It didn’t matter what it cost Laney. Somehow she had to find a way to bring stability instead of uncertainty back into Amy’s life.
A vague thought dawned on her, a thought that would offer Wes some relief and perhaps serve as a peace offering between them. She could loan him the money he needed to keep his house.
But that would only solve one of the problems, she thought. Not all of them. It would relieve his immediate stress, but it still wouldn’t bring Amy family security or give rest to her frightened mind. And it wouldn’t help her to accept Laney.
Laney wanted to be a mother, not just a creditor.
But there might be another way.
As a better idea took root in her heart, she began to see the light of hope. Maybe it would work. Maybe it could solve everything.
Quickly, she grabbed her purse and dug for her car keys. She had to see Wes right away.
Sherry showed up around eight with all the sympathy a sister could give, and knowing that Wes was too preoccupied and upset to function normally, she supervised Amy’s bath and put her to bed. After she had read Amy a story that put her to sleep, she looked for Wes.
He wasn’t in the den, so she went to the doorway of his bedroom and peeked in. Wes sat on the side of his bed, staring down at the portrait of Patrice in his hand.
“Want to talk?” Sherry asked him.
He twisted his mouth and shrugged. “I was just thinking what a failure I am. She trusted me to hold things together. I’ve lost partial custody of Amy, and I can’t even hold onto my house. I can’t even make a living.”
“Wes, none of this is your fault. You didn’t ask Laney Fields to come into your life. And nobody can blame you for all of the bills from Patrice’s cancer. What were you gonna do? Turn down medical treatment for her because you couldn’t afford it?”
“It’s gonna kill Amy, leaving this house.”
“You can stay with me until you get an apartment or find something to rent.”
“First I have to find a job.”
“But maybe you’ll get the contract for the park. Maybe it’ll happen in time …”
Wes shook his head. “No. They won’t make a decision on that for three weeks. By then, the bank will have everything I own. Let’s face it. I’m finished.”
“You can’t get an extension?”
“No,” he said. “This was an extension. I’ve been putting them off for months.”
She sat down on the bed next to him and hugged him. “I’m so sorry, Wes. I wish there was something I could do.”
“You did a lot. Working for me all these weeks with no pay …” He swallowed and looked down at the picture again. “I guess I’ll tell Amy tomorrow. We’ll have to start moving out this weekend. Maybe I could hire on with one of my subcontractors and get him to advance me a deposit on an apartment. I just hate to do it all so fast. It doesn’t give her any time to get used to it …”
He broke into tears and covered his face, and Sherry didn’t know what to do for him.
The doorbell rang, and he drew in a deep breath.
“Who could that be?” Sherry asked.
“Maybe the bank, coming to take all the furniture,” he said. “Bloodsuckers …”
Sherry got up. “I’ll get it.”
He went to the bathroom and leaned over the sink to splash water on his face. Blotting his face with a towel, he looked into the mirror. He had aged ten years in the last one, he thought. He had put up a terrible fight to stay above water, but he had lost.
He could accept all of it stoically, he thought, if it weren’t for Amy.
Sherry came back into the bedroom. “Wes, it’s Laney Fields.”
He came out, frowning. “What does she want?”
“Well, uh … she sort of heard about what was going on …” “How?”
Sherry winced. “I called you over there earlier, and I sort of … mentioned it before I realized she didn’t already know.” “Oh, great,” he said. “She’s probably come to chastise me for not providing for my child. Thanks a lot, Sherry.”
“I’m sorry, Wes. Look, I’m going to go home now, but if you need anything, just call. Any time of the night. I mean it, OK?” She shot him a bolstering look, then turned and headed for the back door.
He watched her go, his eyes dull. He didn’t want to see Laney. Not now. But as always, she hadn’t given him a choice in the matter.
Laney was waiting in the den. The moment she saw him, she asked, “Wes, why didn’t you tell me about the foreclosure?”
He threw up his hands. “I’m sorry. I must have missed the part where the judge told me I had to keep you informed about every event in my life.”
“Not every one,” she said, “but where you’ll live, at least. Have you told Amy?”
“No, I haven’t told Amy,” he said impatiently. “I’m still trying to sort it all out myself.”
“Well … when do you have to move?”
“Two weeks,” he said. “We’ll probably go ahead and get out this weekend.”
“Poor Amy,” she said, sinking down on the couch. “It’s gonna be such a shock to her.”
“She’s getting used to shocks,” he said. “You never cared about them before.”
“She’s getting used to me,” Laney said. “When you were late tonight, it was just a setback. She got scared. Wes, did she tell you what she was afraid of?”
He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, leaving it tousled. “No. We didn’t really talk about it much.”
“She said that she thought you’d tricked her like her mommy did.”
“What?”
“Wes, she’s terrified of losing you. She said that her mother promised to come back, and she didn’t, and now she’s sure that one day you won’t either.”
“She told you that?”
“Yes. She was very upset. It was … one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. It reminded me of my childhood so much …” Her lips began to quiver. She was trembling, trying to go on. Finally she looked up. “Amy needs you,” she said. “She’s afraid, I think, that if she gets comfortable with me, she’ll lose you altogether. I think in her seven-year-old head she may even think we’re trying to prepare her for a time when you’ll drop out of her life.”
