Bring On The Night. Sara Orwig
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and a day care for Henry.” She looked at Jonah. “So where do we go from here? Do you live here, too?”
“Yes. And I intend to get to know my son.” He glanced at Henry and then back at her, thinking of the future. “I’ll take you to court over this if I have to, Kate.”
She looked away, but not before he saw tears fill her eyes. Her tears didn’t diminish his anger, however.
“Don’t run away, either,” he added tersely. “I’ll find you. I can promise you that.”
“I won’t run. I suppose we’ll have to work out times and all that…. Have you remarried?” she asked, turning tostudy him.
“No, I haven’t.”
She shook her head and looked away again. Wind blew her long hair, and he could remember its softness when he’d wrapped his fingers in it.
“When do you start this new job?” he asked.
“Monday morning.”
Surprised, he arched his brows. “That leaves you just this weekend to find a place to live and a day care. That’s cutting it close.”
“I needed to start work as soon as possible.”
Jonah sat down again on the end of the bench and rested his elbows on his knees, watching Henry in the sandbox. The little boy was digging, carefully building a structure. Jonah’s thoughts seethed, and he tried to think calmly what to do next.
“Jonah, I should go,” Kate said, locking her fingers together tightly in her lap. “I can give you my phone number and the number of the place where I’ll be working, but right now, this afternoon, I should be looking for a place to stay. That’s what we’ve been doing all day today.”
She opened her purse and fumbled for a pen and paper. Jonah’s hand closed over hers and her gaze flew up to meet his.
“I’ll take you to dinner tonight and we can plan what we’ll do.”
“I don’t have any time before this job starts. Can we wait until I’ve had a week or two?”
“You’re going to tell him the truth today, right now—here at the park. Or else I will,” Jonah said in a voice of steel, a tone she had never heard before and knew she couldn’t argue with. “I don’t want to be cheated out of knowing my son one more minute.”
She rubbed her forehead again. “Please wait. I can’t deal with all this at once.”
“I’ve waited five damn years!” Jonah snapped. “I’m not waiting another moment.”
She nodded. “All right, Jonah. I guess you have that right.”
“Damn straight, I do. What have you told him about me—about us?” Jonah asked. “Did you tell him that we’re divorced?”
“Yes. I told him that the army was important to you and you were gone most of the time, and we decided it would be best to part. I told him you wanted out of the marriage.”
“Kate, that’s a damn lie!” Jonah said, standing again and pacing away from her, fury making him shake once more. He whipped around. “You’re the one who walked.”
“I know, but I was afraid he would keep hoping you would come back,” she explained.
The anger Jonah was keeping in check tore at him. He clenched and unclenched his fists and took deep breaths, knowing he needed to calm down.
“Children accept life as it comes to them,” Kate continued in a subdued voice, her words running together as she spoke quickly. “My parents were around the first couple of years. Dad wasn’t well the past three years, nor was Mom for the last two, but for a while Henry had a father substitute.” She turned to face Jonah squarely.
“It hasn’t been easy this past year. Mom and Dad were very ill, and I had to quit my job to take care of them. Since I couldn’t give a lot of attention to Henry, he’s learned to entertain himself, but he’s also a little shut off. He’s a solemn child and sensitive, and I think he picks up on what is going on around him. Don’t intimidate him.”
“I don’t intend to intimidate him, Kate. I want to love him,” Jonah said in a clipped tone while he looked at the little boy playing in the sand by himself. Other children ran around the playground together, but Henry kept to himself, and Jonah wondered how solitary the child’s life had been.
“You named him for your dad, didn’t you?” he asked.
“Yes. Henry Neighbor Whitewolf.”
“So you let him keep my name?” Jonah remarked in surprise. “And his middle name is my dad’s? Why did you do that, when you intended for Henry to never know his grandfather?”
“I thought someday I would take him to meet your folks, but then time began to pass and my parents got sick. I had a baby to care for and I just didn’t do anything about it. I never had a quarrel with your folks, Jonah.”
He gritted his teeth and shook his head, not trusting himself to speak. After a long silence, he said, “It was pretty shabby treatment, Kate, to keep the knowledge of their grandchild from them.”
She locked her fingers together. “I suppose you’re right, but if I had gone to see them or called or let them know in any way, you would have showed up and I was afraid of a custody battle.”
“Well, we need to talk about that one.”
She glanced at her watch. “I won’t run away. As of Monday morning, I’ll be an advertising executive for Beckman and Holloway, a San Antonio ad agency, and I’m really looking forward to it.”
“Sounds like a great job,” he said.
“I think it will be. It’ll pay more than the one I left.” She looked at Henry. “Right now, we haven’t had lunch, and I know Henry should eat. I need to try to find an apartment today, and I have an appointment this afternoon with a day care. Can we talk next week?”
“No. You’re not putting me off now. I’ll take you both to lunch.”
“You don’t need to do that,” she argued quietly. “I have a lunch packed in a cooler in my car. Jonah, be reasonable—we can talk tomorrow.”
Jonah shook his head. “Let’s go to lunch and talk. You can look at apartments later. Right now, I want to go tell him I’m his father. I’ve been out of his life for too long already.”
They stared at each other, and he could feel the muscles clenching in his jaw. He hurt as if every bone in his body were broken, ached with longing for the years he hadn’t known his child. Hot anger still consumed him, and to his chagrin, he still found his pulse racing every time he looked at Kate. He didn’t want her to have that power over him, but she did. He just hoped he never let his need for her show. When he thought what she had done, keeping Henry from him, he decided it would be better to keep his basic male reaction hidden from her.
He was astounded that she would try to keep his son a secret. That was a side of her he had never known.
“I’m going to tell him,” Jonah said, finally breaking the silence.
“No!” She gripped his arm and he inhaled, hating the hot tremor that sizzled through him from the touch of her fingers. She yanked her hand away as if she had touched burning metal. “I’ll go tell him right now,” she said, looking at Jonah intently, her gaze searching his features. “You’ve changed, Jonah. You’re a hard man.”
“You’ve changed, too, Kate. And what you did was—” He bit back the word he was about to say. It was over, and from this hour on, he would know his son and his son would know him. And in that moment, Jonah knew what he could do for the future.
“I’ll go tell him, but this is going to be sudden,” she repeated.
“I’m not the one who caused it to be that way.