Love Isn’t Enough
By
VANESSA MILLER
Other Books by Vanessa Miller
After the Rain
How Sweet The Sound
Heirs of Rebellion
Feels Like Heaven
Heaven on Earth
The Best of All
Better for Us
Her Good Thing
Long Time Coming
A Promise of Forever Love
A Love for Tomorrow
Yesterday’s Promise
Forgotten
Forgiven
Forsaken
Rain for Christmas (Novella)
Through the Storm
Rain Storm
Latter Rain
Abundant Rain
Former Rain
Anthologies (Editor)
Keeping the Faith
Have A Little Faith
This Far by Faith
EBOOKS
Love Isn’t Enough
A Mighty Love
The Blessed One (Blessed and Highly Favored series)
The Wild One (Blessed and Highly Favored Series)
The Preacher’s Choice (Blessed and Highly Favored Series)
The Politician’s Wife (Blessed and Highly Favored Series)
The Playboy’s Redemption (Blessed and Highly Favored Series)
Tears Fall at Night (Praise Him Anyhow Series)
Joy Comes in the Morning (Praise Him Anyhow Series)
A Forever Kind of Love (Praise Him Anyhow Series)
Ramsey’s Praise (Praise Him Anyhow Series)
Escape to Love (Praise Him Anyhow Series)
Praise For Christmas (Praise Him Anyhow Series)
His Love Walk (Praise Him Anyhow Series)
Could This Be Love (Praise Him Anyhow Series)
Song of Praise (Praise Him Anyhow Series)
Publisher’s Note:
This short story is a work of fiction. References to real events, organizations, or places are used in a fictional context. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
Vanessa Miller
www.vanessamiller.com
Printed in the United States of America
© 2011 by Vanessa Miller
BFP Publishing
PO Box 26478
Dayton, OH 45426
No part of this ebook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical—including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system—without permission in writing from the publisher.
This fictional account is loosely based on the Old Testament story of Hannah’s plea for a child of her own (I Samuel 1:1-2:36)
1
I’m going to kill him, Hannah thought as she listened to the man on the other end of the phone ask in a strictly business tone, “Is Mr. Thomas Ellison in?”
She tightened her grip on the receiver and cringed. Every time she answered the phone and heard that professional tone of the person asking to speak with her husband of two years, she learned about another past due bill that he “forgot” to pay. “He’s not in right now. I’m his wife. Can I help you?”
“Mrs. Ellison, we’ve been trying to reach your husband concerning some very important personal business.”
She knew the lingo. Personal business was code for, Your deadbeat husband owes us some money. Hannah rubbed the spot on the left side of the back of her neck where hair used to reside. Her hair had slowly fallen out as each layer of her husband’s twenty-thousand dollars worth of personal business had been revealed. “What’s this about?” she asked.
“Tell your husband that if we don’t receive a payment by next week, we’re coming to pick up the car.”
She closed her eyes as she envisioned several more strands of hair drifting to the carpeted floor. She placed the phone back on the receiver and grabbed the keys out of her purse.
“So that’s why he’s been keeping his car in the garage and driving mine.” She was getting so tired of the deception. When they were first married, she sat down with her husband and mapped out a plan to pay every single one of his creditors.
Out of love for her husband, she’d even withdrawn money from her 401k to make it happen within the eight month period they’d allotted to get it done.
She opened the garage door, got in her husband’s silver and black Lincoln and backed it into the driveway. She turned off the ignition, got out of the car and screamed to the winds, the waves and whoever else might be listening, “Come and get it!” She wasn’t going to live this hood rich lifestyle that Thomas was trying to force on her. “Buying Lincolns when he couldn’t even afford a Buick,” she mumbled. Thomas could catch the bus to work for all she cared.
As she turned to march back into the house, she saw Thomas cruise into the driveway with another source of deception –his son. When they were engaged, Thomas claimed to be just as childless as she. He said he wanted nothing more than to have a child with her, so that he could finally be a father. But seven months after they were married, a summons for a paternity test appeared in their mailbox. Thomas swore on a stack of Bibles, “That kid ain’t mine. His mama is just trying to push him off on me so she can get some child support.”
Hannah should have known then that he was lying. If the woman was after child support she would have picked on someone other than $27,000-a-year-earning Thomas Ellison. But even lying on a stack of Bibles couldn’t change a child’s DNA. Thomas was the father. “Hey baby,” Thomas said as he got out of the car and his four-year-old mini-me tossed a baseball to him. “Why’d you take my car out of the garage?”
Hannah turned and stared at them. She was too transfixed by mini-me to answer Thomas’s question. How could he not have known that this child was his? They had the same sandy brown complexion, same crooked smile. They even walked the same: head tilted to the side, favoring the right leg, so the sole of the shoe wore down on the right side first.
I swear to you, baby, I’m not Jason’s father. That lie her husband told still echoed through her head every second and fourth Friday through Sunday of the month. She hadn’t married a doubting Thomas, hers was a liar, and a deceiver. And she was sick and tired of playing his games.
