You Get What You Pray For by E.N. Joy Read Free Book Online Page A

couldn’t imagine sitting by while Unique handed her grandbabies, her flesh and blood, over to some strangers. But then a light bulb went off in Lorain’s head. Not only did she decide to support Unique’s decision to choose the route of adoption, but she also had the perfect suggestion when it came to the person to whom Unique should give the babies. Namely, herself.
    Initially, Lorain and Unique decided they would tell everyone that Unique was acting as a surrogate for Lorain. At that point no one but the two of them knew that Unique was actually Lorain’s biological daughter. Sharing this fact involved too much explaining, and Lorain wasn’t quite prepared to share her story.
    All would have gone well had Eleanor not begun to put two and two together. Eleanor was clueless about the fact that her thirteen-year-old daughter had been pregnant and had given birth. So when she figured out the whole situation regarding Lorain and Unique, she about lost her mind, putting the situation on blast in the church sanctuary. It was a mess. It was something Lorain had not wanted the members of New Day Temple of Faith to be privy to. Thanks to Eleanor, though, that wasn’t how it turned out. But by then Lorain was living a whole new life, in a whole new world. She rarely ever had to see the folks up at New Day.
    She attended Nicholas’s family church at least one Sunday out of the month so that when someone asked her what church she went to, she could avoid the embarrassment of not having a home church to rattle off. But the last thing she needed was to have church folk all up in her business. She didn’t mind all church folk, but all it took was one busybody to set things off. Besides, she didn’t need to be up in church all the time to prove that she was a Christian and loved the Lord. God knew her heart. On top of that, a socialite such as herself didn’t have a lot of time for church, for participating in this committee and that committee. And being a mommy to her adopted girls also took up a lot of time.
    Originally, Lorain wasn’t going to adopt the girls legally; she intended to serve as their guardian. This was because she figured that once Unique was in a better position financially and emotionally, she might want to take the girls back and raise them herself. So instead of pursuing a full adoption, Lorain basically took temporary custody of the twins. She was their legal guardian, and she was responsible for them financially. She didn’t want that burden to be placed on Unique, otherwise it would defeat the very purpose of Lorain raising the twins. This left the door open for Lorain and Unique to do a multitude of things when it came to raising the girls and shifting custody.
    After the death of the boys, and during her battle to be found innocent of the drug trafficking charge and the charges related to her sons’ deaths, Unique felt she didn’t have it in her to be a mommy. She didn’t feel that it was part of her calling, her destiny. Although her church family tried to tell her it wasn’t so, after the boys died, she felt as though she was no longer a mother. She felt stripped of that title in every way and didn’t even want to get back into the ring to try to earn her title back.
    Although she had never voiced it, Lorain begged to differ. She’d seen how Unique was with her boys. Lorain was engrossed by the relationship Unique had with her sons. She’d watched them interact, in awe, wondering whether she would have had the same type of bond with Unique when she was a child if things had turned out differently. Unique’s bond with her children, their connection with each other and their love for each other, showed in each of their eyes. Without question, Unique had been a great mother to those boys. Some women were born with that motherly instinct, and it did not falter, no matter the circumstance they themselves had been born into. Unique was one