Knocking a newspaper off of a chair, Wes wilted into it. His eyes grew luminous. Maybe she did understand after all. “No argument so far.”
“On the other hand, the way she warmed up to me before she knew I was her mother told me that she very much wanted a woman in her life. She’s hungry for a mother, not because of anything that you can’t provide, but because of what a woman can.”
Wes frowned. She was leading up to something. He could feel it.
“And I’ve been thinking about that an awful lot lately. And then tonight when I heard about the foreclosure … I couldn’t help thinking what could solve everything.”
“What?” he asked, dumbfounded that she would be presumptuous enough to think that anything regarding her would solve his problems.
“Separately,” she went on cautiously, “we can’t change things for the better. Only for the worse. But together—”
“What are you saying?” Not what he thought. Surely not that.
Laney took a deep breath and pushed back a strand of hair. “I’m saying that—I mean, I’m suggesting that in order to give her what she needs and maybe make things easier on ourselves, that maybe we should …” Her voice trailed off, too weak to go on.
“Should what?” he asked impatiently.
“Should … get married. For Amy’s sake.”
A breathless moment followed as Wes erupted out of his chair. “Are you nuts? You’ve got to be out of your mind! For Amy’s sake?” he asked, astounded. “Have you honestly convinced yourself that you’d be doing this for Amy’s sake?”
“Why else would I do it?”
“For your sake, maybe? Instant child, instant husband, instant home?” The astonishment drained from his voice, and someth
ing almost violent replaced it. “Since there happens to be an opening in this family, maybe you thought you could slip right in and fill it?”
She wouldn’t let herself get angry. Her voice was a carefully controlled monotone. “No. I’ve thought this out. It would benefit all of us. Even you. Especially where money is concerned.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“Obviously. But I do.” She steadied her breathing. It was time to lay all her cards on the table. Everything was at stake. “I have lots of it, and you need it. You can hold onto your pride and lose your home, or you can do what I’m suggesting and save everything.”
His mouth opened with disbelief. “So let me get this straight. If I marry you, you’ll pay me off?”
“No,” she said. “I’m saying that if you marry me, everything I have will be yours. My father’s inheritance, my house, everything. None of it means anything to me. Amy’s the only thing that matters.”
“My daughter and I are not for sale!”
“I’m not trying to buy you,” she retorted. “It’s Amy’s money too. She was his granddaughter. She deserves it. He disrupted our lives, ruined mine, and he owed me, just like he owed her. If it’s Amy’s money, why should it bother you to let her help pay her mother’s hospital bills and help her father’s company get back on its feet?”
“Because I don’t like what goes with it,” he said.
She steeled herself against yet another blatant rejection. “I’ll help you.” Her voice shook with the words. Good heavens, was she pleading now? She tried to mask the desperation in her voice. “I’ll be there all day, taking care of Amy in her own home, keeping the house clean, and cooking meals. You won’t feel so divided. And when you get home, you can relax. I can be a good mother and a good wife. Amy will have two parents at the same time, and she’ll be happier. You must see that.”
When Wes turned back to her, tears were glistening in his eyes. “I don’t want to get married again,” he whispered. “Never.”
“Not even for Amy?”
He glared at her for a hateful moment, as if she had trumped his ace. “You want to be my wife?” he asked sarcastically. “When you don’t even have a clue what a wife is?” “I can learn,” she whispered. “And I’ll stay out of your way. If we got married, I wouldn’t try to take Patrice’s place.
I wouldn’t expect love or even respect. I wouldn’t expect anything. I just want to be with my baby. We could try to be friends, try to like each other.”
He turned his back to her and searched his mind and heart for some order, some answers. What would it be like to have her in his home every day? How would it feel, sharing Amy with her, sharing the responsibility, the love? How would it feel to share his and Patrice’s home with a woman he hardly knew?
He couldn’t. He shook his head, unable to consider it anymore. “It’s blackmail,” he said. “If you really cared about what losing everything is going to do to Amy, then you’d offer me a loan, not marriage!”
“I’ve thought of that,” she said. “But I don’t want to loan it to you, Wes. I want to give it to you. I want to be a mother, not a banker. Money alone isn’t what Amy needs. If you marry me, you’ll have access to my whole inheritance. I wouldn’t hold any of it back.”
Wes turned back to her. She was still begging, still willing to sacrifice. “It can’t work, Laney,” he said too loudly. “Marriage is a sacred institution to me. God didn’t create it to be like that. Besides, it would make Amy’s home life as strained as it is when she’s with you.” Not to mention his own life, he thought.
“Just for a while,” she pleaded. “If she thought it was a real marriage, that we really loved each other the way a husband and wife do, she might accept it. She wouldn’t see me as the enemy trying to invade her life. The stress is going to get a lot worse if you lose your house, Wes.”
He set his hands on his hips and stared at her. Did she think he hadn’t considered that?
“Even if you say no, you aren’t going to get rid of me,” she promised him. “I’m here to stay. I’m trying to find alternatives, but the court gave me joint custody, and I intend to use it.”
