Read Online And the Shofar Blew by Francine Rivers - Free Book Online Page A

for the past four years. But when he was served with divorce papers a month into the program, Stephen had really struggled. The old urges returned. The urge to get drunk and escape the pain—until it hit him harder the morning after. Fortunately, he knew this was no solution.
    “Irreconcilable differences,” Kathryn had claimed.
    He’d spent the next few weeks roiling in anger, casting blame, justifying and rationalizing his own behavior over the past few years. Except none of it worked this time. His counselor, Rick, didn’t let him get away with it, and the regimen of the twelve-step program kept bringing him face-to-face with himself. He didn’t like what he saw in the mirror.
    Rick was blunt. “If you quit drinking for your wife and daughter, you’ll fail. You have to quit drinking for yourself.”
    Stephen knew the truth of that advice. He’d tried to quit before, only to fall off the wagon. If he went back to drinking now, he knew he wouldn’t stop until he was dead. So he made the decision to turn his life over to Jesus Christ, and live one day at a time. Live , the program said. Live and let live, which meant he had to get his own life in order and allow Kathryn to do the same with hers. It meant letting go of the bitterness and wrath that sometimes threatened to overwhelm him. It meant not blaming her for his drinking, and not accepting the role as scapegoat for all of her problems.
    He’d signed the divorce papers and contacted an attorney, even though he had already decided not to contest the matter. He took the hard slap across the face when Kathryn told him through her attorney that she wanted the house in lieu of alimony. A clean break, she said, but he knew better. The real-estate market was hot, and she’d make a killing off the house he’d designed and built on a golf course near Granite Bay. He agreed, never expecting her to punch him in the stomach by refusing joint custody of their daughter. When he said he’d fight her, she kicked him below the belt by claiming he had been an abusive husband and father, citing as “proof ” that he was living in a rehab center. She demanded exorbitant child-support payments and insisted they be made on a bimonthly direct-deposit basis.
    When the attorney delivered the news, Stephen felt like a cockroach pinned to a display board. “Check the records and see if I’ve ever bounced a check or not made a payment on time. Call the bank! Interview my crew! Talk to my subcontractors! I may have downed a bottle of scotch a day, but I never laid a hand on my wife or my daughter, and I never left a bill unpaid!”
    The attorney did check.
    Stephen felt small satisfaction. Only a few close friends knew he had a drinking problem, and even they hadn’t guessed the depth of it. And the records showed he had run a successful business and made enough to support his family in an exclusive neighborhood. He’d never been arrested on a DUI or created a public disturbance. The only disturbances had been behind the closed door of his well-insulated, luxury home.
    “Be thankful she’s instructed her attorney to have her name removed from anything to do with your business,” his attorney told him. “California is a community-property state, and she’s within her rights to ask for half of it.”
    Stephen knew it wasn’t due to any hint of fair play on her part. She’d been through some of the harder years with him. Maybe she was afraid he’d self-destruct, and she’d get caught up in liens against spec housing projects. Construction businesses came and went with every hiccup in the economy. Kathryn just wanted every dime she could get up front. And she didn’t care if that left him with only pennies to live on.
    “You can fight her,” his attorney had said. “You don’t have to take this sitting down.”
    Stephen had almost given in to the temptation to hit back, and hit hard. Instead, he gritted his teeth and said he would think it over. He didn’t want to react