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“Well, we’ll get to have fun together from now on. We’ll have good times and bad times, but we’ll learn more about each other with every day that passes, and I can’t wait, Ben.”
“Do I have to call you Daddy?”
Lilah bit her lower lip and leaned forward. Trying to save her son, she’d given him grief and confusion. And she still didn’t know if Owen was capable of being a good father to Ben. “I thought you wanted a daddy like your friends,” she said.
“How do I know he’s my daddy?”
“I can help you with that.” Owen pulled two small photos out of his shirt pocket, along with the gift tag her parents’ assistant had draped around the neck of every wine bottle he’d sent to the gallery’s artists. Owen set down the tag, folded to display only Ben’s photo. Beside it, he lined up two pictures of himself, one at a beach, holding up a bright yellow bucket, the other of him perched on a dirty white picket fence, his face more solemn. “Daddies and sons sometimes look alike,” Owen said. “Those two pictures are me when I was your age, and you and I look almost exactly the same.”
Ben looked even more confused. He turned toward Lilah. “I don’t get it, Mommy.”
“You know when people say I look like my mother?”
“Yeah.”
“Owen is saying you look like him, and you really do.”
“But I don’t want to call him Daddy. I’ll call him his name. Own.”
“Sounds perfect,” Owen said, sounding relieved. He must have thought Ben didn’t want a dad, or if he did, he didn’t want this stranger who’d shown up on his doorstep.
“We’re going to Tennessee,” Lilah said, startling herself, as well as Owen and Ben.
“That place where Own lives?”
She nodded. “He wants you to meet his family because they’re also your family. I want to go with you because I’ll miss you too much if you go on your own.”
Water bubbled over the pasta saucepan to sizzle on the stovetop. Lilah sprang to her feet. “I may have to start this over.”
“It’ll be fine.” Owen appeared beside her. “Looks good.”
She had a feeling he was thanking her for making this sojourn in Tennessee look like her idea. She didn’t want his thanks. She looped a piece of pasta on a fork and tasted. “It is good. Ready, Ben?”
“I’m done with my salad.”
Owen collected the salad plates from the table and took them to the sink. He picked up the top plate on a stack of three for the pasta. His frozen gaze had melted a little when he looked into hers.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Fighting you is pointless.” She couldn’t pretend she’d been wrong, and if she let him see she had any awareness she’d cheated him of these years with Ben, he’d grab back all the time he could. “We’re not moving to Tennessee.”
Owen glanced at Ben, but answered with a smile. “We’ll work out a custody schedule. I don’t mind flying to pick him up and bring him back.”
She resented him all over again for acting as if he were being perfectly amenable. “You are not human.”
He laughed, but the sound lifted all the hairs on her arms, while Ben watched them, his mouth open.
“You might have a point,” Owen said in a tone only she could hear. “And I still can’t believe you took Ben from me. But I’m going to make sure I make things different for him.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“I DON’T WANT you to go, Own.” In the bright sunlight flooding into Lilah’s living room, Ben clung to Owen with all his might, legs and arms wrapped around his newfound father.
“I don’t want to leave either,” Owen said in a voice gone thready with emotion. His face was taut with sadness, his eyes closed as if he wanted to keep Lilah out of his private suffering.
He was probably right. She didn’t trust this instant love he seemed to feel for Ben, and he blamed her for the years he’d lost with his son. It didn’t matter that she’d believed she was making the best choice for Ben.
“Come on, buddy.” She tried to peel Ben away, but both males locked their arms around each other. Despite herself, her throat tightened.
She’d never wanted to hurt either of them. That hadn’t been her goal.
Finally, Owen eased Ben to the ground. “You know what?” He straightened, blinking as hard as his son. “It’ll only be a few days. Seven, before I come back to get you. And then we’ll have lots of time together, and you’ll meet your uncles and aunt and your grandma. They’ll be so glad to see you.”
“And the goats?” Ben asked. “You said the goats are nice?”
“The goats will be your best friends.”
“Okay.” Ben slapped his forehead with sweet, little boy exaggeration. “Wait, Own. I forgot something.”
Without further explanation, he bolted toward the stairs. Owen looked at Lilah.
“I’m mystified,” she said.
He took a quick glance at his watch. “I hate to leave, but I have to make the flight.”
“You know, I could bring him, myself. There’s no need for you to come back.”
“I want Ben to know he matters to me.”
“I think he’ll realize that anyway.”
“He’ll remember how he learned about me and the rest of his family all his life. I want him to know I’ll always take the extra step for him.”
Unspoken was his accusation that she’d made those extra steps necessary. Lilah swallowed, pretending she didn’t feel the slightest guilt.
Ben skidded into the room, brandishing a piece of white drawing paper. He held it up for Owen. “This is me and you, duck bowling.”
Two happy stick figures in clothing were flinging balls at objects she didn’t recognize, but the drawing was so full of happiness she smiled, until she met Owen’s gaze.
His eyes looked fierce. She couldn’t tell if he was touched or upset or a confused mixture of both. He lifted Ben in his arms and held him with tenderness that rocked her. What had she done?
And yet, she’d do it again.
