AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Grace felt they still weren’t communicating well, but for now, she didn’t want to go any further. Aidan did seem to be trying to see her point of view, which was a start. “I guess the best thing for me to do is to wait and see whether or not you want to discuss bringing Emma home with you.”
“Grace, I can’t come home without her. The lawyer says she needs a stable environment. We can give her that.”
“No, we can’t, until we resolve some of our own issues.”
“Grace, please give my plan a try. Emma needs to feel part of a family.”
Pain and hopelessness spurred her to hang up the phone without saying anything more. She wasn’t angry; she was completely discouraged by their conversation. No one mattered more to him than his daughter.
She thought back to that time five years ago when Aidan had gone to Spartanburg. His company had been finally hitting the big time, had been sought after by a lot of high-powered companies, and he’d been working day and night and sometimes weekends.
When he’d called to say he wouldn’t be home for a couple more days, she worried about him being overtired. She remembered that weekend he’d spent with Deidre because they had planned to go with friends to a community theater production of Wicked and she’d been looking forward to it. Not wanting to go alone, she’d given her tickets to another couple and had stayed home to work on a quilt.
If she’d had any idea Aidan was with another woman that weekend… And yet, what had changed? Five years later, she was once again waiting for Aidan, hoping that he would consider her feelings in the decision he was making.
And she was left out of it.
Despite being fed up with him, she waited, hoping that he’d call back, looking for an explanation for her quick hang-up.
In their entire married life, she had never hung up on him. Reason enough for him to call her back. The fact he didn’t showed her how completely and utterly preoccupied he was with fatherhood and what it meant to him.
With a sinking heart, she decided to go for a walk, anything to not feel so completely abandoned by the one person she’d loved all her adult life.
CHAPTER TEN
IN THE DAYS that followed their phone call, Aidan had few moments when he wasn’t thinking about Grace and how she’d behaved. He should have called her back, but he’d been too hurt by her attitude to find the words that might help them, and he feared that if he did call, they would fight. What they needed was some time together where they could face each other and work things out.
To fill the void of Grace, he’d thrown himself into Emma’s life while he waited for Lisa to return. He’d managed to get Emma off to kindergarten without a huge flood of tears, and he was navigating the whole which-book-to-read-at-night thing. It had seemed complicated in the beginning, but really came down to allowing Emma to deliberate in front of her bookshelves about which book he could read.
A neighbor had dropped by offering to help him if needed, and the postman had dropped off a parcel. Not knowing what to do with parcels addressed to Deidre, he opened the package to find half a dozen new outfits for Emma from an online store specializing in clothing for young girls. It was clear from the invoice that Deidre had spent an exorbitant amount of money. He looked them over, realizing that he had no idea what size Emma wore or where to buy clothes for her. For future reference, he made a note of the company and its address.
There had been moments in the past two days when he’d wanted to call Grace to find out why she’d hung up on him. He wanted to, but she’d been acting so weird lately he was frustrated. She only seemed to be able to see all this from her perspective and what she wanted, and he didn’t have the ability to cope with all of her concerns when his days were filled with learning to manage his daughter’s life.
