The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck

by Bethany Turner

  Apparently, Laura had never really come to terms with the end of her college relationship with Ben. Though it wasn’t very Christian of me, I couldn’t help but laugh a little whenever I thought of just how much more vexed she would have been if she’d known how close he had been to proposing to her. But it wouldn’t have mattered, of course. Once Christa reentered his life, things never could have worked out with Laura—even if Laura hadn’t kissed someone else. Ben was a one-woman man, and Christa quickly became that one woman.

  Now I was that one woman. I knew that, and had complete faith in Ben’s commitment to me. Unfortunately, I had just as much faith in Laura’s tireless and persistent pursuit. She was good. I had to give her that. She had a way of making herself seem harmless, and she put forth the appearance of being nothing more than his oldest friend—someone with whom he shared so much history that they were really past the point of friendship. They were family.

  Bull hockey.

  She wanted him, and she would stop at nothing to get him.

  “Applesauce, wake up!” Maddie giggled. “Give me all your threes.”

  I shook off thoughts of Laura, and everything else I considered a threat to my relationship with Ben, and looked down at my cards. Shoot. Not again.

  “Aren’t you supposed to ask?” I teased her. “You don’t know that I have any threes, so you’re supposed to say, ‘Do you have any threes?’ and then I can politely confirm or deny. This is, after all, a game of manners, Madeline.”

  Maddie looked at Ben and rolled her eyes before looking back at me. He sat back in his chair, crossed his arms, and winked at me, prepared to enjoy the show Maddie and I were about to put on, as she beat me once again.

  “But you do have threes. Doesn’t she, Daddy?”

  Just then the phone rang and Ben stood to go answer it, but not before saying, “Yep. She does. And two Jacks. And a nine, I think.”

  I laughed. He’d nailed it, and I was once again left to wonder how any self-respecting, successful adult could be as bad at Go Fish as I was.

  “Traitor! Is anyone on my side?”

  “No,” Maddie said. “Now give me your threes.” I cocked my eyebrow at her, which made her giggle as she said, “May I please have your threes, Applesauce?”

  “Well, that’s not a bad thing, is it, Tom?” Ben was saying on the phone, across the kitchen counter from us.

  I looked over at him in order to perform a mental wellness check. In the past month I had witnessed some of the constant demands on a pastor leading a growing church. Ben had associate pastors under him, so he certainly didn’t handle every call and every crisis, but he handled many of them. At any hour, day or night, he might receive a call that a church member was sick, or had died, or was in need of prayer.

  He glanced up and saw me looking at him, so he smiled a smile that let me know everything was okay. I smiled back at him and then turned my attention back to Maddie.

  “Here you go, ma’am,” I said, politely handing Maddie one three.

  She took it and then stuck her little hand out again. “Both of them.”

  I pretended to be put out as I handed her the second three. I looked over at Ben, wanting to see his reaction as her giggles began once more, but he had turned his back to us. I could hear only emphatic whispers, and it was very obvious he was trying not to be heard.

  Don’t be paranoid, Sarah, I told myself. It’s probably just something Maddie shouldn’t hear. I told myself that but, as always, there was a little bit of fear that the moment when the other shoe would drop was quickly approaching.

  A couple of minutes later, Ben forcefully hung up the phone. He didn’t quite slam it down, but there was an unmistakable gravitas to it all. I turned back around, prepared to be a sounding board as he processed whatever bad or frustrating news he had just received, but all I saw was his bedroom door as it slammed.

  I looked back to Maddie with a playful “Yikes!” expression. She didn’t look fazed at all, and it suddenly dawned on me that there had probably been many times when the little girl had been her daddy’s only sounding board.

  “Should I go talk to him?” I leaned in and whispered, legitimately asking her advice.

  “Probably not,” she said, shaking her head as she put the cards away. “He comes out eventually.”

