The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck

by Bethany Turner

Well, that wasn’t nearly as bad as anything that had been running through my head. “Oh. Why? And why are we not going . . .”

  Oh.

  “Are you telling me there are reporters and news crews at Mercy Point because of me?”

  “He didn’t really tell me much.”

  That didn’t make any sense. I mean, it made some sense. Chicago was a town in which I could manage to live a relatively normal life, and nine times out of ten when I went to dinner or the grocery store, I wouldn’t encounter anything more than autograph-seekers and people wanting a selfie with me. I’d been able to establish safe places—my house, Ben’s, Piper’s, the coffee house—where no one seemed to care. I’d thought Mercy Point was a safe place as well, and I felt bad knowing that services may have been disrupted by news crews showing up.

  “What’s the story, though, Piper?”

  She swerved in and out of traffic pretty dramatically, but that didn’t cause any additional panic. Riding in a car with Piper Lanier at the wheel was always a pretty exciting adventure. What did cause additional panic was the way she was ignoring my question.

  “Did someone leak something to the press?” I pushed. “I suppose if someone found out Raine de Bourgh is engaged to a pastor, that could be of some interest.” But enough interest to merit reporters and news crews? Maybe. That was the type of story that I knew was bound to come to light eventually, but when it did, I guess I’d thought there’d be one reporter who sat through a service and then cornered Ben and me on our way out, and then the coverage would grow from there. “No,” I argued with myself. “Why now? That doesn’t make sense. Is it about me, Piper?”

  Still, she said nothing.

  “Talk to me!” I groaned in frustration. “This obviously has something to do with me. You don’t have to tell me what it is—I guess I’ll find out soon enough—but you do have to tell me why we’re driving away. Whatever it is, I need to go be with Ben. So why aren’t we going to Mercy Point?”

  “Because Ben didn’t want you to be there,” she stated matter-of-factly.

  I thought of the passion and love that had been evident in his voice when he told me we were done with low-key. He said he refused to give the impression he was ashamed of me. So how could I possibly drive far away from Mercy Point and allow him to face this—whatever this was—alone? He wanted to keep me away to protect me, but we needed to face it together.

  “Turn around,” I demanded.

  She didn’t even act as if she had heard me.

  “Seriously, Piper. Turn around. What’s the worst anyone can say? I’ve become a Christian and fallen in love with a fellow Christ-follower? I’m prepared to handle that backlash. I welcome that!” I said emphatically. “There’s nothing I want more than for people to know that. Please turn around.”

  She pulled off at an exit headed downtown, and I was satisfied that she had listened to my impassioned plea. But rather than turn around, she just pulled off on the side of the road and stopped the car.

  “You need to think about him, Sarah. He doesn’t want you there. I don’t know all the details of what’s actually going on, but he doesn’t want you there. Not right now, okay?”

  Was he ashamed of me after all?

  Piper’s phone rang again, and she gently pushed me away as I tried to get to it first. “Hi, Ben,” she said, shooting me a dirty look as I tried to grab the phone from her hands. “Yeah, hang on.” She held the phone out, and I took it as quickly as I could.

  “Hey,” I said, not knowing where else to begin.

  “Hey,” he said in a tone I didn’t recognize from him. He wasn’t trying to comfort me, and he clearly wasn’t feeling too comforted himself. “Sorry, I don’t know why I called Piper’s phone again. I meant to call yours.”

  He sounded so flustered, and that made me feel horrible. I needed to be there with him. “No problem. Listen, I want Piper to take me to the church. I mean, this is all my fault. You shouldn’t have to deal with it alone.”

  “This isn’t your fault, Sarah. Nothing about this is your fault.”

  I couldn’t help but think everyone was taking it all way too seriously. No, I didn’t typically have to deal with reporters and paparazzi following me everywhere I went, but I was pretty famous. Whatever story they had, or thought they had—we’d sort it all out.

  “This is just part of the reality of my life, Ben. I’m sorry it’s happening at church. I mean, that seems like it should be off-limits, as far as class and taste go, but I guess it’s something I should have considered. Let me just get there and let them get a picture or whatever they’re going for, and then we can proceed as normal.”

