Two months later—two months that had crept by with a new kind of cruelty—Laney finally sat in the courtroom, staring down at her clenched hands on the table in front of her. Though she had seen Amy often from a distance over the last several weeks, she hadn’t seen Wes. Now she could see the toll this was taking on him. He had lost weight, the lines in his face were more pronounced, and he moved like a man with a hundred pounds of dread weighing his shoulders down. Since he had walked in, Wes had not looked at her. His eyes were dull and fixed on the table in front of him, as if he could keep his control only if he kept his eyes steady. He looked tired, and the lines branching out from his eyes seemed more deeply etched than they had before. He wore creased black pants and a gray jacket that fit his tall frame well. The missing button on the jacket told her it was not new, however.
Absently she smoothed back her sleek chignon and straightened her beige blazer. It was hot in the room, even though a ceiling fan buzzed overhead. Like Wes, she had to sit there and listen as her lawyer presented all the evidence they had—indisputable evidence in the form of documents, blood tests, and photographs—proving she was the child’s mother. And then, just as she’d expected, Wes’s lawyer presented his documents showing that Amy had been legally adopted, presenting Laney’s signature on the papers with great emphasis.
The room grew hotter, and tiny beads of sweat glistened on Wes’s forehead. Laney watched her lawyer pace across the room as he drilled Wes’s character witnesses: his sister, his best friend, his neighbor. With great interest her lawyer dwelt on the fact that Amy had not been taken for either her sixor seven-year checkups. The man was shrewd and missed nothing. That was why her father had used him for all his business. They had the same impenetrable temperament, the same go-for-the-throat strategy, the same conviction that the end always justified the means. He was the same lawyer who had drawn up Amy’s adoption papers, the same man who had told Laney where to sign on the dotted line, who had patted her hand and praised her for her “mature” decision. But he had known that the decision was not Laney’s. And that was why she had hired him to represent her. Perhaps his guilt would make him try harder, she thought. Perhaps his shrewdness would give them an edge. Perhaps his experience with this judge would weigh in their favor.
When the last of the character witnesses was dismissed, John LaRoux, her attorney, clasped his hands behind his back. “Your honor, I’d like to call Wesley Grayson to the stand.”
She watched Wes’s throat convulse as he stood up and started to button his coat, then remembered the missing button and let it go. His shoulders stiffened as he took the stand, and his alert eyes narrowed against LaRoux’s missilelike questions.
The missiles were expertly aimed and just as destructive. Laney listened with disbelief as her attorney drilled him in a mocking voice about his financial state, about the fact that he’d declared a loss on his income taxes for the preceding year, about the judgments against his home and his business, about the bills that Wes still hadn’t been able to pay off.
“I’m self-employed,” Wes said in a shaky voice, trying desperately to restrain his anger. “My health insurance costs a fortune, and it doesn’t cover much. When my wife got sick …” His voice cracked, and he stopped and steadied himself. Swallowing, he started again. “There were a lot of expenses, and my insurance didn’t cover much at all. I had to pay for most of it. It set me back a little.”
“A little?” LaRoux echoed. “Exactly how much do you still owe, Mr. Grayson?”
Wes glanced at his lawyer. The man gave him a nod, telling him to go ahead.
“Somewhere around thirty-five thousand dollars,” he said quietly.
“Do you have any hope of paying that off, Mr. Grayson?” LaRoux asked.
Wes looked at the judge, then at Laney. “I’m doing the best I can.”
“And does your ‘best’ include possible bankruptcy?”
Wes took a beat too long to answer. “I don’t know.” He took a deep breath and tried to explain. “I have several bids out, and I’m working on one for the new amusement park project. I might be able—”
“But no contracts?”
“Not at the moment. We just finished a project, but it was over budget because of some problems that came up—”
“Thank you, Mr. Grayson,” LaRoux said, cutting him off. The attorney smiled and turned to the judge, but Laney’s eyes remained on Wes. His jaw tensed as he stared at the floor, bracing himself for what he knew was to come. His eyes were opaque, but behind the dullness was fear so great that it made Laney shiver. The man had lost more than his wife. He had almost lost his business and his home, he had gone into debt so great that he had little hope of ever getting out from under it, he faced the prospect of losing his daughter, and now he was losing his dignity as well.
