Season of Blessing

by Beverly LaHaye

  Also by Beverly LaHaye and Terri Blackstock

  Seasons Under Heaven

  Showers in Season

  Times and Seasons

  by Terri Blackstock

  Emerald Windows

  Cape Refuge

  Cape Refuge

  Southern Storm

  River’s Edge

  Breaker’s Reef

  Newpointe 911

  Private Justice

  Shadow of Doubt

  Trial by Fire

  Word of Honor

  Line of Duty

  Sun Coast Chronicles

  Evidence of Mercy

  Justifiable Means

  Ulterior Motives

  Presumption of Guilt

  Second Chances

  Never Again Good-bye

  When Dreams Cross

  Blind Trust

  Broken Wings

  Novellas

  Seaside

  ZONDERVAN

  Season of Blessing

  Copyright © 2002 by Beverly LaHaye and Terri Blackstock

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

  ePub Edition June 2009 ISBN: 0-310-86389-9

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  LaHaye, Beverly

  Season of blessing / by Beverly LaHaye and Terri Blackstock.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-10: 0-310-24298-3 (softcover)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-310-24298-7 (softcover)

  1. Breast—Cancer—Patients—Fiction. 2. Cancer in women—Fiction.

  3. Missionaries—Fiction. 4. Friendship—Fiction. I. Blackstock, Terri, 1957-

  II. Title.

  PS3562.A3144 S425 2002

  813’.54—dc21

  {B} 2002009097

  * * *

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.

  Interior design by Melissa Elenbaas

  This book is dedicated to cancer patients everywhere,

  and to those whose lives have been altered because

  someone they love has fought this disease…

  and to the Great Physician,

  who sometimes cures here on earth…

  and sometimes heals by taking us home.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-One

  About the Publisher

  Share Your Thoughts

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Dr. Bobby Graham and Dr. Sharon Martin for being our consultants on this book. Your help was invaluable, and we couldn’t have done it without you.

  We’d also like to thank our agent, Greg Johnson, for the vision he had for a “Best Years” series, which ultimately evolved into these four books. He also had the vision to introduce us to each other in hopes of forming a partnership. That partnership has worked beautifully, and we’ve both been blessed by it.

  And we must thank our editors at Zondervan—Dave Lambert, Lori Vanden Bosch, and Bob Hudson—for their tireless work to make sure these stories are the best they can be. And thanks to Sue Brower, who is responsible for letting our readers know that the books are out. This whole team does a wonderful job.

  And finally, thanks to you, our reader, for giving us your time and attention as we spun these tales. Thanks for all your letters of encouragement, and for sharing tears and laughter with us as we’ve grown with Brenda, Tory, Cathy, and Sylvia.

  May all your crises be blessings, and may you have many, many, many “best moments.”

  I will sing to the Lord all my life;

  I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.

  PSALM 104:33

  CHAPTER

  One

  Sylvia Bryan had always considered the words early detection to have more to do with others than herself. She’d never had anything that needed early detecting, and if she had any say in the matter—which apparently sh
e did not—she would just as soon jump to the best possible conclusion, and proclaim the lump in her breast to be a swollen gland or a benign cyst. Then she could get back to her work in Nicaragua and stop being so body-conscious.

  But Harry had insisted on a complete physical because of her fatigue and weakness, and had sent her home from the mission field to undergo a battery of tests that befitted a woman of her age. She had been insulted by that.

  “I hope I don’t have to remind you that you’re a man of my age,” she told him, “so you don’t have to go treating me like I’m over-the-hill at fifty-four.”

  Harry had bristled. “I’m just saying that there are things you’re at greater risk for, and I want to rule all of them out. You’re not well, Sylvia. Something’s wrong.”

  She’d had to defer to him, because deep down she’d been concerned about her condition, as well. It wasn’t like her to be so tired. She had chalked it up to the brutal August heat in Nicaragua, but she’d weathered last summer there without a hitch. For most of her life she’d had an endless supply of energy. Now she had trouble making it to noon without having to lie down.

