Penny McCusker - Noah And The Stork

Janey had been the one person he’d counted on to always stand by him, whether they were a couple or just good friends, even if it meant bucking the opinion of the entire town. He’d come back to town believing that hadn’t changed. But all these years she’d shut him out, making a home for herself and her daughter in this small, close-knit community. Without him.

It wasn’t fair of him to see it that way but he didn’t care. He needed to be angry, because without the strength of that emotion, he’d have to feel the hurt and betrayal—weak emotions that would make it impossible to face her again. And he had to face her again, if for no other reason than that she owed him an explanation about his daughter.

His half-grown daughter.

Noah wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Except scared. And angry.

He let the injustice of the secret Janey had kept carry him to her front door, three inches of solid, sound-deadening oak with a nice, big dead bolt. He’d kick it in if he had to.

Janey opened it before he could even knock, stepping out on the porch and closing the door softly behind her. “I think it would be best if you didn’t come in.”

“You can’t expect me to walk away.”

“I’m not expecting you to walk away, Noah. Just give yourself some time to calm down.”

“And what about Jessie? The kid’s been wondering where I’ve been all her life, and the minute I show up you hustle her off like I’m some kind of maniac.”

“If you’d seen the expression on your face, you’d have done the same.”

“Okay, so I’m steamed. But it can’t be good—”

“Don’t you dare lecture me on what’s good for Jessie. You haven’t been around—”

“How was I supposed to know?”

“I called you when…when I found out I was pregnant. I left you a message.” She stopped, wrapping her arms around herself.

Noah got the impression she was fighting back tears—but that was absurd. The Janey he remembered never cried.

“You didn’t return my call,” she finally finished.

“You should’ve kept calling.”

“That was my responsibility, too? To hound you until guilt brought you back here when love couldn’t? It’s not bad enough that I had to tell my father and see the disappointment—” This time her voice did break.

Noah took a step forward, just one, before she took a step back and he remembered that all he should be feeling toward her was anger.

It didn’t take her long to get herself together. Janey was nothing if not strong. “What would you have done?” she asked him. “Given up college, forgotten all your plans for a big career and settled here?”

“You didn’t give me the chance.”

“No, you didn’t give us a chance, Noah. You walked out with no goodbye, no explanation and now you stand there and tell me I should’ve dragged you back out of responsibility when it was clear you didn’t want me? You knew me better than that.”

Yes, he did. Janey wouldn’t have begged, but when she’d called him all those years ago, he’d let himself believe she was going to do exactly that. He’d told himself that she loved him enough to swallow her pride and ask him to come back. He’d never imagined she might have another reason for contacting him—his ego hadn’t allowed it—so he hadn’t contacted her. And he’d thought he was being so noble, that if he really loved her he’d let her go because that was best for her. “Janey—”

She held up a hand. “That’s behind us now, and I’d rather not rehash it, if you don’t mind.”

“No,” he said after a contemplative moment. There was no use rehashing it, and what could he have said? That there’d been regrets? That he’d often wished he’d made different choices, burned fewer bridges? What good would it do them now? “We have a daughter. That matters.”

Hearing it put like that shocked her. Her expression didn’t give her away, but she stiffened and even in the deepening gloom of the covered porch, he could tell all the color had washed out of her face. The last of his anger faded. He’d just discovered he had a daughter, but it must, Noah realized, have taken a great deal of courage for Janey to even open her front door, knowing that no matter how he reacted, she’d have to deal with it and then help Jessie do the same.

“We can stand out here,” he said, slapping at a sudden sting on his neck, “or we can go inside.”

“A few mosquito bites won’t hurt us.”

“Okay, but it’s not only the mosquitoes. Someone’s bound to see us, and the news will be all over town before you can say West Nile virus.”

Her mouth curved in a ghost of a smile. “Gossip is the national sport around here, and I get my turn to be the star player, like everyone else. It’s never really bothered me.”

“Even if it means you’d be linked with me again?”

She shot him a look. He had a point, but she’d be damned if she admitted that the last thing she wanted was to hear her name and his in the same sentence. In any context. She’d had enough of that when she was seventeen. “It’s not as if we have much choice. People are bound to find out you’re back in town again.”

He didn’t reply, and although his expression was inscrutable, Janey didn’t get a very positive feeling about what he was thinking. Or maybe, where Noah was concerned, it was best to be pessimistic. “If you’re truly worried about Jessie, leaving now is about the worst thing you could do.”

“I didn’t leave, did I? I want to discuss this, but I don’t see why we have to be eaten alive while we’re doing it.”

“Consider it planning your part in the food chain.”

Noah did the why-me combination, heavy exhalation, eye roll, a little shake of his head. “You were always too stubborn for your own good.” He closed the distance between them and reached for her.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Worse things have happened.”

