Running from Monday

by Lea Sims

  Delaney chuckled. “It’s called—get this—Refresh Station Church. They’ve done some pretty creative things with the fire theme. The pastor and his wife are young and really dynamic, and oh my gosh…the music. It’s amazing. Nothing like I grew up with.”

  You could have knocked Lexie over with a feather. She was used to Delaney’s creative energy and love for good design, but to gush about dynamic pastors and amazing church music? She was pretty certain Delaney didn’t believe in God, and she’d witnessed her disdain for religion on more than one occasion. She recalled a time they were on a flight to San Francisco and the guy sitting next to Delaney kept wanting to “witness” to her. She’d finally shut him down by telling him that he was wasting his time with her and that she agreed with Karl Marx when he’d said that religion was the opiate of the masses.

  “That’s a lot of enthusiasm for a church you got going on there, girlfriend,” Lexie quipped sardonically.

  Delaney heard the question in her friend’s remark. What’s gotten into you? She knew she probably sounded crazy to Lexie. It really wasn’t like her to make remarks like that, and once again, she felt the ping-pong of competing thoughts in her brain. She mentally chided herself for making more of the week’s events than they warranted, and then immediately felt something rise up within her in defense of those events. She couldn’t…wouldn’t make light of them. But she also knew to tread lightly with Lexie, whose keen-edged wit could be as cutting as it was clever, and she didn’t want to be pestered with a million questions, or worse, her sarcastic ribbing.

  “No, not enthusiasm. Just appreciation for a well-run organization and great design.”

  Lexie, seemingly mollified by that response, changed the subject. “So have you heard from the hottie with the body?”

  Delaney blinked in confusion, momentarily nonplussed. Her mind immediately went to Drew, but she had not spoken to Lexie since Sunday night, and she certainly hadn’t mentioned Drew. Then it occurred to her that Lexie was referring to Adam, her one-night stand from the jazz club. Her eyes widened in slight shock. Had it only been six days since she’d sat in that bar with Lexie, flirting over drinks with the muscle-bound trainer from midtown? Was it just last Saturday that she’d kissed him goodbye and closed the door on his searching and hopeful gaze? She hadn’t given Adam another thought. Not one darn thought. I’m a terrible person, Delaney thought, shaking her head in disgust.

  “No,” she finally said flatly to Lexie. “I told him I’d contact him when I get back to New York.”

  “Sure you will.” Lexie giggled in her ear. “When he doesn’t hear from you in a few days, he’s probably going to show up at your door, so you need a plan to let him down easy. Or pass him off to me. I’ll be glad to take him off your hands.”

  Delaney frowned, bristling a bit at Lexie’s words. There was nothing unusual about them. They had joked in this same blasé manner about men on more occasions than she could count. But suddenly, the assumption that she had no interest in Adam after their night together bothered her. It told her that Lexie took it for granted that Delaney was a use-‘em-and-lose-‘em kind of girl. And yet, she had no right to feel defensive. Her friend had just nailed her to the wall with that assumption. She had used Adam and she had no intention of calling him. She’d forgotten about him the instant she closed her front door on Saturday.

  “I’ll let him know that I’m just not ready for a relationship right now,” she said softly. “I don’t want to hurt his feelings. I really should have waved him off at the bar.”

  “Wha-at?!” Lexie sounded shocked. “Um…did I dial the wrong number just now? He’s a big boy, Delaney. He knew what he was doing. Besides, he’s a dude. He wouldn’t think twice of doing the same thing to you.”

  “I know that.” She sighed. Lexie wouldn’t be able to understand what was stirring in her heart right now. Stirring in her heart. Lexie would balk at Delaney even using such a phrase. Neither of them talked like that. People in New York didn’t talk like that. Well, in all fairness, perhaps some of them did but nobody Delaney had ever met or hung out with there, which may have been a reflection of her choice of circle, not location. She frowned even more at that possibility.

  “I’ll deal with him when I get back,” she replied. And that was all she chose to say about Adam.

