Never Again Good-Bye (18 page)

He didn’t answer. His eyes remained locked on Patrice’s face.

“She’s ready to move on, to put the past behind her. It’ll always be a part of her, just like your past will be a part of you. You can both take your past with you wherever you go. But Amy needs a clean break. She’s torn, and she feels those memories tugging at her.”

He nodded, saying without words that he understood that feeling for he felt it himself.

“It would be good to leave here,” Laney whispered. “Amy doesn’t want to slip me into the empty slot in her life that says ‘mother.’ By doing that she probably feels she’d be erasing Patrice completely. If we go to my house, start over in a new environment, she won’t be covering the old memories with new ones. They could coexist.”

He sighed heavily. Her wisdom wasn’t just for Amy. It was for him too. He squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s hard,” he said.

“Of course it’s hard,” she said. “And I realize that one of the reasons we got married in the first place was so you could keep this house. But you were doing it for Amy—and now she wants to leave.”

He got up and went to the dresser, braced his elbows on it, and hung his head.

“I can’t afford the mortgage on your house, Laney. I still owe you all that money. I hate that. I can’t stand the thought of living off you.”

“But the house is paid for. And we’re married, Wes. Everything I have is yours. I want it to be that way. My father’s money never gave me one minute of happiness until I was able to share it with you.”

Wes turned back around and regarded the beautiful woman sitting on his bed. Nothing in her generosity should have threatened him, yet it did. The fact that he had taken her money once haunted him daily whenever his own role as provider came to his mind.

“So much has changed,” he moaned. “In the last year, our lives have turned upside down. This house has been the only thing that’s stayed the same. It’s just like it was when Patrice was alive. I need that.”

The confession moved Laney, and she stood up and faced him. “I know you do, Wes. But the memories can go with you. You can pack them in boxes. You don’t have to make Amy live in them.”

He closed his eyes and pulled her into a fierce hug, and for a moment he rested his forehead on her crown. “It’s hard to pack memories in boxes,” he whispered.

“I know it is,” she said. “But I’ll help you. I’ll help both of you.”

He looked slowly around the room. If a real relationship with Laney was ever going to have the chance to develop, he would have to stop clinging to his guilt and his ghosts. Leaving would be like stepping out of the cloak that had been his life and stepping into a new one. It terrified him; it hurt him. But it was time he made a sacrifice for Laney. She had given him so much. And she’d never had a cloak of her own—not one that fit. It was so little for them to ask of him. And so much.

He tightened his embrace and set his forehead against hers, closing his eyes so she couldn’t see his pain. “All right,” he said at length. “We’ll move. For you and Amy.”

Chapter Fifteen

T
o make the move easier for all of them, Laney suggested that they pack only the things they would have immediate need for and come back for the rest as they needed it. That way, she reasoned, they could ease into the move without making it seem so final. Since Wes made no effort to sell his house, she knew it would be quite some time before he was ready to empty it completely of its memories.

The move, however, drew her closer to Amy and, surprisingly, to Patrice. As they sat on the floor and went through Amy’s things, deciding what to leave and what to take, Laney found herself hurting for the woman who had been forced to leave it all behind.

“What’s this?” she asked Amy when she found an old, threadbare doll with a stained face and only a trace of a mouth and eyes.

“It’s the doll I used to carry around when I was a baby. Mommy made it for me.”

Laney examined the doll. Despite the wear and tear, it had obviously been lovingly crafted. Smiling, she laid it aside and opened the little memory box that sat on a shelf. “Can I look in here?”

“Sure,” Amy said, taking it from her hands and gazing through the contents. “It’s my memory box. This is the ribbon I got for perfect attendance in choir at church. And this is the rose Mommy and Daddy got for me to wear to church one Easter. And this is the little Bible that Mommy gave me when I was baptized.”

Laney looked down at her, her eyes misting over. “You were baptized? Already?”

“Brother Alan says I have a very mature understanding of salvation for my age. I was five then.” She took the Bible out and feathered her fingertips across the lettering. “I’m really glad Mommy was still here when I got saved, so she knew for sure that I’d be with her someday. Daddy said God worked it all out that way.” Amy looked up at her. “When were you baptized, Laney?”

