L
aney sat in the quiet restaurant scanning the Saturdaymorning diners, who spoke in soft tones about seemingly insignificant things. Hanging plants colored the atmosphere, and soft music gave the impression of peace. Laney was anything but relaxed. A shredded napkin lay before her, tiny pieces of evidence that, within, her emotions were at riot.
She saw Wes Grayson through the glass doors before he walked in. Quickly she gathered the shreds into a pile and wadded it up. It wouldn’t do to let him know just how distressing this conversation would be for her, she thought. As calmly as she could manage, she lifted her coffee cup to her lips and peered at him over the rim. She saw him single her out and start toward her. His face was as pale as it had been yesterday, and his eyes were as red and tired as hers.
“Morning,” he said when he reached the table.
Laney offered a wan smile, and he pulled out the chair next to her and sat down, a wary expression tightening his features.
“Have you eaten?” she asked.
“No,” he said, setting his elbows on the table and clasping his hands in front of his face.
“Want to?”
“No,” he said again with growing impatience. “Somehow I get the feeling I won’t have much of an appetite in a few minutes.” His eyes locked with hers, deep, searching, and when she couldn’t deny the observation, he picked up the salt shaker and seemed to study it. “If you don’t mind, I like directness. Why don’t you get to the point?”
Laney shifted in her chair and folded her shaking hands in her lap. “There’s no need for hostility, Mr. Grayson. We have a lot in common, whether we like it or not.”
“We have nothing in common,” he threw back. “Absolutely nothing.”
“You adopted my daughter,” Laney said.
“She’s my daughter,” he volleyed. “Has been since she was three days old. You don’t have a daughter.”
The beginnings of anger heated her neck. “I’m her mother,” Laney said. “That may be difficult for you to grasp—.”
“You gave up the right to be her mother when you let us adopt her,” he interrupted savagely. “You should have thought about your maternal status seven years ago. It’s too late now.”
Laney looked down at her coffee, struggling to keep her voice low. “I wasn’t given the luxury of thinking about it.”
Wes didn’t know what that meant, so he ignored it. “You gave her up, and we became her parents.” He sighed at the pain in her eyes, and bending his head forward, he pinched the bridge of his nose. She was the enemy, he told himself, and Amy was their battleground. But it wasn’t any easier for Laney than it was for him. He allowed himself a second to consider her feelings, her despair, her loss. “Look,” he said in a softer voice. “I understand about regrets. And I’m not trying to be insensitive. From where I stand you did a good thing by giving her up if you weren’t emotionally or financially capable of raising her.”
“I was capable,” Laney whispered. “I was then, and I am now.”
The vein in Wes’s temple began to throb visibly, and compassion for her position fled. “Don’t threaten me, Laney. You can wipe that idea right out of your head because you’re not getting her back.” He realized he was drawing the attention of other diners and lowered his voice again. “You told me yesterday that you wouldn’t make any claim on her. ‘Take my word for it,’ you said.”
Laney took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “I know. And I meant it yesterday. But that was before you told me your wife died.” She opened her eyes again and saw the deep pain illuminating his own eyes. “I know it still hurts,” she conceded. “And I’m not trying to be insensitive, either. But it makes a difference in all this. A child needs her mother.”
“Her mother is dead,” Wes growled.
“No, she isn’t. She still has a mother. She doesn’t have to be deprived anymore.”
“You’re crazy,” he whispered. “You’re a complete stranger to her, and you think you can waltz into her life and pick up where her mother left off? No one can replace Patrice to her, but she’s adjusting. I can give her what she needs.”
“No, you can’t,” Laney asserted. “I don’t believe that a man can be both mother and father to a little girl. A man is not able to give her all the emotional support she needs.”
“What do you know about parenthood?” His harsh whisper whipped across her like a physical blow.
“Nothing. But I know about childhood. My mother died when I was nine, and my father had to raise me. I suppose he did the best he could, but it was sadly lacking. I don’t want my child being raised that way.”
“All right,” Wes said, tossing his napkin aside. “So spit it out. What’s the bottom line here?”
Her face reddened, and she struggled to hold back her tears. “I just want to meet her. I want to be involved in her life, to visit her when I want, to be there for her when she needs me.”
Wes’s expression hovered between violence and helplessness. “That’s absurd,” he said. “She doesn’t even know you; how could she need you? She’s been through a rough time in the past year, and I will not make her more insecure by bringing some stranger into her life who claims to be her real mother.”
“You know I’m her real mother. You saw the papers.”
