Abram's Daughters 03 The Sacrifice Read Online Free PDF

chairs and reading silently, enjoying baroque music, or discussing eldest son Robert's zealous letters and spiritual ambition. Lorraine was increasingly anxious, though, and he had begun to recognize the fact around the time the boys spread their proverbial wings. Continually she invited
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    him to attend church with her and their neighbors, Dottie and Dun Nolt and their toddler-age son. Without exception, he refused, adding to his wife's dejection. Having attended church only sporadically during their adult years, he was by no means interested in jumping on Lorraine's recent religious bandwagon. To her credit, his wife was a woman who knew how to blend persuasion with loving consideration. This fact, over the years, I Kill helped keep their marriage intact.
    His misery had not so much to do with Robert's search for (     Accordingly, each Sunday before Lorraine awakened and (he sun rose, he crept downstairs and got into the car, driving down Georgetown Road, past the Ebersol and Peachey farms, turning onto a dirt lane east of the smithy's spread of land. That narrow byway led to the ten acres he'd inherited from his father, Reverend Schwartz. Having decided against ever building a house there, Henry had held on to the grazing land, letting it appreciate in value over the years. More recently, he had thought of offering to sell it to the local blacksmith, if the Amishman was so inclined. Lorraine, however, had suggested the parcel of land remain in the family, perhaps to be |j;iven at the appropriate time to Robert as a wedding gift.
    Getting out of the car, Henry would go and tend to a small l^rave unmarked by a headstone, trimming the tall grass away with hand clippers. When finished, he stood in deep contemplation, the little mound of earth his altar and the clipped grass
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    his pew, surrounded by a choir of insects and birds.
    Just this morning he had visited the site and stared down at the memorial of his own making, recalling the momentous night he had hauled to the spot a shovel in the trunk of his car. Having paced the ground, he had made a frantic determination for the location of a proper burial. The hollowness in his soul had been undeniable as he pushed hard and deep into the ground the ball of his foot on the shovel, his arms lifting out the soil one heaping pile at a time. Grave digging was harder work than he had anticipated, both physically and otherwise, but the burial itself had been excruciating. And when the task was complete, the lifeless body of an infant boy lay in the broken earth.
    There it was that Henry presented himself to the CreatorGod on Sunday mornings, each and every one since that very first, refusing Lorraine's invitation to a church with walls of stone and mortar. Nowhere else drew him like the open-air cathedral where he was the one and only parishioner, the lone visitor to a child's tiny grave.
    Startled out of his musing by Lorraine's gentle voice, Henry jerked his head, a piece of mail slipping out of his hands and onto the floor.
    "Dear," she said, "be sure to read Robert's letter."
    Lorraine had left a pile of their personal mail from Saturday afternoon lying on the dresser for him. He had been much too busy at the clinic to bother thumbing through the bills and such. He stooped now to reach for his eldest's latest letter. "How are things going for him?" he inquired for Lorraine's sake. Hard as it was for him to admit, son Robert was looking
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    for nbsolute truth strangely finding it in a group of Biblebelieving Mennonites.
    "lie's planning to come home for Thanksgiving," Lorraine ullored, still seated with cup poised in midair.
    "Oh?" He nodded absentmindedly. Late November was I be perfect