A Case for Forgiveness

It took a minute before he could speak, and when he did he let pride fill his voice. “Gus would be so proud of her, Doc. With what she’s done with the inn—it looks like something from a darn magazine now.”

Gus had loved all of his grandchildren, but Shay had been a little extra special to him. Her love for the inn was one reason certainly, but Caleb always thought it was her personality that so closely mimicked Gus’s that had truly stolen his heart—kind, thoughtful, generous to a fault, but feisty, stubborn and strong-willed at the same time. It had stolen Caleb’s heart—and Jonah’s, too, once upon a time.

Doc smiled wholeheartedly. “Every time I go there I think that same thing. I imagine that ole Gus is smiling down on her every single day. But that’s what I’m saying, Caleb. The devotion Shay has for her family...well, she showers it on you, too. And you’re sure lucky to have it. But now, well you know she’s got to be worried plum out of her mind.”

“Come on, Doc, you think you can make me feel any worse than I already do? I know all of that—everything that you said. I do. But I can’t very well admit all the facts to Jonah, can I? He would never forgive me. He would hightail it back to Chicago faster than this lure can spin.” Caleb held his fishing pole aloft and gestured at the shimmering metal on the end of his line. “And then where would I be?”

Doc nodded his head, puzzling over the situation. “I guess that’s true enough. I only wish there was some way you could do all this and let Shay know.”

Caleb let out a sigh. “Yeah, I wish that, too. But I just have to believe—I do believe, Doc, that what I’m doing is for her. In fact, if I’m being perfectly honest, it’s almost as much for Shay as it is for Jonah. And the truth is I’m not going to live forever. That is a fact, and even as painful as it may be, it’s one my grandson needs to accept—and I’d prefer it to happen sooner rather than later. You know what I mean?”

He cast again and this time his aim was spot on.

CHAPTER FOUR

“B-2,” SHAY CALLED OUT.

“Bwahh-eeek,” the ancient microphone squealed back at her. Probably still upset, Jonah surmised, after being left behind by Elvis on his last tour.

Jonah caught Shay’s gaze and winced with exaggeration. She narrowed her eyes at him and then shouted the sequence again sans microphone.

He chuckled and stamped the appropriate space on his card.

You have got to be kidding me, he thought. No one back in Chicago could conceive of this if they saw him now. His firm billed seven-hundred dollars an hour for his time, and here he was sipping blue-raspberry punch and playing blue-light bingo at the VFW Hall, which also housed other activities for the Rankins Seniors’ Circle. According to Shay, people did this so they could “have fun” and “spend time together.”

He’d promised himself, and Shay, that he would be on his best behavior, but she couldn’t stop him from thinking about his life in Chicago. Couldn’t stop him from thinking about his car—his beloved ’69 Boss 429—garaged and waiting for him... In spite of wishing otherwise, it was going to be a while before he was driving his favorite car again. He stamped another place on his card and continued his cynical meandering—why on earth would he want to solve complicated legal cases and, stamp, drive a near-perfect car when he could play bingo?

“I-20,” Shay called out. Stamp...stamp. He reached across the table with his dauber and marked Gramps’s card. Shay had informed him earlier when she was helping him get set up that his ink-stamper-thing was called a dauber. He’d opened his mouth to make a sarcastic retort and then shut it firmly when he’d caught her warning look.

Although—he glanced up toward the front of the room again—watching Shay do her thing did make the experience a bit more palatable. He had a difficult time not watching her—a problem he’d been plagued with since about the sixth grade.

He grinned at her again and held up his card, pointing with exaggerated excitement at his almost-bingo. She glared.

Jonah reached across the table and stamped Gramps’s card as he was too busy flirting with Mary Beth to pay attention to much else. He noticed the B-4 spot still blank on Mary Beth’s card—that sequence had been called a while ago. And so had N-32... Apparently Gramps’s moves were working, he thought with amusement, continuing to eye Mary Beth’s incomplete card.

