by Terri Reed
She tucked the blanket more securely around Aidan. Heartbreaking joy squeezed her chest, bringing tears to her eyes. She touched the downy softness of his dark hair. If anything were ever to happen to him, she didn’t think she could take it.
“Oh, God, if You’re real, please watch over this little life,” she whispered with a small hiccuping sob.
Aidan stirred. She quickly backed away to keep from disturbing him further. He needed his sleep. She did, too, but sleep had become hard to find ever since Aidan’s birth. She was terrified he’d need her in the middle of the night. She’d read all the baby books she could find and still feared that something bad would happen.
Being a parent was the most nerve-racking thing she’d ever experienced and she could only imagine that her anxiety would grow along with Aidan.
The sound of the phone ringing in the living room made her wince. Quickly, she left Aidan’s room, keeping the door cracked open, and rushed to answer the phone.
“Hello?”
Silence greeted her.
Trista frowned. “Hello? Is someone there?”
Straining to listen, she swore she heard the sound of muffled sobs as if the person on the other end of the line were trying to keep their tears quiet. Then the line went dead.
An eerie chill crept up Trista’s spine as she replaced the receiver. She didn’t know who had her number other than Kelly, Ross and her office. Fearing something had happened to her brother or his wife, she quickly snatched up the receiver and dialed their home number.
“Hi,” her brother’s booming voice intoned.
“Is everything okay?” Trista asked, skipping the pleasantries of greeting. She noted the blinking light of the answering machine. She’d forgotten to check it again when she’d come home from work.
“Yes. Why?”
She could hear the wariness in his voice. She couldn’t blame him with all the problems that had plagued the adoption agency of late. First the discovery of so many adoption records having been falsified over the years. Then Kelly received that threatening note at the Fourth of July celebration, and less than three weeks later the offices had been broken into and set on fire.
And just last month, Ross’s SUV’s front windshield had been shattered and another note left behind, demanding they stop investigating the phony records. “Is Kelly there? Is she okay?”
“She is. Trista, what’s going on?”
“Nothing.” She rolled her tense shoulders and shifted the receiver to the other side of her head. Her sweatshirt bunched up as she moved. She tugged at it. “I just received the strangest call. When I answered, there was no response, but I’m sure I heard crying.”
“Hmm. Do you think Mom could have called you?”
Trista scoffed. “No. She can’t even remember my name. How would she know where to call me?”
“I have no idea. But Alzheimer’s is a strange disease.”
A disease that was hereditary. A knot formed in her stomach. “Yes, well…be that as it may, I don’t think it was Mom.”
“It was probably a wrong number. I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Whoever it was will call back if it was important,” Ross commented. “Kelly says you’re coming over Saturday to cook dinner.”
“Yep. Kelly requested lasagna. Will you make one of your killer salads?”
“Of course. Hey, I was thinking of driving out to visit Mom on Sunday after church. Will you come?”
Trista closed her eyes as guilt and resentment warred in her heart. Ross was so good at visiting their mother in the nursing home outside of Richmond. For Trista, the visits were torture. Michelle Van Zandt barely recognized her only daughter.
The last time Trista had gone to the home, Michelle had become so upset because she’d thought Trista was there to steal her husband away.
Henry Van Zandt had died from liver failure years ago. That their mother still worried her husband was cheating on her only served to instill in Trista a loathing to ever go down the matrimonial road again.
After her disaster of a marriage to Kevin and watching her mother’s decline, Trista vowed to concentrate on her son to make sure he didn’t grow up making the same mistakes his family made. She’d even bought a book on how to prevent Alzheimer’s, for herself and Aidan.
“Trista?”
“Uh, I don’t know. We’ll see.” That was as much commitment as she could give at the moment.
Ross sighed. “We can talk about it more on Saturday.”
Perfect. Now she was going to have to endure his lecture on how she should forgive their parents for the past and how their mother needed them now. She was well practiced in tuning out her brother’s lectures. “I’ll see you Saturday.”
She hung up and pushed the play button on the answering machine.
“Hi, babe. I need to talk with you. Call me, okay?”
Her ex-husband’s voice filled the room and she clenched her teeth. With a sharp jab of her finger she deleted the message.
What did he want now? He’d given up total custody of their son in the divorce, in exchange for the condo and all their possessions. She didn’t have anything else for him to take.
Restless and edgy, she cleaned the updated kitchen, straightened up Aidan’s plethora of toys strewn around the apartment and channel surfed on the twenty-inch TV that Ross had bought for her as a welcoming gift. When that didn’t relax her, she pulled out her laptop and set it on the pine coffee table. She could at least work.
Once the computer was ready she stared at the screen. She didn’t want to work. Instead, she surfed the Internet looking for fun things to do with Aidan around town.
A local farm had a pumpkin patch and hayride day coming up. That would be good.
Hmm. Story time at the new bookstore downtown. Aidan loved listening to stories.
