Free Never Again Good-Bye by Terri Blackstock Page A

daughter to know where she could always go for a woman’s hug.
    Laney watched the children being called back into the school building, and she started her engine, the noise grating across her consciousness like a chain saw. She and Wes had known destruction, and they both knew the dark, drastic feeling of loneliness. It had to end somewhere, she thought. She had no intention of taking Amy away from Wes. But if she had to use the court system to get regular visitation, she might as well try for what she knew would be better for her child. She knew that a custody battle would rip Wes apart. She even knew that it might hurt Amy—in the short run. But in the long run, she convinced herself, it would be for the best. In the long run, Amy needed to have both a father— and a mother. That way, they could both be there for Amy.
    One of them would have to take the chance to make them all winners in a situation that spelled loss by its very nature. One of them would have to look ahead instead of behind. And someday they would all stop hurting.

Chapter Six
    T wo 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