Read Online Love Gone by Elizabeth Nelson - Free Book Online

wouldn’t go
home. And she didn’t want him to be there either, definitely not
alone, and definitely not while those two murderers were still on
the loose.
    Just the thought of what happened made
her stomach ache with pain and her eyes swell with tears she
couldn’t afford to shed in front of her fragile son.
    “Yeah they’re here mom. They’re in the
cafeteria. Mom? Mom, I’m so sorry.”
    “Liam, honey, please don’t apologize
to me. This isn’t your fault. None of this is your
fault.”
    She glanced at him again to see if her
words had finally sunk in this time. With one quick look at his
face and slumped posture, she could see that they hadn’t. She
couldn’t deal with his guilt right now.
    “Honey, why don’t you go down to the
cafeteria and let Lisa and Bill know that you need to go home with
them now.”
    He shook his head wildly, “No way mom,
I’m not leaving you!”
    “Thanks baby, I know you’re just
trying to help, but I have to get some sleep.”
    “Mom, please…” He looked at her, his
eyes brimming with unshed tears. She wondered if he even knew they
were lurking there, ready to fall like a waterfall at the slightest
provocation.
    “Please Liam. Please let me rest
now.”
    Without a word he got up and left,
shutting the door quietly behind him the way he never did at home.
Home. What was she going to do about their home?
    Faith had never had a very close
relationship with her parents. Her dad wasn’t even in the picture.
He had abandoned her mom and her when Faith was just a little
girl.
    She didn’t even remember him very
well. Her only recollection of the man was of a skinny, tall man
with a long ponytail holding a guitar and getting into a pick-up
truck. In her mind’s eye he looked at her, where she stood with her
mom on the front porch of their claptrap house in East Nashville,
and he said, “I’m coming back for you baby when I make it big.” And
with that he threw his guitar into the back and climbed into his
truck and drove off. She had no memory of ever seeing him
again.
    Her mom, Myra, had burned all the
pictures of him in a rage and the only thing she would ever say
about her dad was that he was a dreamer, a drunk, and a no talent
excuse for a husband and father. It wasn’t hard for Faith to see
that there was no love lost between Myra and her runaway husband,
Frank.
    Even though she’d never abandoned her,
Myra wasn’t all that much better than Frank in Faith’s opinion.
Distant and cold, Myra had looked on her pretty little daughter as
a burden to be born and not a delight or a help. She had never
abused her, mentally or physically, but children can sense it when
they’re loved and no one would ever accuse Myra of being overly
loving, caring, or motherly.
    Myra. The truth was that Faith hadn’t
thought deeply about her in years. She sent her the obligatory
Christmas cards and the wedding and baby announcements when she and
Mac had married and when Liam had been born, but nothing deeper
than that. She’d received only the most perfunctory cards from her
mother in return and never had a phone call in all the years she’d
been gone from Nashville. She wasn’t even sure her mother had her
phone number, if she really thought about it.
    But now Myra might be her and Liam’s
only option. Mac had been the breadwinner. The one who paid the
bills. Faith’s job at the Tourist Bureau was more of a part time
thing to keep them in little luxuries like movies and new shoes.
Mac’s job with the canneries on the boats was what paid the
mortgage, the car payments, and contributed to the savings and
retirement plans they tried to maintain.
    She tried to think clearly. The
painkillers they’d given her were making her thoughts foggy and
rambling. What was their situation? Would she have to bite the
bullet and call her mother?
    The truth was that the thought of
staying in Alaska now that Mac was gone was almost terrifying to
her. She couldn’t return to their home, the scene of