Wes threw a quick glance at a passing waiter and made a valiant effort to keep his voice low. “But
she
doesn’t know. Motherhood goes deeper than biology. It has very little to do with whose womb a child was carried in. It has to do with being there to celebrate an
A
on her report card and nursing her through the chicken pox and knowing the names of her best friends at school. It has to do with comforting her when she wakes up afraid in the middle of the night, with loving her and protecting her from unnecessary heartache. I can be her mother, too, if she needs one. She doesn’t need you.”
The pain his words inflicted was multiplied when Laney let herself consider what this was doing to Wes. He’d lost his wife, and now he feared losing his daughter. To him she was like a live grenade in his pocket, and she didn’t want to be that. But it was for Amy that she went on.
Laney’s eyes were soft and compassionate when they locked with his, and beneath the pain they held the dull gloss of strength gained from years of struggle. “Don’t make me take you to court, Mr. Grayson,” she said quietly. “Please. Amy has a mother, so there’s no excuse for making her live without one for the rest of her life.”
Wes’s eyes were desperate. “You’d do that? You’d take me to court and upset her life that way?”
Laney leaned forward on the table, intent on making him understand. “I would never hurt her. She’s my little girl too,” she whispered. “I just want to know her, and I want her to know me. It doesn’t have to be complicated.”
Wes tilted his head helplessly, and a long, heavy breath escaped him.
“It’s the most complicated thing in the world to Amy!” He coiled his hand into a fist and stared at it, then took a breath that only tied the knots tighter in his chest. “She’s just a little girl. I don’t want her traumatized.”
Laney’s resolve fell a degree. “Do you really think she will be?”
Wes brought his eyes back to hers and held them for a transparent moment. If only she didn’t care, he thought, he could manage to detest her. But when she grew vulnerable and concerned, he lost his stand. Their heartaches and fears were pitted against each other. Who hurt the worst? Who feared the most? But Amy’s pains and fears were all that mattered. “I honestly don’t know,” he whispered in answer to her question.
Laney cleared her throat and considered the alternatives. “Well, if you think it’s too soon to tell her who I am, then maybe you could just introduce me as a friend. Maybe that would be better the first time, anyway. I’d be happy just to meet her and talk to her.”
“Yeah,” Wes mumbled. “Like you were happy just to see her and then to take her picture. You’ll want more and more. The next thing I know you’ll be tearing her up by telling her that you’ve decided to start playing mother.”
“I
am
her mother,” Laney said.
“I think it’s a bad idea.”
“Obviously.”
Wes swallowed the lump in his throat. This wasn’t getting them anywhere. The stakes were life-sized, and neither of them would surrender. All she wanted was a meeting. A simple ten-minute meeting under his supervision. It wasn’t a lot to ask, and yet she might as well have asked him to cut off his hand. His chest seemed to constrict tighter. What choice did he have, after all? If he didn’t cooperate, she might get more aggressive and get a lawyer. And maybe if he did cooperate, she’d back off and lose interest after a while. Maybe it was the novelty, the adventure, the impossibility of the situation that intrigued her.
His face was white as he brought his dull eyes to hers. “This afternoon at three,” he grated out, as if he were handing her the weapon with which to wound him. “In the park.”
Before Laney had the chance to thank him, he stood up and started for the door, his steady gait belying the anguish she had just inflicted on him.
Once outside, Wes slammed his truck door and collapsed against the steering wheel, wondering what he’d done to deserve having his world ripped apart in every conceivable way. He turned the key and the engine rolled over, then died. Pumping the gas, he tried again. Reluctantly, it started. Weary, he let it idle for a moment until he was sure it would get him out of the parking lot. Laney had more aces up her sleeve than she knew. If this came to some kind of court battle, how was he going to pay a lawyer’s bill? He hadn’t yet finished paying the hospital bills for Patrice’s surgeries and chemotherapy, and there was a judgment against his home and his business. If he didn’t manage to pay them off soon, he’d lose it all.
And now he faced the possibility that this woman might not stop at a mere introduction. She might want to go all the way with this.
He’d simply find a way to fight her, if it came to that. Maybe he could sell his truck and buy an even older model. And he could sell some of his furniture. If he managed to keep his house from the grips of the collectors, maybe he could sell it to pay for a lawyer.
He pulled out of the parking lot and slammed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel. It wasn’t fair that Amy might have to lose her home on top of everything, as if the memories they had there had never taken place, as if Patrice’s years with them had been a fantasy. He hoped he wouldn’t wake up one day to find that his years with Amy were the same. Trials were given to make God’s children stronger, he knew, but this trial was too much. God would intervene, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t take Amy from him and thrust her into the undeserving arms of a stranger, would he?
