The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck

by Bethany Turner

  “Laura Bellamy—beautiful, sophisticated—could have had her choice of men, but she had her heart set on one in particular.”

  “You guys were much nicer than I would have been,” Piper said as footage of Laura’s publicity stunt flashed on the screen.

  I smiled as I watched, so grateful that it had been resolved as peacefully as it had been. And by peaceful, of course I mean it all played out as if written as a sweeps storyline for a soap opera.

  The day after Laura had made her accusations, Joanna called Ben and asked if he and I could join her for lunch. As we walked into her house, I felt nervous all over again. Yes, she had been happy about our engagement, and yes, I had been pleasantly surprised that she actually seemed to like me. Nevertheless, I knew how much she cared about Laura, and I couldn’t imagine that the timing of our lunch visit could possibly be unrelated to Laura’s claims.

  We walked to the door, and Nate greeted us outside. “Listen, kids. You need to hear her out, okay? This is as tough for her as it is for you.”

  What in the world could possibly be so difficult for Joanna? Was it going to be difficult for her to ask Ben if Laura’s accusations were true? Or was she assuming they were, and she was going to give a lecture about responsibility? Maybe she was just going to disown Ben altogether so she could adopt Laura once and for all.

  Ben and I looked at each other, and we saw the confusion in each other’s eyes.

  “Of course we’ll hear her out, Dad.” Nate walked through the doorway, and then Ben held the door open for me as I entered. “But you also need to know that there’s a lot more to the story than—”

  I stopped in my tracks as I turned the corner to enter the living room behind Nate, and I put my hand behind me to grab Ben’s hand. It was then that he saw what I had seen just a split second before he did—Joanna sitting on the couch, Laura by her side.

  “What’s she doing here?” Ben asked angrily as he looked from Nate to Joanna, and then back to Nate. He stepped in front of me, as if to shield me from whatever was happening. “You want us to hear her out? You think this is as tough for her as it is for us? Really, Dad?” If he was trying to hide the contempt he felt for Laura, he was failing horribly. It was evident in every word, through every expression. “Come on, Sarah, let’s go.” He held tighter to the hand I had offered him and began to pull me out of the room.

  “Ben, wait. Please,” Laura pleaded.

  He was already halfway out the door, but I planted my feet. He turned to face me as we stopped moving, and I softly said, “If you walk out right now, you’ll always wonder what she was going to say. Stay for that reason, even if it’s the only one.”

  With his eyes he implored me to reconsider my stance, but I didn’t. Finally he sighed. “Okay,” he answered me gently, before leading me back into the living room. “Make it quick,” he instructed Laura, though he only looked in her general direction.

  “Don’t you want to sit, Ben?” Joanna asked, a little bit nervously.

  “No, Mother, I don’t. Come on, Laura. Get on with it.”

  She cleared her throat. “First of all, let me just tell you how sorry I am.”

  “Sorry?” He laughed bitterly. “Oh, good. You’re sorry. Well then, let’s just forget it ever happened.”

  “Excuse us a moment.” I smiled uncomfortably at everyone. “Ben, can I see you outside for a second?”

  “No, actually. I’m kind of in the middle of some—”

  “Ben!” Nate shouted, and then spoke in his usual quiet tone once he had his attention. “The woman you plan to marry just asked to see you outside. I think you’d best see what she needs, don’t you, son?”

  I suddenly understood very clearly what the Delaney family dynamic must have been like when Ben was a kid. Mom called most of the shots, but when Dad meant business, you knew better than to disobey.

  “Yes, sir.” Ben sulked as he walked outside. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, I would have had to laugh at the grumpy little boy in front of me.

  I nodded my appreciation to Nate, and he nodded his back, and then I ran out after Ben. When I got outside, he was pacing and, I think, looking for something to punch.

  “You need to go to a boxing ring and punch something,” I said, not really having a clue what I was talking about. All I knew was that Ben had years of pent-up frustration that, overall, he managed pretty well. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that he would feel really good if he could just punch something. “You know,” I continued, in a feeble attempt to lighten the mood, “like in Rocky IV. Because when I think boxing, I think Rocky IV.”

