A Perfect Love Read Free Page B

wife.”
    â€œOh, stop it.” She leaned against the banister and stared at the ceiling. Micah always had a kind word for her—especially when she didn’t want to believe him. “Look at me! I’m an ugly, overweight, water-retentive wretch, and I don’t see how Russell stands me.”
    Forsaking the vacuum, Micah propped his hands on his bent knee and smiled up at her. “What a way to talk. The Lord made you in his perfect image. Are you questioning his purposes?”
    â€œNo.” Barbara averted her eyes from the look of kindness on the gardener’s face, feeling somehow ashamed of her neediness. He was right; she shouldn’t feel so down on herself, but how could she help it? Men didn’t care what they looked like; but for women, looks were important. Looks were what caught a man’s attention in the first place, and after you caught a man’s attention you had to charm him, and flatter him, and make him feel special. And once you married him, you had to please him, and care for him, and eventually, give him a baby . . .
    And in that lay the problem. Lately Russell had been insisting it was time they started a family and found a place of their own. Barbara had been stalling, hoping that the announcement of a baby would ease her way out of her family home, but there’d been no baby thus far.
    She supposed she was at fault. She wasn’t in any hurry to leave home, even though she’d been a married woman for three years. Mom and Dad were . . . well, Mom and Dad, and she loved them with all of her heart. But lately she felt uncomfortable here, even smothered, and she couldn’t explain this feeling to anyone.
    What was wrong with her?
    She tried to be enthusiastic about the prospect of having a baby and leaving home. Each month built to a climax of hopeful suspense—was she or wasn’t she pregnant? There were breathless days when her monthly cycle failed to begin on time, and sometimes, when she was late, she spent days in a kind of hopeful bemusement, refusing to take even a simple aspirin in case the miracle had happened.
    But those days were inevitably followed by the awful waking up to a low abdominal ache and the sure knowl- edge she wasn’t carrying a child. Russell always stirred when he heard her crying, and rolled over to take her into his arms, whispering that he loved her and they would be parents when the time was right. They had to be patient and wait on God’s timing.
    Cleta and Floyd only looked at each other with “what’s wrong now?” expressions on their faces when Barbara came into the kitchen with dark circles ringing her eyes. Disappointment, thick as sea smoke, hung in the air for a few days before life settled back to normal and the cycle began again.
    â€œIs something bothering you, Barbara?” Micah’s concern pulled her from her thoughts.
    Sighing, she gripped the banister behind her. Outside the window, bright sunshine streamed through the lace curtains—deceptively misleading for January. Just as her young body was deceptively misleading, offering the promise of babies and a home when there was none.
    â€œIt’s personal, Micah.”
    â€œI don’t mean to pry.”
    â€œNo, it’s not that I don’t want to tell you. You’re like family, after all. It’s just that I don’t want to embarrass you.”
    The gardener smiled softly. “I don’t think you could embarrass me, dear girl. I have seen more things on earth than you could imagine and—”
    â€œI don’t know why I can’t have babies,” Barbara blurted out. “Russell and I try . . . but it doesn’t happen. Russell wants a son so badly.”
    Micah tilted his head slightly. “Babies come when the Father sends them. When the time is right, you will conceive.”
    Barbara had heard that same assurance stated in a hundred different ways:
    Be patient.
    In God’s