His truck picked up speed and he turned on the stereo, adjusting the volume to a level intended to numb the mind, but still he thought. Still he remembered.
His days of childlessness came back to him, the years of praying, wishing, planning for a baby, the day they received the verdict that they could never have their own children, the long year of waiting after they had gotten on the adoption list. And he remembered the day the phone call came. They had felt like Abraham and Sarah when they’d learned they were having Isaac. But Wes and Patrice had been granted a girl, such a precious, cherished gift, with a head full of black hair and a tiny body that fit perfectly in the crook of his arm. He remembered how worried he’d been while she slept those first weeks, how he’d checked her breathing every few minutes, how he’d held her until she expected it every waking moment. He remembered the night when he and Patrice had lifted her up to God and dedicated her to him and promised that they would be faithful with this treasure he’d given them. He only wished he had Abraham’s faith now and that he had the strength to face the possibility that God might demand such a drastic sacrifice of him.
“Don’t ask this of me, Lord,” he cried. “Please. Amy deserves so much better.”
But maybe it wasn’t God asking, he thought, and the Lord certainly knew how to protect his children. God knew that he could not have loved a child of his own seed more than he loved that little girl.
Swallowing back his worries and frustrations, he pulled into his driveway, wishing his trials had given him more faith. But he felt as frightened and uncertain as if he’d never experienced his Father’s love.
And all he could see ahead of him was despair.
F
rom where she stood at the edge of the park, Laney saw Wes Grayson slumped on the bench, watching his daughter engaged in a game of kickball. She glanced anxiously down at the white jumpsuit she had chosen. Was it right? she wondered once again. What did one wear, after all, to meet one’s seven-year-old daughter for the first time? What if Amy hated it? What if Amy hated her?
Ignoring the ache of threatening tears behind her eyes, she flipped her hair back over her shoulder, lifted her chin, and started toward Wes. She had loved ladies with long hair when she was a child, so she had let hers hang freely today. Now she wondered if it made her look too young. How would Amy relate to someone who looked like a kid claiming to be her mother?
She caught herself and forced back the hope that Amy would eventually learn who she really was. Wes had agreed to let her
meet
Amy, not spill out her heart.
She had no right to expect miracles, she thought as she walked toward him. She had given up on miracles long ago. The most she hoped for now was a chance.
Wes didn’t move when she reached him. “She’s playing kickball right now,” he muttered without glancing at her. “We’ll have to wait until the game’s over.”
“Of course.” Laney swallowed and sat down next to him. She saw Amy kick the ball and run after it, then gasped when the black-haired girl tripped over a rock and caught herself.
“I’m OK, Daddy!” she shouted with a wave.
He waved back, then regarded Laney with a quick, dispassionate look.
Her cheeks stung, her nerves were frazzled, and her hands trembled like leaves rustled by an unforgiving wind. “She looks just like me,” she said in a raspy voice.
Wes nodded, as if the concession was too much to make verbally.
His silence was as smothering as her fear was strangling, and if she could not relieve the fear, Laney resolved at least to break the quiet. “Thank you for letting me come,” she said.
He moved his unfocused eyes back to the playground. “Didn’t have much choice.”
Laney regarded the austerity in his eyes, the dark circles beneath them, and the stubble darkening his jaw. “You had one.”
A brief surge of guilt shot through her at the brooding shrug of his brows, but then she looked back at her laughing child and realized that her cause was a sound one, in spite of the pain it caused Wes Grayson.
The pain it caused within her, however, was something she hadn’t expected. Giggles rolled over one another as Amy ran after the ball and kicked it, then took off in a sprint with the others. But the child’s joy only widened a sorrowful fissure in Laney’s heart. All the time lost. All the smiles missed. All the discoveries and the heartaches and the tears … they were gone forever, and all Laney had of them were a few brief memories of a tiny infant and some pictures she had had to hide in the shadows to take. “I held her, you know.”
“What?”
“When she was born. They handed her to me …”
Laney felt his eyes burning into her with an appraisal teetering between burgeoning hostility and grudging sympathy. She told herself to stop before she broke down, but somehow it was important for him to know. “I watched her color change from purple to pink, and she held her head up just a little, and she had so much hair …” Her voice broke off, and she took a cleansing breath.
Wes looked away and squinted, unseeing, at something across the park. “Was that the last time you saw her?” he asked without inflection.
The sound of laughing children and passing cars and whispering leaves kept her control from snapping completely. “No,” she said. “I held her once more the next morning. I even nursed her …” She swallowed and pushed at the corners of her eyes, as if the pressure could dam the tears.