* * *
OWEN WAITED IN his car until the last of his family strolled into the Pizza Keller just off the square in Bliss. He didn’t want to repeat the story to each new arrival, and he hadn’t trusted himself to wait in the restaurant alone, with the bar at hand and his worst fears taunting him about how bad he could be for Ben.
He got out as the clock on the courthouse in the center of the square tolled seven times. Snow crunched beneath his boots, reflecting the colored Christmas lights the town had yet to take down.
He crossed the sidewalk, nodding to a neighbor who greeted him by name as she walked past. Laughter and a whiff of delicious pizza aromas drifted out as he opened the door. No one had ever risked that kind of laughter around his family’s dinner table when he was growing up. Dinner then had been a quiet, tense, often terrifying affair. Knowing Ben, loving him already, had somehow revived old memories Owen thought he’d long since repressed.
He shook himself mentally and waved off the hostess who came to meet him. “I hear them in the back already,” he said and took the menu she held out to him.
As if to make up for all those quiet years, the Gages were now at least two decibels louder than everyone else in the joint. His mother stepped out of the back alcove, carrying an empty water pitcher.
“Hi, son,” she said. “Let me just get this refilled.”
“Mom, you don’t work here.” He took the pitcher, passed it to the server headed their way and turned Suzannah Gage back toward their small room. Noah and his girlfriend, Emma, were seated at the far end of a long bench, eyes only for each other. Owen’s brother Chad was going through breadsticks as if no one had fed him in a decade, and his sister, Celia, had her tablet out and her fingers flashing over the keyboard.
“Sorry I’m late,” Owen said.
“We saw you in the truck,” Noah told him.
“Lurking,” said Emma. Apparently, they were aware of the rest of the world after all.
“What’s up?” Noah asked.
“What’s your big secret?” Emma peered at him. “A girlfriend? A new job? Because you can’t leave Bliss until you finish the barn.”
“Clinic,” Suzannah said. She glanced at the younger woman. “Sounds classier. You don’t want to tell your father he’ll be bringing his brand-new baby girl to have a checkup in a barn.”
“Right.” Emma’s father had helped Noah push the clinic through the town council, just as his own infant daughter was born. “We need to keep him on our side,” she said with a sweet smile, and snatched a breadstick out of the red plastic cup in front of her before Chad could grab it. They laughed at each other as if they were already family.
Celia’s head snapped up. “Are you drinking again?” Her blue eyes were a little dazed from too much work. “Did you come to confess? I don’t mean to be blunt, but I could really use the diary of a struggling, yet recovering addict in my psych research project.”
“Is that what you’re working on?” he asked.
“Making notes.” An overachiever, like Noah. Her class didn’t start until the end of the month.
“Thanks for your vote of confidence,” Owen said, “but, no.” Not that being in the middle of this family inquisition didn’t tempt him. He loved those tall red cups. He loved the foam of beer climbing to the lip. “But I have a few things to tell you.”
“Should we worry?” Suzannah eased back onto the bench on Emma and Noah’s side.
Owen slipped in beside Celia.
“Sorry,” his sister said. “But you know what you have to lose if you give up on your sobriety again.”
“Lay off, Celia.” He squeezed her wrist in an affectionate warning. He couldn’t take it just now.
Chad offered him a breadstick, and Owen couldn’t help laughing. Chad had the metabolism and the extracurricular-sports schedule to treat his troubles with food. The rest of the family laughed, as well, and for once, he didn’t feel like an outsider.
“I’ll wait for the pizza,” he said. The server came back. Looking harried, he eyed Owen with his pen at the ready. “I’d like a tea, please.”
“Okay. Anyone ready to order?”
Chad jumped right in. “Man Meets Meat special.”
“Owen, will you share a mushroom and cheese and arugula with me?” Celia asked.
He nodded, and she smiled at the server, who blinked and fell a little in love with her. Owen grinned at the poor guy.
Noah and Emma said “Pepperoni” in tandem as they always did.
Suzannah shut her menu and looked into the shadows of the beamed cathedral ceiling, reeling off her memorized list of ingredients. “Artichoke hearts, feta, mushroom, and hot Italian sausage.” She beamed at Owen as the server hurried away. “You can share mine, too.”
Cleanup. That’s what he was around here. Never stepped out on his own that his family knew of. Never made his own mark, except in ways that shamed them all.
So he didn’t know how to tell them about Ben. Would they believe his unbelievable explanation about Lilah, or would they assume he’d abandoned his child?
“I have a son,” he said, and the miniconversations, already building up sound and steam, ceased immediately.
“Huh?” Emma seemed confused.
“That’s not right.” Celia gripped her tablet for comfort.
“Oh, no,” his mother said, but at least she didn’t pretend everything was all right, and they’d all be fine, her MO since she’d finally excised his abusive, destructive father from their midst.
“Are you okay?” Noah asked, still the oldest brother, still the first to step up and take care of them.
Chad kept chowing down on the bread sticks.
Owen cleared his throat. He glanced back at the front of the restaurant. Where was his tea? “He’s almost four years old. I met his mother when she was handling some furniture I built to sell in her family’s gallery in Manhattan.”
