Molly O'Keefe - Baby Makes Three

“Alice?” Patrick, incredulous, turned to his youngest son. “Max? Alice was your idea?”

Max ignored him, or pretended to, and poured more eggshell paint in the trays. He practiced being oblivious as though there was a contest.

“Son.” Patrick tried again as Max dipped his roller in the paint and began applying their last coat on the last wall of the kitchen. “I leave you alone with him for ten minutes and this is what you do? Are you trying to ruin this inn?”

“He needed a chef.” Max shrugged, but there was a smile on his lips. “Alice is a chef.”

Patrick nodded. “She is, sure. But she’s also pure trouble for that boy.”

“I thought you liked Alice,” Max said.

“I do. I love her like a daughter but they are trouble for each other and she is the last thing your brother needs.”

“Please.” Max looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but still that devil’s smile was on his lips. If the situation weren’t so dire, Patrick would be happy to see Alice. “They’re grown-ups. They can make it work. At least we’ll eat well while she’s here. I’m about a week away from liver failure after eating your cooking for the past few months.”

Patrick’s mouth dropped open. “Where did I go wrong?” He pretended to be upset, when really these past few months had been the happiest of his life. This teasing was their old shtick. Kept them from ever having to address anything head-on—such as emotion. Such as the past. “I’m supposed to be growing senile on a porch somewhere with grandkids on my knee. Not working manual labor for one son and roommates with the other.”

“Right, because living with my dad is exactly what I want to be doing,” Max said without heat, and Patrick yearned, absolutely longed, to ask his boy what had happened to him. What was wrong. What was still hurting him so badly from the shooting last year that sent him into this tailspin. It wasn’t as though he was that different—the scar on his neck was new, sure. But he still laughed. He still made every effort to get the best of his brother. But it was as though he did those things because he was supposed to, not because he wanted to. Something had happened to leach the joy out of his boy, and he wanted to know what that was.

But if he asked, Max would probably fall on the floor in heart failure or shock. The Mitchell men didn’t ask probing questions.

So, they worked, the way they always did, instead of saying the important things. And Patrick hoped that whatever Max needed he was getting in some way.

The back door to the kitchen opened, letting in a warm breeze and a shaft of bright spring sunlight.

A woman stood in the doorway but it wasn’t Alice. The woman didn’t give off the kinetic energy that had surrounded his daughter-in-law.

Ex -daughter-in-law.

“Excuse me?” she said, stepping from the bright doorway into the kitchen. The door shut behind her and her features emerged from silhouette. “I’m looking for the chef.” She had a pretty smile that turned her plain face into something quite lovely.

“She’s not here,” Max said.

And his dumb son watched the paint dry in front of him rather than look at the pretty girl to his left.

Patrick despaired for the boy, he really did.

“She’s supposed to be here Monday,” Max said. He darted a quick look her way, then returned to the careful application of a second coat of pale cream paint on a pale cream wall, as though failure could blow up the building.

“Maybe there’s something we could do for you?” Patrick asked, stepping into the breach.

“Well, is Gabe—”

“Hello?” Gabe ducked his head out of the small office he’d built off the kitchen. “Hi!” He caught sight of the woman and Patrick knew his eldest son would appreciate how she appeared plain but somehow interesting all the same. True to form, Gabe smiled, the old charmer, and shook the woman’s hand. “I’m Gabe.”

Patrick shot Max a look that said, “That’s how you do it, nincompoop.” Max just rolled his eyes.

“I’m Daphne from Athens Organics. We talked briefly on the phone yesterday. I was hoping to meet with your chef about being a supplier for your kitchen.”

“Of course,” Gabe said, “My chef isn’t here yet, but I’m so glad you stopped by. Come on into my office.” He opened the door for her and she smiled girlishly and Max rolled his eyes again.

Silence filled the kitchen after Gabe shut the office door. Patrick watched his son paint and Max ignored him.

“You’re a virgin, aren’t you?” Patrick asked.

“Shut up, Dad.”

“It’s the only thing that explains why you’re such an idiot around women.”

“I’m not an idiot, I’m just not…Gabe. And that’s fine by me.” He smiled, that sharp, wicked smile from the corner of his mouth. It made Patrick feel as though the boy he remembered with the temper and the laugh that could light up a room was still in there somewhere. “And it’s pretty okay by the women I have sex with, too.”

“Thank God.”

Max laughed, sort of. And Patrick’s heart leaped.

Now, he wondered. Is now the right time? The letter he’d been carrying in the front chest pocket of his work shirt felt like deadweight against his chest. At night, it sat on his bedside table and glowed with a life of its own.

He couldn’t sleep. He didn’t eat. He took a hundred bathroom breaks a day so he could sit down and reread the words he’d memorized.

The office door opened and Gabe and Daphne stepped back into the kitchen. Her color was high and her smile ready as they shook hands. Gabe walked her out the door to her car.

“Maybe he’s going to start working on those grandkids you want,” Max said, nodding in the direction his brother had gone. “It’s about time, the guy’s been thinking about a family since he could walk.”

I just want them to know love. To know love like I knew it, is that so hard? Patrick wondered. So impossible?

The subject of love was a sore one among the Mitchell men. Had been since Iris walked out on them thirty years ago.

Not that he was counting.

“You know—” he dipped his paintbrush into the can of paint he’d set on the top step of the ladder and watched Max for a reaction “—when you lost your mother—”

“Dad.” Max practically growled the word. “What is this new fascination with Mom? You haven’t mentioned her in years and now every time I turn around you’re bringing her up.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m living with her son, who is just as moody and muleheaded as she was.”

Max fell silent. Any reminder of being like his mother could turn him off like a light switch.

“When you lost her—”

“You make it sound like she died!” Max cried, finally setting the roller down. “Or like we misplaced her somewhere. She left. She walked away. I don’t want to talk about her. If you want to reminisce about the past, talk to Gabe.”

Gabe had given him the same reaction every time he tried talking about Iris. Patrick couldn’t blame them—Iris had walked away from them, which, as Gabe had told him, was worse than if she’d died.

She didn’t want us, Dad. She didn’t want any of us, he’d said.

It wasn’t true—entirely. She had wanted them, but there had been things happening that the boys were too young to understand or remember. They didn’t understand why Patrick didn’t just get over it. Over her.

He’d held out a thin ribbon of hope that maybe, just maybe Iris would realize she’d made a mistake and she’d forgive his. Ignore his foolish anger and pride. For years he’d held on to that ribbon. Two weeks ago she’d finally picked up her end.