She drummed her fingers on the table. Ugh! She needed a manicure.
Maybe Kelly was right. She’d been working too hard and not taking care of herself. She wished she had a friend in town but that was another thing her marriage to Kevin had ruined.
He’d so monopolized every moment, getting upset when she wanted to spend time with her friends, that she’d eventually let the friendships fade. She didn’t even know how to get hold of any of her old college gang.
She needed to link up with others who were in the same boat.
Single and lonely.
She frowned. She wasn’t lonely. She had Aidan. She just needed someone to talk to.
What was the name of that online group Kelly mentioned?
The Kingdom Room.
Heart pounding with anticipation, she went to the Web site. She hesitated a moment before bolstering her courage and registering. After filling in the blanks and choosing a screen name, she was in.
For an hour she lurked, reading the posts from the last few days. Men and women both conversed about various aspects of being single. A few mentioned their children. Nothing overly personal or uncomfortable here.
Okay, this was doable.
She wasn’t looking for a romantic encounter, just friends to understand.
With a deep breath, she jumped into the current thread of conversation, hoping to find someone out there to connect with.
Yet, a little voice inside her head taunted her—only more hurt would be her reward.
Chapter Two
By Tuesday morning Scott’s e-mail in-box was bursting.
He stared at the amount of posts. What was going on?
After booting up the computer when he first walked into his office, he’d gone in search of some tea. Setting his mug of Earl Grey on the marble coaster on his mahogany desk, he slipped into his fabric-covered chair.
Normally, he took a moment to let the soothing hues of blues and brown in the office soothe his mind before turning his thoughts to work. But the staggering number of e-mails held his attention.
He clicked into the in-box and began to scroll through the e-mails. They were all addressed to Called2serve. A dawning realiz
ation clenched his gut as he read the posts. Someone, Naomi he was sure, had registered him to The Kingdom Room and added him to their e-mail loop.
He didn’t have time for this.
His father had called just as he was leaving the apartment he rented in a private residence east of Main Street. The phone call had been strange. His father had asked if Scott would say a few words at his parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. Scott could hear the emotion in his father’s voice and it left Scott feeling off-kilter.
Joseph Crosby had always been as solid as a hundred-year-old oak tree and just as unbendable.
His father was a family practitioner in Richmond. He’d had a long career and a great reputation. Everyone knew Doc Crosby. Candice Crosby was a star in her own right as a skilled surgeon. Scott and his sibs never lacked for medical care.
Scott’s sister, Elise, followed their father into medicine and was now a pediatrician. Her husband was a contractor and had built their home as well as Scott’s two brothers’ homes.
John and Kyle Crosby had veered from medicine and both became lawyers. An honorable profession according to their father.
And then there was Scott. The quiet one. The underachiever. The assistant pastor.
Another e-mail popped up.
Scott shook his head to clear his thoughts. He really didn’t have time for an Internet singles group. He needed to focus on organizing the upcoming Thanksgiving Day dinner for the homeless.
But curiosity got the better of him; he couldn’t help quickly scanning the e-mails before deleting them. Some were interesting threads of conversation regarding the holidays and the difficulty of being single when so many people seemed to expect couples at gatherings.
One post in particular grabbed his attention.
Hi, I’m new here and am hoping to connect with others who might understand. I’ve been divorced for a short time, but the marriage was over long before the official decree, I just didn’t know it. So I’m starting over in a new city and between work and my baby, I don’t have time to make friends. I’d been married since my second year of college. It’s strange to be alone, especially as the holidays approach. I do have some family, but they have their own lives. I don’t want to be a burden. Any suggestions? Is the emptiness I feel just the lack of a spouse? Is it normal? Will it pass?
Momof1
Scott sat back. These answers couldn’t be found online or anywhere else on this earth. Naomi may have added him to The Kingdom Room for her own reasons, but God obviously had reasons, as well.
Scott didn’t believe in coincidences. The Momof1 needed a guide to lead her to the truth. To the fulfillment she craved.
Only doing it via the Internet seemed so…cold and distant. So unlike God.
But in an age of electronic devices…God met people where they were. And Scott would serve any way God wanted him to.
Scott closed his eyes. Lord, give me the words You would have me say.
A moment later, he began to type.
It was late in the night on Wednesday when Trista remembered to check her e-mail. The past couple of days had been hectic. The senior Benson had been pleased with the work she’d done on a small claims case that had settled well and had informed her he wanted her on a new case that was a complicated land issue between the county and their client.
So she’d spent every spare moment she could studying the land laws of Virginia and specifically their county.
Now that Aidan had gone to bed, she propped her feet up on the coffee table, squirmed into a comfortable position on the secondhand sofa and fired up her laptop.
Whoa! These Kingdom Room people had a lot of free time. She couldn’t believe the amount of e-mail in her in-box.
