Early Last Night

By Kathryn

Life is to be lived. But occasionally, a life comes along that lives outside the boundaries of accepted secular society. When that occurs, a community learns the extent to which an individual will go in order to achieve that which they feel society has denied them. When Cody and Nicole first met, their lives were on a collision course they wouldnt acknowledge and others couldnt comprehend. Girl meets boy. She sees a man much older who seems to fit into the life she envisions for herself. Boy meets girl. He sees a means to his future. The chaos their union brings to their respective families is a scenario played out much too often in todays secular society. Leaving the love of God and his purpose out of any of lifes circumstances brings disastrous consequences. If only they wouldve known.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: May 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781982203306

Kathryn

Upon retiring from medicine, Kathryn began writing. Through her imagination she delves into an array of relevant aspects of todays society as well as some of the more recent unique medical conditions that plague mankind.

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Copyright © 2018 Kathryn.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-0329-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-0331-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-0330-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018905310

Balboa Press rev. date: 05/15/2018

CONTENTS

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.

-Jeremiah 31:13b, NIV

DEDICATION

T here is nothing new about murder. Adam and Eve experienced the first murder recorded in the Bible, with one of their sons killing the other. No human on earth can know ahead of time the extent to which another will go in order to compensate themselves for that which they feel society has robbed them.

This book is dedicated to all those individuals who have lost a loved one through no decisive fault of their own but who have been left behind to ponder the consequences.

CHAPTER

1

T he crowd of spectators were on their feet, shouting, howling, pumping their fists in the air with the noise escalating and resonating beyond the walls of the gymnasium. It was the last quarter of the Class B State Basketball finals and the gold and black team of Farley had possession of the ball. After coming down with the rebound on the defense end of the court, Nick, who amply filled the black shorts and gold top, who always played center, had ten seconds or less to advance the play over the mid center line of the court.

Calmly but stealthily moving to the offense side of the court, Nick glanced at the clock. Seven seconds to go until the game was over. Would history be made? Once over the mid center line, Nick looked at the basket while six players, three from each team, jockeyed for position on the floor under the basket waiting to retrieve the ball in any way they could. It was now or never.

The arms of the defensive player in front of Nick were becoming a real nuisance. Flaying her arms, following Nick’s every move, she was hoping by some miracle Nick would drop the ball; little did they realize Nick would cause one of them to commit a foul. After taking a fake shot, Nick let go of the basketball but was physically hit in the process. The whistle blew and everyone on the floor stopped in their tracks. The secondhand on the tournament clock stopped with three seconds left in the game. The spectators in the stands from the opposing team groaned while the Farley crowd screamed louder. Two feet over the center line in offensive territory while attempting to make a basket, Nick took a deliberately hard defensive hit. It was a three-point penalty against the opposing team.

Her face remained calm, her body movements relaxed; no unwanted gestures toward the referee, no acknowledgment of being frustrated, Nick walked calmly up to the free throw line and waited to receive the ball from the referee. This was not Nicole’s first rodeo at the free throw line. Being tall and very athletic, she could easily frustrate the opposing team enough to cause an unintentional foul by at least one of the opposing players. She would gladly take the first of three shots at the basket. Everyone in the gym was well aware of exactly what this moment meant.

Nick McEwen took the ball from the referee. Standing strong, deliberate and focused, Nick looked to the backboard while bouncing the ball three times. This was no ordinary player and this was no ordinary game. Every set of eyes in the auditorium were glued on the player standing at the free throw line.

Nick was ready to launch a large, brown ball across an expanse of floor to a rim set ten feet above the floor. The six players, three on either side of the free throw line on the floor under the basket, were jittery, anticipating a rebound. Their knees were taking the physical punishment, flexed and waiting, while their upper torso was straining and sweaty, ready to jump.

As it went through the hoop, bouncing once against the rim, half the crowd erupted with cheers. Everyone waited. Again, Nick received the ball from the referee. The tension in the auditorium was palpable. If made, this shot would tie the game.

Oblivious to Nick was the congregated mass of people sitting on the edge of their seats and those standing around the edge of the court. Familiar were the circumstances in which she found herself. This was the kicker for her. Although Nick didn’t hear the noise as it increased in decibels, she knew this was a moment that everyone cheering in the stands was waiting for. Many people in the stands drove extended miles to come see her play. She was determined not to disappoint anyone. She was determined not to fall short of her own expectations. Concentrating on the rim, the basketball left Nick’s hands and, rolling around the rim a couple times, easily went through the hoop, finding its way to the floor.

In that moment of time, the game between the two opposing teams was now tied in score. As though someone threw a switch, the raucous crowd lowered their decibel level and waited, some hoping Nick would make the next shot while some were praying the basketball would fall short. As in the Salt Lake City Mormon Tabernacle, you could’ve heard a pin drop in the stadium. If the ball went through the hoop, the town of Farley and its basketball team would celebrate the Women’s State Basketball Class B Championship with a much desired win.

The clock on the wall sat at three seconds left of play. After taking a last look at the rim and bouncing the ball three times, Nick was ready. The ball seemed to hang in the air as it made its way to the hoop. Nick wasn’t worried. With a swoosh it went through the hoop never touching the rim.

Nick was no ordinary player. With nerves of steel and the talent of knowing what could be accomplished on the basketball floor with practice and perseverance, Nick achieved exactly what she set out to do. As a senior in high school, it would be her last championship game. She had no concept whatsoever of not delivering the winning score.

