Shaking his head in answer to his question, Andrew guided the car toward the main street. He didn’t breathe again until he was on the interstate, far away from that Bankhead convenience store and his unnamed parishioner.
Chapter 2
Sandra Gooden waved one last time to her children, eight-year-old Matthew and ten-year-old Andrew, Jr., as they headed off in the backseat of her father’s car to get ice cream and then she closed the front door. She lowered her eyelids and leaned back against the door, taking a moment to rest.
“Tired, dear?” her mother asked.
Sandra sighed and pushed away from the door. “I’m fine, Mother,” she said. “I appreciate you and Daddy taking the kids for a few weeks.”
Ida waved off her thanks. “It’s no bother. You know we love having those kids. I’m just glad we could help.”
Sandra was glad, too. Her kids were old enough to know things weren’t right around the house, and her excuses were wearing thin. Besides, it was embarrassing to coach your kids not to answer the phone unless they recognized the name on the caller ID. It would be more than embarrassing if they knew their parents were being hounded by creditors.
“Sandra,” her mother began. “You know I don’t like to dip in your marriage, but Andrew needs to get some help. He’s gambling again, isn’t he?”
Sandra regretted ever sharing her husband’s vice with her mother. But at the time, she’d had to tell somebody and her mother had seemed the safest choice. Andrew’s problem was certainly not something she could share at a prayer meeting with the members of Praise City’s leadership team, not if she wanted to maintain their standing among them. No, this was a secret they had to keep.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Mother,” she said, walking past her mother and toward the kitchen.
Her mother followed her. “I know you don’t want to,” she said, “but you need to. You can’t keep all this bottled up inside. You’re hiding it from the people who care about you and you’re hiding it from your kids. You need to let it out, Sandra.”
She turned on her mother, throwing up her arms. Her mother’s doggedness defied her short stature. “What am I supposed to say, Mother? That my husband is a gambler, and a poor one at that? Should I announce in church that he’s so far gone that we’re on the verge of losing everything—again? Should I tell them that Andrew’s fallen so low that he’s even gambled away his children’s college funds? How can I tell anyone all that?” she cried. “How can I admit that I tied myself to a man who is so fatally flawed?” She turned away from her mother. “Some days I wonder why I married him. This is not the life I signed up for, Mother. Andrew and I should have our own congregation by now, and we would if not for his problem. I thought he’d overcome it last time when he brought us to the end of our rope, but here we are again.”
Her mother walked over to her and rubbed her shoulders. “You married him because you loved him.”
“I don’t even know him,” Sandra said. “How can I love him?”
Her mother pulled away. “Are you thinking about leaving him?” she asked.
“I have to think about it, Mother. I can’t keep on like this. My kids deserve better than this. I deserve better than this.”
“Andrew is a good man, Sandy. He just needs to get some help. You both need to get some help.”
Sandra pulled away. “I’m not the person with the problem, but I certainly have to deal with the fallout. I’m tired, Mother. Tired. I can’t go through this again with Andrew. I don’t have it in me.”
“You know your daddy and I had some rough years, but we made it through.”
Sandra remembered those rough years when her father was a functional alcoholic, and they weren’t good memories, either. She wanted better for herself and her children. “I admire you, Mom, and what you were able to endure and to work through, but I’m not you.” I don’t want to be you, she added silently, not wanting to hurt her mother’s feelings.
“Well, what can I do to help?”
Sandra pressed a kiss against her mother’s forehead. “You’re already doing it. You’re taking care of the kids.”
“I have a little extra money that your father doesn’t know about,” she said, reaching into the pocket of her jeans and pulling out a check.
“I can’t take your money,” Sandra said, though she was sorely tempted. She was sure they were at the limit on their last credit card, and she had less than a hundred dollars in cash. She didn’t know what they were going to do.
Her mother took her hand, put the check in it, and folded the hand closed. “It’s only five hundred dollars. It’s not much, but it’ll help.”
Sandra felt tears well up in her eyes. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to be. Here she was a thirty-five-year-old married woman with children taking cash from her mother. As the daughter, it should be her turn to help her parents. “I can’t, Mom—”
“Shh, yes, you can. It’s done. You take that, and if you need more, you let me know. I’ll see what your father and I can do.”
Sandra began shaking her head. “You can’t tell Dad, Mom. You promised.”
“I know what I promised, and I’m going to keep my promise, even though I don’t think it’s wise. Your father could talk to Andrew, help him out, especially since he doesn’t have a father of his own.”
Andrew was an orphan, brought up in foster care. She and the children were his only family. His need for family was one of the traits that had attracted her to him. He valued what he’d never had. She saw in him solid husband and father material. What she hadn’t seen was his fatal gambling addiction.
“Andrew would be devastated if Dad knew how badly he was handling his family duties. I can’t do that to him. His pride is battered as it is.” Besides, it had taken her father years to warm up to Andrew. If he knew about the gambling, he would revert to his earlier opinion of her husband. She was sure of it.
Her mother lifted a brow. “Those aren’t the words of a woman getting ready to leave her husband.”
Sandra frowned. “Oh, but they are. I know what it means to reach the end of your rope. That’s where I am.”
Chapter 3
Andrew knew something was wrong when the boys didn’t rush him at the door as soon as he entered the house. “I’m home,” he yelled out, hoping against hope that his family was just otherwise occupied. Thoughts of Sandra’s threat to take the boys and leave chilled his heart. She hadn’t really done it, had she?
He marched through the kitchen, peeked into the family room, and seeing no one there, headed upstairs to the bedrooms. “Sandra,” he called out from the stairs. When she didn’t answer, he quickened his steps. When he passed the boys’ rooms and saw their beds were empty, his heart raced. She’d done it this time. She’d really left him.
“Please, Lord,” he prayed. “Please, please, please, don’t let them be gone. I won’t ever gamble again. I promise. Just don’t let me lose my family.”
Andrew stopped short when he entered the master bedroom and found his wife curled up on the bed reading a book. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?” he asked.
Without glancing up, she said, “I heard you.”
“Then why didn’t you answer?”
She looked up at him then, and the disappointment he read in her eyes made him wish she hadn’t. “What’s the point?” she asked. “I’m tired of your excuses.”