Sweet Laurel Falls by RaeAnne Thayne Read Free Book Online

the sudden ache there. She
loved her daughter fiercely, had from the very first moment she’d realized she
was pregnant. Yes, she had been afraid. What seventeen-year-old girl wouldn’t
have been? But she had also been eager for this unexpected adventure.
    Those weeks and months of her pregnancy seemed so fresh and
vivid in her mind. In her head she had known that giving up the baby for
adoption to a settled, established couple who loved each other deeply would have
been the best thing for Sage, but she had been selfish, she supposed. She
couldn’t even bear the idea of losing this part of Jack that she already loved
so much.
    She could also admit to herself now that, at the time, she had
been so angry at her father for leaving and at Jack for repeating the pattern
that she had managed to convince herself her baby didn’t need a father in her
life, except to donate half the DNA. She could certainly raise this baby by
herself without help from anyone.
    Yeah, it had been immature and shortsighted—but then she had
only been seventeen. Younger than her daughter was now.
    Sage had always been a restless sleeper, even as a baby, but
her exhaustion over finals must have tired her out. She didn’t move when Maura
stepped forward to click off the lights on the little tree or when Maura
smoothed the blankets and tucked them more securely, then walked quietly from
the room.
    She paused outside the next bedroom and almost didn’t go inside
but finally forced herself to move. She switched on the little tree beside the
empty bed and watched the colors reflected on the pale lavender walls, cheerful
yellows and blues and reds and greens.
    Angie, Mary Ella and Alex had insisted on coming over
Thanksgiving weekend to help her put up the rest of the decorations, but she had
placed this little tree here herself, as well as the little solar-powered tree
on the gravesite. She had decorated it with all Layla’s favorite
ornaments—little beaded snowflakes Layla had made at String Fever, a glass
snowman she had received from one of her good friends, a few small, pearlescent
balls that seemed to shimmer in the glow from the lights.
    She hadn’t changed anything in here yet. It still looked like a
fifteen-year-old girl’s room, with a couple of lava lamps, a big, plump purple
beanbag where Layla had loved to study, and huge posters of bands on the
wall—most notably, Pendragon, her father’s acoustic rock band. Though he was
twice her age, Layla had had a bit of a crush on Chris’s drummer.
    Some day she would do something with the room. Maybe turn it
into a home office, since most of the bookstore paperwork she brought home ended
up spread out on a desk in her bedroom.
    Not yet, though. She couldn’t bring herself to change anything
yet, so she left it untouched and only came in occasionally to dust.
    After a few minutes of watching the lights, Maura cleared her
throat and turned off the lights before she walked back into the quiet
hallway.
    As much as she ached with pain for Layla and the life that had
been cut short by a whole chain of stupid decisions by a bunch of teenagers,
Maura couldn’t stop living. She had another daughter who needed her, now more
than ever.

CHAPTER FOUR
    D ESPITE THE RADICAL CHANGES to the rest
of the town, the Center of Hope Café had changed very little in the twenty years
since Jack had been here.
    That might be new wallpaper on the wall, something brighter to
replace the old wood paneling he remembered, but the booths were covered in the
same red vinyl and the ceiling was still the old-fashioned tin-stamped sort
favored around the turn of the century.
    Even the owner, Dermot Caine, still stood behind the U-shaped
bar. He had to be in his mid-sixties, but he had the familiar shock of white
hair he’d worn as long as Jack could remember and the same piercing blue eyes
that seemed capable of ferreting out any secret.
    Despite the calorie-heavy comfort food the café was famous for,
Dermot had stayed in