The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck

by Bethany Turner

  Suddenly I really didn’t care if the Pharisees of Mercy Point ever loved me or not.

  14.

  Seven Minutes at 350 Degrees

  There are certain words that feel to your soul like that first shower after you’ve been in the woods camping for four days. That’s how I felt about Ben’s declaration of love.

  I had been so worried about that—even more than I had realized. Like I already said, I knew he was falling in love with me fast, but when would the timing be right to say it out loud? I didn’t want him to feel pressured to say it or feel any uncomfortable expectations from me about those words.

  But Ben’s “I love you” was perfect. Just perfect.

  In my opinion, just as exciting and fear-inducing as the words “I love you” are the words “I want you to meet my mother.” Or, worse yet, “My mother wants to meet you.” At least with “I want you to meet my mother” there is a feeling that your guy is proud of you and your relationship, and he’s serious enough about you to take you home to meet the first woman he loved. “My mother wants to meet you,” on the other hand, is a mixed bag of Oedipal chaos. He’s been talking to her about you—that’s the first thing you know. But after that? You know nothing. Maybe it’s his low-pressure way of saying he really cares about you and can’t wait to take that next step with you. Then again, it could mean he’s not really sure about your relationship at all, and he wants to get his mommy’s two cents to see if he should even continue on with you.

  Thankfully, Ben told me, “I want you to meet my mother.” And then he tagged on with a smile, “And my dad. But there’s a very good chance he’ll just watch football the whole time. Don’t take it personally.”

  I hadn’t had to deal with meeting mothers all that often. The last time I’d met the mother of a boyfriend, I was a teenager being introduced to my future mother-in-law, Lucy McDermott, at the senior awards banquet. Lucy was fine. I didn’t even have to call her Mrs. McDermott. We were never close, but looking back, I do think there was always a sort of solidarity or sisterhood between us. We’d both had the grave misfortune of falling for McDermott men, and though she loved her husband and practically deified her son, I think she understood better than anyone the burden of being a McDermott wife.

  I was dreading meeting Ben’s mom. Absolutely dreading it. I was confident about our relationship, and I knew that her two cents, or any other amount of intrusion, wouldn’t shake his love for me. But considering who I was to much of the outside world, I felt as if there was some additional stress piled on top of the already scary meeting of my boyfriend’s mother. At the very least, I worried it might not be pleasant.

  Of course, it didn’t exactly help my anxiety subside to learn from Ben that Joanna Delaney viewed Laura Bellamy as the daughter she’d never had. She’d wanted Ben to marry Laura, of course, but she did love Christa as well. Christa was no Laura, but she was the next best thing in Joanna’s mind.

  I felt no doubt that I wouldn’t make it into the top ten.

  After Ben and Laura broke up, and once she finally accepted the fact that they would not be getting back together, Joanna tried to get her other sons to succumb to Laura’s limitless charms. Laura and Jeremy, the oldest, went out a few times, but her resistance to give up on Ben stood in the way. As did her unplanned pregnancy, which Jeremy had nothing to do with.

  That would do it, wouldn’t it?

  Ben seemed hesitant to tell me about that, but that really didn’t alarm me. His friendship with Laura worried me, but his reluctance to tell me about the scandal that surrounded her daughter Kaitlyn’s conception and birth was, I was certain, just a means of protecting his friend. He was not only her ex-boyfriend and her long-time chum, after all. He was also her pastor. I could respect that.

  But that didn’t mean I liked it.

  “Obviously you don’t have to tell me anything that you’re not supposed to tell me. Because of pastor/sinner confidentiality or whatever.” I grinned as he rolled his eyes with a laugh. “But you can honestly say that if I needed to know something about your history with Laura that I don’t already know, you would tell me, right?”

  Joanna had invited us over for dinner. It was the first Saturday evening after the tithe call, and therefore it was the last evening before Ben and I would have to walk into Mercy Point, prepared to face a throng of faces that we no longer felt confident belonged to friends. We didn’t know who was out to get us—apart from Tom and Lenore Isaacs—and who wasn’t, so we’d been trying to brace ourselves for whatever came.

