The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck

by Bethany Turner

  She laughed as she stood and walked to the front door and slipped on her shoes.

  “Where are you going?” I was feeling better, but I wasn’t sure I was feeling better enough for her to leave.

  “You have a phone call to make.” She winked.

  I looked at the clock—9:34. “I really shouldn’t. Maddie’s already in bed, and he’s probably putting the finishing touches on his sermon . . .”

  I trailed off in response to the glare on her face, which once again scared me.

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  She ran over to me and gave me a hug. “Just let him know you’re still in the fight. That’s all you need to do.”

  I held on to her for dear life, once again so grateful for her. “And what if I’m too late?”

  She pulled away enough to look at me. “Not a chance,” she said, very seriously. She walked to the door again, and as she picked up her purse, she called out, “I’m picking you up for church in the morning. Be ready.”

  I scowled. “Now, that seems a little premature, Piper.”

  “Actually, it seems a little past due, Sarah. Besides,” she said sternly as she crossed her arms, “do you go to church to worship Jesus, or do you go to worship Ben Delaney?”

  Ouch.

  I smiled sheepishly. “Coffee first?”

  “Of course! Now, make that phone call. If for no other reason than church will be much less awkward tomorrow if you’ve already broken the ice.”

  “Oh! You manipulative little—” I laughed as I looked around for something to throw at her.

  “Love you!” she shouted with a giggle as she shut the door behind her.

  I waited until I heard her pull away before I picked up the phone. Dear Lord, I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. Help me. I tried to remember Romans 8:15 and recite it in my head as I dialed, knowing that the part about not living in fear would be helpful, but I just couldn’t get rid of mental images of Paul in platform shoes and spandex.

  “Sarah.”

  That was how he answered the phone. He didn’t say “hello” and he didn’t put a question mark after my name. It was said with relief.

  “Hi, Ben,” I said softly.

  I still had no idea what to say, but there could be no doubt that just hearing him say my name had presented a certain peace. Where do I begin? I prayed.

  “I’m glad, I mean, thank you for . . . it’s good to hear your voice,” he said, sounding as awkward as I felt.

  “There once was a girl who was sickly and poor throughout her entire childhood,” I stammered, not having a clue why these words were coming out of my mouth. “She had no one and nothing, except for the ability to sing beautiful songs. Night after night, day after day, she lay in her bed, shivering from the cold and nearly starving to death, singing with all her might. The song was her only friend and her only warmth. The song was the only thing in her life of value . . .”

  I told him the fable, word for word. I don’t know why, but it was what I felt led to do.

  “‘She’s dead,’ the townspeople cried, somewhat thankfully. For they knew she was not fit to marry a prince.”

  I was in tears as I concluded, wondering why I had told him that, and why I had let the stupid thing nag at me for thirty years. I felt like an idiot and was trying to figure out something I could say that would somehow make the fable somewhat relevant, but he spoke first.

  “Why’d you stop?” he asked gently.

  I grabbed a tissue and softly blew my nose. “That’s the end.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  I thought back through the entire story, making sure I had covered it all. Sickly girl? Check. Beautiful song? Check. Trader, jester, prince? Check, check, check. Death? Yep. I’d covered it all.

  “Yes, it is,” I insisted. “My mother told it to me countless times when I was a little girl. I know it as well as I know my name.”

  “Well,” he said with a sigh, “my mother used to tell it to me too, and I hate to break it to you, but your mother left off the ending. She wasn’t really dead.”

  He might as well have told me that King Tut wasn’t really dead.

  “I’m sorry, what? What do you mean she wasn’t really dead? You can’t just say it like that!” I exclaimed. “You have to tell me the story!”

  I heard him chuckle just a bit. “Okay, let me see if I can remember. What was your last line again?”

  “‘She’s dead,’ the townspeople cried, somewhat thankfully. For they knew she was not fit to marry a prince.”