  So he’d sent her home to Breezewood, Tennessee, to see an internist at the hospital where he’d practiced as a cardiologist for most of his life. After just a few tests, he’d diagnosed her with a bad case of anemia, which explained her condition.

  But then he’d gone too far and found a lump in her breast.

  She’d gone for a mammogram then, certain that the lump was nothing more than a swollen gland.

  The radiologist had asked to see her in his office.

  Jim Montgomery was one of Harry’s roommates in medical school, and he came into the room holding her film. He’d always had an annoying way of pleating his brows and looking deeply concerned, whether he really was or not. He wore that expression now as he quietly took his seat behind his desk and clipped the mammogram film onto the light box behind him.

  Sylvia wasn’t in the mood for theatrics. “Okay, Jim. I know you want to be thorough and everything for Harry’s sake, but my problem has already been diagnosed. I’m badly anemic, which explains all my fatigue. So you can relax and quit looking for some terminal disease.”

  Jim turned on the light box and studied the breast on the film. With his pencil, he pointed to a white area. “Sylvia, you have a suspicious mass in your left breast.”

  Sylvia stiffened. “What does that mean…‘a suspicious mass’?”

  “It means that there’s a tumor there. It’s about three centimeters. Right here in the upper outer aspect of your left breast.” He made an imaginary circle over the film with his pencil.

  Sylvia got up and moved closer to the film, staring at the offensive blob. She studied it objectively, as if looking at some other woman’s X ray. It couldn’t be hers. Wouldn’t she have known if something that ominous lay hidden in her breast tissue? “Are you sure you didn’t get my film mixed up with someone else’s?”

  “Of course I’m sure.” He tipped his head back and studied the mass through the bottom of his glasses. “Sylvia, do you do self breast exams?”

  She felt as if she’d been caught neglecting her homework. “Well, I used to try. But mine are pretty dense, and I always felt lumps that turned out to be nothing. I finally gave it up.”

  “Not a good idea. Especially with your history.”

  She knew he was right. Her mother had died of breast cancer when Sylvia was twenty-four. She should have known better than to neglect those self-exams. But she had been so busy for the last couple of years, and hadn’t had that much time to think about herself.

  “Well, I have tried to have mammograms every year since I turned forty…” Her voice trailed off. “Except for the last couple of years when I’ve been out of the country.”

  “Well, it seems that the last couple of years were what really mattered.”

  She looked at him, trying to read the frown on his face. “But it’s okay, isn’t it? You can tell if it looks malignant…”

  He looked down at her chart and made a notation. “You need to get a biopsy tomorrow, if possible.”

  The fact that he’d averted his eyes alarmed her. “You just evaded my question, Jim. And you know Harry is going to want to know. Does it look malignant to you or not?”

  He leaned back in his chair, crossing his hands over his stomach. The frown wrinkling his brow didn’t look quite so melodramatic now.

  She set her mouth. “Be straight with me, Jim. You see these things all the time. I want the truth.”

  “All right, Sylvia.” He sighed and took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. “It does have the characteristics of a malignancy.”

  For a moment she just stood there, wishing she hadn’t pressed the issue. Malignancy meant cancer, and cancer meant surgery, and then chemotherapy and radiation and her hair falling out and pain and depression and hospice care and death.

  Her mouth went dry, and she wished she’d brought her bottled water in from the car. She wondered what time it was. She had to get to the cleaners before it closed.

  Her hands felt like ice, so she slid them into the pockets of her blazer to warm them. “Come on, Jim. I don’t have cancer. I’ve been tired, that’s all, and they already figured out it’s from anemia. There is no possibility that I have breast cancer. None. Zilch.”

  “Sylvia, you have to get this biopsied as soon as possible.”

  “Okay.” She looked down at her blazer and dusted a piece of lint off. “Fine. I’ll get the biopsy, but I’m not worried about it at all.”

  “Good.” But he still wore the frown that said it wasn’t good. He turned and jerked the film out of the light box. “And you’re probably right. But if it is cancer, you may have detected it early enough that you’ll have an excellent prognosis.”

