If Tomorrow Never Comes

by SCHALESKY, MARLO

• ISBN13: 9781601420244
• ISBN10: 1601420242
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2009-03-17
• Publisher: Multnomah

Summary

Kinna and Jimmy Henley had simple dreams of marriage and children. What they didn't plan on was years of infertility. After Kinna rescues an elderly woman, the threads of the past, present, and future weave together to reveal the wonder of one final hope.

Author Biography

Marlo Schalesky is the author of several books, including Beyond the Night and Empty Womb, Aching Heart. A graduate of Stanford University, Marlo also has a masters of theology with an emphasis in biblical studies from Fuller Theological Seminary. Married over twenty years, she lives with her husband, Bryan, and their five children in California.

Excerpts

Only the fog is real. Only the sand. Only the crashing of the sea upon the restless shore. The rest is a dream. It has to be. I say it again and again until I believe it, because I cannot be here. Not now. Not with mist dusting my eyelashes, sand tickling my toes, salt bitter on my lips. Not when the whole world has narrowed to a strip of beach, a puff of fog, and a single gull crying in an invisible sky.


This is crazy. Impossible. And I'm too old for crazy. I won't be some loony old woman with a house full of cats. I refuse to be.


Besides, I prefer dogs.


I touch my neck, and my breath stops. The chain is gone. My locket.


My mothers voice teases me. “Not impossible, hon. Improbable. Because with God all things are possible.” Her words, spoken in that ancient, quavering tone, hide a laugh turned wheezy with age. I hear her again. “Someday youll lose that locket, Thea Jean. You just wait.” Her grin turns the sides of her eyes into folds of old parchment. “And thats when the adventure will really begin.”


But I don't want any adventure. All I want is a comfortable chair, a good book, the sounds of my grandchildren playing tag under the California sun, and my boxer at my feet.


I want to go home.


I glance out over the ripples of Monterey Bay. White-capped waves. Dark water. And then I know. Thats what I need to wake me up, get me home. I need a cold slap in the face. Something to shake me from this crazy-old-cat-lady delusion.


I stride forward until the surf kisses my feet, the waves swirl around my ankles, knees, waist, arms. Cold. Icy. Welcome.


The water engulfs me. And suddenly it doesn't feel like a dream.


-
Fog closed in around Kinna Henley as she fell to her knees and pawed in the sand. The grains bit into her hands, filled her fingernails like black soot. And still she dug. Deep into the oozing wetness. Deep enough to bury her sin. Or at least the evidence of it.


No, not sin. She wouldn’t call it that. Desperation, maybe. Determination. But not sin. God wouldn’t bless that, and He had to bless today. He just had to. She was betting everything on it.


Kinna glanced over her shoulder. Somewhere, a gull cried. Once. Only once. Somewhere, water broke along rocks and sand. Somewhere, the sun rose over the horizon.


But not here.


Here, there was nothing but the fog and the shore and the sand beneath her fingers. Alone.


Barren.


She hated that word.


With a deep breath, Kinna reached into the pocket of her nurse’s smock and pulled out six empty prescription vials that didn’t bear her name. She held them in her palm. Minute bits of liquid shimmered in the bottoms, reflecting only gray, all that was left of the medication that held her hope, flowed through her veins, and ended in her ovaries. Expensive medication she couldn’t afford on her own. But she needed it. She’d tried too long, prayed too long, believed too long…for nothing.


This medication, this Perganol, would change all that. It had to.


She closed her fist.


What’s done is done. I had to take it, God. Don’t You see? I had to.


She turned her hand over, opened it, and dropped the vials into the hole. Then she covered them and pushed a fat, heavy rock over the top.


Gone. Buried.


She wouldn’t think of how those vials had been accidentally sent to the hospital. Of how they were supposed to be returned. Of how she said they had been. Or how she slipped them into the pocket of her smock instead. She’d told herself it didn’t matter, no one would know, no one would care, no one would be hurt. She made herself believe this
was the only way. And it was. Nothing else had worked. Not charting her temperature, not a million te

---

Excerpted from If Tomorrow Never Comes by Marlo Schalesky
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.