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

her more tightly. “Yes, baby.”
    Tears welled in the child’s eyes, and Amy’s bottom lip began to quiver. Her words were an octave higher than they had been before, revealing the terror in her bruised heart. “Are you going to give me back to her?”
    Wes caught his breath, as if the question had scalded him, and framed Amy’s face with his big, protective hands. “No.” The word came out long and whispered. “It’s you and me. We’re a team.”
    Laney felt the joy within her deflate as if it had never existed, but the hope still bobbed precariously in her heart. She watched in misery as Amy slid her arms around her father’s neck and buried her face into his chest. His expression became cold, almost vicious, as he held her. They had made a mistake, Laney thought frantically, and he was blaming her.
    Amy pulled back, and Laney’s stomach coiled into a million knots at the dull, resigned expression on her face. “I’m tired,” the child said, climbing off her father’s lap. “I think I’ll go to bed. I don’t need to be tucked in.”
    The words slashed at Laney’s heart like a knife. But she needed to tuck her in and sing her a song and read her a story, Laney thought. Yet Amy’s needs were more important. Laney felt the chilling rejection in the loneliest regions of her heart, but she refused to let the child see her cry. Amy was under enough pressure, enough stress, without having to deal with that. It was ironic, Laney thought. This was one of those times when Amy desperately needed a mother … except that the only mother she had left was responsible for her pain.
    “Good night, Amy,” Laney said.
    Amy stopped at the door and turned back to Laney, her eyes bearing as much bitterness as seven-year-old innocence would allow. “I’m not going to call you Mother,” she said defiantly.
    “That’s OK,” Laney choked out. And as the little girl disappeared up the hallway like an elusive image in a dream, Laney felt as if her heart had been ripped out.
    Wes’s cold silence made things even worse. She dropped her face into her hands and gave in to a rending sob. When she thought she could speak again, she wiped her face and looked up at him.
    His eyes looked weary, lifeless, as he stared in the direction Amy had gone.
    “I’m so sorry, Wes,” Laney said. “It was too soon. She wasn’t ready. I should have seen—”
    “I was afraid this would happen,” he whispered miserably. “I shouldn’t have told you to go ahead.”
    Laney took a few steps toward the door. “She needs someone, Wes. Don’t leave her alone back there. She’s so little …”
    He nodded agreement but turned back to Laney. “Look, it was an experiment that failed. It’s better if from now on you just stay away. I know it’s asking a lot, but I don’t want her traumatized.”
    Laney stood up to face him. Had she come so close only to lose everything? Was this just another trick that life had played on her? Dangling a treasure before her only to snatch it away, the way everything she’d ever wanted had been? No, she told herself defiantly. Amy needed her, whether she knew it or not, and Wes couldn’t stop Laney from filling that need.
    “Wes, I can’t disappear now when she finally knows who I am. She’ll think I abandoned her again!”
    “You owe her some peace, Laney. She doesn’t deserve all this.”
    Since her father had robbed her of her child, Laney hadn’t felt such helpless frustration. She had pled with him too—and lost.
    “Wes, please. She liked me. Even you had to see that.”
    “Well, she doesn’t like you now,” he said, growing angry.
    “And that’s all that matters, isn’t it? Now please, give me some time alone with her.”
    Laney got her purse and clutched it tightly against her stomach. She started out the door, unable to bear looking up at him.
    Oh, hope could be such a cruel emotion, a mocking weapon. It took people at their most vulnerable and shattered them when they surrendered to