Her eyes darted to her lawyer’s, and she wondered where he’d gotten his information and what bearing he thought it had on this case. Surely he didn’t think that a lack of money made Wes a poor father. That wasn’t what she’d wanted to prove. All she wanted was to have her own place in Amy’s life, without hurting Wes in the process.
“Your honor,” LaRoux went on in a bored voice. “It’s apparent that this man is under a great deal of stress, financially and otherwise. He hasn’t even had the money to take his child for her checkups—”
“I take her to the doctor when she’s sick!” Wes blurted, his face reddening.
“Your honor,” the attorney went on, as if Wes’s outburst was irrelevant, “a man in this much debt has to cut corners. Where does he cut them? With the child’s clothing, food, medicine?”
“I object!” Wes’s lawyer said, and Laney breathed a sigh of relief.
Laney wanted to object as well. She hadn’t done this to humiliate Wes Grayson and strip him of his dignity. She’d never said he neglected Amy! She half rose in her chair, trying to get her attorney’s attention and stop him, make him take back what he’d said on her behalf, make him give Wes back his pride. When her attorney ignored her furious eyes she sank back down.
What had she done?
The objection was sustained, but LaRoux had other aces up his sleeve. “We’re talking about a little girl. A little girl in a home with a man who can hardly support her, a man who may not even be able to keep a roof over her head, a man with a failing business to run, a man who isn’t even her natural father.”
Wes’s eyes snapped to Laney’s and locked with them. How could you do this to us? they asked.
She arched her brows helplessly and shook her head. Had she really paid that man to drive a wedge between her and her daughter’s father, to ruin any chance of her ever being friends with him, to drive out the last remnants of his self-respect?
The nightmare would not end until it was played out. “On the other hand,” her attorney went on, “we have my client, a woman wealthy from her father’s inheritance, a woman who cared so much for the child once already that she made the decision to put it up for adoption in hopes that the adoptive parents could give it a better life than she could have at eighteen.”
His daughter was not an “it”! Wes wanted to scream. He bit his lips to keep the words back, and his nostrils flared.
“How could she have known that the adoptive mother would die and that the child would be left with a man with so many problems that …”
Wes’s hand coiled into a fist in his lap, and his face was tinged with scarlet. This wasn’t happening, he told himself. The judge was smarter than that. He would realize Amy was the most important thing on earth to him.
Laney dropped her face into her trembling hands. Leave him alone! she mentally railed.
But LaRoux would not be cut short.
“ … is only asking for a joint custody agreement. My client doesn’t wish to traumatize the child by taking her from her father, nor does she wish …”
He was losing, Wes thought, a smothering wave of panic washing over him. Strangers were making a decision that was going to change Amy’s life.
Laney stood up, her chair scraping on the cold tile floor. The judge’s attention left the attorney, still in the midst of his diatribe, and went to her. Wes looked up. LaRoux wheeled around.
“Your honor, I apologize for interrupting, but may I please have a word with my attorney?” she asked tersely.
LaRoux’s eyes were glinty beads of steel as he stepped toward her, warning her that he wouldn’t tolerate such behavior. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked in a whisper.
“I’m stopping you,” she hissed. “You’ve gone far enough. We could have made our point without ruining Wes Grayson. He’s a good father and a kind man, and I won’t sit here and pay you to kick him in the teeth.”
LaRoux’s spine stiffened. “Exactly what would you like me to do?”
“Dismiss him from the stand,” she said. “And leave him alone.”
As LaRoux turned slowly back to the judge, Laney tried to steady her furious, heaving breaths. Her eyes went back to Wes’s, and she noted that they were a little softer in their reproach. Had he realized what she was telling her attorney?
She watched as Wes was dismissed, and the judge slipped to his chambers for a few minutes. It would take only a few minutes, she thought miserably. A few minutes to give her back her daughter—and possibly destroy Wes Grayson.
