After Ethan had taken a few more bites of his scrambled eggs, he tried a piece of toast. “Feels good going down,” he said. “My throat’s a little scratchy.”
“If you’d like soup for dinner, I can make it.” With Jase away, she felt someone should care for his dad.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t have to. But you’ve been kind to me while I’ve been here, letting me stay in the cottage, finding Amy.”
“So this is payback?”
“Good payback, I hope. I like to feel I can help, too.”
After Ethan thought about what she’d said, he nodded. “You’ve helped my son. You helped him when he came back from Kenya and you’re helping him now.”
“Any therapist could have gotten him on his feet again.”
“And could any therapist teach him how to feel again?”
Sara kept silent because she didn’t know what to say...or where this was going.
Laying down his fork, Ethan rested his head against the chair back. “I made so many mistakes with Jase I can’t even count them.”
As he paused, Sara kept silent. Maybe this was something Ethan needed to get off his chest. Practicing with her could help him communicate with Jase.
“When he arrived here,” Jase’s father went on, “I was not ready for a rebellious child. My wife and I wanted kids badly. We tried, then she died and I went into a funk. For some reason I thought the only way out of it was by forming the family she’d always wanted. So I looked into adopting. I figured I wouldn’t be able to care for an infant all that easily, but an older child I could handle. That was a crock!”
“Because Jase came with a history that was hard to shake?”
“He told you?” Again Ethan seemed surprised.
“Yes, he did. I think maybe he was testing my reaction.”
“That’s my fault. I’ve always kept his background under wraps because I thought that was better for him. But he believed I was ashamed of the fact that his mother died of a drug overdose...that he was illegitimate. He thought I never considered him my real son. Even now, I’m not sure he believes I do.”
“Then you have to change his mind.”
“I don’t know if I can. And if he flies off to Africa again, he might never come back.”
“If you tell him how you feel, I don’t think that will be true.”
Ethan closed his eyes, then opened them again. “And what about you? You don’t want him going to Africa, do you? Let alone Alabama or the next ten places on his list.”
“I see a lot of patients in my practice, Mr. Cramer. One thing I know—none of them wants regrets. And all of them need dreams. If they know what they’re good at, I encourage getting back into the swing of whatever it is. Jase wasn’t just hurt physically when he was shot...and when Dana left him. He was shaken up emotionally. It took two years for him to pick up a camera again, for him to write again. That’s a breakthrough in itself. As much as I don’t want him to go, I know he has to. He has a gift for the pictures he takes and the stories he writes. That’s part of him. If I love him, I have to accept that.”
Somehow, talking about this now helped clarify in her mind and heart what she wanted...and needed. If she loved Jase, she could accept him unconditionally, no matter where his career took him. Somehow they would make their relationship work. If he loved her. If he trusted her.
Ethan jumped on her conclusion. “Do you love my son?”
“I do. But everything got messed up this week. We had a misunderstanding. It brought up some basic problems that we might not be able to resolve.”
“If you love Jase and he loves you, of course they can be resolved. My Martha and I were strong-willed people. We disagreed a lot. Somehow we found compromise and we knew neither of us was going anywhere. At least that’s what we told ourselves. Neither of us expected fate to change all that. So if you do love Jase, certainly there is some way to fix this misunderstanding.”
Sara lowered her eyes, studied her hands. “He didn’t trust me.”
“Did you give him a good reason to trust you?”
At first she almost became angry because Jase knew her so well...knew who she was...knew what she’d been through. However, as she stopped to think about it now and what Jase had seen as he’d walked in the door, maybe, just maybe she could have prevented the whole situation. After they’d made love, if she’d told Jase she loved him, if she’d told him she wanted his baby, then maybe he would have seen the tableau with her and Liam differently. Maybe then he wouldn’t have doubted.