  “Hey, Badger said you called him about some kind of VR project for a wolf sanctuary?” Lexie remembered suddenly. “What the heck was that about? Only you could go somewhere for a funeral and walk out with a design job for BMD.”

  Delaney told her all about the sanctuary, omitting any details about Drew because she knew Lexie would zero in on that tidbit in a hot minute. She simply said that she’d taken a tour of Timber Ridge and thought a VR solution could really help them with their marketing and fundraising. “They have thirty-six wolves in residence right now, and their care and support is expensive. They could really use some visibility. But we also need to figure out how to get some sponsors and see if we can get it funded for them. BMD may even want to throw in on it. I’ll talk to Perry Scott about it,” she said, referring to their director of corporate social responsibility.

  “If this becomes something, I’d really love to sit with the owners to talk through some marketing strategy with them,” Lexie said, excited to support the project. “There could be a lot of other ways besides this VR concept to help boost their brand.”

  Delaney was shaking her head, even though Lexie couldn’t see her. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, Lex. John and Emma are old-school tree huggers. Seriously, you should see them. They’re amazing but they’re not high tech. Emma in particular is not going to like us referring to the sanctuary as a brand. If it were up to her, she’d keep the sanctuary hidden from the entire world and just pray for money to drop from the sky.”

  “Except money doesn’t drop from the sky,” responded Lexie tartly.

  “And John will be the one to agree with you,” Delaney said. “So he’s the one you’ll need to win over first. He’ll be the easiest to convince that some strategic marketing could really help them.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Lexie said. “Now, when are you coming back to civilization so we can hit the club? We can go back to Silk or I heard about this new spot in midtown called Swank that has a ladies’ night twofer on Riptides. Divya says the drinks are all top shelf and the place is loaded with honeys. Sounds like our kind of place.”

  “Yeah.” Delaney forced a smile into her voice. “It does. Let’s check it out when I get back, which will probably be Saturday or Sunday.” She and Lexie said goodbye and hung up. She got up and walked to the mirror on the wall by the bathroom. She peered into it for a long quiet moment. On the outside, she looked pretty much the same as she had six days ago, but as she stared into the deep blue eyes in the mirror, she knew that something had shifted on the inside. Lexie’s slick description of the new club in midtown had left her cold. She’d found herself recoiling from her well-intentioned but brash friend’s description of the bar filled with top-shelf twofers and “loaded with honeys.” Who talked like that?

  We do, she admitted to herself grimly, continuing to stare expressionless into the mirror—the same girls who picked up men from those bars and, without even knowing their last names, took them home for a romp in the hay. In all fairness to herself, she was rarely the one who took anyone home. Lexie was far more likely to do it than she was, but Delaney could hardly excuse herself. She’d done it. More than once. She was the one who took Adam home and then completely forgot about him. And she was the one who’d fallen readily into bed with a coworker when her husband got too busy to remember he was married.

  I don’t like who I’ve become.

  This sudden declaration in her head was painful but clarifying. She thought again about Sasha the wolf. If she were she able to speak, would she say the same thing of herself? That after being trapped and abused, she’d become som
eone incapable of living contentedly within a pack, choosing instead to control or chase off the males of her world and go it alone, proud and isolated, instead? Would she admit that she didn’t like who she’d become? But Sasha’s story was still being written, new chapters of restoration and healing were being authored by a circle of people who were loving her back to wholeness. And if Sasha’s story could change, Delaney thought, so can mine.

  She walked back over to the bed and grabbed her cell phone, punching in Claire’s number and arguing back and forth in her own brain about whether she should stop being silly and hang up before the woman answered or have the courage to follow through and ask for help.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Claire. It’s Delaney.”

  “Hey there. I was just going to call you. Did you have a good time with Drew today?”

  Delaney smiled shyly at the mention of Drew’s name, and flopped back on the bed to snuggle up to Rogue. “Yes, ma’am. We sure did. The sanctuary was amazing. I was really blown away by it.”

