The Other Side of Goodness Read Free Page A

and get away with it, and it doesn’t physically hurt anybody, what’s the harm in the end? I happen to know folks who can make things happen. What is it the young ballers say? Don’t hate the player; hate the game.”
    Lawrence then looked at Paris. “And your mother talks too much, as do you. Some things aren’t meant to be repeated. With that being said, now get on in the kitchen and fix me and your husband something to eat. As I said, we have some business we need to attend to, and I am starving.”
    Paris smiled slightly, the way she did when she was completely under his rule and didn’t care for what he was saying but knew it was best to just go along with him to get along, until the right opportunity presented itself. “Sure, Daddy. Whatever you say.”
    She went into the kitchen, opened the drawer where she kept a stack of various restaurant menus, pulled out the menu to the Italian place she used whenever she wanted Italian food, and called in an order.
    She hung up the phone and grinned. “Sure, Daddy. Whatever you say.”

Chapter 2
    For though I be free from all men, yet have I made
myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more.
    â€”1 Corinthians 9:19
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    P aris’s father’s words about her having children had stung more than he knew. Her mother would have known, because the two of them had just talked about it two days ago. But her father was always too busy to care about anything that had to do with his family unless it was something that somehow fit with his political ambitions. She’d been trying to get pregnant for a little over four years now, desperately trying for the past two years, with no results.
    Andrew really wanted children. He really wanted them. And he was good with them. He’d become more insistent about it lately, making comments about how they weren’t getting any younger. Early in the year, he’d expressed how he was thirty-three, and before he knew it, he’d be forty.
    â€œI don’t want to be an old man trying to keep up with our children,” he’d said. “I’d like to enjoy them while I’m able, and not in my forties, or worse, fifties when they begin elementary school and close to seventy when they graduate high school.”
    When he’d first conveyed his desire for them to start their family, it had come because Paris had been putting off getting pregnant until they’d been married for a year or two. She hadn’t wanted to be like many she’d seen who’d gotten married and found all of their time as a couple lost in the demands of raising children. After two years, she’d discontinued doing anything that would keep her from getting pregnant—fully expecting she’d be like those who immediately got pregnant. Boy was she wrong! And since she hadn’t told Andrew she wasn’t doing anything to keep from getting pregnant, he’d merely thought she just still didn’t want children yet.
    So he’d ramped up his rhetoric, kept up his petition for them to get started.
    Paris knew she should tell him that she wanted to have a baby just as much as he did, but seeing that there was now possibly a problem (and believing she might be the one with the problem), she didn’t let on. She decided she would just let it be a surprise when she did finally conceive. It had been only in the past two years that she’d told Andrew she wanted to start a family, and only this year had she suggested they both see the doctor to find out why they hadn’t made a baby yet.
    Andrew went to the doctor, and just as Paris had suspected, there didn’t seem to be any reason coming from him as to why she hadn’t gotten pregnant. Andrew was so great about it. He played it down when he saw how devastated hearing this affected her. He told her things like, “Don’t be so hard on yourself. We just started really trying about a year