He couldn’t stand it. Stamp, stamp and...stamp. There, all caught up.

“What did she say?” Bernice Threck whisper-shouted the words across Jonah toward Erma Neville.

“N-42,” Erma yelled back. “Bernice, why didn’t you wear your hearing aids?”

“Because I’m trying to get Teddy to notice me and how attractive do you think I would be with those things hanging out of my ears?” Bernice looked to Jonah for confirmation. “Right, Jonah?”

Jonah presumed that by “Teddy” Bernice was referring to Doc, who was seated on the other side of her and at least appeared to be keeping up with his card.

Jonah realized that both women were waiting for his response. He opened his mouth to say he knew not what; thankfully he was interrupted by Erma.

“A sight more attractive than those fishing lures you’ve got hanging from your ears right now,” Erma muttered.

Jonah took a drink of his blue-raspberry punch, relieved not to be drawn into the exchange after all.

“What?” Bernice shouted.

“I love to fish,” Doc chimed in loudly. No hearing devices from that quarter either, Jonah hypothesized.

Erma hollered again, “A lot more attractive than having to shout, I’d say.”

Bernice shook her head with disgust. Her long, dangly earrings made such a loud tinkling sound that Jonah had no idea how she could hear anything but that, hearing aids or no.

She yelled into Jonah’s ear again, “Well, that’s ridiculous, Erma. There’s not a lot that isn’t more attractive than having gout.”

“B-6,” Shay called loud and clear. Jonah looked up and caught her watching him. Her lips were tugging upwards in that way they did when she was fighting a laugh. So, she thought his predicament was funny, huh? He responded with a look of desperation. She turned and coughed into her hand and Jonah thought it a fairly believable attempt at covering a laugh.

He chuckled. Okay, so yes, he had to admit that he was kind of having fun. He glanced over to where Gramps was now officially canoodling with Mary Beth and decided that sight alone would make a little suffering worthwhile.

“B-6,” Shay repeated, but not quite as forcefully. Jonah wanted to believe it had something to do with his nonverbal teasing.

“Beef stick?” Bernice yelled. “Are they selling beef, too? I love those things—especially the caribou ones. Don’t you, Teddy?” She batted her fake lashes like a 1940s film star. “Erma, will you run and get one for me and Teddy to share?”

“Beef stick,” Erma muttered with a huff. Then she shouted at Bernice, “She said B-6 not beef stick, Bernice. And no, I will not.”

Then she glanced at Jonah. “That’s it—I’m outta here. This is embarrassing and I’m not talking to her anymore, unless she goes and gets her hearing aids. She’s out of control. And you can tell her I said so.”

Someone yelled “bingo” from a table behind them as Erma testily gathered up her cards and moved to a neighboring table. Bernice didn’t notice, her entire body tuned in to Teddy at this point.

Jonah thought this whole spectacle was a little out of control. It was bad enough that Shay had guilted him into being here, but she could have warned him that it doubled as some kind of geriatric singles event.

“I-17,” Shay began calling a new game. Someone must have fixed the vintage mic because the sound was much better—and even louder.

The crowded room seemed to hum with a current of excitement. Apparently, there was nothing like a rousing game of “blue light bingo” to raise community spirits. Jonah had no idea what the “blue light” signified, but he was now playing four cards because Bernice had pretty much ditched hers too, to listen to Doc recite a list of fun facts about gout that was way more information, in Jonah’s opinion, than anyone not currently suffering from the disease needed to know.

“Excuse me, sir, but you’re clearly in violation of the house rules.”

Jonah looked up to see Shay’s sister, Hannah, toss a stack of cards on the table.

“What?”

She settled next to Jonah. “I believe there’s a three-card limit. And the way you’re stamping away over here—I may have to report you to the bingo police.”

Jonah smiled. “That might be a blessing at this point.” Jonah inked up his dauber then held his ink-stained hands aloft.

