The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck

by Bethany Turner

  I laughed. “Nice segue.”

  “Thank you,” she replied with a giggle. “Now are you coming or not?”

  I told her I was on my way, and then I dug out my Kate Spade messenger bag, Montblanc pen, and Jane Austen anthology, and drove to Northside College Preparatory High School for the first time in two years.

  We parked our cars next to each other in the parking lot and walked in together, as we always had. Of course, we walked in much more slowly than we ever had before, catching up as we went and stopping occasionally to hug each other. In so many ways, it was as if no time at all had passed.

  There was something very different between us, though. In her presence, I was embarrassed by the Desire books, though for the rest of the evening we didn’t even acknowledge the New York Times bestseller-sized elephant in the room. That wasn’t her doing, it was mine. She asked me questions about my life, and I skirted the issue. She asked if I was working on any new projects, and I made a joke about Spielberg hounding me for the rights to Kerosene Boom! The Musical, but I said nothing of the actual lunches, drinks, and dinners I’d had with Hollywood directors and producers. She asked if I had heard from Patrick, and I told her only of his call to tell me about Kimberly and the baby—not the incessant emails and phone calls that had been occurring in the last week.

  The incessant emails and phone calls had begun on the day after my Tonight Show appearance aired. On the very day he learned that I was Raine de Bourgh. But he didn’t call to congratulate me, and he certainly didn’t call to chastise me. You see, Patrick wanted to have an affair with me. I think it is important to note that my ex-husband didn’t want me back. He just wanted me. Thankfully, I was smart enough to see it for exactly what it was. If my first (and to that point only) love had actually wanted me back, if he had realized he was still in love with me, I may have been tempted. I may have at least considered putting the past behind us. Not because I wanted him, and certainly not because I had forgiven him. But at that point, being the emotional wreck that I was, surrounded by a world of strangers telling me they loved me, if I thought that the man I once loved did actually still love me, well . . . that might have created an appealing diversion. But that clearly was not the case. I was rich, famous, and, if my novels were any indication, possessed a creative approach to sex that I had not had during our time together. Or at least I had never allowed him to see that side of me.

  I couldn’t really put my finger on why I didn’t share these things with Piper, who was without a doubt my best friend—still, after all that time. She was the one person I should have confided in, since Patrick got custody of Father Horatio in the divorce. I avoided the idea that it was because she was a Christian, because to admit to that as the reason I felt uncomfortable would be to admit that I had something to be ashamed of. So instead I reasoned it out in a million other ways. “I don’t want to appear like I’m gloating,” or “Piper isn’t by any means poor or unsuccessful, but if she understood my true level of wealth and success, she might feel uncomfortable,” and, of course, the easiest one to make myself believe—“This book was the subject of a big blowup between us, and it is best to just let bygones be bygones.”

  So I put on my rose-colored, high-powered glasses of oblivion and prepared to dive headfirst into the always-entertaining torture of my best friend, caused by the re-reading of the trials and tribulations of Jane Austen’s Dashwood sisters.

  It wasn’t until Piper and I were about to walk through the door of the high school library that I realized there was a very good chance that Patrick and Piper had not been the only people in Chicago watching The Tonight Show that night.

  “Piper.” I grabbed her arm just before she opened the door. “They probably all saw me on The Tonight Show. Do you think they did? I mean, maybe not. Do people keep watching after the first guest? They may know. Do you think they know?”

  “Of course they know.” She smiled. “Did your agent trick you into believing no one watches late night television?”

  “No. But they probably hate me. I didn’t mean for them to find out that way.” My eyes darted through the window of the door to see if there were any burning effigies in the fiction section.

  “It’s okay, Sarah.” She laughed, though her face expressed nothing but love. “We all found out that way—”

  “You already knew,” I argued, finally stating what I had long suspected to be the case.

  “Yes, but only because I know you. But it took officially finding out on national television, just like everyone else in the world, for me to realize how well I really do know you. And guess what? Those ladies in there? They’re super-proud of you. And you don’t have any idea how excited they’re all going to be when their favorite author walks through this door. I mean, you’re Raine de Bourgh.” She winked. “This is bigger than when Mr. Bingley moved to Netherfield, and we’re still talking about that one ad nauseam.”

  The rest of the group did, in fact, welcome me back with open arms and no small amount of awe. I have to admit: I felt some seriously mixed emotions when I realized that they were totally fine with the fact that I had not only lied to them when I told them about my “friend” Raine but had also abandoned them the moment I had something more important to do.

  “Of course you didn’t tell us you had written the book. It was too early in the whole process to reveal that mystery, wasn’t it?” Suzanne said with a mischievous, and slightly unsettling, twinkle in her eye. I was so glad I had learned Suzanne’s name. As enthusiastic as she always tended to be about the Desire books, it somehow just wouldn’t seem right to keep calling her Granny.

  “Well, of course you couldn’t just keep coming to book club each week like you weren’t one of the most successful authors on the planet!” Botox—I mean, Alisa—said with a giggle.

  “We’re just glad you’re here now, Sarah.” Piper beamed at me, truly glad to have me back, I knew.

