Chapter 29

Rachael stood by the door and listened to her daughter's soft purrs while she slept.

Even in her sleep,she still wore that frown she'd had permanently plastered across her face upon her arrival back home.

Her daughter was hurt and bruised. She was now a depleted version of her old self.

Macy stirred and turned her face around;away from Rachael's scrutiny.

Since her return,Macy had refused to speak to her about anything. They barely even talked and when they did,it would be her,Rachael, doing the talking;trying to show her concern for her daughter by helping her do stuff and Macy managed to turn away from every of her offer to help. Even now in her sleep,she was still turning away from her.

Rachael smiled;a bitter smile that bore all the guilt she's carried around for years.

Her daughter hated her.

She knew the reason why but would never be able to change that.

She had had her chances but she let them slip.

She had in her quest to serve the church,thrown her only daughter away.

As a child,they had dragged Macy to every church program and convention but as she grew older,she began to express her dislike on the way things were run.

During her adolescent years,Macy had always hated Rachael's service to the church,arguing that it drew her away from her family.

She had gone from the meek child who followed mummy about wherever she wanted to be to a young girl who screamed series of 'The church,The church,The church. What about us?' 'Do you even care about us or will it always be about the church?' 'I hate that the church of God which is supposed to bring peace to families is the same thing tearing ours apart'.

The days when Macy would cry,scream and throw tantrums as soon as a sleep-out-of-the-house church program was announced had been haunting her senses lately.

Macy would beg and beg her to stay back and spend Christmas and Thanksgiving with her and her dad but she had excuses why she couldn't readily packed up and waiting.

The guilt gnawed at her.

Her daughter had spent all her teenage years begging to be properly loved and now she didn't care about that love anymore, no matter how desperate Rachael was to give it to her.

She pulled the curtains down to keep the sun from shinning directly against her daughter's sleeping form and went to sit beside her in the bed.

She moved the hair away from her face and her heart broke for her poor child.

There were lines in her face. Lines that suggested just how much she'd suffered through the past months.

She shouldn't have switched off on Macy when she'd told her about the ****.

Now that she thought about it clearly. Macy had shown that no matter what was going on in their lives,she still loved her. Telling her about the **** incident had been her way of showing her that she still trusted her enough to take charge and take care of the situation, as a mother.

But she hadn't taken charge. The only charge she'd taken had been against her own daughter.

Would she be able to make things right? To get her daughter to forgive her?

Wasn't it too late now?

She's tried so hard already and yet had recorded zero success.

Macy would never forgive her but she'd die trying.

She loved her daughter.

No matter how badly she'd taken care of her family in the past,she loved them.

When Macy had suddenly disappeared, she'd felt the world crash down on her.

Her husband had blamed her for 'driving' their daughter away.

She wished she could go back now,so she'd react differently to things but she couldn't. The only way to make things right was to 'bring' her daughter back.

***

Daniel examined the papers before him and sighed in exasperation.

So much waste of time!

The instruction had been simple. Find him her address.

What was all these paperwork?

He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed the private investigator he'd hired.

'I only requested for her address not who the district officer of her local church was'. He bit his lips to keep himself from shouting.

'If you'd calm down a little bit Mr. Williamson, I'll explain things to you'. The investigator's calm voice washed over him through the other end and his shoulders slumped in self defeat.

'I'm listening'. He rasped.

'The report was arranged according to the ones gotten first. I thought you wouldn't want to miss out on anything. Besides,the address is in the last page of the papers as it was one of the last information my team and I were able to get...'.

'I think that will be all for now,Pete...'. He said impatiently,cutting the presumably long speech short. '... I'll call you if there'd be anything else'. He added almost immediately,wanting not to sound too rude.

He had better things to do now than sit and listen to longs talks.

Impatience had become a dear companion to him since he'd arrived from the hospital and had met Macy's absence.

The emptiness in the house had collided with the one in his heart and together both had left him chilled to his bone marrow.

There was not a day that went by without him thinking of her.

He longed and yearned for her.

It was like he took a deadly poison and only Macy was the antidote;one that he'd die if he didn't get immediately.

His Mexico show had been postponed, together with the subsequent ones,after the accident,to allow him time to properly heal.

He'd waited for her.

Through his healing process, he'd waited.

He'd found himself going to her room all the time to catch the faint remnants of her perfume.

It was like a drug and it soothed his soul.

The few weeks he'd been at home,under the care of his sister had been like years in abyss.

Not that she wasn't treating him like a delicate chinaware. In fact,Gracie had pampered him like a cracked egg.

She came every now and then to check up on him and to make sure he was eating properly.

But all that hadn't made him any less miserable. It in fact added to his pain because as soon as his sister left after each visit,the cold emptiness of Macy's absence usually descended on him once more.

Bryan had seen just how miserable he had been and had offered once again to have Macy looked at but he'd stubbornly refused,arguing that Macy would come back to him eventually. He'd been content on waiting for her.

And as soon as he resumed work in Mexico, he'd continued waiting.

He'd waited while hoping...hoping that one day a gentle knock,her gentle knock would sound on his door and he'd open it up to her angelic face but it never happened.

He'd waited enough. Now was to time to take action and the action was to seek her out because he'd be damned if he let himself go to bed another night without seeing her;Not when she was just a few miles away from him.

He'd beg on his knees if Macy demanded that. Hell! He'd do anything to get her back.

With his mind made up and his hand holding unto the paper on a death grip,he exited his suite.