The ball escaped the players and rolled in front of them, and Wes gave it an absent kick toward the children. He looked back at her, his eyes effectively guarded. “I didn’t know they let you hold your baby when it was going up for adoption.”
“They usually don’t,” she said. “But I didn’t plan to give her up.”
A cloud gave way to sunlight, and a ray of it illuminated Wes’s frowning face. He set his foot down and straightened out of his slump. Leaning forward and clasping his hands between his knees, he asked, “So why did you?”
Laney swallowed hard and brushed away the tear paving a path down her cheek. “Because my father was very insistent.” She gave a sad laugh. “He had lots of reasons, among them the fact that I wasn’t competent as a human being, much less as a mother. He said I would ruin her life.”
“And you believed him?”
Laney met his gaze. “When you hear something enough you can’t help believing it. And I was only eighteen. But that wasn’t enough to make me give up my baby. I had an escape planned for the second day. I was going to take her and go as far away from my father as I could get. But he acted faster. When I went to get her she was already gone.”
The lines around Wes’s eyes deepened, as if the revelation somehow unsettled his own past. “But you must have signed something.”
“After that I did,” she admitted, looking back at the giggling little girl. “My father told me that I wasn’t mature enough to make such a decision, and he was afraid I’d do something selfish instead of what was right. I felt defeated, so I signed.”
She heard Wes clear his throat, and he looked away again, eyes narrowing further as he seemed to struggle with this new information. “What about Amy’s natural father? Didn’t he try to—”
Laney cut quickly across his question. “The only thing he tried to do was forget he’d ever known me. He reinforced what my father told me. And I believed them both.”
A cloud veiled the sun again, casting shadows over the park, cooling the breeze a degree but not enough to account for the chill taking hold of her. Laney looked toward the playing children and wished she hadn’t told him quite so much. She hadn’t meant to burden him with her story. All she wanted was to meet her child.
Several moments ticked by as Wes seemed to digest her words. “What happened when you left the hospital?” he asked quietly.
Laney shrugged. “I left home after that and went to Houston. I never saw my father again.” She stopped, tempered her voice. “I had time to grow up, time to learn my own value, time to find out that I wasn’t a worthless burden, time to regret and wonder …”
“Time to decide to correct the bad hand you were dealt?” he asked, protective antagonism working back into his soft voice.
“I just wanted to make sure she was happy, to convince myself that things had worked out for the best,” she said, unable to stop a new ambush of tears. “I thought then I could find peace and stop wondering if it was her every time I saw a little girl.”
A mother and child passed by, and the child pointed at the tears staining Laney’s face before being dragged away.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, dropping her face and letting her hair curtain her anguish. “I promised myself I wouldn’t get emotional. That’s not good for Amy.”
Wes wet his lips and fought the compassion tugging at his heart. He lifted his hand to touch her … then pulled it back, fighting his own traitorous feelings. It wasn’t easy to let a woman cry without comforting her, but he told himself that any sensitivity on his part might backfire. In many ways, she was the enemy.
“I … I just didn’t want you to think that I’m some … callous monster.”
“I didn’t,” he said. But his tone hovered somewhere between condemnation and compassion, as though he couldn’t decide which to feel.
Forcing herself to get control, Laney wiped back the tears and dug into her purse for a tissue. She rubbed her face, ridding it of the evidence of tears, and glanced up at Amy, still playing ball. “She didn’t see me crying, did she?” she asked anxiously.
Wes shook his head. “She’s too busy.”
Laney took a deep, shuddering breath and looked fully at her daughter laughing with her teammates, and realized her whole world hung on the smile of a small child. “I’m so nervous.”
Wes followed her gaze, his own eyes glossing over, as if he didn’t know which side to join in the battle of his feelings. “I’m a little nervous myself,” he admitted. The wind ruffled his mahogany hair and made him look more endearing than she wanted to acknowledge. His full lips seemed to droop at the corners, and he stroked a knuckle across them.
“All this,” she said, glancing back at the child, “and she probably won’t even like me.”
“She’ll like you,” he said in a quiet voice, but the words of assurance seemed to leave him without any for himself.
He looked back toward the children who were breaking up into smaller groups. “I’ll go get her now.”
“No!” The word came too abruptly but not as quickly as the dive of her stomach. She caught his hand.
He stopped and gave her a long, searching look that stripped her soul bare. “Why?”
“Because I’m scared.”
Wes’s throat convulsed, and he drew a breath that didn’t seem to come easily. “It’ll be all right, Laney.”