  I didn’t understand why, but all of their declarations of friendship and understanding were suddenly making me angry. None more so than Piper’s. But I did know that I wasn’t angry with them. I was angry with myself. The entire week after that first Monday back, I was unsettled, though I had no idea why. And then the next Monday, I stewed in my own discontent for the entire hour of book club. Why did I care? What did I even care about? Why was I beginning to feel that my success was a bad thing?

  “Okay, everyone. Have a good week,” Jane said at the end of book club that second week. “Remember, we’ll be wrapping up Sense and Sensibility, so be thinking about what you would like to read next.”

  “And if anyone suggests Pride and Prejudice, I will scream. Literally scream,” Piper muttered to me under her breath.

  “It’s been a while since we read Persuasion,” Moira called out.

  Piper sighed. “Got me on a technicality.” She looked at me with an indulgent smile, but my mind was quite obviously elsewhere. “You okay?”

  “Patrick wants to have an affair with me,” I blurted out. That was it. That had to be it. That was what had me in such a bad mood and what was making me feel so conflicted. Right? I just needed to talk that out.

  Piper’s eyes flew wide open. “Patrick?” she whispered. “Ex-husband Patrick?”

  “No, Patrick Dempsey. McDreamy and I are running away together. Yes, ex-husband Patrick!”

  She smiled and said good night to various ladies as they walked past us before finally looping her arm in mine and walking me swiftly toward the door.

  “You’re not going to—”

  “Of course not!” I exclaimed. “No. Absolutely not.”

  We reached the door of the high school and exited, but it wasn’t until we reached our cars, parked side by side, that she dug deeper.

  “Isn’t he getting married? I thought you said he was getting married. Kiki.”

  “Kimberly. But yeah . . . getting married, baby on the way. All of that.” She looked more shocked by the second, so I added, “This is Patrick we’re talking abou
t, Piper. None of this is shocking.”

  She nodded, as if remembering every story I had ever told her about my disastrous marriage. “Okay then. So what’s bothering you?”

  “I just told you!” I shouted, all of the pent-up anger from the previous week finally making its way to the surface with unexpected force. “Sorry.” I immediately retreated, tears in my eyes. “I’m not mad at you. I don’t know why I yelled. It’s just that he didn’t want me before, you know? He’s not allowed to want me now, just because I’m rich and famous.”

  “Okay.” She nodded comfortingly.

  “And I’m not really even all that famous. It’s Raine. Raine is famous. Raine is the one The Tonight Show wanted. And even she isn’t as famous as Martin Freeman.”

  “Okay . . .” she repeated, though her tone was less full of comfort and more laced with confusion.

  “The first guest. I was just the second guest.” I groaned. “Sorry. Raine was just the second guest. Raine was the one they wanted. Raine is the one Patrick wants.”

  Tears sprung to my eyes, and my best friend hugged me—yes, to comfort me, but also, no doubt, because it was easier than trying to sort through whatever absurdity I was spewing at that particular moment.

  When the tears had finally ceased, and I felt absolutely ridiculous but also completely safe, there in the presence of the one person who loved me and understood my ridiculousness, she asked, “So are you going to tell me what’s really going on?”

  The rest of this book could be a detailed testimony of how my best friend led me to the Lord that day. It’s a good story, and I could happily detail to you every word of the prayer that we prayed in the parking lot that evening—the first sincere prayer I had prayed since I was a little girl praying with my grandmother, the only person of faith in my young life.

  But that isn’t the story I need to tell. This is the story of my feeble attempts to make sense of my life, and those attempts began moments after I prayed and asked Jesus into my heart.

  “Now what?” I asked Piper with excitement and anticipation and through the tears. The tears had begun in anger and then transitioned to shame and sorrow, but by the time I had completed that prayer, the tears represented nothing but joy and gratitude.

  My heart was ready to live for God, but I had no idea what that meant. Did I need to go to Africa and spread the gospel to impoverished children? Did I need to donate all of my worldly goods to charity?

  I should pause right here and inform you that apart from my grandmother, everything I knew about religion I basically learned from movies—and more often than not, The Sound of Music. To me, it seemed perfectly logical to think that the next step was to donate all of my clothes, like Maria did when she joined the convent. And then someday, when I was ready to return to the world, after God had closed a door and opened a window, I would wear my one ugly dress that the poor hadn’t wanted.

  I didn’t really think that was how it would go, though that made as much sense to me as anything else I could think of. Looking back, I don’t know what I was expecting, but I knew that Piper would direct me. Obviously God had placed her in my life, like my own personal Christian Mr. Miyagi. I didn’t have knowledge or vocabulary for it at the time, but I don’t think I would have been all that surprised if, before the night was through, she had assigned me my spiritual gifts and set me on my road of ministry.

  “Now what?” she repeated back to me as she laughed, wiping away a few tears of her own, no doubt sensing the anticipation in my eyes. “Now . . . coffee!”

