Giving Thanks for Baby. Terri Reed

hung up and pushed the play button on the answering machine.

      “Hi, babe. I need to talk with you. Call me, okay?”

      Her ex-husband’s voice filled the room and she clenched her teeth. With a sharp jab of her finger she deleted the message.

      What did he want now? He’d given up total custody of their son in the divorce, in exchange for the condo and all their possessions. She didn’t have anything else for him to take.

      Restless and edgy, she cleaned the updated kitchen, straightened up Aidan’s plethora of toys strewn around the apartment and channel surfed on the twenty-inch TV that Ross had bought for her as a welcoming gift. When that didn’t relax her, she pulled out her laptop and set it on the pine coffee table. She could at least work.

      Once the computer was ready she stared at the screen. She didn’t want to work. Instead, she surfed the Internet looking for fun things to do with Aidan around town.

      A local farm had a pumpkin patch and hayride day coming up. That would be good.

      Hmm. Story time at the new bookstore downtown. Aidan loved listening to stories.

      She drummed her fingers on the table. Ugh! She needed a manicure.

      Maybe Kelly was right. She’d been working too hard and not taking care of herself. She wished she had a friend in town but that was another thing her marriage to Kevin had ruined.

      He’d so monopolized every moment, getting upset when she wanted to spend time with her friends, that she’d eventually let the friendships fade. She didn’t even know how to get hold of any of her old college gang.

      She needed to link up with others who were in the same boat.

      Single and lonely.

      She frowned. She wasn’t lonely. She had Aidan. She just needed someone to talk to.

      What was the name of that online group Kelly mentioned?

      The Kingdom Room.

      Heart pounding with anticipation, she went to the Web site. She hesitated a moment before bolstering her courage and registering. After filling in the blanks and choosing a screen name, she was in.

      For an hour she lurked, reading the posts from the last few days. Men and women both conversed about various aspects of being single. A few mentioned their children. Nothing overly personal or uncomfortable here.

      Okay, this was doable.

      She wasn’t looking for a romantic encounter, just friends to understand.

      With a deep breath, she jumped into the current thread of conversation, hoping to find someone out there to connect with.

      Yet, a little voice inside her head taunted her—only more hurt would be her reward.

      Chapter Two

      By Tuesday morning Scott’s e-mail in-box was bursting.

      He stared at the amount of posts. What was going on?

      After booting up the computer when he first walked into his office, he’d gone in search of some tea. Setting his mug of Earl Grey on the marble coaster on his mahogany desk, he slipped into his fabric-covered chair.

      Normally, he took a moment to let the soothing hues of blues and brown in the office soothe his mind before turning his thoughts to work. But the staggering number of e-mails held his attention.

      He clicked into the in-box and began to scroll through the e-mails. They were all addressed to Called2serve. A dawning realization clenched his gut as he read the posts. Someone, Naomi he was sure, had registered him to The Kingdom Room and added him to their e-mail loop.

      He didn’t have time for this.

      His father had called just as he was leaving the apartment he rented in a private residence east of Main Street. The phone call had been strange. His father had asked if Scott would say a few words at his parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. Scott could hear the emotion in his father’s voice and it left Scott feeling off-kilter.

      Joseph Crosby had always been as solid as a hundred-year-old oak tree and just as unbendable.

      His father was a family practitioner in Richmond. He’d had a long career and a great reputation. Everyone knew Doc Crosby. Candice Crosby was a star in her own right as a skilled surgeon. Scott and his sibs never lacked for medical care.

      Scott’s sister, Elise, followed their father into medicine and was now a pediatrician. Her husband was a contractor and had built their home as well as Scott’s two brothers’ homes.

      John and Kyle Crosby had veered from medicine and both became lawyers. An honorable profession according to their father.

      And then there was Scott. The quiet one. The underachiever. The assistant pastor.

      Another e-mail popped up.

      Scott shook his head to clear his thoughts. He really didn’t have time for an Internet singles group. He needed to focus on organizing the upcoming Thanksgiving Day dinner for the homeless.

      But curiosity got the better of him; he couldn’t help quickly scanning the e-mails before deleting them. Some were interesting threads of conversation regarding the holidays and the difficulty of being single when so many people seemed to expect couples at gatherings.

      One post in particular grabbed his attention.

      Hi, I’m new here and am hoping to connect with others who might understand. I’ve been divorced for a short time, but the marriage was over long before the official decree, I just didn’t know it. So I’m starting over in a new city and between work and my baby, I don’t have time to make friends. I’d been married since my second year of college. It’s strange to be alone, especially as the holidays approach. I do have some family, but they have their own lives. I don’t want to be a burden. Any suggestions? Is the emptiness I feel just the lack of a spouse? Is it normal? Will it pass?

      Momof1

      Scott sat back. These answers couldn’t be found online or anywhere else on this earth. Naomi may have added him to The Kingdom Room for her own reasons, but God obviously had reasons, as well.

      Scott didn’t believe in coincidences. The Momof1 needed a guide to lead her to the truth. To the fulfillment she craved.

      Only doing it via the Internet seemed so…cold and distant. So unlike God.

      But in an age of electronic devices…God met people where they were. And Scott would serve any way God wanted him to.

      Scott closed his eyes. Lord, give me the words You would have me say.

      A moment later, he began to type.

      It was late in the night on Wednesday when Trista remembered to check her e-mail. The past couple of days had been hectic. The senior Benson had been pleased with the work she’d done on a small claims case that had settled well and had informed her he wanted her on a new case that was a complicated land issue between the county and their client.

      So she’d spent every spare moment she could studying the land laws of Virginia and specifically their county.

      Now that Aidan had gone to bed, she propped her feet up on the coffee table, squirmed into a comfortable position on the secondhand sofa and fired up her laptop.

      Whoa! These Kingdom Room people had a lot of free time. She couldn’t believe the amount of e-mail in her in-box.

      She started with the first response from her post and slowly made her way through the quagmire of words. Some made her laugh, others she didn’t know what to make of.

      One man sent her his picture and asked for a date. She quickly deleted that. It creeped her out that some one would ask for a date without knowing anything about the other person. For all the guy knew, she could be a serial killer.

      Several women said she was