She started with the first response from her post and slowly made her way through the quagmire of words. Some made her laugh, others she didn’t know what to make of.
One man sent her his picture and asked for a date. She quickly deleted that. It creeped her out that some one would ask for a date without knowing anything about the other person. For all the guy knew, she could be a serial killer.
Several women said she was nuts to be feeling anything but glad to be single. Those posts made Trista wonder what had happened in their marriages. She and Kevin hadn’t been very happy together, at least not the last few years, but she still missed having someone to talk to at the end of the day. Someone to share the ups and the downs with.
There were suggestions of places she could go to meet people, mostly exotic locales. Yeah, right! She had a baby to take care of, she couldn’t go gallivanting all over the world.
Books were recommended on dealing with divorce and single parenthood. Links to support groups were offered. A few commiserated on the emptiness and loneliness of finding themselves single after so many years of marriage.
Several said they’d be praying for her. She rolled her eyes at the clichéd sentiment. If only life’s problems were fixed so easily.
“What did you expect?” she asked herself aloud. This was a Christian Web site. These people believed in the power of prayer. It certainly couldn’t hurt to have them praying for her.
Trista wrote back to a few ladies that she felt a connection with, giving a brief glimpse into her life, yet careful not to reveal anything too personal.
A person just never knew who she was actually “talking” to online. Hadn’t she just seen a news show about online predators?
Then one e-mail snagged her interest.
Momof1
Has your family said that you’re a burden to them? If not, don’t assume that’s how they feel. One way of finding connections would be to join a women’s group in your area. As to your question about emptiness…people are not only physical and emotional beings with a need for food and companionship, but humans are spiritual beings with a need for God. How is your relationship with Him?
Called2serve
Trista stared at the screen. It wasn’t an unreasonable question that Called2serve asked. Presumably everyone on this site would believe in God. And it wasn’t that she didn’t believe in Him. It was just…where had God been when she was growing up and needed Him?
That was a question she was afraid to ask because she might find out she was right. She wasn’t worth God’s time.
Scott had thought he’d scared off Momof1 when a day had passed without a reply. But there was a message from her in his in-box on Thursday evening. He clicked on the post.
Called2serve
You ask how my relationship is with God. I’m trying to discover that amid all the turmoil of my divorce.
Momof1
Compassion filled Scott’s chest. He couldn’t imagine the pain of divorce. The death of a marriage. The shattered dreams.
The only experience he had with matters of the heart had been Sylvia. They had met during high school in the choir at church and shared a love of music and God. At least he’d thought they had until she’d walked away from him and the life he’d offered.
Her rejection had hurt, but had faded quickly after he’d entered seminary. Since then, he hadn’t met anyone whom he wanted to let into his heart.
He offered Momof1 what solace he could even though he felt very inadequate.
Thursday night.
Momof1
I don’t know the circumstance of your situation, but I do know God loves you. His comfort and peace are gifts He wants to give you.
Called2serve
Friday Morning.
Called2serve
How do I receive these gifts?
Momof1
Friday night.
Momof1
There’s nothing complicated about it, even though we’d like to think there is. Open your heart and mind to Him. Ask Him silently or aloud to show you His love, to come into your life. He so longs to. Then you wait and watch. He’ll reveal Himself. Sometimes in small ways, sometimes in big, dramatic ways. But you’ll know. And you’ll feel the peace and comfort like a gentle blanket of protection.
Called2serve
Trista entered The Kingdom Room on Friday night to discover a chat room was now available. She’d decided to stop corresponding with Called2serve since the direction of their conversation was heading into waters she wasn’t ready to navigate. Asking God into her life?
She was too afraid He’d say no.
It took a moment to acclimate to the format of the chat, but soon she was in on the discussion of the latest blockbuster movie. She hadn’t seen it, but asked if it was worth the time and trouble to go since she wasn’t into action films.
She was surprised to see Called2serve enter the room. But Called2serve didn’t acknowledge her, instead wrote that he wanted to see the movie and planned to go on Sunday afternoon.
Several other people who hadn’t seen it yet said they too would make a point of seeing the movie over the weekend at their local theaters and then the discussion could resume.
All she could commit to was a quick, I’ll think about it.
That earned her a smiley face from Called2serve.
For some reason that silly little yellow icon on her computer screen made her laugh.
Saturday morning arrived with a fresh fall of snow. Outside, a soft blanket of white covered the town of Chestnut Grove and a crisp freshness in the air brought anticipation of a cold winter. Scott stomped his snow-covered boots on the dry pavement beneath the awning of The Reading Rainbow Palace, downtown’s newest bookstore and café.
Inside the double doors, warmth seeped beneath the collar of his coat. He quickly shed the down parka, draping it on a peg bolted to the wall alongside a dozen others.
The place was hopping with mothers and children vying for spots near the center rise where a woman in a green vintage dress sat waiting. In her hands, she held a book and a puppet.