  He laughed cynically and said, “Normal doesn’t exist anymore. She saw to that.”

  She? What in the world was he talking about? “Ben—”

  “Look, we need to talk, but not like this. Can you meet me somewhere in half an hour?”

  “Of course, but you’ll be in the middle of your sermon.” I looked at my watch. “Won’t you? You didn’t have to cancel, did you?”

  It was as if he hadn’t heard anything I said. He just gave me an address, told me he loved me, and then asked to speak to Piper again. As he talked to her, she snatched the address, written on the back of a receipt, out of my hand, glanced in her side mirror, and got back on the road. When she hung up, she put her phone in her pocket and then asked for my phone.

  “Why do you want my phone?” I asked as I pulled it out of my purse and handed it to her. “What did he say?”

  She jammed my phone into her pocket, alongside hers, and then said, “He asked me to make sure you didn’t check out any headlines on your phone.”

  What in the world was happening?

  Twenty-five minutes later we pulled into a middle-class neighborhood I’d never known existed and then up to a house I’d never seen before. There was, however, a familiar CR-V in the driveway. Piper put her car into park and jumped out and ran over to the passenger side door, and pulled me into a tight embrace as soon as I stepped out.

  “Piper, you’re scaring me,” I said. I tried to say it lightly, but I hadn’t succeeded. My voice was trembling.

  Just then I saw Ben open the front door. Piper caught his eye, and then she looked back to me.

  “You love Ben and he loves you,” she said, tears in her eyes. “That’s what matters. Do you understand me? And it’s not fair. It’s not fair to either of you, but it’s really not fair to you. I know you, Sarah. Your instinct is going to be to doubt yourself and be convinced that you aren’t worthy, but you are. You are. I know it, and I promise you that man over there knows it. So when your crazy insecurities start to rise to the top, you rest in the peace and glory of our Lord, and you trust in the love Ben has for you. Trust in who you know Ben to be. God has big plans for you—that much is clear. So whatever this is, it will not destroy you if you don’t let it. And if you don’t think you’re strong enough to handle it, well, that’s what Ben and I are for. All you have to do is let God know you’re still in the fight.”

  I was terrified but also somehow at peace. I nodded once, not able to imagine anything that could possibly be worthy of all of this hoopla, but ready to face it as long as Ben and Piper were by my side.

  So it didn’t really help that Piper suddenly wasn’t by my side and instead was back in her car, pulling out of the driveway.

  “Come on in,” Ben called from the door, stretching out his hand.

  I was saddened by the expression on his face as I took his hand and walked into this strange home with him. He offered to get me some coffee, which I could smell brewing, and I accepted. He went into the kitchen, and I was grateful for a moment to take in my surroundings. It was almost as if I were in a parallel dimension. It was clear that no one else was in the house, or anywhere in the vicinity, so Ben had clearly let himself in. I watched him as he maneuvered around the kitchen, as comfortably as if he were in his own home, popping popcorn for Maddie and me.

  I looked around the living
room where I stood, surrounded by elegant furniture without the trappings of pomposity. A beautiful Tiffany lamp in the corner sat on an end table that was covered with coloring books and crayons, presenting in one perfect image the feel of the whole room. I walked to a bookshelf that held a few books but which served primarily as an exhibit of family photos.

  One face—one of my favorite faces in the world—appeared more than any other, and I smiled as I looked at a photographic history of Madeline Delaney’s first five years. I was especially touched by one I recognized immediately as one I had taken. In it, Ben and Maddie fed the ducks. Well, that’s how it had begun anyway. What the photo showed was when it all fell apart disastrously and Maddie was left in fits of laughter as Ben ran away from a very large goose who seemed to think Ben had been a little too stingy with his breadcrumbs. I ran my fingers over the top of the frame, the sound of her high-pitched laughter still ringing in my ears and warming my heart four weeks later.

