Long-Lost Mom

Smiling, he handed her the one-hour-photo envelope.

“Cool!” She tore open the envelope, then flipped through each shot, giggling at some, making faces at others. “Come look. I’m getting good.”

Stone glanced down at the mostly blurred and very unbalanced shots, some with suspicious-looking smudges that might have been a finger on the lens, and nodded seriously. “Very,” he said encouragingly.

“Look, there’s Sally pretending my teddy is her daddy. She doesn’t see him since he remarried, so I told her it was okay to pretend, just like I do about Mommy.”

Stone held his tongue, but it was difficult because anger nearly choked him. He had no patience for people who turned away from family. To him, family was everything. Family took care of their own, or rather, they should. It was that simple. Maybe he was just old-fashioned, but it was the way he felt, and he knew nothing would ever change that.

Unfortunately, he also knew that things rarely happened as they should. “Bring Sally over here, Sara. We’ll be her family anytime she needs us. Okay?”

Her smile lit his heart. “’Kay.”

“So what was your hurry to have the pictures developed?”

She didn’t answer, but pulled out the last photograph with a frown. “Oh, Daddy. I can’t believe you took this one.” She moaned theatrically, as only a ten-year-old can do.

Stone glanced at the photo causing the distress and laughed. “This is my proof,” he teased, tugging on a loose curl the color of coal. “You helped me paint your bedroom. You picked out those horrid colors.” He shook his head. “Chartreuse, of all things.”

Sara snickered.

“Anyway, I needed the snapshot so that in three months, when you come to me with those big baby blues begging for yet another color change, I can pull it out and remind you- this was what you wanted. You wanted it so badly you helped paint it.”

“Oh, Daddy.”

“You already said that.” Stone moved away, heading toward the back of the workshop where he did most of his designing. “You never told me what your hurry was.”

“My album,” she said in a soft dreamy voice that made him turn back to look at her. “I want my photo album to be complete when Mommy comes back.”

His heart stopped. A new wave of rage at Jenna hit him. “Honey…” Hard to talk when his lungs wouldn’t expand, he discovered. “Sara-”

“It’s her birthday today.”

“Yes,” he managed.

She met his unsteady gaze with eyes wise beyond their years. “I know what you told me,” she whispered from the other side of the store, but he caught every word. “That you don’t think she’s ever coming back.”

God. “I’m sorry, Sara-”

“And I know you don’t want me to think about her, but I can’t help it. I want her to come back.”

“Oh, baby.” He sighed and moved toward her. Thankfully he had no meeting, no customers, so there would be no nosy ears listening to this. Gently he took Sara’s shoulders and waited until she looked at him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were thinking about her?”

“Because it hurts you.” Sara, her wide eyes sheened with unshed tears, sniffed loudly. “I hate it when you hurt.”

She hadn’t cried about her mother for some time, and Stone was furious at himself for not noticing sooner that she needed him. “Sara…” Was it possible to feel such overwhelming love for a small child, so much that it was a physical pain? “I don’t want you to keep things inside, ever.” He cupped her chin and kissed her nose. “Even if you think it’s going to hurt me.”

“Then why don’t we talk about her?”

How to explain? How to tell his precious and yes, dammit, sheltered daughter that she’d been abandoned at birth by a mother who had been little more than a child herself? That he’d been too young to take on both the baby and the mother? That even if he could have managed, it didn’t matter because Jenna had run?

But Sara needed to know, needed to understand, and he couldn’t fail her. “I’ll talk about her to you anytime,” he promised, knowing that promise was likely to kill him.

“Why did she go away before I was out of the hospital?”

“She had to go, Sara.” Defending the woman who had nearly destroyed him was easy only because Sara needed answers. Kind ones. “She had to. She had no one to love her, and so she ran away.”

Huge blue eyes waited for more. Jenna’s eyes. They were a more brilliant blue than his, and framed by lush lashes-just like Jenna’s. “I would love her.”

Unable to trust his voice, Stone squeezed her hand.

“Why couldn’t she just have made a family with us and be ours forever? Why did she have to go?”

Solemnly, patiently, she blinked at him, and Stone swallowed hard. His own anguish came back so easily, he discovered. “She was scared, honey. Very scared.” And to be fair to Jenna, there’d been evil forces that had pushed her to leave. Forces he hadn’t been able to protect her from. She’d been betrayed, horribly and cruelly, by her own mother in a single event that had changed Jenna’s life forever. Still, she could have, should have, trusted him to help, and she hadn’t. “She was young, and alone and petrified.”

“But you were with her, and you can fix anything.”

God bless this child who had never wanted for a thing. Stone, with his ruthlessly stubborn streak and single- mindedness, had seen to it. But for the sake of memories and a heartache that had never died, he had to try to make Sara understand. “Yes, she had me,” he told her. “But I was young, too.”

“You were in college. At a fancy expensive school.”

“Yes.”

“And your mommy and daddy got mad at you and never spoke to you again. You had to transpose.”

“Transfer,” he corrected with a small smile. “To the local college here. I wanted you with me, Sara.” His parents had disowned them both, the boy barely a man, and the infant without a mother, all because he had “ruined his life” by keeping his baby. The baby he’d been responsible for.

Neither his mother nor his father nor his brother, Richard, Stone’s childhood hero, had spoken to Stone or Sara since.

Regret wasn’t a part of this. He could never look into Sara’s beautiful face and regret one part of what had happened. But it did bring up his worst nightmare, and remind him of the stoic way Sara accepted the fact that they had no family willing to acknowledge their existence.

For what would happen to his daughter if something happened to him? Who would take care of her, love her?

“It’d be nice to have grandparents.” Sara’s casual tone didn’t fool him. “Or…an uncle.”

She wasn’t talking in general, and he knew it. She meant his own parents and his brother. At the wistful tone in her voice, he actually felt murderous toward his own family. “They don’t understand, Sara. They can’t see past their own stubborn noses. But I love you and I’ll never stop. ’Kay?”

She smiled. “’Kay.” Tipping her head, she studied him. “Has she ever been back?”

“I’d tell you if she had. I’ve always promised you that. You don’t ever have to wonder.” He didn’t add that he’d spent more than a small fortune trying to find Jenna over the years. That occasionally he still tried, although now it was completely for Sara’s sake, because he had the feeling he would always be far too angry at Jenna ever to want her in his life. He refused to add to his daughter’s pain, but he couldn’t stand the thought of her waiting expectantly for something he’d become convinced would never happen. And if a small part of him wondered if there’d ever be a woman in his life who could make him truly forget Jenna, he ignored it. He didn’t need another heartbreak. “I’m afraid she’s not coming back, Sara.”

The girl stared down at the last photo of herself, the one where she was decked out in painter’s attire, grinning broadly as she painted her room a somewhat sickening shade of yellow-green. Completely unaware of how much every part of her-her laugh, her carefree attitude, her easy affection-all reminded Stone of Jenna.

“She is coming back,” Sara whispered. “I just know it.” She met her dad’s worried expression and hugged him