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Chapter Twenty-Two

“ O h my goodness, I had the best day,” Claire said, and Josiah wanted to reach across between the chairs and pull her from hers onto his lap.

But Dan and Lana were sitting across the fire from them in their own chairs, and her children might wonder what was going on with the adults if he did what he wanted to.

So he didn’t, but he contented himself with looking at her and enjoying the happiness that practically radiated from her face.

They had taken the boat out on the lake. They’d flown kites again, hiked along the beach, walked up as far as they possibly could, had a picnic, and walked back. They’d even taken another carriage ride. Plus, they’d made twenty loaves of bread and delivered one to every house in Raspberry Ridge.

The kids had helped work in the flower beds some, and he’d gotten a little bit of work done in the kitchen, although he still wasn’t done with it.

But how could he resist when Claire invited him to go along with her and her children? He wasn’t going to say no. If she didn’t want him, she shouldn’t ask.

They’d finally gotten around to the campfire—one last one before the funeral.

Tomorrow everything would be about Grandma, celebrating her life, attending her funeral, and burying her.

It was sure to be a hard day, and he was making his barbecue ribs for that evening, so they’d have something to look forward to. Maybe they’d have another bonfire.

But then, on Sunday, Claire was taking her kids to Pennsylvania to meet her ex. Her ex had talked her into doing it over the weekend so he didn’t have to take off work. She’d figured it was the least she could do since he had agreed to allow her the extra week.

Claire had said that Josiah didn’t need to go with her. He would have the entire house to himself to work on the kitchen to his heart’s content. He was ready to get it done, but in the meantime, he was hoping he could have it—if not done, at least not looking like the chaos that it did now.

Regardless, it had been a good week, not just a good day.

“Do we have to go to Dad’s?” Lana said, and her question did not surprise Josiah at all.

Instead, he’d been expecting this all week.

Claire had gone out of her way to make sure that the kids had a week of fun with her, and she’d been so successful, so happy, so joyful, that he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to leave her. Of course, he was biased too.

“I don’t want to go either. I want to stay here with you.

I hate Boston.” Dan held a stick with a marshmallow on the end of it, and it was far enough back from the fire that Josiah could tell him that it was never going to get brown and melted, but he figured that Dan could learn that.

It wouldn’t hurt anything for him to figure it out on his own.

“Well, I would love for both of you to stay here all summer, but your dad wants to see you two. He misses you. He’s been looking forward to having you come.”

Josiah admired Claire. He knew that she didn’t necessarily want to say those things about their dad.

After all, their dad hadn’t loved them enough to not cheat, to not break the family apart, to not screw up when he’d been given a second chance.

Still, she wasn’t trashing their dad. She was…

trying to help them love him. But some things just couldn’t be helped .

“He can come here if he wants to see us,” Lana said, crossing her legs and looking much more mature than her thirteen years.

“Well, maybe you could invite him here. But… He’s got his own life back in Boston. He has his work, and…” Here, Claire hesitated. And then she said, “He might have something to tell you about the family that he’s trying to build.”

She had told Josiah that one of her friends from Boston had told her that her ex was getting very serious with a woman who already had two children.

They were younger, and Claire had told Josiah that she was very grateful that they were younger—they weren’t as old as her children.

She worried some about blended families and stepsiblings molesting the younger ones.

It wasn’t something that she’d heard about from anyone that he knew, but he could understand her fear.

Especially since she was a thousand miles away in Michigan and wouldn’t be around if her children needed her immediately.

She had confided in Josiah that she had a couple of girlfriends she knew she could call, but it wasn’t the same as her being there.

He had gently asked if maybe she felt like she needed to move back to Boston.

She’d shaken her head immediately, saying that she wanted to be here, in her grandma’s old house, living in the town she’d grown up in. She wanted her kids to be able to spend the school years here, at least.

“If you loved us, you wouldn’t make us go,” Dan said belligerently.

“It’s because I love you that I am making you go. And actually, it’s your dad that’s making you go. If your dad says you can stay here, go ahead. I’ll keep you. I would prefer that, actually.”