  “I’m sorry, Sarah,” he growled, still pacing. “But I wasn’t prepared to see her here today. If they’d just warned us . . .”

  “If they’d warned us we probably wouldn’t have come,” I said, inching closer to him, wanting so desperately to comfort him.

  He noticed. “I recognize that look in your eyes. If you kiss me right now, I’m going to start thinking we have a problem, you and I. Always kissing at parents’ houses.” A smile broke through, no matter how hard he tried to not let it.

  “I’m not going to kiss you.” I smiled, still inching closer.

  “You’re not? Why not? I was just kidding about having a problem. Personally, I think we’re just fans of opportunity. And this moment seems to be as opportune as any other.”

  “Three months from today,” I stated matter-of-factly.

  “No, I’m sorry,” he scoffed. “I refuse to wait three months to kiss you.”

  “Oh no. You misunderstand me. The way I see it, three months from today you could be doing a whole lot more than kissing me.”

  He gulped and swallowed a little too much air, which made him cough and made me laugh. I was so intrigued and fascinated by his attraction to me.

  “Are you suggesting we set a date, Ms. Hollenbeck?” he asked once he finally got his breath back.

  “No, Mr. Delaney. I’m telling you I just set it. Three months from today. Be there.”

  With that I turned around and started walking back toward the house, which left him confused and laughing.

  “Hey, where are you going?”

  I ran over to him and gave him a quick kiss and said, “I’m going back inside to face something that really doesn’t matter in the least. After all, I get to marry you three months from today. What else is there?” I smiled and grabbed his hand, and together we went in to face something that didn’t matter at all.

  “Sarah, would you like to sit?” Joanna asked once we were back in the room. She’d given up on Ben, who was standing, leaning against the wall, seemingly determined to keep as much distance as possible between Laura and himself.

  “I’m fine.” I smiled at her and held tighter to Ben’s hand. I needed to make sure he knew I wouldn’t leave his side. “But thank you.”

  “Laura, I believe you were telling us how sorry you are,” Ben said, unable to make himself less angry in her presence, no matter how much we told ourselves that none of it mattered.

  “I am, Ben. I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you—”

  “Oh, come on!” he shouted, letting go of my hand and walking a bit farther into the middle of the room. “You never meant to hurt me? Really, Laura? What did you think would happen?”

  She blew her nose and kept her head down as she said, “It was really more about hurting Sarah.”

  I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by that, and I wasn’t really. But it still felt strange to hear.

  “And you didn’t know that hurting her was hurting me?” Ben fumed. “And you didn’t think that it might do a little bit of damage to my job? My reputation? My ministry, Laura. You didn’t think that might hurt me?”

  “I don’t know!” she shouted back as she buried her face in her hands. “I didn’t think. I panicked. I was so stupid when we were kids, and I didn’t realize what I had with you until it was gone. But I never got over you, Ben. I never stopped loving you.” She raised her head and for
the first time looked straight at me. “I’m sorry you’re having to hear this, Sarah.”

  I opened my mouth to respond to the apology, however insincere I believed it to be, but Ben spoke before I could say a word.

  “You’re not saying anything Sarah didn’t already know. She saw it from the beginning.” He ran his hand through his hair and began pacing the room. “But I didn’t believe it. You were my friend, Laura. I was sure of it.”

  “I am your friend, Ben!” She stood and rushed over to him, but he quickly backed away and rejoined me along the wall.

  “No,” he stated firmly, once he had grabbed my hand again. “You’re not. But that’s not what matters right now. What are you going to do about it, Laura? How are you going to clear this up?”

  She sighed as she returned to her place beside Joanna. “Well, it’s complicated.”

