Mended Hearts (New Beginnings Series) (3 page)

While she was chatting with one of her new neighbors, the lady told her about the daycare center her children attended and mentioned they were looking for afternoon
staff. Apparently they had plenty of morning staff, because there were fewer children enrolled for morning sessions. The number of kids doubled in the afternoon since kindergarten children got out of school at noon, and the older elementary school kids at three o’clock. Since school would be starting up again in a week or so, they were padding their staff. Gracie rushed over to apply and got the job—mainly because of her ability to start a new musical activity program for the kids. It was perfect for her needs and she loved children.

She was relieved to be placed with the staff working with the older children, though. She still felt a twinge when she saw the toddlers. Her baby would have been almost two-years-old by now.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Gracie had lived a very sheltered life and was just beginning to feel that she was coming out of her cocoon. She had no other choice. She refused to live her life as a damaged, needy person. Even she was surprised at how strong she could be. It was a strength she prayed for every morning.

Raised in a small, close-knit community, surrounded by a loving family, she couldn’t have asked for a happier, more fun childhood. She was quiet, but secure of her place in the world. At a very young age she had fallen in love with music. The first time she stood in front of an audience to sing was at her small church at the age of five, and from that time on she craved performing. She inherited her love of music from her grandfather, who was an enthusiastic fiddle player, even though he wasn’t the most talented. Her mother always joked that the stork must have hit a patch of turbulence and dropped her at the wrong house, because no one else in the family could carry a tune. She would sit for hours with Granddad listening to his old record albums on an ancient turntable. Those were her fondest memories.

Gracie dated the same boy all through high school. She’d known Rob since she started school, and it seemed natural that
, when he was headed off to college the year before she graduated from high school, they would get engaged. He came home most weekends and they were as close as ever. The wedding took place a month after she graduated. Though her parents fretted a little over her marrying so young, they loved Rob and trusted him completely to take care of her.

That fall they
moved to San Francisco, where he would continue with his second year of college. She found a full-time job as a receptionist at a recording studio, hoping to be given the opportunity to work as a studio back-up singer there—possibly even singing demos for local songwriters hoping to shop their songs around.

Gracie and Rob struggled as young couples do. He was in school full-time, while she worked trying to support them both. She had begun to get some bookings at the studio, which helped supplement her salary.
He seemed to be gone more and more with study and project groups, but she knew this was a temporary phase in their lives and it would all be worth it when he graduated with his degree.

Two years into the marriage
, the unexpected had happened—a surprise pregnancy. She panicked at first, but it wasn’t long before she saw it for the blessing it was. They were young, and Rob had another year of school to go, but other couples had made it work. She had no doubt they could too. She worked as hard as she had before, and came home exhausted—with her cooking and cleaning and laundry duties still there waiting for her. Gracie wished she could count on Rob to help out a little more at home—even spend more time with her there—but then she’d remind herself that his studies should be his priority. She knew he would make it up to her after he was out of school.

It all fell apart in a space of about two minutes. It was a Friday afternoon and she was seven-and-a-half months pregnant. Her feet and legs were swelling and cramping so badly, her office manager had shooed her out of the office and sent her
home to put her feet up. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken the afternoon off work. She’d driven home and dragged herself out of the car and up the steep sidewalk to the townhouse. Letting herself in, her first priority was to go upstairs and get out of her panty hose and into an oversized t-shirt and shorts. She headed up the stairs—they seemed to get steeper the bigger around she got—toward the bedroom.

As she got to the top of the stairs she heard voices coming from behind the closed bedroom door. Why would the door be closed? Oh no! Maybe Rob had come home sick too.
Concerned, she tapped on the door as she opened it and stood there—stunned. Rob
had
come home and gone to bed—but to her shock he was not alone. The blonde jumped up, apparently as shocked as Gracie was. She grabbed her dress off the floor to hold in front of her. Rob seemed frozen. Gracie couldn’t speak. She turned to walk out of the room, her cramping and swollen legs forgotten.

Halfway down the stairs she heard the girl screeching at Rob.
His wife was pregnant? How could he? How could he do this to her?
Turns out she was more concerned about herself than Rob’s hugely pregnant wife who’d just gotten the shock of her life. Gracie guessed she wasn’t that concerned that he
had
a wife . . . just that she was pregnant. That’s when the anger started burning through the hurt. Gracie’s knees buckled and she dropped onto a chair in the tiny living room and waited for Blondie to leave. It didn’t take her long. She stormed out, slamming the door, never even looking at Gracie as she left.

Gathering every ounce of energy she could, she rose from the chair just as Rob came running down the stairs. He stumbled to a stop when he saw her as
he was reaching for the doorknob.

“I thought you left,” he choked out.

Gracie didn’t say anything to him. She just stepped around him as she headed toward the stairs, unable to look at him.

Rob grabbed her arm as she moved past him. “Gracie, please . . . talk to me.”

She jerked her arm away and headed up the stairs, then down the hall to the bedroom. Keeping her eyes averted from the rumpled bed, she grabbed an overnight bag from the closet and started blindly stuffing clothes into it.

He walked over to
her, wrenched the bag out of her hands, flung it across the room and held her by both arms as she struggled to get free. “Gracie! You can’t leave . . . I’m sorry! We can work this out . . .”

She couldn’t process anything coming out of his mouth, except that he was alternately blaming her, then blaming himself, and then blaming Blondie—whose name was apparently
Amber.
Gracie had been so tired lately . . . hadn’t been giving him enough attention . . . but it was all his fault . . . what did she expect him to do, when faced with that kind of temptation . . .

