“How do you think these things start?” David asked.
Barry threw up his hands. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me? You seem to be real experienced.”
David got up and slid his hands in his pockets, as if to keep them from swinging at Barry. “For the record, I’m not speaking from experience. But I’ve seen it happen before. They start out with friendship, with sharing their problems, and before you know it, you’re telling her things that are none of her business. When Brenda told me last night what was going on with the two of you, that Tory had caught you with another woman, and that you wanted to abort your own child—”
“Wait a minute!” Barry shouted. “Stop right there! Tory had no business telling Brenda any of that stuff, either. It’s no different than my confiding in Linda.”
“It’s a lot different,” David threw back. “Tory confided in a close friend and neighbor who happened to be of the same sex. You confided in a woman who Tory considers a threat.”
“I have not done anything wrong,” Barry said.
“Well, then, are you going to tell Tory that you had dinner with this woman tonight?”
“I don’t see any reason to tell Tory anything. She’s not real interested in what I do right now.”
“Did you know that your baby had moved? Did you know that was why she came to the office the other day? She was hoping you’d want to feel the baby kick, and that you’d understand it’s a real human being she’s carrying.”
“You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” Barry said through his teeth. “Have you ever had to make these decisions that I’m having to make? Have you ever had a retarded child? I don’t want to trap my child in a life that will make her miserable. A human being needs to be able to contribute something. There’s nothing worse in this world than a child who grows up trapped because her life is worthless.”
“Whose life is worthless?” David asked. “I can’t imagine a child anywhere whose life is worthless.”
“I have a brother!” Barry bit out.
“I know all about your brother,” David said. “I know how he sits there staring into space day after day. But our value doesn’t come from being good or productive or leaving something behind. You ought to know that.” He stepped across the room and met Barry face-to-face. “I can’t believe I just fought tooth and nail for my own child’s life, and now you’re willing to give yours up just because you can’t imagine that in twenty years she might contribute something. What about all the babies who die at three and four months old? They don’t contribute anything, but they’re precious to their parents. Life is a gift, man! It has nothing to do with what we can give back. It’s just a gift, Barry. You’ve got to see it as that.”
“I don’t need this lecture from you,” Barry said. “Talking to me about gifts when you don’t even believe in the God who gives the gifts.”
“Well, apparently neither do you!”
Barry stared at him with fire in his eyes. “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here.” He headed to the door and opened it. “I think you should go.”
David slid his hands into his pockets and nodded. Quietly, he left the room and headed to the elevator. The room door closed hard behind him, but in a second, it opened again.
“David!”
David turned back, and Barry stepped out into the hall. “Are you going to tell Tory that Linda was here?”
The elevator door opened, and David caught the door and held it for a moment. “No,” he said finally. “You are.”
Barry slammed his fist into his other hand. “I don’t have anything to tell her.”
David shrugged. “Just tell her you’re sorry, that you’re coming home, that you’re ready to be a father to all three of your children. It’s easy, man. All it takes is a little bit of courage. You remember how to be a man, don’t you?” Then he got on the elevator and let the doors close behind him.
CHAPTER Sixty-Three
Barry went back into his room and locked the door behind him. He went to the window and sat down in the chair beside it, and stared out into the parking lot below. He couldn’t remember ever feeling as low as he felt right now. Having an unbeliever come to him preaching morality was more than he could stand. He couldn’t believe he had given David reason to do that.
You must be so disgusted with me, Lord.
He opened the drawer on the telephone table and found the Bible the Gideons had put there. As if it held the salve he needed for his chafed conscience, he opened it. As always, it fell open to the Psalms, and he began to read, without any delusion that the passage had opened there for him…until he came to a passage in Psalm 103 that crushed his heart.
“He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.”
The reality that God knew him—knew his failings and shortcomings, his temptations and his mistakes—brought Barry to tears. Maybe God had sent David to set him straight. Maybe it was because Barry was an unbeliever that God had sent him. Maybe he knew how vital his message would be, the message Barry should have believed, when brought by someone who had no faith.
He closed his eyes and thought back over David’s words about the baby.
Life is a gift, man! It has nothing to do with what we can give back.
That was exactly the message of grace, the message that Jesus Christ’s death on the cross had preached, that no one on earth was worthy of the gifts that God gave. But he had loved us enough to give them anyway.
Barry had almost forgotten, and now, here he was, letting someone who didn’t have a clue about the grace of Jesus Christ preach to him about grace in his own baby’s life.
His eyes filled with tears. He leaned his head back on the chair and thought of Nathan sitting in the backyard, whistling a tune over and over and over until he heard something new.
But he loved his brother. And when he tried to picture life without Nathan, he couldn’t. He knew many, many things would have been different in his life without Nathan. Some would have been better, but some worse. Nathan had always been an anchor in his life, a stable, constant, never-changing element that kept his family what it was.
