Free Beginnings (Crawley Creek Prequel) by Lori King Page A

She was an only child, but not for lack of
trying. Her parents had always wanted more children, but medical
science wasn’t as good in the forties and fifties. Nowadays they
were able to give women more of an idea of what was wrong…in most
cases.
    Struggling to calm her raging emotions, she
closed her eyes and focused her energies on slowing the tears. Once
her breathing eased back to a normal rhythm, she reached for the
keys and shoved them into the ignition with a silent prayer that
her old clunker would start today. The last thing she needed was
more to deal with. Between Montford and Crawley Creek she would
have twenty minutes to figure out how she was going to tell her
husband the bad news.
    At thirty years old, she felt like her life
had just ended.
     
    ~ ~ ~ ~
     
    Abraham Crawley fell in love with Seraphina
Jerome the moment he laid eyes on her. It was the first day of
class in his freshman year, and the florescent lights had shone on
her like a beam of heavenly light. Her rich mahogany-colored hair
had captivated him in a second, and her dark eyes seemed almost
unnaturally expressive above her sweet smile.
    Back then, she was a fifteen-year-old slip
of a girl, barely past puberty, but he saw the beauty of her soul,
and he wanted it for his own. Carting her books for her from class
to class and then home, he was able to find out more about
Montford’s newest resident. Originally from Idaho, her father was
an over-the-road truck driver who’d had to stop driving due to a
bad back, and her mother was a stay-at-home mom who’d just recently
entered the work force to help make ends meet.
    When he’d left her on her front porch that
first afternoon, she’d smiled at him in a way that stole his
breath, and there hadn’t been a moment since that he hadn’t loved
her. She was his one true soulmate, and he loved her more than life
itself. So when she’d suddenly withdrawn and become quiet and sad a
few weeks ago, he noticed right away.
    The problem was that she refused to talk to
him about what was bothering her. His gut told him it had to do
with the neatly labeled calendar on the bathroom counter that
charted her ovulation and the scores of pregnancy tests she’d
purchased in the last several years. He wished she wasn’t so hung
up the lack of a child, but whenever he brought up other options,
she shut down on him. He’d learned to just avoid the subject, so it
just hung over their relationship like a thick morning fog. Neither
one of them knew what was on the other side, and neither was brave
enough to push their way through the murk.
    They’d fulfilled their parents’ wishes that
they wait until after college to get married. As teenagers, they’d
planned and prepared so that with associate degrees in hand they
could spend the rest of their lives together. Children were
something they’d talked about from the evening of his fumbling
nervous proposal the night of Sera’s twentieth birthday. They’d
excitedly made plans for a future of planting roots and building a
legacy, but ten years later they were celebrating yet another
anniversary, just the two of them.
    He couldn’t lie to himself and say he wasn’t
disappointed by the lack of a child, but it certainly didn’t stop
him from enjoying his life. He and Sera had scrimped and saved for
five years before they managed to purchase the ranch of their
dreams. Crawley Creek was finally thriving after another five years
of backbreaking work. They should be celebrating what they’d
accomplished instead of weeping for what they were missing. He knew
that children would come when the timing was right, and if they
didn’t… well, he could be happy with just Sera.
    That’s why he’d planned something special
for the evening. The ranch hands had the night off, so he was going
to make use of their beautiful property by taking her out for a
special picnic. In a basket, he’d packed two tuna fish sandwiches
and a dish of potato salad, as well as a thermos of