Laney shook her head. “I wasn’t.”

“Never? Really?”

“My father didn’t raise me in church. He didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t see.”

Amy’s eyes rounded as she gazed up at Laney. “But you believe, don’t you?”

Laney gazed down at her daughter. “I didn’t before. But I’m seeing God’s work all around me now. Miracles. Yes, I believe.”

“But have you asked Jesus into your heart?” The question came very natural to the child, and seemed very sweet, and it filled Laney with a deep sadness that something profound was lacking in her life.

“No, honey, I don’t guess I ever have.”

“But he’ll come, if you’ll ask him. I promise, Laney. It’s the coolest thing. I can help you ask him, if you want me to.”

Laney wasn’t sure why tears assaulted her with such force, but her face twisted, and she covered her mouth. “Would you do that for me?”

Amy got on her knees and put her arms around Laney’s neck. “I’ll tell you what to say to him,” she whispered.

And beginning with “Dear Jesus,” Amy led Laney into the prayer of salvation.

When they were finished, Laney sobbed against her daughter’s shoulder and clung to her with a mixture of joy and love and overwhelming gratitude.

“Now I’ll have all of my family with me in heaven,” Amy said. “You and Daddy and Mommy. Everybody I love.”

T
hat night, when Wes came home, he immediately noticed a change in Laney. She was calmer and smiled more, and he wondered if it had something to do with the move.

“So what did you guys do today?” he asked Amy while Laney was making supper.

With big, round eyes, Amy looked up at her father. “We talked about Jesus,” Amy whispered. “And I helped Laney ask Jesus into her heart.”

He caught his breath. “You … you did?”

“Yes, Daddy. She cried, and then she called Brother Alan, and he came over, and …”

Wes let her go and stood up, trying to determine how much of this was his child’s imagination and how much was reality. “Are you telling me that Laney prayed?”

“With me, and then with Brother Alan. But don’t tell her I told you. Let her do it. She needs to confess it before man, you know. I’m just a girl.”

Tears came to his eyes, and he lifted his child up into his arms. “You are an amazing little angel, do you know that?”

“Why, Daddy?”

“Because …”

He stopped short when Laney breezed in with two bowls of vegetables in her hands. “Are you guys ready to eat?”

Wes swallowed and tried to look natural. “Sure. I’m starved.”

She set the bowls down then looked up at Wes. A shy smile crept across her face. “Did Amy tell you what happened to me today?”

He set Amy down and met the child’s eyes. She nodded that it was all right to tell. “Well, yes. She said that you’d made a profession of faith.”

Laney smiled openly. “That sounds so cold. Not at all like what happened to me.” She reached out for him, and Wes pulled her into his arms and crushed her.

“I’m so happy for you, Laney.”

“I’m getting baptized Sunday, Wes. I hope that’s not a bad time.”

He pulled back to look at her, laughing with joy. “A bad time? Are you kidding?”

And as he held her, he recommitted his own life to the One who had taken a lie and turned it into truth.

T
hat night, Laney and Amy went back into the child’s room to resume their packing. Looking around the room, she saw it with new eyes. Eyes that didn’t count the loss but saw only the gain. Eyes that didn’t recall the darkness but saw only the light.

And there was light in Patrice’s legacy to her daughter. Beautiful light in the ceramic clowns that Patrice had painted, lattice hangings, quilted dolls. They hadn’t had much money, but Patrice had made them wealthy in other ways. “We’ll take all of this,” she whispered finally. “They belong with you.”

She found herself wishing she had met the woman when she began helping Wes pack. She saw Patrice’s sense of humor in the silly gifts she had bought for him: a huge polka-dot bow tie that she’d given him for a birthday, a pair of size fifty-four boxing shorts with hearts all over them, plaid socks, a Scottish kilt.

Wes caught her gazing with a smile on her face at the woman’s portrait beside the bed, and he stopped folding the clothes he was stacking into a box.

“I think I would have liked her,” Laney said finally.

Moved again, Wes gazed with her at the picture. “I think she would have liked you,” he whispered.