  An hour later, Maddie and I were on the couch, watching television. Well, I was watching television and she was asleep with her head on my lap. I was starting to get the impression Ben was never going to be ready to talk. I’d thought about leaving, but that didn’t seem like the right thing to do. Having said that, it occurred to me that when Maddie was put to bed, he and I would potentially be alone together, and that didn’t really seem like the right thing to do either. I decided I was safest right where I was.

  At some point I dozed off too, I suppose. I was awakened by Ben’s hand on my shoulder. Maddie was no longer on the couch with me, and the television was turned off. I took a quick look at the clock and saw that it was 10:00.

  “Oh, sheesh. Sorry,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

  “Don’t be,” he said softly, sitting down beside me on the couch.

  He looked tired. And worried. I knew I needed to get out of there before anyone saw my car parked in front of his house at that time of night, but something in the way his shoulders were sagging told me I couldn’t go. Not yet.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  He took a deep breath. “That was Tom Isaacs on the phone earlier.”

  It had begun. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew. I knew before he told me who’d been on the phone, and I probably knew even before he’d completed the phone call. I didn’t say anything, I just held my breath and let him go at his own pace. And I prayed that it wasn’t the end.

  “Apparently Mercy Point’s offering funds grew by leaps and bounds this week.”

  Okay. I was pretty sure that was my doing, though I certainly hadn’t thought about how noticeable it would be. I allowed myself to breathe, not understanding what was causing Ben so much distress but feeling confident I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “Of course they did.” I smiled. “You preached on tithing. You woke some people up.”

  “Including you?” He turned to face me, and I was so saddened to see that all of the Go Fish joy had been wiped away, and I still didn’t understand why.

  “Well, yes,” I said. “That was the first sermon I’d ever heard on tithing. And I’ve been reading the book of Numbers. Well, okay, I’ve been trying to read Numbers. I hope this isn’t a sin, but I have to say, it’s not the most interesting book of the Bible, is it?”

  “Stop making light of everything, Sarah!” he said, standing from the couch and walking to the picture window and looking outside, arms crossed. “Nothing about this is cute or funny. Absolutely nothing.”

  I was startled and I was hurt. And I could very plainly sense that I had in fact done something wrong. Or at least he thought I had. I still couldn’t imagine what it was, but I felt my confidence shatter around me. I’d been so careful. How had I messed up and not even realized it?

  “Ben,” I said shakily, “I don’t understand—”

  “What’d you do?” He turned around and faced me again, but his arms were still crossed and he kept his distance. “Did you try to make up for years of not tithing? I mean, how could you not think about how much a check like that would stick out?”

  I’d paid so much attention to Ben’s tithing sermon, as I did all of his teaching. It wasn’t about the money, it was about the faith. Right? God wanted us to give our first and our best to show that we trusted him to provide for us. Isn’t that what he’d said? I had prayed as I wrote that check, and I had felt so good about giving my first and best. How had I managed to screw that up?

  “Forgive me, Reverend,” I sneered, having no doubt he would accurately decipher the disdain in my tone, “but I guess I wasn’t thinking about what anyone would think. Why should I? I gave 10 percent, which the Bible presents as
a guideline, and which my pastor also presented as a guideline. I prayed about it, and I gave. What concern is it of yours, or Tom Isaacs, or anyone else?”

  “You’re right. Of course you’re right.” The expression on his face made it difficult for me to believe he actually thought I was right. “But when you and I are trying not to ruffle feathers and trying to keep our relationship kind of inconspicuous, you had to have realized that there was no way of doing that if you were to write a check for 10 percent of your entire net worth! Retro-tithing really isn’t a thing.”

  I was already so confused, and he wasn’t helping. “What are you talking about? I just tithed my income. I didn’t ‘retro-tithe,’ Ben!” I did air quotes as I said that in an attempt to demonstrate how ridiculous he was being.

  His arms dropped, and he laughed an erratic laugh. “Good grief, Sarah! How much money do you make?”