Hannah laughed and began stamping her card in an attempt to catch up with the current game.

“What in the world are you doing here?” Jonah asked.

“Uh, playing bingo,” Hannah drawled, pointing out the obvious. “Is the smell of all that ink getting to you there, counselor?”

“No. I mean why?”

Hannah raised her brows in a way that spoke clearly of her disapproval—and reminded him of Shay.

“Because it’s a great cause and because I can—I’d never played bingo in my entire life until a few months ago. Can you imagine that? I’ve been missing out and besides, did you not hear that the blue-diamond pot tonight is one-hundred and twelve dollars?”

“Why is everything blue?” Jonah asked waving one hand across the tablescape and holding up his cup of blue raspberry punch with the other. The plastic table cloths were blue, the centerpieces on the table held little vases of blue carnations and baby’s breath, and strings of blue lights were twinkling here and there around the room. Even the ink was blue.

Hannah looked puzzled. “I have absolutely no idea. Maybe it’s Mrs. Wizencroft’s favorite color. She can be a real dragon lady, runs the Seniors’ Circle like it’s the Marine Corps.”

Jonah laughed. “It’s great to see you, Hannah. Gramps told me you were back home. How are you holding up, not being able to ski?”

Hannah reacted with a look like he’d poked her in the ribs with a stick.

“I’m sorry—was that not okay to ask?” Stamp, stamp.

She grinned. “No, actually, it is. It’s just that no one ever asks me that—except Shay. They ask me how I’m doing or how I am, but no one ever asks me about skiing. I think people are afraid that I’m going to break down and start bawling all over them or something.” She tipped her head, looking thoughtful for a second. Then she added, “Which I might. And it feels...how much time have you got?”

Jonah pulled his brows up and made a tsk-ing sound. “No time, actually, I’m super...” He stamped Bernice’s card. “Duper.” He reached over to stamp Doc’s card, who had apparently exhausted the subject of gout, but was now whispering loudly in Erma’s ear about lupus. “Busy,” he added as he then reached over and stamped her card.

Hannah made a big show of protesting. “Well, skipping over the accident and the ensuing realization that my career—my life—was over?” She nodded as if giving herself permission to continue. “Okay, so, skipping over all that and in addition to trying to forgive the drunk driver who almost killed me, I’m learning to enjoy life in a different, more content-based way—as my expensive sports psychologist terms it. Not that I wouldn’t ski competitively again if I could—without risking messing up my body forever, because I would. But the cool thing is that I’m learning and trying to accept, that skiing doesn’t define me as a person.”

“That’s...awesome, Hannah.” And it was. Jonah could only imagine what that kind of recovery entailed. Hannah had been skiing since she was four years old. Even Jonah had to admit that when he thought of Hannah—he couldn’t picture much else but her on a pair of skis.

“Yep, it is.”

“How are you doing that?”

She belted out a laugh before commenting, “Slowly, painfully, and with extreme difficulty. Kind of a ‘two steps forward, one step back’ kind of thing. Shay has been amazing, of course, giving me a job and a place to live and tons of unconditional sister support.”

Her tone was light, but Jonah could hear the pain still lurking in her voice. He wasn’t sure what to say. He stamped his card, and his adopted cards, and struggled to come up with something profound.

Hannah was smiling at him, warmly. “Shay’s right about you, isn’t she?”

He let out a chuckle. “Probably, but in what way are we referring to specifically?”

“About your lawyering, specifically—how important it is to you. You can’t even begin to consider what your life would be like if you couldn’t be an attorney, can you?”

This was true, he thought, and Shay had certainly accused him of putting too much importance on it in the past. But the part he’d never understood was how his focus on his career was so different than how Shay felt about the inn. He’d asked her about it when they’d had that fight a couple years back, but she’d only looked at him like he was the biggest fool on the planet.

He looked up at Shay now. She was such a force in this town. If it was possible to personify a place, Shay did so with the Faraway Inn. She was the Faraway Inn, and how ironic he thought, that the word also described the nature of their relationship; Jonah and Shay—so far away—too far away from each other in every sense that really mattered.

