Riven - Jerry B. Jenkins [114]
“We have news,” Ravinia said.
“Well, hon,” Dirk said, “it’s not really news yet. I mean, we may have news in a while, but do we really have news yet?”
“What?” Grace said. “You have to say now.”
“We’re going to try to have a baby next year.”
Thomas just sat staring and could tell Grace was doing the same. Why did this surprise him? Wasn’t it the natural course of events? Had he hoped that since they were both career people they might put this off, maybe forever, or at least until Ravinia came back to her faith and Dirk became a believer? “Well, that’s something, isn’t it?” he said.
“You know what trying means!” Dirk said, too loudly. “But that’s why it’s not really news yet. It’ll be news when it works and we have a date to announce. But, as long as we’re talking about it, we’re hoping something will happen early in the year so we might have a child by this time next year. Cool, huh?”
“Will you stop working then, Rav?” Grace said.
“Oh no. Nobody does that anymore, Mom. No need. I’ll take the appropriate maternity leave; then I’ll jump right back in.”
“And who will care for the baby?”
“The county provides day care right at the office,” Ravinia said. “I can work and see the baby anytime I want. I can take it with me in the morning and back home at night.”
Thomas knew Grace’s gears were turning and she was deciding how she might care for her own grandchild at least several hours a day.
He knew she was not up to it now and would be even less so in a year, but this was all moot unless and until, as Dirk said, there was anything to report come the new year.
What Thomas was afraid to ask was what, if anything, Dirk and Ravinia had in mind for their child’s spiritual life. Would they allow him and Grace to take their grandchild to church? If they were like most modern nonreligious parents, he decided, they would talk a lot about exposing the child to all sorts of ideas and letting him or her decide what to believe.
When that happened, the child generally grew up like the parents and believed either a mishmash of conveniences or in nothing much at all. This was going to be one delicate balancing act. Thomas knew well that this would not be his child. But it would be his grandchild, and he wasn’t about to retreat from trying to see that he or she was raised, as the Bible said, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Thomas had left the TV droning in the living room, and in a brief lull in the conversation, Dirk said, “Did you hear that? Where’s the Touhy Trailer Park, and why is it that tornadoes seem to aim at those things?”
“The same funnel that blows through a neighborhood and takes out a tree or two can rip those foundationless little boxes to pieces,” Thomas said.
Addison
Brady thought he had been hardened by his years inside. How long had it been since he had felt anything but anger or lust?
But now, as a rent-a-cop in an orange vest vigorously waved him over about two hundred yards from what was left of the gaggle of motor homes that had been his neighborhood, Brady was sick from his gut to his throat.
A thin, halting line of traffic snaked past the place, drivers gawking. Brady had to stay out of that line, because once in it, he would be corralled past, unable to stop, unable to run home, find his mother and brother, and see what had become of the single-wide that had housed them for as long as he could remember.
He pulled off the road, only to find he was blocking an ambulance. The driver blasted his siren, pointing, shouting. Brady moved as far to the right as he could, only to have his right front tire drop off the shoulder and the car slowly slide deep into the ditch.
At least he was no longer in the way.
The ambulance crept past, and there Brady sat. He could imagine it being days before he would be able to find anyone to tow him out. The hail had given way to a cold, steady rain that cocooned the car. On the one hand he was desperate to get home, and on the other he dreaded what