Never Again Good-Bye by Terri Blackstock Read Free Book Online

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