  “Oh yeah, okay. First of all, it’s not that she wasn’t fit to marry a prince. She wasn’t fit enough. As in, she wouldn’t have survived the excitement. Anyway, after the prince had left to return to the palace, the townspeople went to their homes and changed into their mourning clothes . . . Sorry, I don’t tell it as well as you do.”

  “No, no.” I shook my head even though he couldn’t see it over the phone. “Go on. Please.” I was in disbelief and could hardly stand the anticipation as I waited to find out how it actually ended.

  “Okay, so they changed into their mourning clothes and cried out in despair. They’d all spent so long protecting her. That’s why they refused to let people see her. They were protecting her, but suddenly she was gone. But they went into her hut, or whatever, and she wasn’t dead at all. She was sitting there healthy and smiling. I think that was it.”

  What? “Okay, that sucks,” I exclaimed, extremely disappointed. “That’s even worse than my ending.”

  Ben laughed, and in spite of everything and the two weeks of darkness that were still very much in the forefront of my mind, I felt my breath catch in my throat.

  “No, it’s not. Okay, I probably didn’t tell it right, but don’t you see? She sang because that was all she had. The song was her only friend, she thought, but it wasn’t really. She didn’t have to sing anymore. The townspeople were willing to sacrifice their happiness in order to protect her, so they were her friends.”

  Thirty years. For thirty years I had tried to put together a jigsaw puzzle, and I had unknowingly been missing the corner pieces. Finally I had all of the pieces, and they didn’t fit.

  “No, they weren’t! They weren’t willing to sacrifice their happiness. They were willing to sacrifice her happiness!”

  Ben was silent for a few seconds. “Yeah, you have a point.”

  “At least in my version they’re just awful people. But if they’re supposed to be her friends? That’s so much worse.”

  “You’re right. I must have told something wrong. Really wrong.”

  “I kind of hope so.” I laughed.

  “So, um . . . why are we talking about this?” I started laughing harder, and he chuckled as he continued, “Don’t get me wrong, you can call to ask me the time if you want. I’m just curious.”

  I thought for a moment before realizing I didn’t have a good answer. Which just made me laugh even more. “I have no idea!”

  “Well, the time is now 9:43 p.m., Central Standard Time,” he replied. Then he took a deep breath and softly added, “Any other random things we should discuss?”

  It didn’t feel normal, and we were both supremely aware of the discussion we needed to have, but at least the ice was broken. Thank you, Jesus. Even if that was the only purpose of that stupid fable, thank you.

  “Are you mad at me?” I asked, the simplicity of the question not at all doing justice to the complexity of the situation.

  “Mad at you? No. Not exactly. More frustrated with you, I guess. Confused. Hurt. And, yeah, okay, maybe there has been some anger mixed in here and there.”

  I knew I deserved all of that.

  “Look, Ben—”

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  I grabbed my tissue as the relief flooded my soul and the tears flooded my face. “I love you too. And I just need to say—”

  “I love you,” he said again.

  Wow, he knew how to make an apology difficult. “I love you too, but liste
n—”

  “I love you,” he said once more, and the third time I heard the smile in his voice.

  I got it. I understood. He wasn’t shutting me out, and he wasn’t saying we didn’t have things we needed to discuss. He wasn’t acting like everything was fixed and that neither of us had apologies to make. We did, and we would. But he was telling me that he loved me, and nothing mattered more than that. All I’d had to do was show him I was still in the fight.

  His confidence in our relationship, and in me, was staggering. There was no question and there was no doubt. When I asked him—trying to keep it light but also desperately needing to know the answer—if we were still engaged, he said only, “Unless you’ve gotten a better offer.”

  I laughed, confirmed that I had not, and continued on with the conversation. It wasn’t until we were about to hang up the phone that he addressed it with a tad more seriousness.

  “You didn’t really think our engagement would be off, did you?” he asked, by then sounding so sleepy and groggy, and a tad hoarse.