“You mean you’d put her through what she went through today? Sobbing and remembering her mother, thinking her father isn’t going to come home? You’d do that again?”
“I wouldn’t want to!” Laney said. “But I’m convinced she needs me. And I need her.”
Wes ruffled his hair and looked at the ceiling, a despondent, futile look coloring his twisted features. “I can’t do it. I can’t make a mockery of marriage after Patrice.”
She felt herself losing the battle and knew this loss might cost her the war. “Please, Wes,” she said, touching his back. “Don’t think of it that way. I wouldn’t push you or expect anything. It wouldn’t be like a real marriage, except to Amy. You and I would know differently. And when she grows up—”
“What about you?” he asked suddenly, turning back to her. “You’d be destroying any chance you have for finding someone else. A real husband. You’d be locking yourself into a false life and giving up a real one.”
“And so would you.”
His shrug was hopeless. “I’ve already had my life.”
His words were dispassionate and final. Had he really laid his heart to rest with Patrice? “Then give me mine,” she entreated. “It’s an agreement, that’s all. It can be broken.”
“Just like that?”
“If it isn’t working, I’ll be the first to admit it.”
When he turned away again she slid her hand up his back and closed it over his shoulder. “Please, Wes,” she whispered in a strained voice. “You’ve never thanked me for giving you my daughter. She was the only thing in life that ever mattered to me. Please give me the chance to get her back. I promise I’ll never take her from you.”
Somehow her last words had more impact than all the others she’d prepared tonight. I’ll never take her from you. It was a way to ensure that. He could never hope to see her give up and walk away. They had come much too far.
And Amy did need a mother. He closed his eyes and recalled the helpless feeling he’d had earlier when he hadn’t known what to say to her, when he hadn’t been able to comfort her. She had needed Patrice, but she had Laney instead. “I’m a Christian,” he whispered. “I believe in living my life a certain way. Church is an important part of our life, and so is our faith. I won’t sacrifice my beliefs for you.”
“I’m not asking you to,” she said. “I … I’ve never been a churchgoer, but I’ll start. And I’ve never really believed in God, but I’ll try. Please, just give me a chance, Wes. I promise I’ll never compromise the things you’ve taught Amy. And I’ll do my best to live by them.”
“Living by them means that you don’t enter into a temporary, frivolous marriage for the sake of convenience. If I get married again, it’ll be for life. For better or for worse.”
“Fine,” she said. “No back door. I can accept that.”
“I’m not offering it.”
She sighed and struggled to find the right words. “Be reasonable, Wes. You’re a businessman. This is a business arrangement. You wouldn’t hesitate to hire a live-in nanny. Think of me as that. It’s what’s best for Amy.”
“You just don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?”
“Marriage isn’t a business arrangement or a game.”
“And bankruptcy and joint custody are no picnic. I want more for my daughter. And I know you do, too.”
He stared at her for a moment, the agony in his eyes still resisting defeat.
“It’s blackmail,” he said again, raking a hand through his hair.
“That’s not fair,” she said. “I’m not threatening you into this.”
“Aren’t you?”
She looked at the floor and shook her head dolefully. “Just think about it, Wes. With an open mind. Think about what’s best for her. It’s the only answer that makes any sense.”
> He fixed his eyes on her then, staring at her as moments ticked by. She was sure he was going to say yes. Sure that he knew it was the only way.
“I don’t have to think about it,” he said finally. “The answer is no.”
Chapter Nine
The next morning, Wes sat alone in the small building that had housed his business for the last several years. He couldn’t believe he was going to lose it. He glanced up at the plaque that he’d won three years ago, for “Builder of the Year.” His business had been booming then, and he’d developed a reputation for reliable, honest, high-quality work.
Who would have believed it would come to this?
He heard a car pulling up on the gravel parking lot and through the window saw his lawyer. More bad news, he thought, bracing himself. What more could they take away?
He met Bert at the door and reached out to shake his hand. “How are you doing, Wes?” the tired-looking attorney asked.
“I’m OK,” he said. “Still a little numb, but OK.”
Bert pulled up a chair and sat down to face him. “I just wanted to let you know that I tried for another extension. They wouldn’t give it.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t think they would.”
Bert looked down at his feet. “Man, I wish I had the money to loan you myself.”
“It’s a lot of money,” Wes said.
Bert looked back up at him. “I feel like I’ve let you down a lot lately. First on the custody thing, and now this …”
Wes shook his head and got up. “It wasn’t your fault, Bert. We’re gonna be all right. I just haven’t been able to tell Amy yet that we’ve got to move out. I keep putting it off.”
“I don’t blame you. She’s been through enough lately.” Bert paused and adjusted his glasses. “By the way, I was thinking this morning, and it occurred to me that you might want to keep this foreclosure from Laney Fields. Is there any way you can hide it? Make it look like you just willfully decided to move?”
“No, it’s too late. She already knows.”
Bert groaned.
“Why?”
Bert got up and slid his hands under his coat and into his pants pockets. “Well, I was just afraid she might take advantage of it. Try to take you back to court for full custody.”