“Did you hear me baby; I asked why’d you take the car out of the garage?”
He was standing next to her now. So close that she could reach out and touch him. But the kind of touching she wanted to do would probably get her twenty-five years to life. “While you’re out playing with that baseball, the creditors are looking for your car. I’m not going to help you hide it from them.”
Turning her back on her husband and his prodigal seed, she strutted away. Opened the garage door and then went inside their small house. They’d bought their home as soon as her husband’s credit problems had been cleaned up. She was proud of their accomplishments and had once thought of this house as cozy. But when his illegitimate son, Jason came to visit, she could find no place to hide. The living room and dining room connected and the kitchen was so small she could barely turn around in it. Stopping in the dining room, she debated her escape when Jason walked into the house and said, “Hi, Hannah.”
Hannah wouldn’t even look at him. He was just trying to let her know that she hadn’t said a mumbling word to him, and she was not about to have her manners corrected by a four year old. She waved her hand in the air as she stood in the dining room. “I’m a little upset right now, Jason, I don’t feel like talking.”
Thomas closed the door as he walked in. He snapped at Hannah, “You don’t have to treat him like that, Hannah. None of this is his fault.”
She knew it wasn’t Jason’s fault. She didn’t want to mistreat him, but no matter how sh
e tried, she couldn’t force herself to do right by this little boy who had invaded her life. Instead of addressing the issue, she verbally attacked her husband. “You are the most irresponsible man I know. You know we’ve got all these bills, but are you out trying to get a second job?” She pointed at the baseball in his hands as though it offended her and continued, “No, you’re out playing catch.” She rolled her eyes and walked out of the room.
2
Thomas lowered his head. Defeated. That was how he felt. He had hoped that she would never find out about his most recent financial woes. He’d worked three doubles in the last two weeks to come up with the extra money he needed to pay his car note. He mailed the check in to them yesterday, just as he’d told them he would. Why did they have to call his house and upset his wife? He handed the baseball and mitt to Jason and told him, “Take this stuff to your room and change out of those dirty clothes while I talk with Hannah.”
“Okay.” Jason headed toward his room, then stopped and turned back around. “Hey, Dad?”
“Yes, Son?”
“I had fun playing catch with you today, but if it’s going to upset Hannah, we don’t have to play anymore.” Jason’s shoulders slumped as he turned and walked toward his room.
Thomas watched his son walk away. It tore him up to see the little guy so sad. He wanted to tell him that Hannah wasn’t upset with him. But the boy was smart; he knew mistreatment when he was receiving it. Thomas knew what it felt like also. His shoulders slumped just like his son’s as he turned toward his own bedroom.
He put a smile on his face as he opened the door to his bedroom. The smile faded as he watched his wife throwing her clothes into an overnight bag. “What are you doing?”
“You’re a smart man, figure it out.” She yanked the dresser drawer and grabbed some of her under clothes and tossed them in her bag as well.
“You’re leaving me?” The words felt foreign on his lips. He’d thought that he and Hannah had weathered the biggest storms and were now on the road to recovery.
“I cannot stay here one second longer. I need some time away.”
His wife was the most beautiful woman he’d ever come in contact with. And although he loved her olive skin tone, brown eyes and high cheekbones, it wasn’t her outer layer that most attracted him. She had a big heart. She was giving and understanding. She had walked through the fire with him, and helped him to become a better man. But lately it seemed as though her inner beauty was fading. Still, he didn’t want to live a day without her. “Don’t leave, Hannah. If this is about my car note, I paid it yesterday.” She kept packing. “Stop this, Honey. I can explain why it was late.”
She ignored him as she tried to open the bottom dresser drawer. The handle broke off in her hand, and she swung around to face her husband with the object held high. “Do you see this? You promised we would get a new bedroom set, but did we get it? No. We’ve been too busy paying off your bills.”
Hannah’s mother had given them their bedroom set and the cream colored leather sofa and chair in their living room, as well. But the bedroom set was more than a decade old when she’d passed it down to them. The wood had faded in spots and bubbled in others. He’d wanted desperately to buy his queen something she could be proud of… he’d wanted to be someone she could be proud of. He hadn’t brought much of anything to this marriage.
Well that wasn’t true. He’d brought twenty thousand in debt and a four-year-old son. Neither of which Hannah appreciated. “I’m working on it. If you give me some time, I’ll make good on all my promises to you.”
She harrumphed as she put the last of her items in her overnight bag and zipped it. “Time is running out on your caviar dreams and champagne wishes.”
Bringing his voice to a whisper he told her, “I didn’t expect to be paying child support. I’m trying to get adjusted to having two hundred dollars a month taken out of my paycheck. You helped me with all the debt I had when we first got married, why can’t you work with me on this?”
Rolling her eyes for the second time that day, she picked up her bag, opened the bedroom door and walked past him. “I’ll be at my sister’s house for the weekend. We’ll talk when I get back.”