He wiped the tears from his eyes and remembered back to when he was six years old and his mother had met him in the front yard as he walked home from the first day of school. She’d had tears in her eyes when he approached, carrying his new Flintstone lunch box and a Bullwinkle satchel.
“What’s the matter, Mama?” he had asked.
She had laughed then, and wiped her tears away as she leaned down to hug him. “I was just thinking what a great gift it was watching you walk home from school today.”
He had been confused. “It’s no big deal, Mama. Everybody does it.”
She shook her head. “No, honey, not everybody. Never forget that.”
That had drifted deep into his subconscious where it had nested and flourished, and he knew that much of his life had been formed around that thought, that not everyone had the gifts he had. The lack of those simple gifts was an undeserved curse. Or was it? Was the whistling a gift? Or the consistency in Nathan’s life? Had those been Nathan’s offering?
It was hard to imagine that those things constituted a contribution to the world, yet he knew David was right. If God measured him against mathematicians and child prodigies, where would he wind up in the ranking? Maybe he’d be even more different from them than Nathan was from him. Maybe that’s what God wanted him to know.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.
Had he been uncompassionate toward his own child? Had he turned his back on her, as Tory claimed? If God could look upon Barry without disgust, how could Barry hold such a high standard for his baby? God knew what this baby was like, how she was formed, what she was made of. God knew why.
Overcome with remorse, Barry got out of his chair and fell to his knees beside the window, and wept and prayed for forgiveness, for letting his life get so turned around and his focus get ripped off of Christ. He had abandoned Tory when she needed him most. He had betrayed her verbally and emotionally, and if she hadn’t brought this to a crisis, had probably been heading toward physical betrayal as well.
He dropped his head on the bed, unable to believe he had drifted so far from being the strong family man that he had been just a few months earlier, so far that an unbeliever had come to straighten him out.
He wept out his broken heart to God, pleading and begging for forgiveness for the sin of giving up, of turning away, of directing his own path.
By the time he’d finished praying, he’d resolved to accept the baby that Tory was carrying, though he couldn’t yet make himself feel good about it. God had a long way to go with him, he thought, but at least he was pointed in the right direction now. Still feeling the heaviness of the grief driving him, he packed his suitcase with all the things Tory had so angrily thrown in, then checked out of the hotel and headed home.
CHAPTER Sixty-Four
Tory had gotten the kids to bed early and lay on her own bed, staring at the ceiling. It was too early to go to bed herself, but she couldn’t manage to do anything else. She wondered what Barry was doing, if he was eating right and getting enough sleep in his hotel room. She wondered if Linda Holland was keeping him company. She started to cry again.
When she heard the door to the house close, she jumped upright. Someone was in her house!
She got off the bed and grabbed a vase from her bed table, then backed into the closet and tried to see up the hall. She heard footsteps coming and realized that whoever was in the house could go for the children first. Terrified, she forced herself to leave the closet, the vase held high over her head.
Barry was walking toward her. She caught her breath and dropped the vase. It crashed on the hardwood floor.
Barry froze. “Don’t move,” he said. “You’re barefoot.”
She stood in place, looking at the broken glass around her. “You scared me,” she sobbed.
“I know,” he told her. “I should have called or something. Here. Don’t move.” He swept the glass away with his shoe, then picked her up like a bride and carried her to the bed.
She wept from relief in the wake of panic. “Just stay here,” he said, “and I’ll clean it up in case the kids wake up.” He hurried to the laundry room and got a broom and dustpan. In seconds, he was back, sweeping up the broken glass.
She sat up, wiping her face and wondering why he was home. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
Barry sat down next to her on the edge of the bed. “I had a visit from David tonight.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” he said. “He seems to think I have some things to apologize for.”
Tory thought of giving him a list, just in case he wasn’t sure, but she decided to let him talk. He looked down at her stomach with pain on his face, then reached out and laid his hand on it. The touch spoke volumes.
“David had a message for me today,” he said quietly. “It was about how life is precious and it doesn’t have anything at all to do with what we contribute. He reminded me of Joseph and how hard everybody was fighting for his life just a few weeks ago.”
A tear rolled down her face.
“And then I had a good prayer time,” he said, “and I realized that he was right. His message was Jesus, even though he didn’t know it, and Jesus doesn’t look at people according to how smart or how perfect they are. Thank goodness.” His mouth twitched at the corners as he tried to keep his voice level.
“And there was another thing that David told me.”
“What?” Tory asked.
“It was about Linda.” Tory felt her defenses rising again. She didn’t want to hear what she was about to hear. She closed her eyes and dropped back to her pillow.
“Tory, look at me.” She met his eyes, afraid of what she might see. “I can promise you that nothing ever happened with Linda. Nothing like you think, anyway. She showed up at the hotel tonight, but I didn’t let her come to my room. I met her in the restaurant, and David found us there.”