“I’m sure your sister couldn’t imagine her life without the Faraway Inn either.” Jonah could hear the defensive tinge in his tone.

Hannah’s chuckle had him thinking that she could hear it, too. “That’s where you two have some common ground then, isn’t that right, counselor?”

“Common ground?”

“Shay thinks she wouldn’t be who she is without the inn and you probably think you’d just shrivel and die without the ‘attorney at law’ tacked on to the end of your name. Common ground.”

Shay was staring at him again. He met her eyes and felt a shot of awareness course through him because she was smiling at him—that dazzling dimpled smile that used to leave him dumbstruck. He smiled in return, and had to correct his previous thought, because they weren’t so far away in all the ways that mattered—just the ones that would allow them to ever be together again.

Hannah had started talking once more. “...but if there’s one thing I have learned from my experience it’s that true happiness is not about what you do for a living, there’s a lot else besides work, right? That’s what Dr. Vossel keeps telling me anyway. And I’m trying my hardest to believe it.”

Jonah stared blankly at Hannah, taken aback by her statement, not sure if he agreed, but certainly not wanting to disagree in light of everything she’d been through.

Jonah looked around in bafflement as some in the crowd began making a “quack, quack” noise. Then Shay called out something that sounded like “clickety-click.”

Hannah grinned, then reached over and stamped the O-66 space on his card.

“O-66,” she explained and then yelled, “Bingo!”

* * *

SHAY ANNOUNCED A short break and then dabbed the sweat from her brow with a tissue.

Janie handed her a glass of cold punch. “Looks like Caleb and Mary Beth are getting pretty cozy.”

“I noticed that. It’s sweet, huh? They’ve been spending quite a bit of time together lately.”

“Bernice is gunning hard for Doc.”

“I could hear that, too—all the way up here.”

They shared a chuckle.

“Jonah only takes his eyes off of you long enough to stamp an entire table’s worth of bingo cards, which surprisingly doesn’t take him long at all. It’s like he’s a veteran.”

Shay grinned. “You can’t tell but his eyes are pleading with me to come and save him.”

“Save him?”

“Yeah, I kind of, um, encouraged him to come tonight.”

“Ah,” Janie said with a quick grin. “I see. Well, he should be here. It’s not going to kill him to spend a night out with his grandfather.”

They both watched Jonah extricate himself from the table where he’d been sitting for the last hour. Shay had to give him credit for sticking around this long.

“I think he’s heading over here. Are you going to—save him, I mean?”

Shay turned to fiddle with the bingo cage so Jonah couldn’t read her lips. “Not. A. Chance.”

Janie snickered.

“As a matter of fact—I think we both deserve to go home early tonight. Or even better, Janie, how about a drink at the Cozy Caribou? Text our good buddies, Laurel and Emily, and see if we can meet up.”

“But I’m supposed to call the numbers next.”

“Oh, Janie, my dear, sweet cousin-slash-friend—watch and learn.”

“Good evening, ladies,” Jonah said as he approached them.

“Hey, Jonah,” Janie said.

“Hi, having fun?” Shay asked.

“Yes,” he said sarcastically. “I can only think of about eight-thousand things I’d rather be doing.”

Shay frowned.

“Hey,” he continued with a laugh. “I’m here, aren’t I? And I have been stamping away over there like a madman in case you haven’t noticed. I’m probably going to end up with carpal tunnel.”

He’d obviously intended to goad her.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I am kind of having a good time.”

His smile seemed entirely genuine, and Shay felt her insides begin to melt along with her resolve.

“And Gramps is loving it.”

She considered aborting her plan.

“I also find it highly amusing that this is what you choose to do with your free time.”

That comment shifted her right back into action.

“You think it’s funny that we donate our free time to the Seniors’ Circle, where the money earned here tonight goes to the hospital’s home hospice outreach? For hospice care like your nana had before she passed away.”

