His Surprise Son

“I’ve got to tell my parents.” He sounded as if he was about to tell them he’d found out he was dying.

“Maybe they’ll be supportive.”

Nate’s laugh told her otherwise. “Izzy, my father works twelve-hour days on a dairy farm and moonlights as a handyman so I can have a college fund. My mom taught piano and cleaned hotel rooms to pay for my after-school sports fees, because she thought it would help me get a scholarship. You think they’re going to enjoy hearing this?”

“Don’t yell at me, I didn’t get pregnant alone!”

“I know that!” His energy felt explosive as he rose from the bench. “I’m just saying this changes everything. Not only for us. For other people.”

“I can get a full-time job,” she said, hearing the desperation in her voice. “I can work while you go to school, so—”

“You can’t support three people.”

“You said you were going to work while you’re in college.”

He nodded. “I’ve got to help with tuition and books.” He shoved his fingers through his hair. “If I’m lucky, I’ll have enough left over for living expenses.”

“I can pay my own way. I have for years. I don’t expect you to—”

“Izzy! Who’s going to take care of the baby while you and I are in school and at work and studying? I’m going to college in Chicago. We’d be two thousand miles away from anyone we know. No,” he said when she opened her mouth to protest. On a giant exhalation, he plowed both hands through his hair, then moved as if he were slogging through thigh-deep sand to sit beside her.

An anchor of fear pulled at Izzy’s heart. Looking at the Portland skyline, she blinked as the city lights blurred. No tears. Absolutely no tears.

They didn’t live in this sprawling city. Both she and Nate were from a Ridge community three and a half hours away. They’d come to Portland to soak up a view that was a taste of the bigger life awaiting them.

He was going to build skyscrapers.

She had planned to be the first person in her family to earn a high school diploma and go on to college.

Suddenly, Izzy felt as if nothing was holding her upright, as if she might slide off the bench. Stiffening her spine, she sat side by side with him—silently and with space between their bodies, which had not been their way this summer. The August evening felt hot and oppressive.

At the point where the silence was about to become unbearable, Nate spoke again. This time he sounded like someone who’d been running in the desert. “We’ll figure it out. I’ll talk to my parents. There’s got to be something... We’ll figure it out together.” Nate’s large palm and beautiful long fingers curved around the hands she clutched on her lap. Chancing a look at him, Izzy saw that he was staring at the ground.

The warmth that usually flooded her body when he touched her did not come.

Not once in four months had Nate actually said the words I love you. Izzy had counseled herself to be patient. Told herself she didn’t have to hear the words to believe he felt them.

She shook her head. Stupid...stupid! How could a girl like her possibly know what love looked like?

With the rose-colored glasses off, the truth became painfully clear. Now, even though she was right next to Nate, even though he’d said they would find a solution together, she felt the heart that had warmed and softened this summer turn as cold and hard as stone.

* * *

“So the waitress says to the man at the counter, ‘We have two soups today, sir, chicken with noodles and split pea—both delicious. Which would you like?’ And the customer says, ‘I’ll take the chicken.’ But, after the waitress calls in the order, the man changes his mind. ‘Miss,’ he asks, ‘is it too late to switch? I think I’d prefer the split pea.’ ‘Not at all,’ the waitress replies, and she turns around and hollers to the cook, ‘Hold the chicken, make it pee!’”

Henry Bernstein leaned back in the guest chair in The Pickle Jar’s tiny office and smiled the sweet, mischievous smile that usually warmed Izzy down to her toes. Henry had told her at least one new joke every week for the past seventeen years. At seventy-six years young, he liked to claim he knew more jokes than a professional comic.

“Where’d you hear that one?” Izzy tried to smile, but she wasn’t up to her usual hearty laughter.

“I spent a week with two hundred senior citizens.” Henry shrugged. “It’s a laugh a minute in those retirement homes. Lots of company, three meals a day and all the Bengay you want. Not a bad life.”

