Conceived Without Sin by Bud Macfarlane Read Free Book Online

Geometry class; the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. God is good; pleasing God is good; pleasing God requires that I be good.
    There werea hundred different ways to put it.
    Donna did not stay in the church for hours. In fact, she prayed for less than half an hour. Other than an unusual ability to concentrate on the mysteries and words of the Rosary without distraction, she did not feel one outward sign of the grace that flooded her heart on that day. But she was never the same. The ember of grace she received during the Sacramentof Confirmation four years earlier was inflamed that day. Now it was up to Donna to keep the fire burning, and she did. That weekend, she went to confession for the first time in over two years.
    She got into the habit of visiting the Blessed Sacrament on her walk home from school at least a few times a week, even if only to say a quick I love you to her new friend, Jesus.
    When the boys came ather over the next few years, rejecting the Three Bad Things was as easy as turning down a glass of poison. She found herself attending daily Mass with her parents before school, and even got her best friend, Gloria Santini, to go to Mass with her. Picking up a devotion to Saint Anthony seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
    Besides, the guy's amazing. Ask Uncle Tony, and you get instantresults, she now thought as she looked over at the silent stranger driving the truck.
    She could tell that there was a goodness in Sam; he wasn't a barracuda. She just knew. Like most good women, she knew she could trust her instincts, now that the Three Bad Things weren't mucking up the works.
    "You don't talk much, Sam, do you?"
    He looked away from the road and gave her a quick, toothy smile.He confirmed her question with silence and a slow shake of his head.
    A few minutes later, he said, "Don't worry, Donna. Buzz can talk enough for ten men."
    4
    Months earlier, in a suburb of New Jersey, a tall, well-built man slammed the door of his car just after climbing in.
    From the rearview mirror, Mark Johnson saw the smile on his wife's face as she stood behind the screen door of their home.His daughter Angela was standing there, too, in front of his wife Maggie. Maggie said something to the girl, and closed the front door slowly, as if to mock Mark's anger.
    He started the car, and pulled out of the driveway. His heart sank. She's happy I'm leaving. Happy! She's relieved!
    She had kicked him out before, but had always let him return the next day. One time, two years earlier, she hadbeen the one to leave him, taking the girls for a week to stay with her mother in Maryland. Not this time. Maggie was staying put. This time she had forced him to pack his clothes.
    He had called her bluff, and she had won.
    "If that's how you feel, Mag, why don't I just move out!" he had screamed an hour earlier, losing his temper, at the end of another long discussion-turned-shouting match.
    Theyhad stood in their newly remodelled kitchen. He had taken a night job for a security company to pay for it last summer. They were on opposite sides of the new island with the cook-top stove. Maggie had insisted on that stove.
    The kitchen was so bright and cheerful. Angela was coloring in her Our Lady of Fatima coloring book at the kitchen table, listening with one ear. It remotely annoyed Markthat Angela rarely cried when the arguments came. She was used to them.
    Maggie's pretty eyes had sparkled. "Okay," she had told him smugly, almost serenely. "But if you do leave, you're not coming back until I say so, and under my conditions."
    She had the youngest, little Meg, in her arms. Meg was burying sobs into her mother's breast. Sarah, the oldest, was at soccer practice.
    "Fine! I'll moveout!" he yelled, calling her bluff.
    "Good. You go pack," she closed the deal calmly. "I need to get dinner together. I'll pick up Sarah later."
    She turned away from him and opened the refrigerator, and began pulling out ingredients for the