Showers in Season by Beverly LaHaye Page A

understand! You’re not even trying to understand. I’ve been there; I know what it’s like. You don’t.”
    “So I don’t,” she said. “So what? Your mother had never done it before Nathan came along.”
    “You’re not up to this, Tory. I know you.”
    “And I know me, too,” she said. “I know that I’m selfish and resentful and I know that sometimes I put other things ahead of my family. I know that I want to be a writer. I know all that! But I’ll have to work on this, I’ll have to change, and maybe God gave us this baby so I would. Maybe he did so you would. Maybe there’s good to be seen here somewhere. We can’t just assume there’s not!”
    He started driving, silent as he navigated the streets home. She was silent, too, except for the sound of her crying. When they pulled into Cedar Circle and into their own driveway, they sat there for a moment before going in.
    “Tory, I know what a shock it’s been for you to hear me say this tonight,” he said. “All I ask is that you give it a few days and consider it—”
    “No,” she said. “I won’t.”
    “I’m the leader of this family,” he said. “I’m responsible for it, I have to protect it, and I have to support it. You have to at least consider my wishes.”
    She gave a bitter laugh. “So you’re using the submission card? Barry, I’ll submit to you on everything except things that go against God’s will. I will not do something that is heinous and awful. If I did this I could never live with myself. It would ruin my life, just like I believe it ruins the life of every woman who does it. I’m gonna follow God instead of you.”
    “How do you know that I’m not listening to God, too?” he yelled. “How do you know that I haven’t talked to him about this, that this isn’t exactly the answer he gave me?”
    “Because the answers God gives never include sin. And if you can convince yourself that abortion is not a sin, then you’re not the man I thought you were at all.” With that, she got out of the car and stormed across the yard, unwilling to face Annie’s teenaged chatter or the kids who might still be up. Barry would have to do that, she thought. Let him explain why their mother was distraught.
    She went to the swing in the back of their yard, sat down, and doubled over, pressing her hands against her face. As softly as she could, she sobbed into them, all the injustice and crushing disappointment of her husband’s answer to this crisis falling over her like an avalanche.

C HAPTER Fifteen
    The woman who had run into the school barefoot and covered with mud was hysterical, shouting and wailing out rapid-fire Spanish too fast for Sylvia to understand. Harry ran from the room he’d set up as an examining room and called across the noisy gymnasium for Jim.
    The bilingual pastor broke free of the people he was attending to and hurried to the woman’s side. He barked out Spanish to her, but didn’t get much out before she began to rant and rave again, pointing to the door and toward the Cerro Negro volcano whose mud slides had brought hundreds of people here for help.
    Jim looked weary from all the work so far. They had been taking people in and trying to feed them and find places for them to sleep, while the hurricane grew closer.
    She saw Jim’s face twist with emotion, and he turned back to them. “She says she sent her oldest child to get an elderly neighbor to come ride the storm out with them, but he nevercame back. She decided to leave her four other children and go looking for him, but…” His voice broke off, and the woman began chattering again. “She…says a mud slide buried her house while she was gone. Her four children…” He rubbed his mouth. “She’s been trying to get to them, but some of the rescue workers pulled her away and brought her here.”
    Sylvia reached for the mud-covered woman and pulled her into her arms. The woman wept and wailed against her, clinging as if she knew instinctively