  If he’d asked at any other point in the month prior, I wouldn’t have hesitated at all before telling him. For one thing, I was the author of some of the top-selling books of the past year or so, and my financial status was easy enough to find online or in Forbes. But more than that, we were still fervent believers in Rule #7. But at that moment, I wasn’t too keen on the idea of giving him the satisfaction of getting an answer to anything he wanted to know.

  “A lot,” I said with a sniff.

  “Well, yeah. I know that.”

  I didn’t like his tone, and I really didn’t like his attitude, but as the seconds passed and he kept staring at me, I also didn’t like the idea of keeping anything from him.

  “Okay, keep in mind that I’ve already been paid a whole bunch of money for a book I haven’t even started writing yet. It’s not like I make this much all the time or anything, so—”

  “How much, Sarah?”

  I sighed. “I’ve made about four and a half million.”

  He kept staring, mouth wide open. “Dollars?”

  I looked at him and rolled my eyes. “No, pot holders. In my crochet class. Yes, dollars!”

  I stood up and took a quick peek in the mirror and was horrified, but not surprised, to discover I’d been carrying on this conversation with mascara under my eyes, drool dried on my cheek, and the hair of a rooster before its morning coffee. Great. I walked to the door to grab my shoes and begged my eyes not to release the threatening tears.

  “Where are you going?” he asked gently.

  I knew I couldn’t talk without crying, so I just muttered nonsense that sounded like harumph, grunt, groan, growl and pointed to the door. I got my shoes on and located my things and realized how unfortunate it was that I had chosen that day to break out my new Prada handbag.

  I stormed to the door, hoping to make a dramatic exit, but he grabbed my hand as I passed. “Sarah, we can’t storm out on each other.”

  Why not? Patrick had always stormed out on me when he was angry, or didn’t want to deal with something, or just wanted to make it look like something was my fault. It felt like my turn to finally get to be the one to storm out. I had done nothing wrong, and yet I felt persecuted. Yes, persecuted!

  “Why are you persecuting me?” I shouted passionately.

  To his credit, he tried not to laugh. I saw him try. But he just couldn’t help it. “Am I persecuting you? I didn’t mean to.”

  For the first time ever, I didn’t find his laughter sexy in the least. “Yes, actually, I think you are persecuting me. I make a lot of money. So what? And I wrote a tithe check to my church, and I still believe that was the right thing to do. What, is there some conflict of interest thing or something? Do you work on commission?”

  He smiled and sat down on the arm of the couch. “No. I don’t work on commission.”

  “Then I really can’t see why my tithe, which really should just be between God and me, is of concern to anyone else. If I’m wrong about that, you’re going to have to explain it to me.” I lost the battle with my tears. “Because I just really don’t understand.”

  He exhaled as he stood and pulled me to him. He held me and let me cry for a couple of minutes until we both knew I no longer wanted to storm out on him. Something in my mind had shifted, and all I could think about was how good he felt and smelled. And how disappointed I was in myself that I seemed to care less about standing up for my principles than I did his dedication to going to the gym every day. I still didn’t understand what the problem was, but all of a sudden, I also didn’t care. There was just enough rational thinking making its way through the fog that I knew I should pull away. I needed to go, or at least place some distance between us, but his breath in my hair and his hands on my back made it impossible.

  We still hadn’t kissed—not since the coffee house about a month ago—and I didn’t know if I could stand to wait any longer. I knew that alone in his house, long after Maddie had gone to sleep, and very long after I should have gone home, was not the right time. And yet, in that moment, it felt like the perfect time.

  Any little bit of resolve that I had to resist the power he had over me was lost when I heard how shallow his breathing had become, and I could have no doubt that he was facing the same internal struggle I was.

  “Ben?” I whispered.

  “What do you want me to do, Sarah?” he said quietly, with pleading in his voice. I was about to tell him that I wanted him to kiss me, but he wasn’t through talking. “You’re going to have to tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it. If you want me to step away, I will. But it will be because that’s what you want. I’m not feeling strong enough to want anything but you right now.” He took a deep breath. “What do you want me to do?”

