AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Willow sighs gently. She’s so far from the one place that she considers home. She should just pack her bags and go back there. After all, her grandparents have never met Frank. They don’t even know that he exists. She’s just about to tell her when her grandma says, “I’ve got good news for you.”
“Me, too,” Willow says excitedly. She’s about to tell her that she has a great-grandchild and they’re coming home.
“Your mom’s here.”
“Mom?”
“I know she doesn’t like to be called that. But I think that she’s changed.”
Willow freezes. She was happy to go home to her grandparents, but to deal with Harriet too just feels like too much to bear.
“What does she want?”
“Well, don’t be like that. She was working in Vegas for a while as a dancer.”
Willow nearly drops her phone, even though she was lying down with it close to her ear. This was too much of a coincidence.
“Can you believe that she even got married?”
Grandma’s laughing, but alone. She realizes and stops, “Anyway, she was working as a dancer or something in Vegas and married some bad man or something. She even got him sent to prison. Anyway, luckily he’s still there and with the help of the police she managed to change her ID and everything, but there was one thing that she always missed.”
“What’s that?” Willow feels as if her heart’s stopped beating.
“Home.” There’s an awkward silence, then her grandma continues. “I shouldn’t have said all this to you on the phone. You had something to tell me. You said it’s good news. I hope that you’ve met someone and you’re bringing him home. It’s been forever since you’ve been here.”
Willow shakes her head. “I need to go. I’ve got a headache.”
“Oh. Your grandpa said that I shouldn’t tell you. But I thought that it has been so long that we could all put it in the past.”
Again, Willow is unable to breath properly, let alone sleep.
“Okay, I can see that he was right, as usual. You give me a call when you get the chance. Just don’t be a stranger.”
“Bye.”
Her grandma was going to say something, but Willow doesn’t give her a chance as she hangs up the phone and once again cries into the pillow, the same way she did when she came home from work. The woman that Liam’s looking for just happens to be her mom and to make matters worse, the man looking after her son just happens to be his step-granddad.
Willow sobs as she realizes that there’s only one thing to do. She needs to leave. For the first time in a long time she’d felt safe and had thought that she had a future, but, as usual, it had been taken away from her. Life was cruel to her, and she didn’t even know the reason why.
Chapter Thirteen
Liam
He’d heard Willow when she came in from work. He’d been asleep on the sofa and the sound of her keys jangling in the lock had pushed him from sleep. He glances at the clock now and sees it’s almost six-thirty in the morning. He eases off the sofa and creeps toward his bedroom, peeking in the door at the Frank. The little boy is a tiny lump in the center of Frank’s bed, his thumb shoved into his mouth and a tattered bunny clutched beneath his chin. Liam steps back to the sofa. Might as well let the boy sleep.
Liam drops back onto the sofa and punches at the throw pillow under his head, trying to soften it up. He’ll see if he can get a couple more hours’ sleep, too. And he might as well let Willow have some rest since she didn’t get home ’till almost dawn. He yawns and decides he’ll take Frank to breakfast in a few hours when he wakes up. He tries to get comfortable on the sofa and finally drifts back off, thinking of Willow, warm in her bed in the room next door.
Small fingers tap at his cheeks. Liam jerks away and stops himself from grabbing at Frank just in time. The little boy is grinning at him, his dinosaur-covered pajamas rumpled and his hair standing on end, his stuffed bunny dangling from his tiny fist.
“Hey, mornin’ kiddo,” Liam mumbles.
“Morning, Liam.” Frank warbles brightly. “I hungry.” He pulls up his pajama top and rubs at his little belly.
“Yeah, okay. Want some pancakes?”
“Yummy!”
“Okay,” Liam sits up and stretches out his back. “Let’s go down to the diner. Just us buds, let your momma sleep some.”