“At last,” Emma said, cutting him off. “I have been dying to tell someone about that furniture and the other pieces you’ve done.” She turned to Noah. “He built my stepmother’s cradle for her baby.”
“You knew about my son?” Owen asked. Emma was his friend, more like a second sister. He trusted her not to keep secrets from him. She was the only person in this town who never seemed surprised to find him sober.
“No, I was being thoughtless.” Crestfallen, she sat back, flexing her fingers on the table ledge. “I just meant I wish you’d be more open about your work. That cradle was beautiful. But I had no idea you had a son. How did you find out?”
“It sounds ridiculous. The family who owns the gallery sent all the artists who show there a gift of wine.” He’d expected their worried reactions. “I poured it out,” he said, and the memory of the rich, red liquid swirling down the drain made his mouth water. “But they left a gift tag that had a photo of their family on the bottle. Ben’s mom—Ben is his name. Ben’s mom is the daughter of the guy who started the gallery. She broke up with me when she found out she was pregnant because I told her I didn’t want to stop drinking.”
“Owen.” Celia sounded disappointed.
“I know. It’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve done in a long line of stupid mistakes. I didn’t know what I was throwing away. I just thought I had to be honest with Lilah, and I couldn’t stop. Back then.”
“But now?” his mother asked.
“You know I’m not drinking, Mom. Not since Thanksgiving, when I started working on the clinic.” His eyes drifted toward the polished mahogany bar and the upright beer tap handles. He didn’t tell his family that Lilah had been his drinking buddy. Funny he felt a need to protect her from that much, at least. “Lilah said she didn’t want to see me anymore if I couldn’t dry out. I assumed she meant it.”
“You must not have been too attached to each other if that was all it took to keep you away,” Celia said.
His sister had been talking med school, same as Noah. If she got in, she’d need to learn about bedside manner.
“Or you were so attached you decided you wouldn’t beg her to take you back.” His mother’s empathy also put him off.
He wasn’t about to bring up the fact that Lilah had accused him of being like his father. He still wondered himself if that was true, and he couldn’t stand how easy his honesty about his own past had made it for her to choose the weapon that kept him away.
“Son?” Suzannah said. “Is there anything I can do?”
His brothers and sister took their mother’s change of attitude since their parents’ divorce at face value. He knew how easy it was to fall back into old habits, and he never managed to believe completely in his mother’s reform.
“I’ve lost four years with Ben, so I’m forcing his mother to bring him here.” Might as well admit he’d blackmailed Lilah. They’d soon realize this wasn’t going to be some joyous reunion.
“Forcing?” Suzannah sat back, her eyes a little too wide. “How, exactly are you doing that? Owen, I don’t want you acting like your—”
She faltered but left the word father unspoken. Which was a good thing. The accusation was too close to his own suspicions about himself.
“That doesn’t sound like you.” Celia shut the cover on her tablet. “Why would you do that, Owen?”
“Because I loved Ben the second I saw him, and I can’t throw away another day with him.” He looked at his sister, and for once, he hid nothing.
“Doesn’t this woman know you’re staying sober now?” Emma asked.
He let himself smile. Good old Emma. She refused to believe the worst. “I’ve told her I’m trying, but she has doubts, and you can’t really blame her.”
“Why don’t we know about her? Were you ashamed to bring her down here?” Suzannah frowned. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She did come down, Mom. I just never introduced her to people here. We didn’t have a lot of time together because she worked for her family in New York, and my place was here. I didn’t want to move.”
“Maybe you also didn’t want anyone to know about your private life,” Celia said.
He glanced at her. “When you take your nose out of your books, you’re observant.”
“This Lilah must not be. If she cared about you then, she must see you’re sober now.”
They were all so desperate to believe in him. Determined to trust the promises he’d made after the last bender only a few weeks ago.
“I guess I wasn’t sober a lot when we were together.” He looked at Noah, who’d persuaded the council he could get the clinic done without drinking. “I am now,” he said. “And I’m going to stay this way.”
Suzannah reached for Owen’s hand. The moment for closeness had passed, but he let her hang on because she needed to feel she could comfort him. He was willing to let her feel better. “You can promise her all you want, but she might not be able to believe you. She’s probably anxious for her son. You can’t blame her since she saw you in those darker days.”
She sounded as if Lilah had filled her in, but no one knew how many times he’d promised himself he wouldn’t drink again. “The first time I actually went to rehab, I did it for her.”
“Which is why it didn’t work,” Noah said. “So she tried to force you to stop drinking, and now you’re forcing her to share your son.”
“When you put it like that, I realize how ruthless I’m being.” Owen recalled Lilah’s frightened expression as she’d watched him drive away with Ben for their day out.
“I’d do the same, and I defy anyone at this table to say he or she would walk away from a child. Ben’s mother wouldn’t do it,” Noah said.
“That’s why she’s coming with him,” Owen said. “At first, I wanted to just take him with me, but I was angry. When I realized Ben would suffer without her, I told her I was staying there until they were both ready to come, but she asked me to trust her not to run for Canada.”
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