The words comforted her more than anything else he could have offered, but his hard expression fought with the compassion in his voice.
“Will you stay?” she entreated anxiously.
“If you want me to,” he said. “Just take it easy. I’ll go get her.” He stood up, but Laney grabbed his hand.
“Wes? Are … are you going to tell her who I am?”
His eyes were tormented when they meshed with hers, and he raked a hand through his hair. Finally, he whispered, “Not yet.”
There was hope, she thought. He wasn’t ruling it out forever.
But as Wes approached his daughter, he wasn’t sure whether the little crumb of hope he’d thrown her was a form of self-betrayal or simple weakness.
“Daddy, they cheated,” Amy told her father.
Wes slid his shaky hands into his jeans pockets and feigned a smile. “You always say that when you lose. Try being a good sport.”
“I
was
being a good sport until they started cheating. They don’t even know the rules.”
Wes tousled her hair and wished that a meaningless game in the park was all Amy had to bring her down. “It’s just a game, short stuff. Next time you can cheat.”
A little smile broke through Amy’s scowl. “You’re not going to let me cheat.”
Wes gave a shrug. “Well, maybe not. But that glimmer of hope might tide you over until next time.”
Amy giggled and set her hands on her hips. “I’m not dumb.”
Wes gave a mock gasp. “You’re
not
? Then I’m going to have to rethink my parenting strategy a little.”
“Daddy, you’re so silly.”
Wes feigned indignation. “Silly? I’ll show you silly.” With that he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, tickling her until she squealed and twisted with delight.
“Let me down, Daddy!”
Wes gave in and let her down, her giggles lightening the weight of his burden a little. “Boy, you’re heavy. What have you been eating?”
“Your cooking,” Amy said with a smirk. “And it’s made me
lose
weight.”
“Don’t insult my culinary talents, or I’ll feed you oatmeal for the rest of the week.”
Amy grimaced, and Wes stooped down and glanced toward Laney, who seemed to be loosening up as she watched the bantering with a look of poignant anticipation.
“Come on, short stuff. I want you to meet that lady over there.”
Amy took his hand and followed him toward Laney. Wes watched Laney lean forward and give a shaky smile, a smile that touched his heart despite his efforts to ignore it.
When they were close to her, Amy offered her an astonished smile of recognition. “They let you out of jail, huh?”
Laney’s face went blank, and she glanced up at Wes in a panic.
“For taking pictures,” Amy continued. “Did they make you do push-ups?”
Wes rubbed his jaw and gave a slight grin as he sat down. “I think she has prison mixed up with spring training.”
Laney found herself laughing with overwhelming relief, the first time she’d laughed since … she couldn’t remember. “I didn’t go to jail, Amy,” she said. “And it’s a good thing, because I’m hopeless when it comes to push-ups.”
Wes pulled Amy onto his lap. “Honey, I told you they just asked her some questions. It was all a mistake. Laney and I are …” He hesitated on the word
friends
. “We know each other now, and she wanted to meet you.”
Amy’s tongue tested the hole where her front tooth had been as she pondered Laney. “Can you cook spaghetti?” she asked intently, as if that were an important clue to the woman’s character. “Spaghetti that isn’t runny?”
Laney’s eyes sparkled as she smiled at the beautiful child. “Well, yes. I make very good spaghetti.”
“Can you make it tonight? My daddy said he was feeding me oatmeal tonight.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Laney looked at Wes with uncertain eyes, suddenly embarrassed at the unexpected turn in the conversation. “He wouldn’t really feed you oatmeal, would he?”
“Trust me,” Amy assured her. “It’s either that or canned soup. And he doesn’t even warm it up right.” A child across the park called her name, and her attention was diverted. “I have to go,” she said quickly. “Sarah only has fifteen more minutes to play.” With that she slipped out of her father’s lap and barreled across the lawn toward her friend.
“Well,” Laney said on a frustrated chuckle. “That didn’t go exactly as I’d planned it.”
“I think she liked you,” Wes admitted. The words held a note of dread.
“For now,” she said, casting him an uneasy glance, though relief danced in her black eyes. “I was intriguing to her. She thought I was an ex-con.”
Wes almost smiled. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”
“It’s OK. It was a good icebreaker.” Her big eyes sparkled, warming something inside him that had been cold a long time, and he told himself it was just because her eyes looked so much like Amy’s.
“You’re a good father. I can’t imagine mine ever throwing me over his shoulder.” A tendril of envy uncurled inside her … not just envy of Amy for having a father who cared but envy of the woman he had loved and married and made a family with. What was he like as a husband? she wondered fleetingly.