There. That’s where she drew the line. She wasn’t going to take the fall for her ex splitting the family up completely.

“Fine. Let me have your phone, I’ll call Dad now.” Lana held her hand out, and Claire shrugged and held out the phone, but she made her daughter come get it.

Her daughter disappeared, and Dan jumped up, running after her.

“I don’t know what to do. Please tell me I’m not screwing them up forever.”

“I think Ted already did that.” He didn’t mean to be all gloom and doom, but a divorce would leave scars, no matter what. He couldn’t lie and tell her that it wouldn’t. She knew it. She was looking to him to not lie.

“I just wish there was something I could do to undo all the painful, hard things that he’s done.”

He nodded and didn’t bother to remind her that the kids would grow through the pain and suffering.

It would be hard, no questions about that, but they would grow.

They would learn. There would be things that would be different in their lives because of the trials they went through.

Claire knew it, though, and he didn’t have to rub it in.

Lana came stomping back just a few minutes later.

“Dad wants to talk to you,” she said, handing the phone to Claire.

Claire exchanged a look with Josiah before she took the phone from Lana.

She held it up to the ear closest to Josiah, and he could hear her ex’s voice clearly.

“What are you trying to do—turn the children against me? I let you have an extra week, and all of a sudden, they don’t want to come here at all? What’s wrong with you? I trusted you.”

He wanted to roll his eyes. A cheater giving his ex-spouse a hard time because he couldn’t trust her? That was rich. And he also wanted to jump to Claire’s defense. She’d wanted to create memories for herself, not to make things harder for her husband.

“I didn’t do anything I wouldn’t have done with them if they had spent the entire summer with me. We just had to cram it all into a few days, because my grandma’s funeral is tomorrow. We’ll be spending the day burying her. And then Sunday, we’re driving to Pennsylvania to meet you.”

He was gratified to hear the calmness and peace in Claire’s voice. He made a mental note to tell her that she’d handled it well.

Somehow, some of the anger in Ted’s voice had defused. “I don’t like my kids calling me and asking if they can stay and telling me they don’t want to come to Boston.”

“I don’t like my kids coming to me and crying and asking me when Dad is going to come home and why he doesn’t live with us anymore.”

“Really? You have to go there? ”

“I’m sorry. My point is, both of us have to deal with things we don’t want to.”

“You don’t have to hold it against me for the rest of my life. Just because you weren’t a good enough wife, and I needed my sexual urges satisfied, and you weren’t enough—is that my fault?”

He heard Claire suck in her breath. He could see the hurt pierce right through her eyes. He wanted to grab the phone and smash it to smithereens, but he just sat in his chair.

“The children have a right to their opinion and to express what they want. I told them if you changed your mind and didn’t want them for the summer, I would keep them.

Otherwise, I told them, in no uncertain terms, that we would be going to Pennsylvania to meet you on Sunday. Is there anything else you wanted?”

Her voice was completely devoid of all warmth. There was no friendliness or engagement in it. She was just talking because she had to.

Maybe because she wanted to hide from him, or maybe because she wanted to keep him from being able to hurt her again.

“No. But I don’t want the children calling me and asking if they can stay there for the summer. That was rude and underhanded. And I don’t appreciate it. Goodbye.”

Claire kept the phone to her ear for just a bit longer, and Josiah waited.

Finally she lowered it, not even bothering to look to see if it was off. It was clear that her ex-husband had hung up on her.

“He said no, didn’t he?” Lana said, her arms crossed over her chest, her foot sticking out, and her whole body showing her displeasure.

“He loves you. He wants to see you.”

Josiah was impressed. After the insult that her husband had unfairly lodged against her, he couldn’t believe that she wasn’t curled up crying somewhere or railing against him. But instead, she was saying the same thing she had said before—that he loved them, which probably was true.

“I’m going to run away. I’m not going to go back to Boston,” Dan said, and he started to stomp away.

“Hey there. Hold on a second,” Josiah said. Maybe the fact that he had interjected himself into the conversation made Dan stop, or maybe Dan just wanted someone to stop him.

Anyway, his tone didn’t hold any heat or anger. And he was surprised when Dan actually listened.