Chapter 28
Standing outside the study door later that night, Violet tried to muster up the courage to knock.
She recalled how Noah had walked right in without announcing himself. It had been so bold and courageous of him, and she wished she could do the same thing. She couldn’t even knock on the door!
No, I can. I can do that. What’s the worst that can happen, after all?
Gritting her teeth, she raised a hand and knocked.
There was a moment’s pause, then the sound of footsteps. The door opened.
Jonathan had a glass of bourbon in his hand. His shirt collar was unbuttoned, and his hair was disheveled, as if he had run a hand through it a few times. “Is Noah in bed?” he asked her.
“Yes, he went about an hour ago.” She walked slowly into the room, wondering if he would invite her to take a seat. He didn’t, but Violet decided she didn’t need to wait for an invitation. It was his study, but it was her house…probably.
She sat down in the chair that faced his desk. “I think we need to talk about some things,” she said quietly.
“You’re talking about Noah. About what he said.” Jonathan leaned against his desk.
Violet nodded.
Jonathan picked up the bottle of bourbon, poured a second glass, and held it out to her.
Violet took it and nodded thanks. She didn’t care for bourbon, not really, but there was something about the gesture that appealed to her.
Something about being aligned with him, doing something together—even though the thing they were really aligned on was the idea that they couldn’t remain together any longer.
“He wants us to be his parents,” she said, and took a sip of the bourbon. It was thick and bitter, and she tried not to let her distaste for it show on her face.
If Jonathan noticed, he said nothing. He just nodded. “And we can’t do that,” he said. “Be his parents, I mean. We can’t.”
“I know we can’t.”
“What are we going to do?” He looked at her helplessly, and she realized in that moment just how much she had been hoping he would propose a solution. That he would come up with something the two of them could do.
He had nothing to offer, so she was going to have to be the one to solve the problem. She swallowed hard. “Jonathan, I think we have to try to find Noah’s parents.”
Jonathan’s eyebrows shot up. “His parents? You mean his birth parents?”
“Yes. We don’t know who he belonged to before he came to us. He’s never spoken about that.”
“We know they weren’t good people,” Jonathan said darkly. “Don’t you remember the stories he’s told us? You can’t possibly think that reuniting him with the people who abandoned him is the right thing to do.”
“I think we don’t know exactly what happened,” Violet said. Her voice shook a little, but she tried to speak firmly. “We have a child’s reckoning of those events. And he was so young when…”
“When they abandoned him?”
“Whatever happened, he was very young when it did,” she said. “I’m not saying we ought to hand him over to them.”
“Well, I’m glad you’ve retained some common sense.”
“But I’m saying we should find out who they are. We should find out what happened. Jonathan, it seems clear that Noah is craving family. He wouldn’t have slipped like that, he wouldn’t have called us his mother and father, if there wasn’t a part of him yearning for a mother and father.”
“That doesn’t mean we should provide him with the worst options available just so those roles will be filled,” he said.
“I’m not suggesting that.” Violet noticed, suddenly, that he hadn’t really looked at her since handing her the glass of bourbon. He was shuffling through papers on his desk, but it was clear by now that he wasn’t really looking for anything. If he were, he would surely have found it.
Being ignored like this bothered her. “Would you stop that?” she asked.
“Stop what?”
“Stop playing with your papers. Sit down and look at me, and let’s have a proper conversation,” she said.
He did look up then, his eyebrows raised. Very slowly, almost exaggeratedly, he sank into his chair.
“Well,” he said. “This is very proper of you, I must say.”
“Proper?”
“Very decorous.”
“It isn’t about that. I’m not trying to be proper. I’m trying to carry on a conversation with you. This is important. This is about Noah’s future. We should be able to talk about it.”
He sighed. “You seem like his parent.”
“But I’m not. That’s the thing, Jonathan.
He feels like I’m his mother, and I feel like I’m his mother, and…
oh, you know how I’d love to stay with him and take care of him.
I would be that to him. But what I can’t offer him is a father.
You can be his father, but not if I am to be his mother.
With either of us, he won’t have stability.
We’ve been selfish to think that just because we want to be in his life, that we should be.
We should at least attempt to discover if a more stable option is available.
I see that now, and it’s wrong to deprive him just because…
just because I wish we could be a family. ”
She held her breath. She had meant that she wished she and Noah could be a family, and yet…it hadn’t quite sounded that way. It had sounded like she might be talking about the same thing Noah had been talking about, like she might, conceivably, mean the three of them.
“We are in a mess,” Jonathan said softly.
“Noah is going to be devastated,” she told him.
“I don’t think he realizes that this isn’t forever.