  We went and drank coffee and ate scones, as we had almost three years prior when she’d been only Girl I’d Never Noticed before She Dashed My Poetic Delusions. And, surprisingly, we talked about some things other than the commitment I had just made. We talked about Sense and Sensibility (which Piper confessed she didn’t actually totally hate, but she made me promise not to tell the rest of the group), and we talked about what books might be coming next. We talked about some of the more noteworthy emails and phone calls I had received from Patrick, and wondered if he’d somehow suffered from memory loss that made him more likely to believe I would ever, for even a moment, fall for any of the lines he threw at me. We talked about music and men and a business trip that she had just taken to Detroit.

  It was rather shocking for me to discover that though I’d made such a huge choice and commitment, the day-to-day, moment-to-moment activities still went on. Nothing had really changed.

  “Excuse me,” a twentysomething woman with a baby in her arms interrupted us kindly.

  Had she noticed my glow? Was I actually glowing? I wouldn’t have had difficulty believing it. I remembered that in The Ten Commandments, Charlton Heston had been glowing when he came down the mountain, carrying the tablets. Of course, his hair had also gone completely white at the same time, and that effect of being in God’s presence was slightly less welcome.

  “Yes?” I smiled at her, feeling what I can only describe as self-righteous humility, if that’s a thing.

  “Aren’t you Raine de Bourgh?” she asked nervously, and just like that my glow faded.

  “Um . . .”

  “Oh!” She laughed. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not your real name. I just wanted to say I love your books. Such a great escape when life gets to be too much.” She rocked the baby, who was suddenly fussy, as if it detected a heretic in its midst.

  “Um . . .”

  That was all I could say.

  “Well,” the woman said, clearly being made to feel uncomfortable by my lack of conversational skills, “nice to meet you.”

  Piper barely made it until the woman walked away before she burst into laughter. She had no doubt been holding it in the entire time.

  “Sarah, had you forgotten that, despite your salvation, you are still one of the most famous romance authors on the planet at the moment, and that you will still be recognized for your kinky novels?”

  The honest answer? “Sort of.”

  Piper laughed until she cried, for probably a solid three minutes, and then she went back to her coffee with a sigh.

  I didn’t see anything funny about any of it. While Piper had been laughing, I had been thinking about my life and my obligations. I’d already made commitments that wouldn’t be easy to get out of, and people were counting on me. I was to sit down for an interview with Katie Couric in just a few days, and then it was off to London and Paris for a week of promotion. Not only that, I was on a deadline—though a loose one—with a new manuscript due to my publishers sometime the following year.

  But suddenly I understood how Piper might have felt the night she stormed out of book club rather than read Stollen Desire. I was overwhelmingly ashamed of every word I had written.

  “‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose,’” she said, looking deep into my eyes with a smile still on her face.

  Tears filled my eyes once again. “That was beautiful.”

  “Thank you.” She giggled. “I wish I could take credit for it, but actually, the apostle Paul wrote that. Romans 8:28. God works for good in all things, Sarah.”

  I knew what she was trying to say, but I just had a difficult time believing it. Not because I didn’t believe God was powerful enough, but because I couldn’t see any good that could ever possibly come from Stollen Desire.

  “How am I supposed to live a life for God when I am only known for . . .” I didn’t even want to say the name of the book aloud anymore. “That?”

  “Do you know what the apostle Paul was known for? I mean, prior to writing that verse, and the book of Romans, and most of the rest of the New Testament?”

  I’d never seen a movie about him, so I shook my head no.

  “He was a persecutor of Christians, Sarah. The Roman government paid him to find the Christians who were worshiping in secret, and he would bring them to the government to be punished, and usually killed. He was one of the biggest, most deadly e
nemies of the early church. And yet, ‘We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’”

  Okay, so I hadn’t killed any Christians. That much was true, and it actually provided a small amount of comfort. But how many marriages were a little less secure because my books filled hearts with unrealistic romance and lust-filled imagery? How many women and men, in addition to my ex-husband, were willing to be unfaithful to their spouse or boyfriend or Kimberly because of debauchery presented by Raine de Bourgh? No, it wasn’t fair to try to pass it off on a woman who didn’t exist. The debauchery rested squarely on the shoulders of Sarah Hollenbeck.

  “Look, Sarah. You didn’t make them buy the books and you didn’t make anyone read them. Yes, you put it out there, but you’re only responsible for your sin. Don’t hold yourself accountable for theirs as well. Deal with yours. Confess it to God, ask him to forgive you, and he will.”

  “Just like that?” I asked.

  “Yes. Just like that.”

  I sighed. “You make it sound so simple.”

  “It is simple.”

  “See, I’m not sure I can agree with that, Piper. Next week I have to sit at a bookstore in London and read excerpts from a book I wish didn’t exist. I have to sign hundreds of books for hundreds of people, and I’m just not sure that the booksellers will think my tear-stained apologies are good for business. How can you possibly say this is simple?”

  “Oh no, sweetie.” She laughed softly. “That’s not simple. Absolutely not. There’s going to be a whole lot to work out, probably. But you’ll get there. We’ll get there.” She winked as she grabbed my hands. “But between you and God, it’s simple. So focus on that. And then ask him the question you asked me.”

  I wiped away my tears. “What question was that?”

  She smiled. “Now what?”

  5.