Orchard of Hope by Ann H. Gabhart

because he wasn’t sure he might not have joined in. And then the merry heart medicine would have been down the tubes.

7
    Things were always a little wild on Sunday mornings at the Brooke house as they all scrambled to get ready for church. Before Tabitha came home from California, Aunt Love had kept David and Jocie on schedule. If either of them stayed too long in the bathroom, she rapped sharply on the door and got them moving. But it was hard to move somebody out of the bathroom who had morning sickness. And it was beginning to look as if the only thing that was going to ease Tabitha’s morning sickness was having her baby. Her doctor had told Tabitha some women were just unlucky that way.
    David still had a hard time thinking of Tabitha as a woman. He’d lost so many of her girl years after she’d left with Adrienne that he wasn’t ready for her to be a woman, even if she was only a few weeks from being a mother. She had settled in better back in Hollyhill than he ever imagined she would after they came home from church a couple of months ago to find her on the porch. She’d ridden a bus all that way. By herself. Holding the secret of her baby close within her for weeks after she was home. Aunt Love had finally insisted Tabitha tell him what he’d been too blind to see. So many surprises already this summer.
    Sometimes David was almost afraid to stick his head out from under the covers in the morning for fear of what the Lord might send his way next. But then when the sun started pushing light in through his window, David would say his morning prayer. “Oh, Lord, be with me today.” And the Lord’s answer would echo back. Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world . The Lord’s promise was good to the disciples who faced much more perilous times in those New Testament days than David could even imagine facing, and that same promise was good to the Lord’s followers now. David just had to lean on the Lord and in all things be thankful.
    And he was. He was thankful Tabitha was home. He was thankful for the child on the way. He was thankful for a church that trusted David to lead them. He was thankful Jocie had weathered the storms of the summer. He was thankful Wes had survived the tornado. He was thankful that it was so easy to smile when Leigh was around. He still didn’t know exactly what he should do about Leigh. If only she wasn’t so young, but maybe it was her being young that kept him smiling.
    But none of that made it one bit easier to get out the door on time to leave for church. Or easier to decide what to do about Wes. David wasn’t having second thoughts about bringing Wes home with him, but he was having second thoughts about their ability to take care of him, especially Aunt Love’s and Tabitha’s and Jocie’s when David wasn’t there to help.
    On Saturday, they had all three volunteered to stay home with Wes on Sunday. And now Tabitha had found David going over his sermon notes in his bedroom and was trying to convince him she should be the one to stay home. “Let me stay with Wes. Nobody will miss me at church.”
    “Everybody will miss you,” David told her. “Whenever you’re not there, they all ask about you.”
    “Probably to see if I’m properly ashamed of myself yet.” Tabitha made a little face as she touched her rounded stomach.
    David stood up from his desk and went over to hug her. “You know that’s not true. The people out there have been nothing but kind to you. Haven’t they?” He peered down at her face. Maybe there was something he didn’t know. Maybe the Martin boy was at it again. It had been Ronnie Martin’s ugly words in Jocie’s ears that had sent her reeling earlier in the summer.
    David and the boy’s father, Ogden Martin, one of the deacons at Mt. Pleasant, had talked it out, then prayed together on their knees in the men’s Sunday school room until the Lord helped them find a way to both continue on in the same church. Ogden made his