  Once again Roma and Stevie were present on my shoulders, but this time Stevie’s delightfully expressionless twirling was no match for Roma’s “Don’t tell him what you think best protects you. The best protection is the truth.”

  “I really didn’t know.” I sighed. “Honestly—oh gosh, please hear me out on this—I think there was a part of me that hoped so.”

  He was completely alert once more upon hearing that. “Okay. Ready to hear you out.”

  I went on to explain my insecurities regarding, well . . . everything! I explained that the idea of failing at another relationship was almost easier to reconcile in my mind than the constant pressure I felt when trying to hold it all together. Most importantly, I explained that to me he represented all things good and godly. That’s not to say that I thought he was perfect. I thought he was better than other men, but I was never under any delusion that Ben Delaney was anything other than a man. It wasn’t what he was, it was what he represented.

  On the other hand, my insecurities, temptations, and shortcomings were all represented by my failed first marriage. Yes, Patrick was a loser with the moral integrity of a prairie dog, but there had always been a part of me that believed a better woman might have changed him.

  “This isn’t about me wishing I could have made things work out with Patrick. You know that, right?” I said five minutes into my ranting. Once I’d decided to really display all of the crazy, out in the open for Ben to see, there was no stopping me.

  “Of course I know that,” he said. “Okay, I hate to do this . . .”

  I looked at the clock once more. “Oh, yikes. I’m so sorry. You need to get to bed.”

  He laughed and said, “Are you serious? You are finally opening up to me. You are finally telling me the things I don’t think you’ve even wanted to tell yourself. How in the world can you think I would be like, ‘Hey, gotta run,’ at a moment like this?” He paused, I think waiting for an answer, but I didn’t want to give him one.

  Ultimately, I didn’t need to.

  He sighed. “Because that’s what Patrick would do. Okay, listen to me. What I was going to say was ‘I hate to do this, but I’m going to go into pastor mode for a minute,’ and then I was going to talk about how difficult divorce is, especially for Christ-followers. But there’s something more important that I think I need to make you understand. Sarah, I’m not Patrick.”

  “Ben, I know that—”

  “I know you know that. But now it’s time for you to know that. And you need to know why. I have three things he never had, and it’s these three things that ensure I will never be like him.”

  I couldn’t help it as my mind ran away with me, trying to predict which three he was referring to. In my mind, Ben had a million things Patrick didn’t have.

  “Number one, I have a relationship with Christ,” he began. “And that relationship shapes who I am and what I value and who I try to be. I struggle, and I have moments of extreme weakness.” He lowered his voice as he said, “Talking to you in the middle of the night, wishing you were lying here next to me instead of on the other end of a phone call, brings those weaknesses to light, believe me. But that relationship is the most important in my life, and it’s not based on some stupid, self-centered desire to look holy. It’s based on the complete understanding and acceptance that I will never even be worthy, much less holy, and yet the God of the universe knows my name. So that’s number one.

  “Number two, I have Maddie. I’m sorry that you experienced the pain of being denied motherhood, but truthfully I have thanked God every day that you don’t have to share a child with that man, and I think it’s time that you start looking at it that way too. God has a plan. A perfect, bigger, and better than anything we can ever imagine sort of plan.”

  Ah, the baby topic. Of all the topics I could ever discuss, nothing was more gut-wrenching and devastating than that. Ben and I hadn’t discussed any of that since the very first time, over sushi. Until that moment, there on the phone, I think it had been the one thing he kept off the table because he didn’t want to hurt me. It wasn’t that we couldn’t discuss it, but what good would it do? For him, I felt the same way about discussing Christa’s death. Apparently this conversation was one in which everything—everything—was on the table. I figured I had probably heard it all—every pep talk that was meant to be encouraging but was actually just patronizing. I grabbed a tissue, bracing myself for whatever he would say next, but I couldn’t have possibly been prepared.

