Читать книгу A Million Blessings - Angela Benson - Страница 8

Andrew knew something was wrong when the boys didn’t rush him at the door as soon as he entered the house. “I’m home,” he yelled out, hoping against hope that his family was just otherwise occupied. Thoughts of Sandra’s threat to take the boys and leave chilled his heart. She hadn’t really done it, had she?

He marched through the kitchen, peeked into the family room, and seeing no one there, headed upstairs to the bedrooms. “Sandra,” he called out from the stairs. When she didn’t answer, he quickened his steps. When he passed the boys’ rooms and saw their beds were empty, his heart raced. She’d done it this time. She’d really left him.

“Please, Lord,” he prayed. “Please, please, please, don’t let them be gone. I won’t ever gamble again. I promise. Just don’t let me lose my family.”

Andrew stopped short when he entered the master bedroom and found his wife curled up on the bed reading a book. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?” he asked.

Without glancing up, she said, “I heard you.”

“Then why didn’t you answer?”

She looked up at him then, and the disappointment he read in her eyes made him wish she hadn’t. “What’s the point?” she asked. “I’m tired of your excuses.”

Okay, he deserved those words. He accepted them with a swallow. “Where are the boys?”

“They’re staying with my parents until we straighten things out.”

He didn’t like that she had shipped the boys off without consulting him, without giving him a chance to say good-bye. “Don’t you think we should have talked about this?”

She closed the book, put it on the nightstand, and then sat up in the bed. “I sent them away because we need to have a serious talk about this marriage and our family. The bottom line is that I can’t keep going through this with you. You promised me the last time that it wouldn’t happen again. Yet here we are.”

He came to the bed and sat facing her. “I know I’ve let you down,” he said. “But I’m going to fix this. I have a plan—”

She began shaking her head. “Not another plan. Andrew, you need help. Professional help. I believed you before when you said you could stop. I don’t any longer. You’re destroying this family. Can’t you see that?”

Andrew shook his head, refusing to believe God would let him lose the only thing that mattered to him—his family. He took his wife’s hands in his. “Trust me one last time,” he pleaded. “And if you can’t trust me, trust God. Expect a miracle with me, Sandra.”

He saw the wariness in her eyes. “What have you done, Andrew?” she asked. “What kind of miracle are you expecting?”

“I want you to look for a miracle that only God can provide.”

She laughed a dry laugh. “I guess you want me to believe that God is going to drop money from heaven for us the way he dropped manna for the Israelites.”

“That’s exactly what I want you to believe,” he said.

She pulled her hands away. “Come on, Andrew. You should know by now that God doesn’t work that way. That’s how we got in this situation in the first place. You’re always looking for the big score, instead of building slowly. You need to change the way you operate.”

Andrew reached for her hands again. “Okay, if this doesn’t turn out the way I believe it will, we’ll try it your way.”

She squinted at him. “What have you done, Andrew? What scheme are you working on now? Please don’t tell me you’ve borrowed money so that you can gamble.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “This deal only cost me two dollars.”

“Two dollars? What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”

“I had a vision,” he said, taking a bit of leeway with the truth. “In that vision God told me to play the lottery this week and he gave me the numbers to play.”

Sandra snatched her hands away and jumped up from the bed. “That’s the last straw, Andrew. Now you’ve started lying on God. You know as well as I do that God did not give you any lottery numbers. Have you lost your mind?”

Her words hurt, but he brushed them off as best he could. God was not going to let him down. He could feel it.

“If playing the lottery is your way of getting us out of the hole you’ve put us in, we’re in more trouble than I wanted to believe. I think it’s best that I go stay with my parents and the kids and give you some time to figure out what you want from us and what you’re willing to give. We can’t build a future for our family on a lottery scheme. We don’t even believe in the lottery.”

Andrew glanced at his watch. “Turn on the television,” he said.

When she just rolled her eyes, he reached on the far-side nightstand, picked up the remote, and turned it on himself. “They should be announcing the lottery results in a few minutes. Believe with me.”

“I believe you’ve lost your mind,” she said. “That’s what I believe.”

He pulled the two lottery tickets out of his pocket and handed them to her. “You hold the tickets,” he said. “I’m too nervous.”

Grudgingly, she took the tickets and sat down next to him on the bed. “I don’t believe I’m doing this,” she said. “Pastor McCorry would fall out of the pulpit if he knew his assistant pastor was at home waiting for the lottery numbers to be announced, rather than at church teaching his Bible study class.”

Pulling her close, Andrew chuckled. “There was no way I could teach tonight. I’m too anxious about the lottery results.”

“How much is the lottery for this week anyway?” Sandra asked.

“Not much,” he said. “About twenty million.”

She laughed out loud. “Sounds like a lot to me.”

He laughed, too. “It’s a lot to us but not for the lottery. It’s not like it’s one of those hundred million dollar weeks when everybody plays. This is an average-sized jackpot.”

She peered up at him. “You know, it bothers me that you know so much about the lottery. Something tells me this isn’t the first time you’ve played.”

“Watch the television,” he said. “They’re about to call the numbers.”

She did as she was told. “Here,” she said to him. “You hold one and I’ll hold one.”

He took his. His heart began to sink as the announcer read the numbers. He hadn’t won. He glanced over at Sandra, and from the look on her face he gathered she hadn’t, either. He couldn’t believe it. He’d been so sure God was going to come through for him.

“We’ll just play the numbers again next week,” he said. “We can’t give up now. I really believe in these numbers.” When his wife didn’t respond, he looked down at her and saw she was crying. Her tears broke his heart. “I’m sorry, Sandra,” he said. “I’ll fix this. I promise I will.”

Sandra began shaking her head, and then she began to laugh. Andrew wondered if her disappointment had made her delirious. He grew uneasy as her laughter grew and she threw herself at him. “We won, Andrew,” she said. “We won the lottery!”