When LaRoux walked back to the table his eyes glowered. “You’ve got it in the bag,” he said as he stuffed papers into his briefcase, “despite your efforts to go on being a loser.”
“No one had to lose!” she whispered. “I could have gotten joint custody without attacking him. I had enough of an argument, and you know it. I wanted it to be fair.”
“It’s only fair if you win,” he said.
“You don’t care who gets hurt, do you? You don’t see this as affecting human lives or hurting decent people.”
“Do you?” the cold attorney asked. “If I recall, you said that the child hadn’t even welcomed you into her life.” He uttered a dry, brittle laugh. “You hired me to hurt those decent people, so don’t give me the self-righteous routine now that I’ve gotten you what you wanted.”
Laney stared at him as he lowered to his seat, and slowly her angry, guilty eyes drifted to Wes. For a moment she wished she could take it all back, start over, and find some other way. Their eyes met for a split second before he turned away, and she felt colder than she’d ever felt in her life.
The judge returned to the courtroom ten minutes later, his judicial robe brushing the floor as he walked to the bench. Making a production of shuffling the papers on his desk and adjusting his glasses, he prepared to give his answer.
“After reviewing this case thoroughly …”
Wes clasped his hands in front of his mouth and closed his eyes. Please, God, he prayed. Prove that there’s still justice in this world …
Laney coiled her fingers in her lap and set her eyes on the judge.
Both held their breath. Both sweated. Both died a little inside as the judge grew long-winded, recounting both sides of the issue.
And then he finally said, “And for that reason, I award Ms. Fields joint custody of her daughter.”
Laney caught her breath in a sob, momentarily forgetting all the pain and sorrow it would cause the man at the table across from her.
Wes drew in an agonizing breath and wondered why he felt surprised, why he felt cheated, why he felt betrayed when he had expected it. He dropped his forehead into his hands. How was he going to tell Amy? He looked up, his green eyes indicting as they met Laney’s anxious ones. Her joy instantly faded, and guilt flashed through them.
The judge finished his statement, and court was adjourned. Laney pushed past the attorneys and made her way toward him, trying—and failing—to look as if she understood what he was going through.
“Wes,” she said before he could rebuke her. “Please. I didn’t mean for any of those things to come out. I didn’t know them myself.”
Wes started out of the courtroom, his brisk pace making her trot to keep up.
“My attorney was cruel,” she said, “and you know I don’t believe you’ve neglected Amy in any way. That wasn’t the point—”
“Then what was the point?” he asked, swiveling abruptly, almost making her run into him.
“I just wanted to have a part in her life. You wouldn’t let me see her.”
His nostrils flared, and for a moment she thought he might break down before her. But when his words came out they were steady and calculated. “I won’t force her to go with you,” he warned in a deadly quiet voice. “Before I’ll let you destroy her, I’ll take her so far away you’ll never see her again. I’d tread lightly if I were you.”
Tears sprang to Laney’s eyes. “Wes, please give me a chance,” she whispered.
He turned and walked away.
Wes was proud of himself. He had managed to drive home without running into any cars, without driving off an embankment, without slamming into any brick walls. He had not self-destructed.
He walked into his empty house and dropped his keys on the telephone table. He still had an hour before Amy got home from school. One hour to fall apart and put himself back together again.
His bedroom was dark, and he went in and sat on the bed—Patrice’s side—and gazed at the eight-by-ten picture of her he kept on the nightstand. He clutched his arms across his stomach and doubled over as the agony deep in his soul bubbled to the surface. Wilting, he lay on the bed on her pillow. “Patrice,” he cried, as tears squeezed out of his eyes.
His voice made the darkness darker, the loneliness lonelier. He grabbed the pillow from under the bedspread and clutched it against his chest. “I miss you,” he whispered as he wept.
He didn’t cry for long. His tears reached deep inside and tore great chunks from what was left of his heart. When he was spent he lay on his back still clutching the pillow and stared at the ceiling.
