Page 33 of The Soldier's Homecoming

Because what was the point in Gabby getting used to calling for her mother if she wasn’t going to be here?

She sucked in a big breath. Even so, she wanted to be the one to comfort her. “Honey, I’m here. Mommy’s here.”

Was it so bad to want to care for her own daughter?

Gabby pulled her arms away and pushed her palms down flat into the bed. When she looked up, her brown eyes were like saucers, glimmering with dampness, her cheeks pink, hair mussed up all around her face.

“But I don’t want you,” she sobbed. “I want my dad.”

Penny’s heart physically shattered into a million shards Tears filled her own eyes, drowned her tear ducts.

“Everything okay down here?”

Gabby began to wail, the noise subsiding only when Daniel flopped down on the bed beside her and cradled her tiny body against his large one.

Penny couldn’t watch. Couldn’t deal with the pain of knowing her daughter didn’t want her.

Her husband hadn’t wanted her, had been unfaithful when she needed him the most, and now her daughter didn’t want her, didn’t need her, either.

“Pen...”

She shook her head, glaring at Daniel with tear-filled eyes even though she knew he didn’t deserve her anger. It wasn’t his fault that Gabby wanted him and not her.

He couldn’t help the way Gabby was behaving. And neither could Gabby. She was used to her father,loved her father, and had relied on him for months while her mother had been a memory, someone to look forward to seeing again one day.

These past months, Daniel had been her everything.

Daniel had been Gabby’s entire world.

“Penny, stay,” he whispered, chin resting on Gabby’s head.

No. She felt like an intruder just being here.

Like she had no place here anymore.

“I need some fresh air.” She expelled the words before the need to cry overwhelmed her so much she doubted she’d be able to speak. Would be able to keep her body upright.

Daniel’s eyes pleaded with her as she walked backward then fled down the hall.

But she didn’t need comforting, she needed to be alone.

Daniel gently easedhis arm from beneath Gabby’s shoulders, holding his breath as he waited to see if she would wake.

She didn’t, her body relaxed and floppy with slumber as he tucked the covers up to just under her chin.

He dropped a kiss to her cheek and tiptoed out of the room, his legs aching from the tail end of a cramp in his calf muscles after being tucked up on the small bed with his daughter.

Now he needed to find Penny.

He didn’t know where she’d gone, what she was feeling, what he would even say to her when he found her.

But one thing was sure—he needed to talk to her.

Because she was alone now and he knew what being alone felt like.

Because he’d been so alone when she’d left, had been on the verge of having a breakdown from suddenly being back home, a single dad, having lost the camaraderie he’d enjoyed his entire adult life being in the navy. From walking away from what heloved—being in the air, the feeling of being on top of the world in a helicopter.

And no matter how long they put this off, there were words that had to be said. He’d wanted to delay it, to stall this conversation for at least a day or two, but now he didn’t have a choice.

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