Free Redemption by Karen Kingsbury

against her stomach, refusing the sick feeling. "I thought you two of all people would understand why I can't. . . why divorce isn't an option for me."
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    Her father cleared his throat, stood, and began pacing the small room. He stopped a few feet from Kari, and she could see conflict raging in his eyes.
    "Honey, you're absolutely right. And we'll do everything we can to support you in this." He slid his hands into his pants pockets, and Kari saw the muscles in his jaw tense." "It's just that I ... I'd like to . . ."
    His voice broke.
    "I know." Kari rose and hugged him, and her mother joined them, placing her arms around them both. Kari whispered as loudly as she could, given the weariness of her soul. "Your little girl's been hurt, and you want to make it better, right?"
    When her father didn't answer, Kari stepped back to see his face. What she saw tore at her almost as much as knowing what her husband had done. Her father, the man who had held the family together when her sister Ashley walked out five years ago, the man who had stayed upbeat and stood by her mother when her hair was falling out from chemotherapy-that same man was standing with tears running down his face.
    Kari held on to her parents and prayed they would all somehow survive the coming weeks. She had no idea how her siblings or her friends at Clear Creek Community Church would react. Everyone had always known her as the good girl, the one destined to do right and stay married forever.
    She hated the idea that now those same people were bound to feel sorry for her.
    The thought made her want to hide under her parents' bed like she used to do when she was little and a springtime thunderstorm would rock the house.
    And there was something else, something she was afraid to admit even to herself.
    The truth was, the nausea and headaches and tired feeling she'd been fighting for the past few weeks might be more than a reaction to stress. It wasn't a thought she even wanted to entertain in light of Tim's admission. But that didn't make it less possible. If something didn't happen soon, she would have to take steps to find out.
    Kari swallowed, and from the safety of the inner circle her 58
    parents' arms created, she calculated the dates once more in her' mind. There was simply no denying the facts. She'd missed two periods in a row, something that had happened only one other time in her life.
    That had been in February three years ago.
    The first time she was pregnant.
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    Dirk Bennett slipped into the storeroom of the largest cafeteria on campus, the place where he'd worked since the beginning of last year. He tipped three pills from a bottle marked "Natural Power" and downed them with a swig of water. Then he peered through a grate out at the seating area and saw Professor Jacobs having lunch with Angela. Again.
    Anyone could see what was happening. The professor was having an affair with her. Dirk had been following them for the past few weeks, and now he was convinced they were living together.
    Dirk clenched his teeth and wound his fingers into rock-hard fists. Anger burned within him, and he imagined opening the storeroom door, walking up to their table, and knocking out the professor with a single blow.
    The thing that upset Dirk most was her lies. She'd been lying to him for the past eight months.
    "I'm busy, Dirk. ..."
    "My classes are more demanding than I thought. ..."
    "I need space. . . ."
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    "You're too young to get so serious. ..."
    Her excuses felt like daggers through his heart. Dirk released a ragged sigh and thought back to the beginning. Back to the afternoon when he'd been pumping iron in the university weight room and Angela Manning first walked into his life. She wasn't pretty like the sweet girls he'd dreamed about in high school. Rather, she was striking, with an untouchable air and a taut, Ś; chiseled body.
    That afternoon they had worked out for nearly an hour, sometimes only a few feet from each other. He caught her eye