3
Hannah sat in her sister’s expansive kitchen dipping her fresh-out-of-the-oven oatmeal cookies into ice cold milk. Her favorite remedy for the blues. Her big sister knew her so well. “Janice, you just don’t know what it’s like. I can’t take it anymore. Thomas was not truthful with me and I shouldn’t have to stay married to a man like that.”
Janice put another batch of oatmeal cookies in the oven, sat down behind her island and put her elbow on the marble counter top. “What makes you think I don’t know how it is?”
Hannah put another warm cookie in her mouth and waved her arm in dramatic fashion. “Look at all you have. This huge house with non-hand-me-down furniture is evidence enough that your husband treats you good. This place has to have at least four-thousand square footage.”
Janice laughed. “Forty-five hundred to be exact. But Little Sis, I think you are forgetting something.”
“You’re doggone right, I forgot something. She stepped down from the high backed stool and walked from the kitchen to the great room. The name was no exaggeration, from the cathedral ceilings to the Pella windows and the open fire place, not to mention the snow white carpet and lounging furniture… spectacular. “I forgot how to live good, is what I forgot.” She turned to face her sister as she heard footsteps behind her. “I feel like I live in a shoe when I come over here. Everything is so big and roomy, while I can barely turn around without knocking something over in my house.”
Janice put her sister’s hand in hers. “It didn’t start off like this, Hannah.” Janice squeezed her sister’s hand. “Don’t you remember that little apartment John and I had on Wabash?” Janice laughed as she released her sister’s hand. “Girl, some days I thought the roaches were eating more food than we were.”
“I remember that apartment. Didn’t someone break in and steal the meat out of your freezer?”
“That was the place. The neighborhood was so bad that I accused John of moving me over there just so I could get shot walking home from work.”
Hannah laughed.
“Come sit with me,” Janice told Hannah. They walked out of the great room and entered the family room, the place for all things beige and comfortable. They sat together on the sectional and Janice told her, “It took a lot of years before John and I were able to live comfortably. We struggled for the first nine years of our marriage.”
Hannah knew all about struggling. She was majoring in it… at the school of hard knocks and big fat lumps. “Didn’t you get tired?”
“Of course I did. Those were the nights when I did a lot of crying and a lot of praying. I still can’t explain how it all worked out; I just know that God answers prayers. And I think He has a special place in His heart for a crying woman.”
“But John didn’t have to pay child support.”
“What would he have paid it with? For the first three years of our marriage, John spent more time looking for a job than working any place on a regular basis.”
Tears trickled down Hannah’s cheeks as she said, “Okay, your husband might have had a bad time with the job market in the beginning, but you never had to spend time with a child that didn’t belong to the both of you.”
Janice wiped the tears from her sister’s face. “No I didn’t, but John had other problems, and so did I. But we worked together to solve them. I’m telling you what I know, Hannah. With God’s help you can get through this.”
Head bowed low, Hannah confessed, “I haven’t prayed much lately.”
Janice scooted closer to her sister and put her arm around her. “God’s still on the throne, Sweetie. He hasn’t changed residence. You can still find Him if you seek after Him.”
She and her sister talked well into the night. Then Janice told her that she needed to go make her man happy. Hannah went
to the guest room and climbed in bed, but she couldn’t get to sleep that night. She was too busy wondering why she couldn’t get past the anger and work with Thomas. If her sister could work with her husband and move her family from poverty to prosperity, why couldn’t she do the same? Why was she so angry all the time? Her husband was good to her, and she loved him. So what was the problem?
At about three in the morning she finally admitted to herself where the greatest part of her anger stemmed from. She hadn’t conceived. She and Thomas had been trying to have a baby for over a year… and nothing. She didn’t have many childbearing years left. She was thirty seven and didn’t want to wait until she was forty to have children. If something didn’t happen soon…
And every time she saw Jason, it was like a reminder of her failure to conceive a child for the man she loved. Consequently, even surrounded by her husband’s love, she was miserable. She told Thomas how she felt a couple months back, and he’d asked her, “Isn’t my love enough for you, Hannah?” She pulled the covers tightly around her barren body. She hadn’t been able to answer his question then, and she still didn’t know if his love was enough to quiet the turmoil in her soul.
4
On Sunday morning Thomas got up early to make Jason’s favorite breakfast: cinnamon pancakes with chocolate milk. Thomas was learning more and more about his son each weekend they spent together. He enjoyed getting to know Jason. The only unfortunate part of the time he spent with his child was his wife’s reaction. But he had denied and neglected Jason for too long as it was, there was no way he would continue to be a deadbeat dad. Yeah, he was paying his child support. But sending money didn’t make you a dad. Families invested time in one another. Thomas decided that if he only got one thing right in this life, he wanted to be a great dad. He wanted his son to grow up and tell his sons that he had a father who did everything he could and even went that extra mile to ensure that he led a successful life.
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