  “Of course,” he said as he pulled onto the street on which he’d grown up.

  “Of course, like ‘there’s nothing to tell but if there was I’d tell you’? Or of course, as in ‘there’s nothing you need to know, and I’m better off keeping it all hidden’?”

  “Of course, as in ‘you’re a crazy lady who scares me just a little bit sometimes.’” He laughed.

  It was good to see him laugh. The past week, since the Monday evening phone call, had been a tough one. He’d spent a lot of time in prayer, as had I, though I knew we were praying for different things. He wanted to leave Mercy Point. I think he’d known that was his preference from the moment he hung up the phone and stormed into his bedroom. He’d spent the hours until he’d come out and found me asleep on the couch praying that God would just let him know it was time to move on. But God had other plans, apparently.

  Ben wasn’t afraid of a fight. That much I knew. He welcomed the fight, but he feared he wouldn’t be able to adequately minister to his congregation while he was embroiled in a moral war with them, and that was certainly a valid concern. But he couldn’t back down. He couldn’t allow anyone’s closed-minded, judgmental attitudes to dictate the terms of our relationship or my relationship with God. Ben and I were fully aware of who the judge in our lives was, and it certainly wasn’t Tom Isaacs.

  So while he prayed for a peaceful, but satisfactory, way out of the fight, I just prayed for him.

  I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of meeting his mother the Saturday evening before our first Sunday back after the offending phone call, but I was hoping that maybe before the end of the evening we would have another ally at Mercy Point. Of course, hoping and having any actual optimism that something will occur are different things entirely. I’d been at Mercy Point for about a month and a half, and Joanna had been there since the Nixon administration, I believe. And yet we’d never met. Piper and I sat in the same row each week, just one section over and two rows behind where Joanna sat with Laura—except for the Sundays when Laura was in children’s church convincing Maddie she should be her new mommy—and yet I could never even catch Joanna’s eye. Catching Laura’s eye, however, was much easier. All I had to do was breathe near Ben.

  I expressed my concerns about Joanna ignoring me to Ben as we approached his parents’ house, but he was quick to assure me that was no reason to assume his mother didn’t approve of me.

  “She ignores me at church too,” he stated matter-of-factly.

  I was certain he was just trying to make me feel better, but then I thought about it. Ben was almost always by my side at church, or at least within eyeshot. And I’d never seen him talking with Joanna.

  “Well,” I scoffed. “She ignores you because you’re with me.”

  He chuckled. “No. She ignores me because she doesn’t want the rest of the congregation to think that she pulled some strings to get her son hired as the pastor.”

  “But you grew up there, right? Don’t most people know she’s your mother?”

  “Oh, absolutely. But I think she figures if she just appears indifferent to it all and doesn’t draw attention to it, no one will undermine my position. Of course I’ve never understood what strings she thinks she has access to, but I’m not going to tell her that. It’s better to let her think she has strings she doesn’t have than to have her shout, ‘That’s my Benji!’ every time I step up to the pulpit, like she used to when I stepped up to bat playing ball in high s
chool.”

  I laughed and relaxed, feeling more confident that I wasn’t dealing with Joanna already disapproving of me, after all. I was just dealing with a quirky mother. I knew a thing or two about quirky mothers. That I could handle.

  “Hmm, wonder why she’s here . . .” Ben muttered as we pulled into the driveway.

  I glanced up just in time to see Laura getting out of her car, carrying a casserole dish. She smiled too happily and waved too enthusiastically when she saw us.

  And I—too successfully—fought the temptation to grab the wheel from Ben, throw the transmission into reverse, and squeal away like we were being chased by the bad guys in an action film.

