn’t see to it, he would.” She made no attempt to keep the bitterness from her voice.

Josh drew both hands into fists and closed his eyes. “My father has been gone eighteen months. He died over a year ago. Why didn’t you contact me then?”

“I didn’t know he was gone.”

“You could have known. You would have known, if you’d just told me any of this. Five years, Jean. Five whole years.” Josh walked over and leaned up against the kitchen counter. Her heart ached for him—this was so much to take in all at once. Much of that had been her doing; she was paying the price right now for not telling him in all these five years, instead watching him stagger under the blow of the things she’d just revealed.

“I’d like to say I’m surprised at my father,” he said with a sigh. “I’m shocked, but not surprised. It sounds exactly like something old Barty would do.”

The force that was Bartholomew Tyler was part of what had made Josh the driven man he was, but it had such a dark side, too. Josh had grown up believing he was destined for greatness, but for his family, it was a binding obligation, not a vote of confidence.

“Your father never approved of me, you knew that. This just added fuel to the fire. We were welcome here, whereas we’d have to fight tooth and nail there. I was tired, still healing, and Dad was really starting to fail. It was looking like it would be his last Christmas. I’m not proud of how easy it was to throw up my hands in surrender.”

When Josh said nothing, she went on, determined to say what she felt ought to be said. “Jonah is not a liability. He’s not faulty, and he’s not an accident. He’s a gift.”

“A gift you hid from me.”

“Parenthood doesn’t work as a second priority. Jonah comes first in my world. He has to. Now, I suppose, you’ll need to decide if he’ll be anything more than on the fringes of yours.”