Read Online Take This Regret by A. L. Jackson - Free Book Online

already done. Al I knew was that my daughter was hurting. I rushed inside and pried her away from the window. At first she resisted, struggling in my arms to get back to him before she buried her face in my neck. I could feel her confusion, the way she needed me to comfort her al the while being drawn to the man outside. Her tears ran down my neck and onto my shirt. I shushed her as I rocked her, holding her with one arm while my free hand ran from the top of her head and down her back over the silky strands of her hair.
    “It’s okay, sweetheart,” I murmured against her head.
    “It’s going to be okay.”
    She pul ed back, her perfect face tearstained and broken, and asked me the one question I felt incapable of answering. “Mommy, who is that man?”
    How could I tel her that the man I had just sent away was her father or deal the questions that would assuredly fol ow? Instead, I pressed my lips to her forehead and whispered, “Mommy loves you so much, Lizzie.”

    She nodded against them as if her four-year-old mind understood that I was asking her for time, that my heart was not yet ready to break hers any further. She clung to my neck desperately as I hugged her before I reluctantly set her on the floor.
    “Can you be a big girl for Mommy and go upstairs and play in your room until dinner is ready?” I caressed her cheek as I implored with my eyes. She gazed up at me, never looking more like Christian than in that moment. I smiled sadly at her, wishing that it didn’t hurt so much.
    She cast one last glance toward the window before looking back at me. “Okay, Mommy.”
    Once she was safely upstairs, I cautiously peered through the curtains, praying that Christian was gone, though intuitively knowing he was not. He sat in his car, his gaze meeting mine, his eyes pleading for forgiveness while mine silently begged him to just leave us alone.
    Dinner was quiet. Lizzie said very little the entire evening other than thank-you, Momma when I set her smal plate of lasagna down in front of her. Neither of us ate much, and I knew her mind was focused just as much on what had happened this afternoon as mine was. I owed her an answer to her question, but I stil hadn’t found the right way to tel her.
    We went through our normal evening routine, albeit halfheartedly. Her nightly bath lacked the normal giggles and splashes, and for the first time in her life, she didn’t want a bedtime story. She climbed into her bed, and I pul ed the covers up over her chest and kissed her softly on the head. I hoped she would snuggle into her pil ow and yawn the way she usual y did, but instead she looked up at me, waiting. I sank onto my knees beside her bed, knowing I could put this off no longer. I opened my mouth, searching for the right way to tel her, but she spoke first.
    “Was that my Daddy?” Al the air left me as her timid, soft words came like a whisper into her dim room. They were fil ed with such hope, and now I could do nothing other than crush that hope just as soon as it had been born.
    A single tear slid down my face as I nodded.
    Swal owing, I looked around the room as I tried to gather enough courage to speak. Final y, I turned back to her.
    “Yes, baby, it was.” Lizzie knew little of Christian. She had asked once, right after she had started preschool. She had wanted to know why she didn’t have a daddy like the rest of the kids. I had only told her that her father lived far away. I knew that one day I would have to explain the choice he had made. I just didn’t think it would come so soon.
    Breathing deeply, I reached out and brushed her hair from her eyes, playing with the long strands while I began to speak. Sadness washed over her face as I described as gently as I could that her father had chosen a different life, one without us in it; and I prayed she wouldn’t understand what that real y meant. Of course, I should have known better.
    My ever-insightful child looked me directly in the face and asked,