  “I thought she was watching Maddie,” I said with a pout, and then I quickly realized I was pouting and summoned the strength of every muscle in my face to try and act like I didn’t want to cross my arms and go to the corner, stomping my feet and throwing a temper tantrum each time I saw my boyfriend’s gorgeous ex.

  “Well, no. Kaitlyn is, technically. She said Laura wouldn’t be home tonight, but she didn’t mention she’d be here. Oh well,” he said as he put the car in park, and he meant it. Oh well. He didn’t even think twice about it.

  I loved him, but he was an oblivious man.

  “I’m not really sure this is a good idea.”

  He took off his seat belt and then reached for and grabbed my hand. “Oh, come on. She’s going to love you.”

  “Who is? Your mother or Laura?”

  He smiled a small smile. “Well, both! But I meant my mother. I’m not even thinking about Laura.”

  Don’t get me wrong: I was comforted knowing that was true. I believed him completely. But I knew that Laura’s presence meant I’d just lost all of Joanna’s attention from the get-go, and that seemed like an unfair curveball when trying to make a good first impression.

  Ben reached for the door handle, ready to step out, but I grabbed him just before he could open it. I worried I didn’t have time to make him understand. Laura was standing at the door to the house waiting for us, watching every move.

  “Hey, before we go in, I just want you to understand where I’m coming from here. I know that you couldn’t care less about Laura as anything other than a friend, and I know that you love me. But I also know that your mother could register the two of you at Tiffany’s and it wouldn’t faze you, because you really don’t see it. But I see it. The odds were stacked against me with your mother to begin with anyway because I’m not Christa—but Christa’s not here, and suddenly Laura is. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Laura, apparently, had gotten tired of waiting at the door for us, but instead of going inside as I really wished she had done, she started walking toward us.

  “Sarah, you have nothing to worry about.”

  “I know that. I’m not worried. It’s just that—”

  “Look, I am just so excited to finally introduce you and show you off a little.” He looked up and waved to Laura and smiled at her oh-so-adorable, sexy pouty-lipped impatience, and then held up his finger to indicate we would be just a second. “But if you’re uncomfortable—”

  “I am uncomfortable. Yes. Very uncomfortable. But I’m not asking to leave or anything. I guess I just want you to realize why I’m so—”

  “Come on, you two!” Laura opened Ben’s door from the outside. “My deviled eggs are going to get warm!”

  “You brought deviled eggs? You know that’s not fair.” He got out of the car, and with a sigh I decided I should too. “Sarah, Laura’s deviled eggs are to die for. She puts some secret ingredient in . . .”

  “I’ll never tell!” Laura laughed, and then she flipped her hair over her shoulder and turned around to head into the house.

  Ben stopped and glanced at me with a smile on his face and then put his hand out for mine, and I was completely thrown off guard by the expression on his face. It was a sweet mixture of innocence and ignorance. I smiled at him, my trepidation subsiding as I reminded myself that this was not like any other relationship. I could march into the Delaney home with the full confidence and backing of the man I loved.

  Laura Bellamy and her rapturous deviled eggs didn’t deserve any further consideration.

  “As long as I have that secret in the palm of my hand,” Laura said with a smile, “I figure I’ll have Ben there as well.” With that, she threw open the door and walked in without knocking. “Joanna, we’re here!” she trilled.

  Why? Why did she have to say something like that just when I had rallied enough poise to pretend I was okay? I couldn’t help but notice the practiced sway of her hips as they sashayed into a home that I was about to enter for the first time, but which she seemed to consider her own. And then there was that southern belle lilt to her voice. She was from Chicago, just like the rest of us, but her voice evoked thoughts of drinking sweet tea while you sat on the porch swing, fanning yourself and watching fireflies. Worst of all, there was the way she looked at Ben. The more I observed her, the more I realized she didn’t even have the decency to look at him as something she hoped to attain. It was so much worse than that. She looked at him as something she already possessed.

  “Ready?” Ben smiled at me one more time, ready to usher me into the great unknown.

