Read Online Reverend Feelgood by Lutishia Lovely - Free Book Online

baby had never been a part of their tradition. Katherine wondered how this addition would alter the rules.
    “What are our options?” Simone asked quietly, looking from Katherine to Nettie.
    “Options?” both Katherine and Nettie asked.
    “None,” Destiny said before either woman could speak. “I’m having this baby.”
    Destiny lifted her chin and sat up straighter, trying to quell the fear that mixed with excitement inside her. She was having Nate’s baby! His first! Yes, there had been many women before her, but she was the first one to carry his child. And she was determined to deliver it. “I’m having it,” she firmly declared.
    “This isn’t just your decision, Destiny,” Simone responded. “Because this isn’t just your problem. This affects not only a man but a ministry, an entire congregation.” She took a deep breath to calm the nerves that had been bundled ever since she’d received the shocking news a month ago. “We do have other alternatives, and I think we need to examine them fully. One is abortion.”
    “Thou shall not kill,” Nettie quickly countered. “Nobody should take a life that can’t give one.”
    “That same Bible also says ‘an eye for an eye.’ It’s the same one that talks about Saul killing his thousands and David killing his tens of thousands. And David was a man after God’s own heart. There are times God ordered whole towns destroyed, and everybody in them. So sometimes God killed.”
    “But you ain’t God!”
    “Look, Miss Nettie, I don’t want to argue the sin of abortion,” Simone continued. “I just want us to look at this problem from every angle. There is also the possibility of adoption. I’m sure there are many families, many childless couples, decent, successful Christian couples who would love to raise this baby as their own.” Simone turned to Destiny. “You’re young, just seventeen, and there’s no way you can understand the enormity of this situation. There’s plenty of time for you to have a child, once you and Nate are mar—” Simone still couldn’t get herself to say the word. “You can have a baby later, when you’re older. Don’t you want to go to college?”
    “I can still go to college!” Destiny had heard about all she could take on the subject of being separated from the baby that she already loved more than life itself, even as her stomach was still as flat as a pancake.
    “I can’t see giving the baby away,” Katherine finally spoke. “The Nobles have always stuck together. I can’t see something bearing my blood being raised in somebody else’s household without me having anything to do with it.”
    “I’m with you on that, Katherine. Blood is thicker than water and this baby’s blood is Thicke.”
    “So why make this difficult?” Simone argued softly. “An abortion—no matter what anybody thinks of it morally—solves this problem quickly and quietly. We can go to another city, another state. In less than twenty-four hours it will be over and done with.
    “The timing is just not right for a baby,” Simone continued. “Too much is at stake. This is a critical time in Nate’s ministerial career. He’s poised to join the Total Truth Association, which will give him a powerful national platform. He’s about to publish his first book, and the publisher is already talking to him about a second one. The church is growing bigger every day. We’ll be building our first new sanctuary in less than two years. Down the road, a child might be a beneficial addition to Nate’s life, but right now? It would be the worst thing that could happen.”
    “Would you be saying this if it were your baby?” Destiny asked her mother.
    “Excuse me?”
    “You heard me. Would you be so willing to kill it if it were you carrying his child?” Destiny pushed back her chair and stood abruptly. “I don’t care what any of y’all say, because nothing will change my mind. I love Nate, this is his baby, and I’m having it.”