Looking for Miracles Read Online Free

fine boned. Her elbow fit in his cupped hand with so much room left over. He let go and looked away.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Sorry that he died, or sorry you had to be the one to tell me the truth about him?” Lori’s voice was sharp. Mike looked back into her face. “That wasn’t real nice, I know. But I also know that Gary wasn’t a real model citizen in the county. We didn’t exactly have a welcoming committee beating a path to our door when we moved in.”
    “Yeah, well, I’m still sorry he’s gone. No matter what he did for a living. I mean, he was probably a good daddy, and now—”
    “Don’t go there.” Lori’s voice was still sharp. “If I’m truthful with myself, he was an awful father. He never knew what to do with Tyler, and a new baby wouldn’t have made any difference. Finding out about her was probably what made him turn to the drug thing again. It seemed to be the only way he knew how to make money.”
    Lori’s tough facade couldn’t last. Mike told himself that, and as he did, he watched her crumble. Her arms beneath the baby shook, and her eyesfilled with tears. “Oh, Lord, what am I going to do?”
    Suddenly everything caught up with her and she lost what little color she had as silent tears coursed down her cheeks. Mike had no idea what to do besides sit there and pat her arm. He hoped that was okay, because it was the only thing he could do. So for a while they all sat quietly.
    The baby nursed. Lori wept. Mike patted her arm. Both of the adults were conscious of the presence of the two young men with the gurney, just beyond the cloth divider. Even this little oasis of calm they had created wouldn’t last long. As the last of the calm there trickled away, Mike heard the echoes of Lori’s wail in his mind. What were they going to do? The thought of leaving this young woman alone to deal with whatever fate handed her was unthinkable.
    Now the pittance the department had scraped together for Christmas wasn’t enough. For a brave young widow with a five-year-old, it might have been. But not now. Not with this baby, and Lori’s new knowledge of her desperate situation. The moment Tyler Harper had opened the door and let Mike into his home, he was hooked. And even for a problem this size, he intended to be part of the solution.

Chapter Three
    I t took Lori about an hour to get settled in her room on the maternity floor. Brisk nurses whisked her daughter away to be washed, weighed, measured and looked after. Once the baby was out of her arms, Lori sank back into the bed pillows. She was too exhausted and confused to think. Her body ached for a hot shower, but she knew what the nurses would say to that.
    She should be making phone calls. But to who? How long would it be until someone told her she had to leave the hospital? “I asked for a miracle,” she reminded God out loud. Maybe this looked like a miracle on the other side of heaven, but it sure didn’t look like one from under a white cotton blanket in a hospital bed.

    Lori let the crisp sheets and firm pillows envelop her. Okay, time to take stock. There were miracles here. She’d had the baby in the hospital, surrounded by doctors and nurses, instead of alone in the trailer or in the ambulance on the road. And her daughter was beautiful and healthy, as far as Lori could see.
    So the immediate past was full of miracles. As for the near future, Lori wasn’t so sure. She felt very fragile just now. Where was her hope right now?
    She let out a little laugh. Hope? That was all she could have right now, wasn’t it? There certainly wasn’t any money around. Or much solid that she could put her hands on. There was a rickety trailer whose rent was paid for maybe two more months. And a rattletrap heap of a car Gary’s former employer had been bullied into signing over the title on. Maybe that was her ticket out of this mess, at least for the time being.
    Lori dreaded going back to that trailer in the middle of nowhere. It was bad