  “I know it’s selfish of me, but if you’d had kids with him, he’d be in your life. Our lives. And I don’t think that could have possibly been good for you, or us, or any poor little McDermotts who had to have him as a father. I know we’d have made it work, and those kids would have been blessings just like Maddie, but I just . . . gosh, Sarah, I don’t how to say it except to just say it. Once we’re married, I intend to knock you up absolutely every chance I get.”

  “Well, it’s the first time anyone’s ever given me this pep talk,” I said with a laugh.

  He chuckled. “I hope so.” He took a deep breath. “I consider it my God-given gift to be able to be the one you raise a family with. I know what that love is like—that love for your child that is unlike any other—and you and I are going to share that. So, there you go. That’s number two.”

  I didn’t know if I could handle more, but I still asked, “And number three?”

  “Well, that one should be obvious. Number three, I have you.”

  I didn’t really know where he was going with number three, but I was intrigued. “Well, so did he. For a time.”

  “No, he didn’t. Not really. He was a placeholder. God gave him a chance, and he blew it. I’m the one who gets to really know you and understand all of the miraculous things about you.” He exhaled and I somehow knew that it was his turn to brace himself. “I couldn’t have loved Christa any more than I did, Sarah. I loved that woman with everything I was and everything I had, and I still thank God every day for letting me share that time with her. When she died, I thought that was it. My heart was done. But God had a plan—a perfect, bigger, and better than anything I ever could have imagined sort of plan. The love I’d known and the love you’d been denied . . . they were God’s preparation for this. Right now. You and me. This is the plan.”

  When Piper showed up early the next morning to pick me up, I was a new person. I wasn’t even just back to my old self. I was new. Ben and I finally hung up the phone at 2:15 a.m. after I had promised to make paper airplanes out of my bulletin and throw them at him if he started to drift away while delivering his sermon.

  As I got Piper all caught up in the car and over coffee, I marveled at how God had worked throughout my entire conversation with Ben.

  “Wow” was all Piper said as I concluded my rehash of all of the highlights of the conversation. Her cheek was resting on her hand and she was staring at me as if she were a little girl listening to a fairy tale. />
  I finished off my coffee and then smiled and said, “I know.”

  As we walked out to her car and climbed in, her phone rang. She quickly said, “By the way, if you die, I have dibs on him,” and then answered her phone as I laughed and buckled my seat belt.

  “Oh, hey Ben,” she said.

  “Hey! You don’t get him until I die!” I said, not even trying to keep my voice down, certain she was faking the phone call.

  “Oh my goodness, are you serious?” she asked as she quickly fastened her seat belt and then pulled out of the parking lot in a chorus of squealing tires, revving motor, and gravel kicking out behind us. “Yeah, she’s with me. Tell me what to do.”

  17.

  That Bellamy Girl

  I turned to her, suddenly panicked. “What’s wrong? Is he okay?” And why had he called her instead of me?

  She used her hand to gesture for me to be quiet so she could hear, so I leaned in, trying to hear what he was saying. I couldn’t hear a thing.

  “Okay. Yeah. You bet. Do you need me to get Maddie or . . . Okay. Yeah, I’ll stay with her.” She looked at me, and I knew she’d been given the assignment of being my guardian, though I didn’t know why.

  At that point, though, I was actually okay. She was on the phone with Ben, Maddie was clearly fine if Piper was offering to pick her up, and Piper was with me. The three most important people in my life were safe, so nothing else could hurt me. Or so I thought.

  “Yeah, call when you can. Do you want to talk to her?” She looked away from me. “Sure. Okay. Call when you can.”

  She hung up the phone but didn’t say a word to me.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, trying to remain calm. When she didn’t answer me, the calm went away pretty immediately. “Piper, tell me what’s happening.”

  She pulled out on the expressway, very noticeably headed in the opposite direction of Mercy Point. “It’s not any big deal, really,” she said, looking in her rearview mirror. “Apparently there are some reporters and news crews at Mercy Point.”