She closed her eyes and began to sob harder, and turned to her side, away from him.
“It was wrong, Tory. I was wrong to confide in her like I did. I don’t have any business sharing confidences like that with another woman.”
“Why’d you do it?” she demanded.
“I don’t know. She was there, it seemed like, from the very beginning. She was noticing my moods, showing up when I was down. She didn’t have an agenda. Just wanted to listen.” Tory shot him a disbelieving look over her shoulder. “At least, that’s what I thought. But then today, I think I realized that she had other plans.”
“Oh, Barry!” She sucked in a sob, and he turned her back over to face him.
“Tory, she never meant anything to me. And I can promise you that it won’t happen again.”
“What are you going to do about it?” she asked. “She works there with you every day.”
“We don’t work that closely together,” he said. “Only once in a while do we even cross paths. I’ll just tell her that I can’t have any more heartfelt conversations, that my wife and I have worked things out. I’ll ask to work with a different marketing team.” He touched her face and gently urged her to look at him again. “Please, trust me. Forgive me.”
For a moment, Tory lay there, searching her mind for an answer. How could she forgive him for all that had happened? All the disappointment, the betrayal, the heartache? She didn’t have that in her.
But I have it, she felt God’s Spirit say. Let me do it. Slowly, Tory sat up, and pulled Barry’s hand back to her stomach. “You’re not going to pressure me to get an abortion anymore?”
“No,” he said. “I won’t.”
Her words came out on an uncertain whisper. “Barry, are you serious?”
For a moment he only looked at her, and she saw a million emotions pass over his face. “I don’t want a retarded child,” he said. “I can’t stand the thought. It just breaks my heart that one of our children will have to suffer that way. I don’t know when or if I’ll ever be able to be happy about this, Tory. Maybe by the time the baby comes. I don’t know. But just be patient with me. I need some time.”
It was exactly what Sylvia had told her, exactly the wisdom that she had avoided. Time was always the last thing she had to give. But she realized now that she had no more choice than Barry had about the baby being born into this family.
“You need to know that I’m going to keep praying for a miracle,” Barry said, “that maybe there was a mistake, that the lab tests were wrong. I have to keep praying for that miracle.”
Suddenly, the baby fluttered. Barry caught his breath. “Was that…?”
“Yes,” she said, finally able to smile again. “It was the baby saying, ‘Hello, Daddy.’”
He frowned and looked down at his hand covering her stomach, concentrating. The baby fluttered again. Tears began to roll down his face. “Seems perfectly normal, doesn’t she?”
She reached up and wiped his tears. “Kicks just like any other baby. Please smile about her,” she whispered. “She deserves so much more than tears and anger.”
“I’m trying,” Barry said. “I really am.” His voice broke off, and he swallowed. “I know I’ve destroyed a lot in you in the last few weeks, a lot of your respect and admiration and everything else. Maybe that’s part of why I was talking to Linda, because she was looking at me like you used to, admiring me.”
Tory didn’t know how to answer that. “Be patient wit
h me, too,” she said. “A lot of damage has been done. I forgive you and I’m glad you’re home, but I just need some time, too.”
He nodded. “Do you want me to sleep in the basement?”
“No. The bed’s too big for just one person.” He lowered his ear to her stomach, his eyes closed. He kept his ear pressed against the roundness, as if he could hear his baby’s voice. She thought of stroking his hair, offering him comfort, but she couldn’t make herself do it.
Finally, he raised up. “I’ll go get my suitcase.”
As he headed back out to the car, Tory fell back on the bed, so thankful that he was home. But she wished with all her heart that he had been able to bring a salve to heal her wounded heart and restore the respect she had lost along the way.
CHAPTER Sixty-Five
Barry managed to put off telling his mother about the pregnancy until Christmas Day. She had invited them to come for Christmas dinner after the children opened their presents. Tory knew that he would have put the announcement off indefinitely, if she hadn’t insisted on going. At first, it had disturbed and angered her again, but then she realized he was trying to protect his mother from any grief. She would hurt to learn that Tory and Barry were facing the same heartache she had once faced, and her son wanted to spare her.
It was difficult for her to hide her protruding belly when she went through the door, but she managed to cover up with her children’s coats. The kids ran into the house and threw their arms around their grandma, then hurried to the playroom she kept set up just for them. It was full of the toys that Barry had as a child and new things Betty had picked up along the way.
Betty hugged her son as if she hadn’t seen him in years. “It’s good to see you two,” she said. “You’re just such strangers.”
“Mom, I’m sorry about Thanksgiving.”
“You’ve already apologized for that,” she said, waving him off. “We got over it.” She always spoke in the plural, as if Nathan shared her feelings.
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