Luna stared at him, her heart breaking at the look on his face, the loss and longing she was feeling herself, but this couldn’t be, it just couldn’t! She steeled herself for what she was going say, because there was no other way to go with this.
“Joey, you can’t feel that way about me; I’m your sister, didn’t you hear what I just said? Didn’t you hear your aunt tell me who my father was? He’s your father too; no matter what we did before, we’re brother and sister; nothing can change that!”
Joey’s face was a mask, his heart in his eyes, and much as she wanted to run to him, to hold him and take away that pain inside him, that one fact held her in place; what they wanted was wrong, it was against the law, it went against some of the most fundamental beliefs of her faith, and there was nothing they could do to change that.
The sound of Jonah clearing his throat made her whirl around, her hands flying to her mouth as young Joe grinned and wriggled in his arms as he reached for her. Tears spilled from her eyes to run unnoticed down her cheeks as the little boy gurgled and tried to reach her, his little face creasing with worry when he saw her crying. She spun around to glare at Joey, her heart hammering in her chest.
“Why did you bring him here? That was a dirty…” she gritted, her teeth clenched to prevent her fury erupting, but Joey cut her short.
“I brought him because he’s our boy now, not just mine; he wants his momma; he wants you… and so do I. I love you, Luna Hollister. I have from the first moment I saw you. I love you now, and I will always love you. Please, come be part of us, we need you, Joe needs you, we both love you; none of this has to matter, not if we don’t let it; we can work this out.”
Luna wrung her hands in despair; she wanted so much to do just what he said, to take Joe and hold him, love him, be his mother, but that thing would always be there, that one fact that couldn’t be denied; Joey was her brother, and it went against every law and every moral code there was; incest was incest, and they’d already crossed that line, albeit unknowingly; now she knew, how could she pretend it wasn’t there, that it didn’t matter?
Jonah stepped between them and silently held the little boy out to her. Luna glared at him, in an agony of indecision, and then, with a soft cry somewhere between joy and anguish, snatched the child from him and held him close, murmuring and kissing him, while Joe crowed with laughter as he once more held and tugged her glorious copper hair. When she surfaced, Jonah led her back to the couch and sat her down, where she waited, her arms wrapped around the little boy, stroking his hair as she looked from Jonah to Joey, to Jonah again. He sat in his chair and reached for his pipe, and put it back in his overall bib pocket with a sigh when she glared at him.
“So what do I do now, Jonah?” she asked, her tone challenging, still spoiling for a fight.
Jonah leaned forward, to fix her with his gaze.
“You do what you were fixin’ do originally, what you left here to do, no wait…” he held up his hand, “lemme finish. It don’t matter about you and Joey, and who your daddy is, and what happened all that time ago; that was then, this is now; hell, you lift the skin on near-on everyone in Laroque County and they’s kin to one or t’other of you underneath; what happens between you is between you, and the fact you’ all are related don’t mean nothin’ much; most folk in this town are damn’ near that close kin to you, and they all got their stories too; it don’t mean they go blabbin’ them all over town. Remember, some things belong to the family, and they ain’t for other folks’ ears; remember that, and you’ll be fine. Think on this: your momma’s friend, Myra, she got a daughter ’bout your age, right? Young Emily, works in the Stop’n’Shop.”
Luna nodded, her anger derailed as she wondered where he was going with this.
“Well, Myra and her big brother, Blaine, they were real close, and she was real broken-up when he went to the Gulf. Boy got his-self killed in Oman, car-bomb, never even got to the fightin’ in Kuwait, a real shame, he was a nice kid, and a good soldier. Eight months after he was deployed, young Emily was born, and it didn’t take too long for folks to put two and two together. But it don’t matter to the folks in town; they don’t hold it against young Emily for what her momma did, and Myra, well, she been alone and grieving ever since, and the town respects her loss, and they don’t trouble her none with gossip and talk. ”
Luna stared at him, then glanced at Joey.
“So what’s your point?” she asked, anger still boiling just below the surface.
Jonah grinned at her as he took his pipe out and pointed at her with the stem.
“My point is, these things sort themselves out; there ain’t no need to go lookin’ for the big picture. The little picture’s usually what you need to keep your eyes on. You go, Lu-Lu, you be a momma to this little boy here. I ain’t got no children I know of, so right now this is the closest I got to a grandson; he needs you, so you look after him, y’hear me?”
