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Show 211 Some day she would have children. Some day. Deep inside herself she knew that. And they would be raised with more love than Marty had received-of that she was sure! They would be raised with the same kind of love she had had as a child. And suddenly she thought of her parents, of the love they had had for her. When she was a little girl, Marty's age. She remembered sitting in a pew beside them; beside her mother, Robbie had been sitting on the other side of her dad-it came to her now. The feel of her mother beside her, her presence, it was suddenly there. It must have been a Christmas Mass, since her father, who was not Catholic, only came on Christmas and Easter. The love that they had had for her! It had been the mainstay of her life. She had had no way to really evaluate it then-although, of course, she could sense it, she knew. It had been the center, the essence of her childhood. That love. And now they were gone. Certainly on that morning sitting beside her they had not thought that things would turn out as they had. No, that had never entered their minds. And that feeling of a moment before, that self-assurnace that her own child would have more love than Marty-how could she be so confident of that? For who knows, she thought bitterly, what will happen in this world? The sermon turned to the evil of the world. The world was an evil place, Father Cooney cautioned-his firm voice at that very moment taking a stand against the omnipresnt evil-it was the nature of man in the world. His very essence. And suddenly the huge figure of the |