  “I knew you would like it,” Claire sighed satisfied into the phone. “I told Drew you would really appreciate what they are doing out there.”

  “You were right. I was so impressed by their entire operation,” Delaney agreed.

  “How are you feeling today? I know yesterday was pretty rough.”

  “I’m ok. I had a moment of panic today when Drew told me he had overheard our conversation, and that kind of caught me off guard. I wasn’t sure how to react to him knowing, but he was so kind and so respectful, I couldn’t be angry with him. After all the years I’ve kept it a secret, I should probably be upset about him knowing, but the truth is I’m kind of relieved. I feel like I’ve had a deep festering wound inside me that’s suddenly been lanced, and while it was very painful, it needed to happen. I’ve held that truth inside my entire life, Claire, to the point where it had become like a dead weight inside of me. I think I’m just beginning to realize it. And…well…that’s actually why I’m calling you.”

  Claire sent up a silent prayer of thanks. Drew was right. God was working on this girl’s heart. She had no idea what had transpired at the sanctuary today, but it must have been something significant. “Yes?” she answered Delaney expectantly.

  “I know we need to make some decisions about my aunt’s estate, but I also really need someone to talk to right now. I feel like I’ve been awakened to some things in the last few days, and I don’t know how to process them all. It’s a bit overwhelming. Do you have some time to talk tomorrow?”

  “Of course!” Claire exclaimed. “You’re meeting with the attorney tomorrow, right?”

  “Yes, at one o’clock.”

  “Well, then why don’t we meet for an early lunch and chat, and then I can come to the attorney’s office with you if you want me to. Will that work?”

  Delaney sighed with relief, tears filling her eyes for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last few days. She was a hot mess. “That works just great for me.” She was grateful for Claire’s willingness to talk to her. She was so unsure of her footing right now, and there were so few people she could turn to for help.

  As busy and successful as she was, the utter absence of people she could truly confide in was just another glaring reminder that the full life she thought she had was actually rather barren. If she couldn’t talk to Lexie about the things she was struggling with, it said a lot about the nature of their friendship. Their relationship, she realized now, had been built on safe, superficial topics—work, fashion, drinks, movies and men, to name a few. She couldn’t recall a single truly meaningful conversation they’d ever had about their families, childhood, emotional struggles, insecurities, fears, or heartaches. They usually avoided those topics or glossed over them with pithy jokes like “Wine not whine!” and reminders to each other that they were in a “drama-free zone.” It was code for I don’t want to talk about the deeper stuff. So, they treaded water at the relational surface instead. Her relationship with Danny had been much the same.

  But if she was honest with herself, she had to admit that she was the one to blame. She sent out the signal to pretty much everyone around her that she didn’t want to go there when it came to discussing her personal life. She knew Lexie wanted her to open up about her divorce and how she was feeling, but she had never been willing to. She didn’t have Lexie’s knack for making painful subjects sound as common as a hangnail, which could be identified, trimmed and summarily discarded with the sweep of a hand and a profane “good riddance.”

  Delaney had spent a lot of time building a safe, predictable and successful life. But it was slowly dawning on her that a successful life was not the same thing as a fulfilling one.

  And she wanted the fulfilling one.

  “The worst wounds, the deadliest of them, aren’t the ones people see on the outside. They’re the ones that make us bleed internally.”

  —Sherrilyn Kenyon

  The next morning, Delaney dropped Rogue off at a doggie day spa and drove to Refresh Station to meet Claire. She had awakened that morning with a fresh outlook on the day, an unusually sweet anticipation that she could not remember feeling in a very long time. There were burdens falling off her life that had weighed her down far longer than she had ever realized. Her thoughts were still a bit of a jumble and she wasn’t entirely sure what it would all mean for her moving forward, but she did know that she felt better and more hopeful than she had ever felt before. Her mind and heart were open.