He knows that you and I have argued about this house, and that there’s been friction between the two of us.
But I don’t think he’s ever really absorbed the idea that the three of us are not going to stay here and be a family.
It’s going to crush him when one of us leaves.
That’s why I want to try to find his family.
We can’t give him what he wants, and I want to see if there’s anyone who can.
I just want to know that we’ve exhausted every option.
I want to know that we’ve tried. Does that make sense? ”
“It does,” Jonathan said.
“So then you’ll do it? You’ll help me look for his parents?”
He regarded her steadily. “You never thought I would say no, did you?”
“I had no idea.” This was true. She had been hesitant to come in here precisely because she’d had no idea how he was going to react to her request.
“Of course I’ll help,” he told her. “When you get all excited like this, when something hits you so passionately, I can’t help but want to do whatever it is you’re asking for. I can’t say no to you when you’re like this, Violet.”
Violet’s heart hammered. What did he mean when he said things like that? Didn’t he realize how that sounded? He seemed…well, the truth was that he seemed as if he was enamored of her. She didn’t know how to process that, didn’t know what she was supposed to say.
All she said was, “Thank you.”
“I’ll start now,” he said. “I’ll speak to some people I know who would be good at helping with this sort of thing, and we’ll see what we can turn up. Maybe someone will know something about people who have given up a child.”
“And if it turns out that he was mistreated by them…”
“They’ll never see him,” Jonathan swore.
“Not unless we can be certain that it’s safe and a good idea for him.
We can try to learn who they are and what happened back then without exposing Noah to them.
If it turns out they’re the kind of people I’m afraid they are, we’ll never tell Noah we found them at all.
We’ll just turn them over to the authorities, and that will be that. ”
Violet sighed. “I hate even suggesting this,” she admitted. “I wish we could just…”
But she trailed off. What did she wish they could do?
The true answer was so laughable that she knew she didn’t dare to speak it aloud to Jonathan.
She wished they could stay here and keep playing make-believe.
That they could spend their days making picnics and their evenings reading books about animals, and that when Noah called them mum and dad, they could smile and feel that warm feeling of belonging.
She wanted to pretend that this was her family. That Noah was hers. And that Jonathan…that he’s mine too. That we have some claim on each other, some way of making all this permanent.
But she couldn’t go on pretending that. To do so would be to lie to herself, for Jonathan had never seen the situation that way. She couldn’t allow herself to forget that he was only here, in the end, because he wanted the house. Not for her. Not even for Noah.
If we find Noah’s parents and discover that it’s right for him to reunite with them, it changes everything, she realized.
It would mean that there’s nothing tying me to this house anymore.
I need a place to live, but it doesn’t have to be here, and Jonathan has agreed that it would be fair for him to provide me with a different home if he keeps this one.
If Noah isn’t here, I have no reason to stay. The whole thing could be resolved.
Her heart felt heavy at the thought.
She wasn’t ready for all of this to be over.
But the difficulties they were having in sorting it out were starting to affect Noah, and that was just something she couldn’t allow to continue.
She got to her feet. “Thank you for speaking with me about this,” she said. “And for agreeing to help find his parents. Whatever we learn, it will be good for us, I think.”
She couldn’t wait to hear what his response would be. She started to move toward the door.
But he was faster. He got up and stepped directly into her path, intercepting her. She gazed up at him, heart pounding.
“I just hope you know,” he said quietly, “that I think you’re wonderful to him. You’re a good influence on his life. We’re not his parents. But if he was to have a mother, I don’t…I don’t think he could do much better than you.”
She sucked in a breath. It was a miraculous thing for him to have said, a beautiful way for him to see her. Her heart pounded, and she thought that if any man was ever to kiss her, this would be the moment. Right after a comment like that one. She wouldn’t rebuff him. She wouldn’t be able to.
But he wasn’t leaning in. There was no sign that he had intended his comment to spark these feelings.
They weren’t real feelings, she told herself harshly.
There was no reason for her to be thinking this way.
She had gotten carried away because she had envisioned the three of them as a family, but now that fantasy was being deconstructed.
It was all going to go away, and she wasn’t helping matters by allowing daydreams of illicit kisses with Jonathan.
“I should go,” she murmured.
He took a step back, almost as if to release her. Certainly, the tension between them eased, and she was able to turn toward the door.
But a thought occurred to her, and she turned back. “You would be good for him too,” she said. “If it…if it goes that way.” Because it still might. There were so many possibilities here. It was just that none of them matched that singular fantasy. “You would be a good father to him.”
“Thank you,” Jonathan said quietly.
Violet’s stomach churned. She turned away again, and this time she ran out the door of the study and down the hall before she could weaken again.