Beginnings (Crawley Creek Prequel) Read Free Page B

Pastor David Gillian, was an
exuberant girl who never met a person she didn’t like. She oozed
positivity, and Sera had been seeking her out for nearly two
decades when she needed a pick-me-up.
    “Thank you! I added a bit of fertilizer to
the new pots when I repotted them this spring. I think they really
enjoyed the extra vitamins.” Mary beamed with pleasure as she
looked over the greenery. “If they keep growing like this I’ll be
able to split them again next spring. Maybe this time you’ll want
one for that big beautiful foyer you have on the ranch?”
    “Maybe,” Sera said, neither accepting nor
declining her friend’s generosity. She was talented at many things:
cooking, baking, horseback riding, needlepoint, event organization,
and she even wrote the occasional poem or essay in her old
leather-bound journal, but she absolutely did not have a green
thumb. “I actually wanted to talk to you. I have a problem and I
need some advice.”
    Mary’s eyebrow arched and she cocked her
head. “I wondered when you’d get up the nerve to talk to me.”
    “What?”
    “You’ve been gnawing on something for weeks
now, and everyone knows it. Just didn’t think it was right to push
you into sharing if you weren’t ready.” Mary explained. “I’ll grab
us both a coffee and meet you in the chapel.”
    With a weak smile of gratitude, Sera nodded
and entered the beautiful old chapel. Oak pews sat in ten perfect
rows between the double doors and the altar, each accommodating at
least fifteen people comfortably. Hymnals and bibles dotted the
backs of each pew, as well as boxes of crayons and coloring books
for the young. The sun beamed through the stained glass windows
that bracketed an oversized cross above the pastor’s podium, and as
always, gave her a sense of peace. Here she felt one with
herself.
    Mary handed her a coffee mug and sat down
next to her crossing her legs as she waited for Sera to spill her
secrets.
    “I went to see the doctor again. For more
tests,” she began, staring down into the swirling black liquid in
her cup. “The news wasn’t good.”
    “Oh, no.”
    “I can’t have children.”
    “Can’t? As in ever?” Mary’s eyes were wide
with shock when Sera glanced her way.
    “I have a hostile uterus. Basically my body
can’t carry a baby. There’s no way to fix me.” Tears began to slip
from her eyes, and she set the cup on the bench next to her to
avoid its contents slopping over from her shaking hands. “I haven’t
told Abe yet. I don’t know how.”
    “Oh Sera,” Mary gasped. “You can’t keep this
from him. He needs to know so that you guys can decide what your
other options are.”
    “Other options? What options?” Sera’s tone
was grim. “I have no problem with adoption. In fact, we’ve actually
talked about it before, but we always assumed we’d adopt a child
after we had one of our own.”
    Nodding in sympathy, Mary said, “You could
look into a surrogate.”
    Sera wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know how I
feel about another woman carrying my child.”
    “It’s not just about how you feel, Sera. Abe
should have a say in this, too.”
    “I know, but how can I break his heart like
this? When he asked me to marry him he also asked me to be the
mother of his children. It’s like he got me under false
pretenses.”
    “Are you kidding me?” Mary let out a snort.
“That man would have married you even if you’d told him you didn’t want children.”
    “But I do want children. I always have—”
    “We don’t always get what we want. Do you
think David and I planned on building two different homes? No, of
course not. We wanted to build our dream home and live in it for
the rest of our days. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans
when she sent that twister through and took down the first house.”
Sera rolled her eyes and glared at her. “Okay, so it’s a bad
analogy, but the point is that sometimes we’re directed down a
different path than we want to