  “Actually, it’s not,” Ben argued. “I mean, damage has been done, but we’ll deal with that.” He released my hand and then placed his arm around my waist and pulled me closer—as if wanting to make sure she understood that she was not a part of “we.” “Sarah and I are getting married—”

  “In three months,” I chimed in, perhaps unnecessarily—although the slight trace of a smile that appeared on his lips made it feel pretty necessary.

  “And everything else will work out somehow,” he continued. “But you’ve convinced some people at Mercy Point that I’m Kaitlyn’s father, and it’s just a matter of time until that lie spreads. The reporters are going to dig deeper into your generic claims, and someone at Mercy Point is bound to fill in the rest of your story. You need to clear that up.”

  “Well,” she muttered softly, “that’s the part that’s complicated.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to sit down?” Joanna asked one more time, I suppose to the room at large.

  “Why is it complicated, Laura?” Ben prodded, ignoring his mother. “Don’t you know who Kaitlyn’s father is?”

  “Of course I do,” she replied, stung. “But it’s complicated because . . . well, I mean . . . we have to look out for Kaitlyn.”

  “I agree. And I really wish you’d thought of that before you ever created this mess, but that doesn’t change the fact that—”

  “She is your family,” Laura said, sobbing.

  “How dare you turn this around on me, as if I’m the one dragging Kaitlyn into this? Yes, she is a great kid, and we all care about her. I’m not suggesting for a minute that we do anything that would—”

  He looked quickly at me and I greeted him with a deer-in-headlights look. I figured that I understood less than anyone else in the room, having missed out on the first thirty-plus years of history between the Delaneys and the Bellamys, but even I could sense from Laura’s tone, and the flood of new tears that accompanied it, that we had finally gotten to the heart of the matter.

  “She’s my family?” he repeated. “As in . . .”

  “She’s your niece,” she wailed as she buried her head in Joanna’s shoulder.

  “Wow,” Ben said as he sat down at last, more out of necessity than anything else. Anger had, at least temporarily, been replaced by complete and total shock. “I mean, I knew you and Jeremy dated for a little while after we broke up, but I never realized there was anything going on earlier. Wow. Does he know that she’s his?”

  “Actually . . .” Laura began.

  “No, there’s no way he knows,” Ben continued. “He couldn’t have kept this from me, and he certainly would have wanted to be a part of his daughter’s life. Does Kaitlyn know?”

  “Actually, Ben,” Laura tried again.

  “She’s been around him her entire life. To think—”

  I saw Laura struggling, needing to say more but not knowing how. And Ben’s ramblings weren’t helping.

  I walked around and stood behind the chair where he sat, and placed my hands on his shoulders. “Ben,” I whispered. When he looked at me, I motioned for him to look at Laura, and then he saw her pain and stopped talking.

  “Actually, Ben,” she whimpered, “it wasn’t Jeremy. It was Jacob.”

  You could have heard a pin drop on the plush, outdated carpet as Ben took in the information. You could see his train of thought, moment by moment, and it wasn’t difficult to predict where the train would stop. But I couldn’t take my eyes off of Joanna, to whom none of it was a surprise. It all made sense—her dedication to Laura, her insistence that Laura and Kaitlyn be included as part of the family. It had never been about Laura. It was about Kaitlyn. And Jacob.

  Ben’s mental train pulled into the station, and it desperately wanted to be anywhere else. “He was a kid, Laura! You slept with my baby brother? How could you do that?”

  “Your ‘baby’ brother was a couple months past eighteen, Ben,” she argued.

  “Exactly! Legally an adult, but still a kid! He was a kid who always had a crush on you, and you took advantage of him to get back at me. Because we had a fight? That’s when it happened, right? That Christmas?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, making no attempt to deny or defend. That surprised me, and Ben too, I think.

  “Does he know?” he asked, much more quietly.

  Laura shook her head. “No. It was bad enough that I was single and pregnant. I didn’t want to ruin him too.”

  “She didn’t make that decision alone, Ben,” Joanna spoke up. “She doesn’t hold all of the blame.”