  And then I saw the picture that made it perfectly clear whose home I was in. Ben was in blue hospital scrubs, leaning over the bed of a beautiful blonde woman. They both looked exhausted, but their faces shone bright with the love they couldn’t contain, for each other and the tiny pink baby with a scrunched-up face asleep in the woman’s arms.

  “Hi, Christa,” I whispered.

  She was everywhere, in photos all over the shelves and on the walls of the home that undoubtedly belonged to Christa’s parents. There were photos of her as a child and in high school. In one, she and a gangly boy with brown hair and very familiar eyes sat together on a Ferris wheel, laughing, clearly unaware that they were being watched. Others showed the same boy and girl with their wedding party, in front of a Sold sign, next to a sonogram machine. In one, they stood on a beach in front of a setting sun, laughing together in spite of the dark circles under their eyes and the scarf on her head.

  “Thank you for loving him so much, Christa,” I whispered. “Thank you for being a woman worthy of his love. Thank you for Maddie.” I wiped away one tear that fell. “Thank you for preparing him to love me.”

  “Here you go,” Ben said as he walked out of the kitchen with my coffee. I turned around, and he saw my expression, but I don’t think he knew quite how to read it.

  “She was gorgeous, Ben. Just . . . gorgeous.”

  He set the coffee down on an end table and walked over and looked at the pictures with me. “Yeah,” he said.

  As his eyes moved from one frame to the next, I noticed that he seemed to be taking it all in as if for the first time. I hadn’t thought about it before, but I suddenly realized that despite spending almost as much time in Ben’s house as I had my own over the past couple of months, I had never seen Christa before that day.

  “Why don’t you have any pictures of her up at your house?”

  “I do. They’re just mostly in Maddie’s bedroom. Except for my copy of this one. It’s hanging up in my room.” He pointed to the one taken immediately after Maddie’s birth. He sighed. “I don’t know. At first I didn’t hang anything on the walls at all, because I couldn’t imagine staying in Chicago for long. Too many memories, you know? We’d been in Connecticut from the time I started at Yale, up until she found out she was sick and wanted to come back to be close to her folks. And then it all went so fast, and I just couldn’t imagine staying. I guess at a certain point it just seemed like it would belabor the grief to hang up memories I was trying not to be consumed by.”

  “Well”—I swallowed down the lump in my throat—“if it’s okay with you, I’d really like to put some of these photos in our home after we get married. She’s part of your story, so she’s part of our story.” I thought of everything that had been said by Piper and Ben over the fourteen or so hours prior, and I knew I was ready for whatever was coming our way. I glanced again at the photo that had instantly become my favorite—the one on the Ferris wheel. “Even then, God was preparing your heart to love me.”

  He pulled me to him, and as I rested my head on his chest, listening to the heart that I knew beat in time with mine, I silently prayed, Whatever it is, Lord, help me to be his strength.

  “Let’s sit,” he said quietly, guiding me to the couch.

  He opened his mouth to start talking, but I stopped him. “Ben, before you say whatever you’re about to say, I just . . .” I felt like I needed to say something to assure him of my love, but I had no idea what it should be. So I kissed him, gently, and then pulled away and grabbed his hands. “I love you,” I said.

  He smiled. “I love you too.” The smile faded. “Okay, so here’s the situation—”

  “I love you.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Are you using my own Jedi mind trick against me?”

  “Sorry.” I winked. “Go ahead.”

  I was terrified and yet I was at peace. I’d never felt anything like it.

  “Laura’s back,” he said.

  “Oh good,” I said, somewhat sincerely.

  “Yeah, well . . . that’s a matter of opinion, I suppose.” He stood up and started pacing, running his hand through his hair.

  “Just say it, Ben. It’s okay.”

  He stood staring out the window for a few seconds, and then he slammed the palm of his hand up against the wall. I walked up behind him, wrapped my arms around his waist, and rested my head on his back.

  “She called the reporters. At least I think it was her. When I got to church this morning, there were dozens of them.” He turned around to face me. “I thought they were for you—”

  “They weren’t?”