“Shay, I was joking. I’m—”

“Why can’t you believe it?” Janie interrupted.

Shay answered for him, “Because he’s a rich and important attorney in Chicago and a community game of charity bingo in his Podunk hometown is far beneath him. He’s been spending the entire evening thinking about how much money he’s losing by being here and wondering how lonely his car is at home without him.”

Jonah’s jaw tightened, but Shay noticed he didn’t deny it. “Well, I think the important thing is that I’m here.”

Shay applauded. “Praise for Jonah for spending time with his grandfather.”

“And you know Shay, you don’t have to be so—”

“Honest? I know, it’s a fault.”

Janie’s eyes widened, and then she tried to hide a smile. “I’m just going to go use the ladies’ room before my, uh, shift.” She pointed and walked away.

“I thought we were going to try and get along,” Jonah said, crossing his arms over his chest. “For Gramps’s sake?”

“Yeah, well, you started in with your snarky comments.”

“Why are you so touchy tonight?”

“Look, I’m sorry, Jonah. I—”

“You know, disliking something doesn’t mean you think you’re superior to it—it means you don’t like it. I don’t like Japanese food either, but I don’t think I’m superior to the country of Japan.”

Okay, he had a point there—sort of, but that was irrelevant. She needed to change her tune if she was going to get the rest of the night off and, more to the point, take the big-city attorney down a peg or two.

“Yeah, Jonah, you’re probably right. I’m just stressed, I think. Worried about your gramps, worried about Hannah, I’ve got staffing issues at the inn, and I’m...tired.”

She saw the flicker of surprise in his eyes at her attitude change. Then his shoulders sunk slightly, his face softened as his hands slid into the back pockets of his jeans. She knew sympathy when she saw it.

Reel him in, she told herself—nice and easy.

She reached over and slowly started spinning the basket that contained the little colored balls. They began tumbling over one another. There had been a call a few years ago for an electronic bingo machine, but Shay was glad the Seniors’ Circle had opposed the upgrade. To her, bingo just wouldn’t be the same without the metal basket full of wooden balls making that distinctive clacking noise. The sound also served to alert the troops that the time had come to pipe down, which they were beginning to do already.

Shay leaned over and casually announced the pattern for the coming round. She slowed the rotation of the basket until a ball released and rolled down the chute. Then she reached over and plucked the ball from the little cup where it landed. She picked it up...and made a sound of despair as it slipped through her fingers, landing on the floor and bouncing out of sight. Half of the crowd let out a collective groan, most of the other half looked around in bewilderment, while a smattering of flirtatious yell-talking continued.

Jonah bent to look for the ball while Shay took a step back. After a few seconds Jonah reached down and then promptly stood, proudly holding the ball aloft like a hard-won carnival prize.

“Oh, Jonah, thank you,” she said with relief. “Can you go ahead and read it?” She blinked and squinted and pointed at her eye, motioning that she had something in it.

Jonah obliged. “N-35,” he cooed into the microphone. “N-35.”

“Shoot,” Shay said when he glanced over at her again. She bent to her knees. “Now I dropped my contact. Would you mind calling the next number, too?”

“Uh...sure.” He nodded and then reached over and began spinning the basket. “Like this?” He slowed the rotation until the next ball clicked into position.

“That’s great,” she gushed. “You’re a natural.”

“N-31,” he called smoothly. “N-31.”

Shay crawled farther away as Jonah went ahead with the next sequence and then the next. Finally, she rose and scurried over to where Janie waited by the door with their coats and bags.

“Masterful,” Janie said with a giggle as she handed over Shay’s belongings.

“Thank you.” She executed a quick bow. She looked at Jonah and watched his face transform from bewilderment to understanding as he realized what she was doing. He narrowed his eyes menacingly as Shay gave him two thumbs up. She added a wave over her shoulder as she and Janie strolled out the door.

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