  “Not just yet,” I whispered to him, there in the open door of his parents’ house, and then I locked my fingers in his hair and pulled him to me.

  He didn’t resist, not that I gave him an opportunity. I hadn’t set out to manipulate—but I’m only human. I suspected Laura was going to do all she could to steal Ben’s attention away from me that evening—what with her hips and her deviled eggs and that raspy ScarJo laugh. I just wanted to make sure he remembered who he loved.

  There was a brief moment of shock, that’s for sure, but within seconds his lips and mine were entangled in a passionate dance a month and a half in the making. I guess he threw down the bag of dinner rolls we had brought? I don’t really know—I just know that all of a sudden his hands were on my waist, pulling me even closer.

  I’d never experienced anything like it. In all honesty, I don’t think even Alex and Annie had ever experienced anything like it. To be simultaneously so attracted to someone and so respectful of them—I’d never imagined a kiss could be so all-encompassing. I lost all sense of time and space and location.

  Especially location.

  “Ahem.” Ben’s dad, Nate, subtly cleared his throat as he bent down and picked up the dinner rolls from the porch. “I’ll take these in to your mother.” He turned around and walked back in the house, shutting the door behind him.

  I was momentarily mortified as I struggled to catch my breath and make sure no one else was watching. Ben blushed and laughed an embarrassed laugh as he called out, “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Oh my gosh,” I muttered into my hands as I buried my face in them. “Ben, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” He pulled my hands from my face and intertwined our fingers as he lowered them to either side of my body, and then released them as he wrapped his arms around my waist. “I’m not.”

  “Oh, really?” I responded through my nervous laughter.

  “Well, I mean I didn’t love the part when my dad caught us, but I thought the rest of it was pretty great, actually.”

  While I nervously glanced around, surveying the neighborhood—specifically the Delaneys’ door—he never took his eyes off of me. Ben’s body was still molded against mine as he kissed me softly and gently on the lips, over and over. He was relentless, and only when I finally stopped caring if anyone was watching did he say, with a giant grin on his face, “I suppose we should probably head in there now. Don’t you think?”

  I laughed, still trying to catch my breath. “Honestly?”

  The grin faded just a bit, but not in an unhappy way. “Yeah,” he breathed. “Honestly.”

  “Honestly, I’d love to take a rain check on dinner with your family at this point, but I guess that’s probably not a good idea.” And it def
initely wouldn’t have been a good idea to kiss Ben again right then, no matter how much I wanted to. No matter how much my lips were already missing his . . . I cleared my throat and forced myself to focus less on the gorgeous man with his arms around me and more on the gorgeous man’s parents and ex-girlfriend, just on the other side of the door. “And our dinner rolls are already in there, so . . .”

  “I guess we did kind of throw away our best shot at a subtle departure. Or a subtle entrance, for that matter.”

  He dropped his arms from my waist and found my hands again. He kissed my lips one more time—so gently—and then held one of my hands tightly as he reached for the doorknob with his other hand. I took a deep breath, feeling more confident than ever in my love for Ben, and his for me. Nothing was more important than that—not a Southern-belle-by-way-of-Chicago who had her sights set on the man I loved, and not a mother who had always preferred “the Bellamy girl.” Not even being caught kissing on the front porch like a couple of teenagers. With Ben by my side, I could face it all.

  So why weren’t we moving?

  I looked down at his hand still resting on the knob. “Is it locked, or—”

  “What are we waiting on, Sarah?” he asked quietly, not looking at me.

  “I was waiting for you.” I shrugged. “I’m ready, so . . .”

  “No, I mean . . .” he began as he turned to face me once again, but once our eyes met, it was as if he lost the ability to speak. At least I think that’s why he stopped talking. I was busy losing the ability to breathe.

  His eyes were full of love and unspoken words.

  He was about to kiss me again—he wanted to as much as I wanted him to—but I stopped him. I shifted uncomfortably, convinced that everything he said—with his words and his eyes—referred to the sparks and intensity we were both feeling.