Faith sent me a tender smile. “Love never comes too late.”

Thirty-Nine

Grace

I ran into the bathroom and dropped to my knees. I vomited so violently I was sure my guts had to be coming up with it.

Everything. Everything.

Tears burned and stung where they dripped down my cheeks, and my body heaved and clutched. A tight sob wheezed out of my throat while my insides squeezed in the most excruciating kind of pain.

I clung to the toilet, knowing I had nothing left.

No ammunition. No fight.

How could I fail my children this way?

I guessed I really had been a fool. Because I was absolutely staggered that Ian had just walked. Turned his back on me in the moment I needed him the most. Maybe I did have the worst intuition when it came to men.

But I’d believed in him so wholeheartedly that, when he brushed me off, it felt like the cruelest sort of blow.

Total devastation.

Ravaged by anguish.

How could I have hope when the man who was supposed to advocate for us believed there was no hope left?

Another roil of nausea slammed me, and I heaved again, bringing up nothing, my stomach expanding with the void.

Sobs ripped and tore, and I didn’t have the strength to lift my head when footsteps shuffled in. And I didn’t think things could get any worse until I felt my grandmother’s heart shatter right there.

Her grief mine and mine hers.

“Oh, my girl.”

A soft hand was laid on my back, stroking down my spine, voice coaxing in its soft timber. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Tell me what happened.”

I clung tighter to the cold porcelain, the only relief for my skin that felt as if it were on fire. “I wasn’t enough, Gramma. I wasn’t enough. My babies . . . Oh, God, my babies.”

I doubted she could understand a word I said, everything fragmented and broken.

An extension of me.

She hadn’t been home when I’d stumbled through the door after Ian had driven off without so much as a backward glance. I’d originally intended to tell her about what had happened with the kids with Ian at my side. I’d envisioned we’d gather at her table and together we’d form a plan.

I could feel her trying to be strong, but her own torment shone through, her voice growing craggy and thin. “Reed got to them?”

My face pinched in agony, and I nodded, sniffling, raking my forearm across my face in an attempt to see through the bleariness. Moaning, I pushed myself back and flopped against the tub. “He said he came to pick up the kids yesterday and they weren’t here. That going to the judge was the only thing he could do. Of course, that judge just so happened to be Jonathan.”

Anger gusted from her being. “He did nothing of the sort.”

I could only nod again. There was no surprise in hearing the bastard had lied about that, too.

It wasn’t as if it wasn’t obvious that he’d been having me followed this whole time. That my private life had not been private at all.

But it stung, just the same, that the man could spew lies and blasphemies and claim it as truth and the world would take it as fact.

“It doesn’t matter. The only thing that does is that my kids are gone, and I have no idea how I’m going to get them back.”

She reached out and tipped up my chin. “You dry your eyes, pick yourself up, and remember you have the power to go after what’s right.”

Helplessness bled free. “I’m not sure that I possess that power anymore.”

“Nonsense. Of course, you do. Your last name might still legally be Dearborne, but you’re a MacNally at heart. We might get beaten down, but we always get back up.”

Unable to fully focus, I blinked at her through the haze of misery. “And sometimes we make mistakes, Gramma. Terrible mistakes that are selfish and stupid, and we ruin any chance that we had, and once we realize it, there is absolutely nothing we can do to take them back.”

Her gaze deepened, and she inclined her head. “Are we talking about that looker of yours?”

Her words were nothing but a jagged blade driven into my side. “He’s not mine.”

“You sure about that? Because it definitely seemed that way to me when he came for you in the middle of the night a couple of days ago. Not many men step out like that, not unless they’ve already put their heart on the line.”

“We put everything on the line. Both of us. And we both lost. We lost everything.” My voice was a wisp.

She brushed her knuckles through the tears that blanketed my cheeks.

Unchecked and unending.

“Don’t you know the bleakest times are making way for the brightest sunrises?”

“I’m not sure the sun can rise when there’s only darkness left.”

Her head shook. “The sun always comes. It might tarry, but it will shine. Now that’s a gift we can always count on.”

Tags: A.L. Jackson Confessions of the Heart Romance
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