Henry and his younger brother, Sam, had just returned from visiting their friend Joe Rose, who lived at Twelve Oaks, a senior residence along the Willamette River. “I’m glad you enjoyed it, but I’m even gladder you’re back,” Izzy told him sincerely. “It’s never the same around here without you. And I hope you’re ready to get back to work, because I’ve been putting together some marketing ideas. I think I know how we can pump up business.”

Raising the elegant, elderly hands that had scooped pickles out of an oak barrel back in the day, Henry said, “In a minute, in a minute. First, tell me what’s so awful that you haven’t been sleeping.”

“Who says I haven’t been sleeping?”

“Your eyes tell me. Is it business that’s keeping you awake, Izzy girl? Remember—” He raised a finger. “‘Tension is who you think you should be—relaxation is who you are.’”

Now she did laugh. “You heard that from someone at the retirement home. Only someone retired would say it.”

“It’s an ancient Chinese proverb.”

“Written by a retired ancient Chinese prophet.”

Henry grinned.

“Business isn’t all that’s keeping me up at night,” she admitted. In her life, she’d had only one person to whom she could turn with any problem, and that was the thin, wise, gray-haired man in front of her.

“Nate Thayer,” Izzy said, speaking the name aloud for the first time since yesterday afternoon. She’d avoided it, as if not saying his name might make his presence less real. “He’s here, in Thunder Ridge. He came to the deli yesterday. He saw Eli.”

Henry was rarely given to quick or exaggerated expressions, but now his brows arched above the line of his glasses. “He knows?”

“No. He didn’t recognize Eli. And Eli had no idea, of course. He held the door open for Nate. They smiled at each other.”

“But you and Nate spoke?”

“Yeah. I was wearing the pickle costume, and I fell on the floor, and— Never mind.” Shaking her head, she pressed her fingers to her temples. “It was awkward.”

Henry folded his hands above his belt line and nodded. “I thought he would come back someday.”

Too agitated to sit still, Izzy rose, wrapping her arms around her middle as if it was nineteen degrees outside instead of close to ninety. “He took his time. Not that I’m complaining. I wish he’d never come back. I wish I didn’t have to think about Nate Thayer again until Eli is an adult.”

“Did he come here looking for information?”

“I don’t know. He hasn’t asked anything yet. But he’s not entitled to information.” Henry gazed at her. “He’s not,” she insisted before Henry could share some ancient wisdom about fathers’ rights—fathers who hadn’t wanted to raise their children to begin with.

“Nate and his parents wanted me to put our baby up for adoption. He was willing to wait until Eli was eighteen before he ever saw him. So let him wait a little longer.”

“You’re worried,” Henry said, nodding. “It’s understandable. But you’re speaking out of fear.”

“You’re darn right I am.” The tiny office didn’t leave much room for pacing, but Izzy made use of the space that was available. “You remember how Eli was a few years ago. His self-esteem was terrible. He hated everything about himself, including the fact that he had a father who didn’t want him.” She had never told Eli that, of course, never even hinted, but short of lying and saying that the man who had fathered him died or was living in Tunisia, what else could a father’s absence in his son’s life imply? She had told him only that his father was a boy she had known. A boy who hadn’t been ready to be a father and who had moved far away. Eli had never asked for a name, an act of self-control that seemed to give him a sense of power. He had referred to the man who’d fathered him once as “the guy with the Y chromosome.” Then he’d stopped talking about it all together.

“He’s on the right track now,” she said emphatically. “He’s a good student. Responsible and productive. He’s happy. I intend to keep him feeling good about himself. I won’t allow Nate to waltz in here and mess up my son’s life.”

Behind wire-rimmed glasses, Henry’s brown eyes watched her closely. “Eli is on the right track. And circumstances are very different now. Eli was also upset about being deaf in a hearing world. The cochlear implant made a great difference.”

“Yes. Because being able to hear took his mind off what he doesn’t have. He never talks about not having a father anymore. It doesn’t make him unhappy now. He has you, and Sam and Derek. He knows you love him.”