  The power of the moment absorbed me. I never would have imagined that there could be something more powerful than the desire I felt for Ben in that moment, but the desire to not tarnish the love God was building between us was overpowering. It wasn’t about a kiss, or even an evening of kisses. If I’d thought we’d have any chance of not letting our passion go any further than our lips, I would have begged him to kiss me and never stop. But it wouldn’t have stopped there. I knew it, and he knew it. And he was asking me to be his strength.

  I bit my lip and then mouthed a silent prayer of thanks and for assistance. “I want you . . .” It would have been so easy to stop there. “I want you to let me go home.”

  I felt every muscle in his body relax, and then there was a shiver, just before he let go of me. “Thank you,” he whispered, though I don’t think it was really directed toward me.

  I had to fight against every instinct I was feeling—to hug him, grab his hand, sit down and talk for hours—and just walk toward the door. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  I opened the door after turning on the porch light and took one step out, but I stopped when he said, “They don’t want your money, Sarah.”

  I couldn’t turn and face him. I knew it wasn’t coming from him, and I knew what a difficult position I had put him in. It all suddenly made sense. And it didn’t matter that the money I had tithed was actually the advance on a book I intended to use for the Lord, because let’s face it—the amount of the advance was a result of what had already been written, not what was to come. And it didn’t matter that as of Sunday morning, I’d felt as welcome at Mercy Point as anyone else. It didn’t even matter that I’d never even been given cause to suspect that anyone at Mercy Point, apart from Ben and Piper, even knew me as anyone other than Sarah Hollenbeck.

  Someone had found out—probably because I had written that check. And now it was dirty money. They—whoever they were—didn’t think the Lord would want them to accept money that had been earned the way I had earned it. Would they accept money made from gambling or prostitution? What about drug money? I don’t know. But one thing was very clear. It wasn’t okay for the pastor’s girlfriend to tithe the royalties from her provocative books. As I’d suspected hours ago, the other shoe had dropped, and the fallout had in fact begun.

  “Hey.” I smiled, my back still turned, too humiliated to face him.
“That’s good. That check probably would have bounced anyway.” I couldn’t even come up with a good joke to defuse the tension.

  Instantly he was behind me with his arms wrapped around me and his lips by my ear. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what to say—to Tom or to you—and I’m just so furious. I don’t know what God wants me to do, and I don’t know if I’ll be strong enough to do it. I don’t want to face those people again. Not because I’m embarrassed or ashamed, because I’m not. And I am so proud of you and where you are now, and that just makes me even more disgusted with them. You’re living by faith, and following God’s path, and searching for his will for your life while they’re just busy judging you. And I’m so sorry that I can’t just walk away from Mercy Point, but God’s telling me to stay. And, I’ll be honest, I’m not real happy with him about that right now.” He took a breath but kept holding on to me. “Please tell me you’re still going to be by my side. Please.”

  The floodgates opened and I turned around and wrapped my arms around his neck and cried into his shoulder.

  “We’re done with low-key. Do you understand me?” he whispered. “I am not ashamed of you, and I refuse to act like I am, or in any way give the impression that I am. To them or to you. There are bigger things in our lives than trying to please everybody. Some people are just Pharisees, Sarah. That’s all there is to it. They can think what they want to think, and they can fire me if they want.” He pulled away enough to look at me and smile. “Besides, I think you could support us for a while if necessary.”

  I laughed a very unsexy laugh through my tears, which made him laugh too. He released me just long enough to step back inside and grab a tissue from the kitchen counter, then he wiped away my tears.

  “I love you,” he told me for the very first time as he finished the job, and then he kissed the top of my head. “I love you like crazy, and Maddie loves you like crazy. Even if you are shockingly bad at Go Fish.” He smiled at me as I laughed. “And I’m sorry that some people at Mercy Point are apparently set on not loving you, but I assure you, it’s their loss. And someday they’ll realize that.”