David's lips were still moist from the passionate kiss Anna had given him as they stood on the sidewalk in front of the Grumpy Gander restaurant. He was fifty-one and she was fifty-two and they had been married for thirty years. But their ages and three decades of marriage had not lessened their physical and sexual attraction for each other. Their bedroom could testify to their frequent amorous activities — and just not at night or early in the morning.

As they walked down the sidewalk holding hands in Mapleton, Indiana, David's thoughts returned to why he had retired and why they were moving from West Virginia back to their hometown. He hoped the psychiatrist was right. He had counseled her for years and over that time had prescribed numerous combinations of drugs to help her overcome her deep depression and heal her scared psyche. David remembered the psychiatrist's terse comments over the telephone, "David, move back to your hometown where the emotional and psychological damage had been inflicted on Anna. This is my last recommendation to restore Anna's health. She can't continue the way she is. She's only getting worse."

The word worse echoed through David's mind and Anna had to pull his hand to keep him from walking out into a busy intersection. He looked at Anna, winked, and said, "Thanks for saving me."

Saving me? No. David was doing his best to save Anna. That's why he took early retirement at fifty-one and moved back to Mapleton, where he and Anna said they'd never live. But he was doing this to save the love of his life. David's motivation that he mentally repeated to himself several times a day was: Whatever it takes to get my Anna back. I'll do whatever it takes.

As they crossed the intersection, David's mind began playing a movie of their lives. David and Anna started dating in high school and were married a few weeks after they graduated from college. David received an engineering degree and accepted an entry-level position with an energy company in West Virginia. David advanced quickly up the corporate ladder during his thirty-year tenure with the company. His career with the company was very lucrative. After the psychiatrist's telephone call, that basically ordered him to move back to Mapleton for Anna's health, he retired, placed their home on the market, threw a few things in their Tahoe, and drove to Mapleton. They were now living in a small motel room. During their daily drives that forced Anna to get out of the motel room, they noticed a wooded parcel of land for sale a few miles outside of Mapleton. They met with the realtor who had listed the property and made an offer to purchase the parcel. They made the necessary arrangements to get a cashier's check to accompany the offer with bank president Roger Taylor IV.

The movie stopped playing in David's mind. He rubbed his brow with his free hand, took a deep breath, and said to Anna, who was holding his hand as they walked down the sidewalk, "We've made a lot changes in the last couple months. Are you all right? Handling all of this okay? If we are going too fast, we can sure put the brakes on. We set our own schedule, you know." He then leaned over and kissed her forehead.

She squeezed his hand, smiled, and said, "Hey. I'm with the guy who took me to our high school prom, got me through my Dad's untimely death, and continually tells me, 'I loved you first and love you the most.' So, I'm fine. I really am. Plus, we're doing what my shrink told us to do."

With those words, she playfully swung their arms, laughed, and skipped a couple of steps.

They continued to hold hands as they aimlessly strolled down the sidewalks of Mapleton. They had no particular place to be or time to be there. As David stepped upon the curb after walking across another intersection, he glanced up and there was Christ Community Church (CCC). Yes, CCC where Anna's pain, depression, and emotional scaring had all begun. In a very true sense they had come full circle.

David thought: Is this really what Anna's shrink wanted to happen? Returning to the scene would be the cure? Everything else he did to help her failed. Will this work? Will it give me back my Anna?

David kicked a shiny piece of red gravel on the sidewalk. It bounced along the concrete before it careened into the church's asphalt parking lot and spun as if it had a life of it's own. David thought: Is this a sign for us that we are just spinning our wheels again as we seek yet another cure for Anna? Or is this worthless piece of gravel being used to lead us back into the life of CCC? It could have just as easily bounced off the sidewalk into the street.

David muttered these thoughts under his breath and squeezed Anna's sweaty palm.

David's gentle squeeze of Anna's hand caused her to stop thinking about all the changes they had been through in the last few months. She had been thinking about their specific changes, but also thoughts about change in general were dancing through her mind. When should people change? Is change good? If so, then why do most people avoid change like the plague? Also, the scripture from Ecclesiastes came to her mind, "The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride."

She hoped the changes that had brought them back to Mapleton would bring about a good end for David and her. Also, she smiled to herself when she mentally repeated the last part of the verse, "... patience is better than pride." She and David had swallowed their pride by the very act of moving back to Mapleton. Most of their friends in West Virginia and some of the citizens of Mapleton had heard them say on more than one occasion, "One thing's for sure, we're never moving back to Mapleton!" Now here they were. Not only back, but in the process of buying a parcel of land on which to build a home. They had swallowed their pride — maybe the patience would come?