  I wanted to wrap my arms around Ben, but he was no longer within my grasp as he stood from the chair and walked back toward the wall. As he passed me I saw the redness in his eyes, and I had to quickly wipe away the tears from my own eyes—a result of seeing so much pain in his.

  “How long have you known, Mom?” he asked through raw emotion he was struggling to contain. “Since the beginning?” Suddenly he laughed, but the laugh was full of nothing but agony and betrayal. “You knew I was going to propose . . .”

  “I didn’t know then, Ben,” Joanna cried. “I promise you, I didn’t know then. I never would have let that go on, sweetheart. Not without you knowing. She told me a little after that. I should have told you. I know that now, and I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do. But I promise, I didn’t know until after the two of you broke up. By then you were with Christa, and I didn’t think—”

  “Hold on a minute,” Laura spoke up, as all of the color drained from her face. “You were going to propose . . . to me?” The soul-level despair had been replaced by the pouty-lipped countenance I was much more used to from her.

  I certainly felt no obligation to assist Laura, but right then I felt like offering her some unsolicited advice.

  Learn when to keep your mouth shut.

  “When were you going to propose to me, Ben?”

  I knew that there were so many more things Ben wanted to say to his mother, and I knew that eventually he would, but Laura’s badly timed statement of disappointment helped turn his attention back to her.

  “So you didn’t want to ruin Jacob, but you had no qualms at all about ruining Sarah and me?”

  “I love you, Ben,” she said through her tears.

  “What do you think saying that is going to accomplish? Who do you think you’re fooling?” Ben started pacing again. “You don’t love me! This isn’t what you do to people you love, Laura.”

  “Ben . . .” Nate said, trying to calm him down.

  I, on the other hand, did not try to calm him down. He wanted to punch something, but it wouldn’t be Laura. He had, however, earned the right to say his piece.

  “Nate, Joanna . . . these two have about fifteen years of history they need to deal with. And I think Ben deserves a chance to say what he needs to say. So we’re going to let him say it. If that’s not something you feel comfortable being present for, it might be a good time to step outside.”

  I don’t know who was most shocked that those words came out of my mouth. Joanna wasn’t sure if she should stay or go, Nate wasn’t sure he liked me telling him what to do in his home, La
ura didn’t seem to like the fact that I, for one, was staying put, and Ben fell even more in love with me. Nevertheless, no one moved.

  Ben grabbed my hand. “Actually, I’m good. I forgot it doesn’t matter.” He looked at me with overflowing amounts of affection, and the pain and sadness in his eyes made it very clear that it actually mattered a great deal. “But thank you,” he whispered to me as we walked to the door.

  “You’re just . . . leaving?” Laura asked in disbelief.

  He tightened his grip on my hand, but he didn’t turn back and he didn’t say a word.

  “Mercy Point Church has since closed its doors, the victim of much more than an age-old sex scandal.”

  “Aww, this part makes me sad,” Piper said as we finished off the popcorn.

  It made me sad too, but I couldn’t help but get this little, tiny bit of glee whenever I saw the footage of Lenore Isaacs being escorted out of the church building in handcuffs. In hindsight it all made perfect sense.

  Tom Isaacs was guilty of nothing more than being an idiot who would do whatever his wife told him to. It was Lenore who had a problem with my tithe check, but only because she thought her husband could come out on the winning side of a fight against immorality. She’d soon learned that Ben and I were a couple, which originally seemed like an opportunity to not only make Tom look good but get rid of Ben in the process. But then she realized the plan she liked even more was the one in which she embezzled the additional funds coming in from the pastor’s new girlfriend.

  I hadn’t been at all surprised to learn that Laura and Lenore had in fact been in cahoots. Laura had first taken her claims to the church board, and from what we could tell, she hadn’t originally planned to take it any further. As a member of the board, Lenore had been handed everything she needed. What was surprising, however, was the revelation that Sydney had been the one to put them in touch with the appropriate media outlets. She took her job very seriously, I suppose, and she saw Ben as something standing in the way of her doing her job effectively because, as she said in court, he kept me from doing my job effectively.