Now that the blinders were off, Gracie could see the red flags waving before her mind’s eye
and she felt like the biggest fool the world had ever seen. All of the mysterious study group meetings he never wanted to discuss with her. The project meetings she never saw the finished results of. Him never wanting to invite his study group over to meet at their house—his excuse being that he didn’t want to put her out.

Her panic escalated and all she wanted to do was get out of the house. She put her hands over her ears and started back down the hall toward the stairs. He chased her down
and caught her at the top of them, crowded in front of her and slapped her.

“Gracie! Stop! You listen to me!” His face was filled with rage.

She snapped back, stunned. Who was this man? This was not the Rob she knew. Tears started coursing down her cheeks and she struggled to get away from him. He slammed her back against the wall, knocking the breath out of her. The blow to the back of her head caused her to see stars. She whimpered. He pushed her, belly-down onto the floor and all she could think about was her baby. That’s when she began fighting back. She started kicking as hard as she could—anywhere she could reach, which made him hit her around the face and head harder. She had to get out of there. Somehow she wrenched free and started crawling toward the stairs again, trying to gain her feet. Just as she reached up to grab the railing and got her feet under her, he charged her from behind and shoved her back. The problem was there was nothing behind her but the long staircase and she went tumbling all the way to the bottom, before she knew what was happening.

Gracie
lay crumpled against the foyer wall, barely conscious, when her next-door neighbor pushed the front door open and took in the scene. She screamed out the door and two maintenance men doing lawn care in the complex common area ran over. Gracie, of course, was unaware of anything going on around her except the excruciating pain in her abdomen and the blinding pain in her head.

She woke up several hours later in a hospital bed with her parents hovering over her. The physical pain of broken bones and a concussion were horrible. But, the emotional pain of losing her precious baby was unbearable. Her mom and dad were horrified when they first saw her. Her face was so swollen and bruised they couldn’t recognize her. Then they had to break the news about the miscarriage. It was the hardest thing they’d ever had to do.

They also informed her that the maintenance men had gotten help and held Rob for the police. Not that that had been very difficult. He had appeared to be in shock and had just sat at the top of the stairs gazing down at her with sightless eyes. He’d been arrested and was even now locked up—charged with deadly assault with other charges possibly pending.

Late that evening the detectives came to take her statement. They were very kind and considerate, making the ordeal as easy as they possibl
y could . . . but it was still difficult to live through it again.

Gracie’s brother, Mathias, had flown into San Francisco and took up his post by her bedside too. Between him and her parents, she wasn’t left alone at any time of day or night. She left the hospital a week later and was driven
back home, directly to her parents’ house. Mathias and Granddad had gone over to the townhouse and packed up all of her things before she was even discharged.

When Rob had found out that Gracie had lost the baby,
the guilt swamped over him. He pleaded guilty to the assault charges in exchange for not being charged with the murder of a fetus. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Gracie filed for divorce her first day back at home. He didn’t contest it. The divorce became final within a couple of months. The judge was sympathetic to her and pushed it through quickly because of the circumstances. Since Rob didn’t
fight it, there was no reason not to. He’d sent several letters in the following two years, but Gracie shredded them without reading them. She knew he wanted to tell her he was sorry—and she believed he truly was. She tried her best to forgive him in her heart, but she really wanted no contact with him. It was better for her if she just forgot all about him and tried to get on with her life.

The death of her baby was unbearable, but the death of her trust was
almost worse. It shook her confidence more than she could have ever imagined. She didn’t think she would ever trust her instincts about people again. Just an hour before she went home that day to rest, she would have said she knew Rob better than anyone in the world—and she believed that with her whole heart. Now she knew she was wrong, and if she could be so wrong about him, what did that say for her judgment when it came to new people in her life?

After long months of being coddled and watched over—overprotected by her family—Gracie was about to go stark raving mad. She loved them for all the love and care
they gave her, but enough was enough. She could stay and let herself be a needy, weak person, or she could step out of the shadows and try to make her own way. It was a struggle, but she won the fight and the family finally seemed resigned to, if not happy with, her decision. It was a godsend when Colby contacted her with an offer to get far away from family and start building a new life . . . and doing what she loved doing most in the world too.

So here she was, getting settled in San Diego. Her physical injuries had healed and her emotional injuries were scarred over, and getting less painful day by day.

CHAPTER 3

When Sonny walked through the doors of Savannah’s that Friday evening, he was pleasantly surprised. He’d expected to find a run-down dive of a bar. But instead, found a fun, funky place with a comfortable atmosphere. He paused to look at the framed poster of the house band on the wall just inside the door. By process of elimination, he identified Gracie Laurent as the cute brunette standing slightly in the foreground of the group shot. She was wearing a breezy smile as if she’d been caught at the tail end of a laugh. Sure enough, when he looked down the length of the room to the stage, she was standing front and center belting out a Martina McBride song, and holding her own doing it. More than holding her own, he thought, impressed.

He glanced around and the place was close to full. It was, after all, nine
-thirtyish on a Friday night. He noticed a free bar stool at the far end of the bar, closest to the dance floor and the stage. Normally he would have picked a seat farther away from the action, but he was there to make contact with Gracie, and he had to be close enough to do that. He hobbled on his crutches as he made his way slowly through the crowd. He was trying not to slip on the peanut shells scattered over the floor and mess up his only surviving good knee. He eventually made it to the stool. Luckily, no one had grabbed it before he could get there.