David's thoughts moved from the piece of gravel he had kicked to the new marquee that stood on the front lawn of CCC. He was impressed by its size. He remembered the old one that was squatty and usually obscured by overgrown shrubs. It was almost impossible to read. Not this one. It could be read driving by at sixty miles-per-hour. It was taller than he was and even wider than it was tall. There in letters several inches high were these words:

CHRIST COMMUNITY CHURCH

Sunday Worship Services and Times Alive and Wide-Awake* 8:30 Traditional Worship 10:30

Wednesday Bible Study 12:00 (Free Lunch Included)

Minister: Pastor Jordan T. Bennett

(* Not for the faint of heart.)

David laughed and said, "Hey Anna, look at this."

Anna turned and faced the marquee. She read aloud the words as a town crier would. "Hear ye, hear ye. The edifice that stands before you is Christ Community Church. There are two worship services conducted inside every Lord's Day. One is at half past eight and the other is at half past ten. Also, for those who are hungry come at noon on Wednesday for earthly and heavenly food. This church presents the preaching and teaching of the Right Reverend Jordan T. Bennett." Before she could read the words on the bottom line of the marquee, she and David were laughing hysterically. She paused, gathered herself, and then in full volume continued, "Those of you who are faint of heart and not friends with change, please refrain from attending the early service for your own good. You won't like it and we don't want to listen to your grumbling."

Now David and Anna were bent over with laughter.

When the laughter subsided, Anna said, "Well I know what service we'll be attending. We're the eight-thirty kind of people. Right! We can handle change. Bring it on. The more the merrier!"

David still laughing, nodded in agreement, and added, "We can always use a free lunch, so it's eight-thirty on Sundays and noon on Wednesdays." He grabbed Anna, picked her up, swung her around, and started singing, "Onward Christian Soldiers," as they began marching down the sidewalk.

They went down many of the streets of their hometown both mentally and physically, as they walked back to their motel room. The weather was sunny and pleasant, and so was their conversation and spirits. Anna standing in front of CCC didn't bring another wave of depression over Anna, as David thought it might.

* * *

CCC was where it all began thirty-six years ago. She had a life changing experience there, but not the inspiring, uplifting, and spiritual type. No, it was of the dark, sinister, and sinful variety. Anna, as the president of the church's youth group, had to meet with the youth pastor, William "Joel" Smith, on a regular basis. They had to plan the youth activities, finalize the monthly Youth Council agenda, write the youth column for CCC's weekly newsletter, select the anthem the youth choir would sing during worship service, etc.

Therefore, Anna and the Pastor Joel spent considerable time together each week in his office. Over the months of working together and meeting several times each week in his office, Anna and Pastor Joel grew close and familiar with each other. Their closeness was encouraged by Joel's cold bed at home. Trudy, Joel's wife, was afraid of getting pregnant because her mother died tragically in giving birth. Therefore, she avoided having sex with Joel, even though they used birth control. She always thought: Will this be the time it fails and I'll get pregnant? So while his blood ran hot, hers did not. Their bedroom could not be described as a passion pit or a lover's paradise. It was more like an igloo at the North Pole.

So without it being planned, Anna lost her virginity at sixteen on the sofa behind the closed door of Joel's office. Their numerous meetings at the church became impassioned love trysts and had nothing to do with the youth group. To Anna's surprise and Joel's chagrin, she became pregnant. To her the solution was obvious: Joel divorces Trudy, marries me, and we raise our baby. His emphatic and solitary response was just the opposite: no divorce, no marriage, and Anna has an illegal abortion. After an emotional discussion, Anna finally submitted to Joel's hurtful and heartless demand. He arranged for her to have the illegal abortion performed by a money hungry and unscrupulous doctor in the back room of a gas station on the outskirts of Mapleton. The only people who knew of the abortion, other than Joel, Anna, the scum ball doctor and his nurse, were bank president Roger Taylor III and his commercial loan officer Edward Foster. It was only later that Joel's wife, Trudy, found out about the affair and abortion from her two best friends who were plugged into the hierarchy of Mapleton's power structure.

Pastor Joel's statutory rape of then sixteen-year-old Anna and her being coerced into having an illegal abortion by a money-hungry-sleazy-ball doctor from a neighboring county in a filthy old gas station were only two of Mapleton's dark and dirty Peyton Place-like secrets. Mapleton was a sinful community. The town fathers and most of those holding the political power worked hard to give the impression that Mapleton was an All-American City and wasn't a corrupt, immoral, and ragged around the edges little town. Knowing the right people and having the right amount of money, you could do (and get by with) almost anything. The unwritten but official principle upon which Mapleton operated was: If you could pay the "right" price to the "right" people, then you could arrange and do any deal, and no one would be the wiser.