  She parked her car in the church parking lot and made her way into the building. Claire had told her to come to a classroom down the main hallway toward the lunch bay. She was a little early, so she wasn’t sure if she should wait in the hall or slip into the room. She looked through the small window of the classroom door and saw a group of women sitting at tables and looking up at a screen at the far end of the room. Since they were obviously watching a video, she felt safe enough to tiptoe into the back of the room. She slipped into a chair against the wall and searched the room for Claire. She spotted her bobbed hair at a front table. Delaney cast a glance up at the screen.

  The woman in the video was in her early fifties. She was petite and slender with blonde hair cut in a sleek trendy style. It had been pulled partway back in a clip, bangs teased and sprayed to perfection, and she wore big dangling earrings and a matching necklace. She had an unmistakable Texas drawl and a habit of looking directly into the camera any time she wanted to make an emphatic point or an impassioned plea to her viewing audience. She was wrapping up her teaching lesson, and though Delaney had no idea what she’d been talking about prior to that moment, there was an earnest authority in the woman’s voice that captured her attention.

  “Don’t be scared of what it’s going to cost you. Be scared to miss what this wins you. That’s what you’ve got to be scared of. Be scared to miss what God has for you. Let that be your fear, not this process. Anything this kills in us needed to die. I had some parts in me that needed a good killing. And the rest needed a good healing. He’s come not to kill you but to bring you to the abundant life he promised you. Listen, we ought to look around us and say, ‘Weren’t we supposed to be better than this? Weren’t we supposed to be effective? Weren’t we supposed to have real power in our lives? The answer to those questions is yes. Sometimes we have no idea how we’ve been oppressed until we’ve been set free.’”

  Delaney stared unblinkingly at the screen. I had some parts in me that needed a good killing. And the rest needed a good healing. It seemed like the woman on the screen was looking straight at her—as if she knew Delaney by name. With the accuracy of someone who might have been secretly scouring her mental diary, the woman had just spoken succinctly and powerfully into Delaney’s exact time and space.

  After issuing that challenge to the women in front of her, both on the screen and in the room, the teacher read a funny article about some cows who had escaped
from their transport truck in the parking lot of a McDonald’s. Everyone, including Delaney, giggled at the article’s references to how the cows were “making a break for it” and that the effort to round them up had been jokingly dubbed “Operation Hamburger Helper,” with one bystander commenting that it looked like the cows were attempting to make an escape.

  At this point in the story, the woman on the screen got serious once again, and looking straight into the camera, issued this zinger: “It’s time to make a daring escape. What future do you want? How do you want this to turn out? Do you want to grow old and die in your bondage or do you want to break free?”

  Delaney had grown up hearing a lot of preachers, both the ones in her own church and the guest preachers and missionaries who would come along throughout the year for revivals and special events. Never in her life had she experienced a moment quite like this one, where the words being spoken from the platform weren’t just being directed at her. They were resonating within her. Something on the inside was jumping up and down, saying “Pay attention! This is for you!”

  This was the second time in two days that someone had spoken the word healing to her in such a compelling and personal way. Was it a coincidence? Or was she just trying to make one plus one equal two here? She had never thought of herself as someone who needed healing. She tended to steer clear of the whole realm of psychology, analysis, and mental health labels. It wasn’t a highly subjective science, in her opinion, and therefore not entirely trustworthy. She’d never held much stock in finding one’s “inner child,” preferring to leave the past in the past.

  But her past was proving increasingly difficult to keep where she left it, and she was beginning to realize that perhaps she’d taken a rather smug and presumptuous position on the subject of inner healing. This trip home had unearthed some things inside her that while long buried, were far from dead. And in the last two days, she’d had three people point with laser accuracy to the wounds she’d been ignoring, wounds that needed attention. Even her trip to the sanctuary and her encounter with Sasha seemed somehow predestined. Delaney was beginning to get the feeling that she was being guided by some unseen hand through a series of orchestrated checkpoints, each one designed to awaken and usher her into awareness. The thought of who that hand might belong to sent a sudden coursing tingle and shudder throughout her body.