  As Sylvia drove home, she realized that, along with early detection, she hated the word prognosis. It was not a word she’d ever expected to have uttered about her own body. This was just a minor inconvenience, she thought. She did not have time to be sick. The Lord knew how hard she worked for him in Nicaragua, and how much the children in the orphanage there needed her. They were probably already grieving her absence.

  The Lord surely wouldn’t cut her work off when she’d been bearing so much fruit. He cut off barren branches and pruned those who needed to bear more. But when she spent her life giving and serving, wouldn’t he want her work to continue?

  So she determined to push the news out of her mind until she’d actually had the biopsy. She knew in her heart that the mass was benign.

  And if the biopsy proved her wrong, she would deal with it then.

  CHAPTER

  Two

  Brenda Dodd wiped the white paint off of her hands and threw the rag across the plywood limousine. She hit Daniel—her sixteen-year-old—in the face.

  “No fair! I wasn’t looking.”

  He flung it across the prop and hit Leah across the forehead. She slung it at Rachel, her twin sister, leaving a smudge of paint across her cheek. Rachel tossed it at Joseph.

  Preoccupied, twelve-year-old Joseph hardly noticed. He stood in front of his father, watching him sand the steering wheel that would go inside the car. “It seems like an awful lot of work to go to, Dad, if you’re not even going to come to church and watch the play Wednesday night.”

  Brenda’s smile faded, and she looked at her husband. David had that tight, shut-down look that he got whenever the subject of church came up.

  “I don’t mind.”

  “But, Dad, I’m the star. I play the Good Samaritan who drives into town in his limousine and helps the guy who got mugged. How can you not want to see that?”

  David cleared his throat. A cool breeze blew through their yard, ruffling his wavy red hair, but he still had a thin sheen of sweat above his lip. “Son, you know how I feel about church.”

  “I know, Dad, but it’s not like something terrible will happen to you if you come.”

  “I’m not a hypocrite.”


  “But I want you to see me. I’ve practiced so hard. And I’m good, aren’t I, Mom?”

  Brenda knew better than to get involved, but she couldn’t let her child down. “He is good, David.”

  “It’s not that he’s good.” Fourteen-year-old Leah slopped more paint on her shorts and bare legs than she did on the car. “It’s just that he’s such a ham. He’s a terrible show-off.”

  “I am not.”

  “Are too.” Rachel came to sit beside Leah. “I thought they were going to have to pry that microphone out of your hand the other night at rehearsal. They wanted you to sing one verse, but you sang three.”

  Joseph snickered. “Hey, I felt moved by the Holy Spirit, okay?”

  Rachel laughed. “Yeah, moved to stand in the limelight just a little longer.”

  “Okay, guys.” Brenda got up and went to the other paint can sitting on the picnic table. “Leave Joseph alone. He’s a talented performer, which is why he was chosen to play the Good Samaritan.”

  Joseph struck a pose. “And Dad isn’t even going to see.”

  “Enough, Joseph.” David sanded the steering wheel, blew the sawdust off.

  Joseph shrugged and grabbed a paintbrush and stuck it in the black paint.

  Brenda winced as he dripped it across the lawn. “This paint’s for the windows, Joseph, and we might not have enough. Be careful not to let it drip.”

  “I won’t.” With great care, he began to outline the windows. “But really, Dad. I know you don’t want to come to church because you don’t believe in Jesus, but I don’t see why you couldn’t just fake it every now and then.”

  David sanded harder. “I don’t fake things, Joseph. You don’t fake your feelings just to please other people.”

  “But why don’t you believe? I mean, it’s just so obvious to me.”

  David shot Brenda a look. “Joseph, could we drop it?”

  “But why, Dad? You always say that we should ask questions when we don’t understand.”

  Daniel turned to see his father’s reaction. Rachel and Leah stopped painting. Brenda said a silent prayer that their son’s probing would make David think. If anyone in the family could get away with questions like these, Joseph could.