That's how Mapleton was run. Need something done that wasn't on the up-and-up, then discretely ask around to learn who would do it for you and who needed to get pay. It was that simple. By Pastor Joel making a couple of telephone calls to the "right" people and having the "right" amount of cash, Anna's illegal abortion was history. All without one whisper finding its way to the street. More of Mapleton's unsavory and despicable secrets were then buried.

That's why Anna's parents never knew it happened. Also, why David never knew Anna had been raped and had had an abortion until a few years ago. Anna finally told David due to her psychiatrist insisting that she needed to tell him as part of her healing. The psychiatrist after years of counseling and prescribing numerous combinations of meds got to the root of Anna's mental and emotional problems. They originated from the affair with Pastor Joel and the back-door abortion that followed.

* * *

A few years after Anna and David were married and living in West Virginia, they wanted to start a family. They tried for several months, which turned into two years, with no pregnancy forthcoming from their efforts. She finally went to a doctor. Her medical history form was far from truthful. However, her doctor quickly discovered her secret that she had been pregnant and had an abortion. The abortion was the cause of her not being able to conceive. The doctor told her, "Whoever preformed your abortion really messed you up. The damage that was done will prevent you from becoming pregnant. And there's nothing I can do to correct the situation. The overwhelming odds are at least ninety-eight plus percent that you will never conceive and bare a child." With those words still ringing in her ears and echoing through her mind, she left the doctor's office devastated and in tears.

She drove around the back roads of the West Virginia town where they lived until she got control of her emotions. What she had just heard brought back all the pain and agonizing memories of Joel getting her pregnant and the sleaze-ball doctor butchering her for life. She thought: What was I thinking? Why did I agree to Joel's plan? Why didn't I tell my parents and have the baby without Joel? Some girls were doing that. Anna's thoughts turned to hate for Joel and the scum-ball doctor as the clear and present pain surrounded on her.

The memories of those wretched events in her life came pouring over her in wave after wave. What happened to her when she was sixteen and seventeen continued to hurt her and affect her life. And now they were affecting David's life too. Why hadn't she done things differently back then?

Finally, she got a handle on her emotions and then she started thinking about what she would tell David about the office visit. After driving several more miles, she came to the conclusion that she would tell him that the doctor said they should keep on trying to have a child. She encouraged herself by remembering that the doctor didn't say he was one hundred percent for sure she couldn't have a baby. So that's what she would tell David. She practiced the words aloud, "David, we just have to keep on trying. You really like having sex, so let's have more and more sex. Because the more sex we have the greater the chances are I'll get pregnant." With the sun setting and her emotions in check, she steered the car toward home.

As she entered the house, she winked at David and started unbuttoning her blouse. By the time she reached the bedroom door her blouse and bra were on the floor and her skirt was unzipped and sliding down over her hips. She turned her head toward David who was watching her with a crooked smile on his face and said, "Come get in bed with me and I'll tell you what the doctor said."

They had dinner later, much later that evening.

* * *

David did make love to her that night before their late dinner. In fact from then on many mornings he was late to the office and his lunch break expanded by an extra thirty minutes to accommodate their increased frequency of making love.

But their increased sexual activity didn't produce a pregnancy. She would tell David she went to the doctor and he said just to keep trying. But she hadn't gone. She thought it was a waste of time, because he had told her there was nothing he could do to fix the problem caused by her abortion. That sleaze-ball doctor back in Mapleton had damaged her and she'd never conceive.

Finding out she couldn't conceive and would never be able to bring a child into their lives increased the frequency and severity of her spells of depression. The affair with Pastor Joel, his rejection, and forcing her to have an illegal gas station abortion had psychologically scared her. Since those sordid events in her life she would experience occasional bouts of depression. Those spells generally lasted only a day or two. She could hide those emotional downturns from David because they were relatively mild and brief in duration.

But now she couldn't hide them from him. Knowing she would never give birth to a son or daughter had intensified the affect of her emotional scaring and psychological damage that was inflicted on her when she was a teenager. She wanted a child. She so desperately wanted a child. And, she wanted to give David a son and a daughter. Their lives were wonderful. David made good money that afforded them a worry-free lifestyle and all the luxuries of life they wanted. The only thing missing was for her to get pregnant and have a healthy child.