Read Online Tomorrow's Dream by Janette Oke, Davis Bunn - Free Book Online Page A

couldn’t they do something? Kyle often found herself wanting to scream, Do something now!
    But Kyle did not express the cry of her heart. They had to be patient, Kenneth often reminded her. They had to pray, and to trust. But Kyle wondered how much longer she could hold on. Her faith seemed to be slipping from her just as surely as her frail baby. It was frightening. She did not want to lose her grip on God any more than she wished to lose the fragile hold on her weakening child.
    â€œIf only . . .” The anguish filling her heart pushed her harder than the brisk wind as she walked toward the bus stop. “If only I hadn’t insisted on finding my birth parents. If I could have just let things be as they were. If I hadn’t discovered a brother with a heart problem, everything might be all right. Why wasn’t I content simply to be a Rothmore? Why . . . ?”
    A part of her knew the recriminations were foolish. Even as she raged inwardly, trapped and hurting and wanting desperately to be with her child, even now she knew the words made no sense. But Kyle’s tired and troubled mind was beyond reason. She ached. She mourned. She fought against reality. She sought explanations that would not come. She clung to hopes that did not exist, not even in her own mind. She fought a losing battle with her own exhausted resources. It was all she had left.

9 
    The morning breakfast dishes had been cleared away, the old table scrubbed clean, and the family was seated and watching Joel. Joel in turn was watching Simon, the high school friend who had brought him into this wonderful family. Simon, the eldest boy, was Joel’s age, and farm work had chiseled strength into his young features.
    Joel then glanced at Sarah, Ruthie’s younger sister. She was entering her middle teens and growing into a person of beauty, the kind that shines from within. She had her mother’s poise and her father’s eyes, a gaze so level and direct that most young men even twice her age found themselves stammering and blushing.
    Joseph Miller cleared his throat. “No harder can the family be listening than now, Choel.”
    Joel felt hesitant and shy and eager, all at once. “I don’t know where to start.”
    â€œBut start you must, or make the explosion, and think of the mess that would make in Mama’s kitchen.”
    His wife chided, “Papa, shah, what a thing to say.”
    Joel looked at Ruthie and implored, “You tell them.”
    â€œBut you said you wanted to be the one.”
    â€œI can’t. You do it.”
    â€œWhat?” Joseph cried. “Also Ruthie is having news? Too much this is for one old heart. One of the two must wait until another day.”
    â€œPapa.” This time his wife’s warning tone was genuine. “Now are you stopping with the chokes?”
    Joel sat surrounded by the love of family. It was so good to be able to smile again. To feel the moment’s joy well up until his weak heart felt ready to take wings and fly from his chest. When his wife looked his way again, he nodded and said, “Go ahead, Ruthie—tell them.”
    Ruthie took a breath that seemed to go on forever, then she announced, “We are going to have a baby.”
    â€œA grandpa!” Joseph fairly shouted the words. “You are to be making of me a grandpa!”
    Mother and daughter were already up and moving toward each other. They stood by the table and hugged fiercely while all the others shouted and cheered the news. Joel accepted the handshakes and the backslaps and thought he could never be happier than this moment. Not even his wedding day had compared with this overflowing of shared joy, of shared future.

    For the rest of that morning and throughout the afternoon, the entire farm was electric with laughter and chatter about names, about boys versus girls, about family legacies. Joel found enough strength so that he could walk with