Jonas
This house is too small.
But even a thirty-thousand square-foot mansion would be too small.
I don’t want to be inside.Anywhere. I hate being cooped up. I hate feeling helpless. I hate knowing thatthis is all my fault, and I can’t make it better if I can’t leave the house.
But I can’t leave the house without making things worse.
“Anyone ever tell you your body will start to break down on its own once you hit forty?” Hayes says without looking up from the parenting book he’s reading in the sitting room in the more-spacious-than-I-give-it-credit-for house where he’s keeping me captive.
I mean that he kindly bought to give us privacy while I’m slowly working on convincing Emma that all I want is to meet my—ourson and have an opportunity to be involved in their—hislife.
I got the memo loud and clear, no matter how much I hate it, that I have no place inherlife.
That opportunity evaporated when I left her without explanation in Fiji. When I thought I was doing the right thing.
Seeing her again—this isn’t regret for what I did.
It’s so much deeper than that.
“So?” I reply to my older brother.
“Seven workouts a day might be too much.”
“I’ve only done three.”
“It’s not even ten in the morning.”
“Insomnia.”
“Also bad for aging. Might get extra wrinkles and need more hair dye.”
“I liked you better before you met Begonia.”
One corner of his mouth hitches over his book.
I keep pacing the sitting room, letting him go back to his book instead of using him as a punching bag.
Floor-to-ceiling windows overlook mountain peaks still showing the last of the winter snow, even though it’s July. A deep blue sky vaults overhead. Towering pines and rolling meadows paint the smaller peaks green.
Emma said she lived somewhere beautiful.
She undersold it.
I know there are waterfalls hiding out there. Mountain streams and creeks and rivers to be rafted. Rock formations to climb. Animals to encounter.
Things to showmy son.
And I realizethis houseis what she described.
The views. The space. The yard.
It might not bethehouse, but this is what she wanted.
Her dream.
“You ever box?” I ask Hayes, abandoning my plans to leave him alone.