What would he do when Amy was with Laney? He couldn’t bear to come home to this empty house, to sleep without checking on her at night, and to wake without her early-morning smiles and her childish demands for things she knew he wouldn’t let her have for breakfast. The loneliness would kill him. Yet there was nothing he could do.
Was it his destiny to love only for a while and never learn to say good-bye?
Laney sat in the frilly bedroom she had decorated for Amy and looked at the pink and white dust ruffle beneath the soft pink comforter, at the subdued wallpaper, and at the French Provincial furniture that had been delivered the day before. Would Amy like what she had done to this room? she wondered. Would she see the love that had gone into it? Would she feel the warmth that Laney knew she could give her?
She pulled her feet up on the bed and folded her arms over her knees. Her daughter. Her baby. Was life finally making itself up to her, or was she setting herself up for a fall?
No, she thought. There was no room for fear. She would look ahead to the talks they would have in this room, to the questions she would answer, and to the love they would exchange. She deserved that love. She closed her eyes and tried to picture Amy’s exuberant smile and that long winter gown that transformed her from tomboy to princess.
Mommy, who was the first boy you ever liked?
There was a boy named Georgie who sat next to me in the second grade.
Did he pull your hair?
Every chance he got. And he wrote on me and threw dirt at me at recess and tied my shoelaces together … It was true love.
Mommy, why didn’t you ever get married?
Laney opened her eyes to the empty room. “Because there was too much unfinished business, too many ties, too many questions,” she whispered. “Because I could never move on with my life as long as I’d left you behind.”
Her heart ached with the pain that had presided in her soul for so long. It would work, she told herself. It would work for all of them. Even Wes. Laney would make it work.
She closed her eyes and imagined the little girl tucked into the bed, smiling up at her. “I’ll try to make it easy for you,” she whispered to the absent child. “And for your daddy.”
Quiet was all the response she got, leaving her with a cool, empty feeling that she expected to be temporary. When she had summoned all her strength, she pulled off of the bed and went to the telephone in the den. He’d be waiting for her call, she thought. Waiting fearfully, miserably for her to tell him when she wanted to take Amy. If only he could see how right this was, she thought, he would be happy.
The phone rang four times before a quiet, masculine voice answered. “Hello?”
“Hi,” she said simply.
Silence.
“I thought we should talk about our schedule,” she said. When he didn’t respond, she went on, going through the speech she had rehearsed over and over in her mind. “If it’s all right, I’d like to have her this weekend, and then I was thinking that I could keep her after school until you get home, so she doesn’t have to stay with the baby-sitter. When school’s out I could keep her during the day, and you could have her at night. That way, her life wouldn’t be disrupted. When she’s more used to me, we could alternate weekends and maybe work up to a night or two a week.”
“And if it’s not all right?”
She heard the anger vibrating in his voice. “Wes, it won’t be ideal for either of us. It’ll be hard for me to let her go at the end of the day.”
“The sacrifices you’re willing to make,” he said sarcastically.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and forced herself to go on. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. I want to pick her up at ten o’clock. I’ll bring her back Sunday.”
No answer.
“Look at the bright side,” she offered. “You can date without getting a baby-sitter. You could go out tomorrow and—”
“I don’t exactly feel like celebrating,” he said.
She gave a limp sigh. “No, I don’t suppose you do.” An idea occurred to her, and her eyes found new life. “You could come over here for dinner tomorrow night. Make sure that everything’s going well. It might make you feel better. Amy too. I think it’s important for her to see us as friends.”
“She knows we’re not friends,” he said.
“Still,” she tried again, “we could try.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
“Ten o’clock, then?”
“You’re running this show.”
She brought a shaky hand to her forehead. Why did he insist on making this so difficult? “All right. I’ll see you both then.”
The click told her he had hung up. She set the phone in its cradle and tried not to feel the anguish, the misery he was feeling. She tried to erase the image of haunted green eyes from her mind, tried to forget the defeated slump of his broad shoulders as he’d stormed out of the court building that afternoon. Friendship between them seemed impossible, and that was a shame because they needed each other tonight.
But tonight would be over soon enough, she thought finally. And tomorrow she would have Amy.