Luna looked rebellious, her eyes flashing even as she held her voice down so as to not spook little Joe.
“Uncle Jonah, you knew about Joey all along, didn’t you? ” she gritted. “You knew who his father was; you knew he was my half-brother, you bastard, and you didn’t say anything, you just let me… why the hell did you let this happen?”
Jonah nodded slowly.
“Okay, mebbe I deserved that, but I had my reasons too; I said nothing because there warn’t nothin’ to say or do; way I see it, who your daddy is don’t mean that’s who you are, and it don’t matter anyway; he’s dead and gone, all them things he did, they’re gone with him. I know what he did to his daughter, things like that don’t stay secret in a place like Springfield, and what he tried to do in that church; Miss Sarah told me what happened to him in prison; his daddy destroyed my family, and he destroyed his own, and now he’s dead ’cause of it; it just seemed to me that I should let the dead bury the dead; what else should I have done?”
He jabbed his pipe-stem at her for emphasis.
“Way I see it, young Joey here’s Miss Sarah’s boy, you’re my baby sister’s girl, that makes you good folks from where I sit, no matter who your daddy is; Steve Dolan was an accident in your momma’s lives, nothin’ more; it don’t mean he gets to rule yours, neither. Rakin’up the past wasn’t going’ to solve nothin’, I could see how you were with each other, you were both so happy, and I didn’t see any reason to go spoilin’ that for you, so I kept shut; sometimes the best thing to say is nothin’ at all.”
Something else seemed to be on her mind.
“Was it Dolan my mom was afraid of? Why? Did he even know or care about me?”
Jonah took his pipe out again, staring wistfully at it, before setting it down on his lap.
“Me and Miss Sarah, we go back a long way, you know that. She’s never kept secrets from me, and she told me about Joey, about what that man did to her. He came round one time, blusterin’ and actin’ all that, threatenin’ to take Joey away from her, which was the kind of stupid you could only get from that family. Anyway, young Frank kicked his ass for him, sent him to the Emergency Room! Word got out about what he’d threatened Miss Sarah with, and your momma was afraid he’d do the same to her when he found out she was pregnant, so she left.”
He grinned suddenly.
“I sure wish I’d seen young Frank kick that smug sumbitch’s ass, it might ‘a’ helped make up for what his family did to us…”
At Luna’s enquiring look, he sighed, once more fiddling with his pipe.
“I guess you’re old enough now to know the whole story; it aint pretty…”
Luna settled Joe more comfortably on her lap, one arm around him, and her free hand somehow in Joey’s as she waited, fascinated, to hear what Jonah had to say.
“Back when the three of us was just kids, mebbe six, seven years old or so, and Laurie was still just a baby, my daddy worked at the Dolan’s tire re-molding plant in Monte Vista; he was a press-operator, been there since he come back from Vietnam, and momma worked in the office, processing the orders; that’s where they met. She was real pretty. You’ve seen pictures of Laurie when she was young, how pretty she was? Well, momma was even prettier.”
He stared into the distance, his eyes hooded and his voice deeper, softer.
“Daddy had an accident, a stack of old tractor tires fell on him, crushed his pelvis pretty bad, and that was the end of his job; Dolan’s just let him go, with no compensation, and they took no blame; their lawyers tried to make him sign papers in his hospital bed, stuff about how he was at fault and absolving the company and the plant of any blame. When his insurance ran out, they brought him home from the hospital and he was stuck in that front bedroom. We didn’t have enough money for no wheelchair or anythin’ like that, and VA welfare people never replied to momma’s letters askin’ for help; likely never even got them, seein’ as the Postmaster then was one of Dolan’s kin, so momma had to keep workin’ at the plant.”
He paused, looking at his pipe, then slid it regretfully back into his pocket.
“Round about then Steve Dolan’s old man, Jerry, started sniffin’ around momma; he wouldn’t leave her be; he used to come here and be puttin’ his hands all over her, knowing daddy couldn’t do nothin’ about it; if daddy’d been on his feet, Jerry Dolan would’ve been one dead sonuvabitch!”
Jonah looked pensively out the window, then resumed his story.