The crowd erupted; the sound of cheering fans was deafening. To some of the opposing team, it felt as though the gymnasium itself shook, Farley celebrating a win no one thought was possible. Nick was surrounded by her teammates with hugs and tears streaming down their faces.

In the stands, her family was bombarded with high-fives and squeals of delight from those around them. No one was prepared to leave the stadium to get to their vehicle in order to escape the traffic jam that resulted after each and every game. Everyone stayed glued to the square foot of real estate they’d occupied for the entire game. The noise, the cheers, the screaming, the joyous tears being spent all contributed to the excitement that had just happened on the gymnasium floor.

Exhibiting a quiet pride in their daughter, her parents could only wonder what she would go on to accomplish next. For her entire seventeen years Nick always had some goal in mind, a goal she invariably fulfilled.

Like a certain man standing in the bleachers, watching her play her last game, he too had a specific goal in mind. And it had nothing to do with basketball.

CHAPTER

2

E veryone has a story. Everyone . If one were to ask thousands of individuals about their lives, there wouldn’t be two people responding in exactly the same way. Because as much as we’d like to think as Americans we’re all alike, independent, free, happy to be living in a country where we can achieve our fondest dreams, where troubles exist anywhere but in our immediate surroundings, the truth of our existence lies beneath the surface of that which is rarely confronted. Peace, if it exists, can only be found in the souls who claim it. War? Conflict? It’s only a heartbeat away.

Some people live their lives in a constant state of war. Others live their lives in peace. Those who survive the war with disagreements between relatives, with children who want to experience life involving drugs and sex, and ultimately do, with absent parents who expect their children to raise themselves, they ponder the reasons. They wonder later in life why their children became such misfits of society. Speculation on why their children made the choices they did is never ending. It’s a war that inexorably is bound to repeat itself over and over based almost entirely on the lack of judicial judgment. The war that occurs in the workplace where an individual expects to be rewarded by their superiors for each act they do within their job description, especially anything they do above and beyond that which is expected of them is common; it’s a war of feelings and guilt, ambition and greed.

Marriage is where two people come together with diverse and often opposite personalities and backgrounds. A covenant created for one man and one woman, together, where God explained that they are now one creature through the mystery of marriage. In spite of those who have survived their union for their entire marital lives, it can present some of the greatest wars ever fought.

A constant war has always been between what is and what might have been. It’s a war within each person, conveniently placed there because of their inherent humanity, a war started because they see themselves as their only savior for their dilemma, not just for themselves but many times for all those in whom they come in contact.

Those who experience some semblance of peace, in a world where anything goes, where the next best thing is that which gives them pleasure, whether physically or mentally, emotionally or psychologically, in situations where their ambitions have eclipsed a higher authority, are those who’ve concluded they can’t do life on their own, where many of life’s circumstances and the ramifications that result thereof are outside of their control. These are the people who have put their lives under the command of someone who certainly knows the present circumstances in which each of them find themselves, in spite of their decisions, but who also knows what the future holds for them before it ever crosses their mind. The peace they experience is not an elusive dream and certainly not a state of permanent contentment; it is attainable only because they chose to relinquish whatever measly authority they have in an insane and corrupt world and give it over to the one God, who made a leaf so intricate and healthy that a tree can sustain thousands of them at one time, a God who controls the tides by the moon, a mass floating above the earth that so few will ever set foot upon, and a God who made man in His own image and still loves him in spite of man’s willingness, indeed his intent, to live life on his own.

Don’t deceive yourselves! There is a profound difference between those who live with war and continual strife and those who have found contentment in the peace that only God can give.

Everyone has a story. Ah! This is a story of love in all its rarest bloom, where the sun shines on clear days and rain falls wherever God wishes to make everything bright and clean again, where the lives of every individual mimic the four seasons of any given year.

It’s a story that began with love and hope, only to become a story of futile demise. We ask how it could happen, why did the ending become something we couldn’t allow ourselves to comprehend? Perhaps the journey in the following words will address these questions. Do not be deceived! Sometimes the answers are as elusive as if they didn’t exist at all.

CHAPTER

3

C onnor McEwen was a mix of Irish and Scottish blood, not that you could tell any difference between the two. He’d inherited the best and the worst of both. Born before the turn of the twentieth century he was by all matter of judgment a high strung, mischievous, willful and intelligent human being, who by the time he was nineteen, had had more encounters with the local police than you could count on his fingers and toes. Twice! His tall, stringy frame made him an ideal horseback rider allowing him to participate in some of the ugliest races that the Irish green had ever seen. Besides his reputation of always being available for a race, Connor was known for lining his own pockets with money, some legal, some, not so much. He’d find an excuse to bet on anything with four legs and a mane.

History tells us during the late 1800’s, if it is to believed, Ireland, besides being one of the most beautiful places on earth situated on a huge pond, was inhabited by some of the most raucous, rowdy and ruthless people on the face of the earth. If the stories are to be believed, men played as hard as they drank while most of their women labored through many unanticipated childbirths. Birth control and Catholics didn’t mix well! And always, those same women as wives dumped as much liquor down the sink as they could find in their homes, certainly more than was usually imbibed by the head of the house at the local pub! Although, if it is to be believed, women could be as coarse as the men themselves.

Men’s skirmishing amongst themselves was an activity of enjoyment with each man winning and no man losing; not to be confused with the fierce, aggressive hostility occurring when two men fought over the same woman. That was war! The inhabitants of Ireland were basically Catholic so by attending confession the day before Sunday Mass, the men relieved their consciences’ and lived to fight another day.

Since their parents attended a Protestant church, Connor and Cady, attending with them, never