“True, but you were around then, too.”

“Does that include Jessie?”

She went still, one hand creeping up to rub at her aching chest. “I’ve never considered her a bad thing.”

He cupped her elbow and steered her up the front steps. “Just the fact that I’m her father.”

Janey would’ve told him to go to hell, but she couldn’t have dug a coherent sentence out of her brain with a bulldozer, let alone voice it. The touch of his fingers on her bare skin had scorched enough brain cells to leave her temporarily senile.

When he let go of her to open the door and her mental processes kicked back in, she realized this was about Jessie. The girl had been wondering about her father for nine years, and when she finally met him, he completely freaked out. Heaven only knew what was going through her daughter’s mind, Janey thought, because she rarely did. If Noah disappeared now, though, Jessie was bound to take it personally. Janey had firsthand experience with that.

“I can’t believe you still live here,” Noah said, as he ushered her into the big old Victorian house that had been built by her great-great-grandparents.

She slipped into the front parlor, turned on a floor lamp with a fussy, glass-fringed shade and felt instantly comforted. She loved the cheerful tinkling sound it made, how it threw prisms of light into every corner of the room, the same way it had for as long as she could remember. “Where else would I live?”

“New York, L.A., London. There are some real cities out there in the world, Janey.”

“I like it here. You’re the one who couldn’t wait to get out of Erskine.”

He went quiet for a long moment. “I had my reasons.”

“I knew you weren’t happy here, Noah, but you never wanted to talk about it.”

“It’s still never.”

She stepped back out of the parlor. “Is that why you’re standing in the hallway?”

He stared at her for a second, mouth set in a grim line, eyes dark and intense.

“The front door’s right behind you.”

She could see he was considering it, and she knew before he spoke that he’d come to the same conclusion she had only moments before. This was about Jessie.

“Where is she?” Noah asked.

“Upstairs, in the tower room.” Janey said, referring to the uppermost floor of the turreted part of the house. The room was ringed with windows and high enough to see over the other houses in this part of Erskine. Jessie seemed to find the view soothing, although all that would be visible at this time of evening was the sun setting behind the mountains. “It’s where she goes whenever something’s bothering her.”

“So did you,” Noah murmured with a half smile Janey couldn’t bear to see. The look of pleasant nostalgia on his face was too painful to believe.

“What have you told her?” he asked.

“What’s there to tell her? I had no idea where you were or what you were doing.”

“So all I am is some guy you slept with ten years ago?”

“What do you want to hear, Noah?” She straightened, coming out into the hallway to confront him, her voice as tightly controlled as her temper. “That she used to ask who her father was, and where he was, and why her mom and dad weren’t married like most of the other kids’ parents—or at least divorced and splitting weekends and holidays?”

“Those are good questions, Janey, every one of them.”

“And I had good answers for them, except she was too young to understand those answers. She doesn’t know how it feels to be in love, to trust someone so completely…” Janey clenched her fists, refusing to let him see how much it had hurt. “I lived it and I don’t even understand it.”

“Janey—”

“Then she started asking the hard questions,” she continued, talking right over him. “Like why didn’t her dad want to spend any time with her, or at least meet her? And here’s the really hard one, Noah. What’s wrong with her? No matter how often I said it had nothing to do with her, I could tell she still thought it was her fault.”

“Jeez, Janey.” Noah ran a hand back through his hair, leaving it rumpled, a fitting counterpoint to the wild light in his eyes, eyes so like Jessie’s it was painful to look into them.

Janey bit back the rest of the angry words clawing at the back of her throat. He’d earned her anger, but making him hurt, like she and Jessie had hurt, wouldn’t solve anything. “Jessie stopped asking questions about you a long time ago. She’s accepted the fact that her parents aren’t together. It’s not unusual, even in Erskine. It’s just—” She caught her lower lip between her teeth and turned away. It didn’t help; Noah could still read her mind, it seemed.

“You’re wondering whether it’s a good thing I’m here or not.”

“Yeah, well, something about stuffing toothpaste back into the tube occurs to me.”

“So, what happens now?”

She brought her eyes back to him. “Right now that depends on you.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“And I can’t give you the words, Noah.”

He jammed his hands in his pockets, seeming more uncertain by the second.

“If you can’t do this, I’ll find some way to explain it to her.”

“What if I say the wrong thing?”

“At least it’ll be you saying it. And you can always apologize. It’s not like she thinks you’re perfect or anything.”

He held her gaze for a moment, then smiled wryly. “No, I don’t imagine she does.”

“I’ll go get her.” When Janey got to the tower room, however, she found Jessie curled up fast asleep on the old sofa that had been there forever. For the last four years her beloved stuffed bear had held a cherished place on the topmost shelf of her bedroom hutch. The fact that it was back in her arms tonight spoke volumes about the state of her heart and mind.