She looked up at him, expecting him to still be gazing at the picture, but his eyes were on her, instead. Her heart caught at his yearning expression. “You just don’t know what you do to me, Laney.”

Hope rose to block her throat. She touched his stubbled jaw with disbelieving fingers. “Tell me.”

He moved her hand to his mouth and held it there as his brows came together. “You make me forget the pain, but you create a new pain.”

She stared up at him. A new pain. He felt it, too. “Then why?” she asked. “Why have you avoided me? Why have you been coming home late, working weekends—”

“Because being near you drives me crazy,” he said simply. “Because I can’t really even touch you, and I want to. But wanting to seems like such a betrayal … it doesn’t make sense, I know, but it’s there.”

“It’s OK,” she whispered.

She caught her breath as his lips came down on hers with the gentleness of a sigh, cleansing her of her fears and phantoms, bathing her in warmth and hope. He was almost husband, almost lover, almost friend.

After a moment, he broke the kiss and gazed down at her, touching her face as if she were a precious treasure. “I was thinking, Laney … about all the guilt I’ve felt. About our marriage. The way we did it.”

It was clear something was missing, but she wasn’t sure what he meant.

Recognizing her confusion, he met her eyes as his grew misty. “It never feels good to go against God’s will. It always makes me miserable.”

“And you think our marriage was against his will?”

He thought for a moment. “It might have been in his will, eventually, but we didn’t give him time. And because we rushed so, we deprived ourselves of the opportunity to get to know each other. To get closer. Maybe even to fall in love.”

She didn’t know what to say, so she only gazed up at him, waiting for whatever he was leading to.

“But it’s so funny how God always makes provisions for our mistakes. He works around them, you know? Uses them.”

He stared at her for a long moment, and it was clear that this wasn’t easy for him.

“He’s making me fall in love with you, anyway,” he said. “It’s the craziest thing. And now we’re equally yoked. There’s really no reason …”

She caught her breath as he kissed her again.

“Laney,” he whispered against her lips, “would you consider setting things right?”

“How?” she whispered.

He combed his fingers through the back of her hair and pressed his forehead against hers. “Would you consider marrying me again? This time for real? In the church, with God blessing us?”

Slowly, she stood straighter and gazed at him with astonishment. “You want to marry me again?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “Right now, I don’t know whether to go forward or backward. I feel like I’m cheating if I get close to you, like the Devil’s got some terrible hold on me, and he’s using my past and my own marriage against me. I want it to be real, Laney, so I can act on my feelings. So I can be happy about falling in love with you, rather than miserable.”

She breathed in a sob and covered her mouth. Would a real marriage keep the memories of Patrice out? Would it help him to forget and cleave to her?

Maybe, she thought. And if not, she would be patient. All she wanted now was to be Wes’s wife—in more than name. “Yes … I’ll … I’ll marry you again …”

“Tonight?” he whispered. “We’ll get Sherry to watch Amy, and we’ll go talk to Alan and get him to do it all over, right there in the church.”

“Tonight,” she whispered, teetering between laughter and tears.

A
lan came over from the parsonage at nine and met them in his office, wearing a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Wes reached for Laney’s hand and squeezed it. “We want you to marry us, Alan.”

Alan frowned and leaned forward. “Didn’t we already do that?”

“Yeah, we did. But I wasn’t being honest with you. And I wasn’t being honest with God.”

Alan’s eyebrows lifted, and smiling, he leaned back in his chair.

“Now, I want to make a real commitment. Under God. I want him to be at the center of this covenant.”

Alan smiled at the tears in Laney’s eyes. “And how do you feel about this, Laney?”

Laney was quiet for a moment, then finally, she tried to speak. “Everything changed for me today,” she whispered. “I don’t deserve any of this, but here it is. I don’t know why he would bless me with my little girl and such a wonderful man after all the things I’ve done in my life …” Her voice broke off, but she tried to go on. “The fact that Wes wants to marry me again, for real, is just too good to be true. But if God could give me a gift like he gave me today, then he could give me this.”

Alan looked down at his hands, his own eyes misty. “You don’t know how I’ve been praying for this.”

Laney looked surprised. “You have?”