  “Yes and no.” He laughed bitterly. “She used your name to get them there, certainly. And they did seem very interested in the fact that you go to church there and, honestly, that you go to church at all. And of course our relationship was getting quite the buzz. If she had just stopped there . . .”

  I couldn’t imagine what it could possibly be. If they weren’t there for me, but I was obviously somehow connected . . . Dozens of reporters? And a big enough story to merit my phone being taken away? I took a deep breath, having a very bad feeling about it all. And Piper knew. Whatever it was, he had told her on the phone, so she had known. She had known when she said, “Trust in who you know Ben to be.” The story wasn’t about me at all.

  The story was about Ben.

  I took one more deep breath, imagining the worst, certain that the truth wouldn’t be that bad. “Do you want to get married?”

  He looked at me funny. “Of course I do. That was kind of what I meant by ‘Will you marry me?’ actually.”

  I shook my head, not sure, just like with the fable, why I was saying anything I was saying, but knowing I meant every word of it. “No, I mean right now.”

  Bless his heart. I think back on it now and I can’t help but laugh. He was so confused. “Umm . . . like, right now?” He looked around the living room, probably searching for a clue as to what the heck I was talking about.

  “Listen to me,” I said, and then I pulled him back to the couch and forced him to sit. When he did, I sat next to him, my knees beneath me so that I was his height and we were eye-to-eye. I held his face in my hands, forcing him to look at me and listen. “What I’m saying is I would marry you, right now. I know that you’re about to tell me something that you’re afraid is going to shatter us. I can read it in your eyes. But nothing is going to shatter us. I would marry you right now, and whatever you’re about to tell me would be an afterthought. Got it?”

  He cleared his throat. “I have never been so intimidated by someone and yet so attracted to them at the same time. You’re kind of scary when you’re take-charge like this.” He added, “I’m not complaining, mind you.”

  I smiled, but I didn’t move. I hadn’t gotten the answer I needed yet. “Do you hear what I’m telling you? There is nothing you can say that will shatter us. Got it?”

  “Got it,” he said quietly.

  And then he finally let me in. “Laura announced to, from what I could tell, every single
major news outlet, that Raine de Bourgh’s pastor boyfriend had fathered a child out of wedlock with one of his parishioners.”

  I said nothing. It was ridiculous, of course, but I got up from the couch and stood by the window for a moment, letting it sink in. I wanted to make sure I understood.

  “Sarah, are you okay?” he asked, keeping his distance as he awaited my reaction.

  I was fine. I was so fine that I broke his statement down and analyzed it in my mind, convinced I was missing something.

  Raine de Bourgh. Okay, that was me.

  My pastor boyfriend was Ben, of course.

  The whole child/parishioner thing was a little blurry, but still I didn’t see why anyone was taking it as seriously as they were.

  I couldn’t help but smile. “I know it’s none of their business, but I really think you should tell them you haven’t even had sex in a few years.” I started laughing. “While we’re at it, let’s make sure they know I haven’t either! That one might blow their minds.”

  Ben wasn’t laughing. Or smiling. “The thing is, she didn’t give details to the press—just the generic claim that I’d had a child with a member of the church. I’m guessing she figured she could do more immediate damage by being vague, and she was probably right. But she got a little more specific with the church board. She claims it goes back more than a few years, Sarah.” He moved a little closer, in retrospect clearly trying to break it to me gently. He hadn’t yet gotten to the part that he feared would cause my unraveling. “The child is fourteen now.”

  Of course I suddenly understood perfectly, and I have to admit I was slightly less fine, but I didn’t unravel.

  “Does this out-of-wedlock child happen to be Maddie’s regular babysitter when you and I go out?”

  He rushed in and grabbed my hands, I think still expecting a meltdown. “Kaitlyn is not my daughter, Sarah. She’s not.”

  Trust in who you know Ben to be.

  “Of course she’s not,” I said, relief overtaking every inch of me. “Of course she’s not.”

  He grabbed me and pulled me to him and held on for dear life. I felt the release of tension in his shoulders and down his back. Had he really been worried I wouldn’t believe him? How could I not? The thought was just ridiculous to me.