19.
There Once Was a Girl

A few minutes later, Ben and I were preparing to leave Gary and Beth’s house, not certain where we were going but convinced we couldn’t hide any longer. We were going to run into some reporters or photographers somewhere, we knew, but we were just postponing the inevitable.

“Ground rules?” I asked as we headed toward the door.

“Easy,” he said. “Honor God, treat everyone else involved with respect, and don’t leave each other’s side. Oh, and be honest.”

He sure made it sound easy, but I didn’t believe he thought it would be any less of a challenge than I did, though I knew we were going to be presented individual challenges. For him, the most difficult thing would be treating everyone involved with respect. He wasn’t feeling very respectful toward Laura, I knew, and it would take a lot of prayer and fortitude to avoid throwing her under a bus.

And I do mean a literal bus.

For my part, I wondered if I possessed the spiritual maturity to stick to my guns. Throughout my entire adult life, every speech I had given and every statement I made publicly had been full of lies.

“Well, I’m not saying my sex life is quite as outrageous as that of Alex and Annie, but it has been said we write what we know,” I’d said to a national late-night television audience.

“I just couldn’t be prouder of him than I am. He deserved this award, not just for who he is in the boardroom, but who he is in life,” I’d said to Chicago magazine and the entire state of Illinois when Patrick was awarded their “Man of the Year” prize.

“I will,” I’d replied to a priest and five hundred people I didn’t know when asked if I would be with Patrick McDermott until death separated us.

Though at the time, I’d believed with my whole heart that one was the truth.

As we began to walk out the door, a car pulled into the driveway. I was afraid it was reporters and quickly tried to pull Ben back into the house before we were sighted.

“Relax, it’s Beth and Gary,” he said, not budging as I tugged on him with all of my strength.

For some reason that was temporarily more terrifying than the thought of photographers. I’d already developed an immense respect for Christa’s parents, based on all Ben had told me. They seemed like wonderful people, and I was certain we’d all be fast friends, were I not attempting to fill a void left by their daughter—not only in the life of their beloved son-in-law but also their only grandchild. But as it was . . .

I was hunkered down, squatting just inside the door, under the window so that I couldn’t be seen, still holding on to Ben’s hand, still pulling on him, a little bit lost in thought trying to come up with an excuse to kiss him.

That had helped the last time I didn’t want to meet parents.

“Sarah, what are you doing?” He laughed.

“I can’t meet them, Ben,” I whispered, still hiding but deciding to go with the honest approach for a change. “I am really uncomfortable at the thought of that. What if they don’t like me? I mean, I know they love you, and I’m sure they’ll probably support you no matter what, but I want them to like me. I know I can never compare to their daughter in their minds, and that’s as it should be, but I want them to think I’m at least okay, you know? And I’m just not sure today is the day that I can put my best foot forward. Can we try another day? Please?”

I heard their footsteps and chatter getting closer, though I couldn’t see them from my position near the floor, and I took a deep breath, hoping and praying that this time Ben would understand my heart. I just didn’t know if I could stand for him to once again not comprehend how real my fear was, even if I couldn’t help but demonstrate it in the silliest and most humiliating of ways.

“Hey, guys.” He leaned out the door, still holding on to my hand. “I’m sorry, but would you mind giving us just a minute?”

“Sure,” they said in unison. Beth asked, “Do you want us to wait in the car, or . . .”

I saw in Ben’s eyes that for a moment he wasn’t sure how to answer that question. Should he ask them to leave and come back, or just wait in the car so I could sneak out the back door? But as he looked back to me, I saw a shift—in his thoughts and his demeanor. I didn’t know what was happening, but the power I felt between us got very intense once more, and I was worried he was going to tell me how important it was that I meet Christa’s parents, and then I would be riddled with guilt and have to go through with it. I would do it, of course, if that’s what he wanted, but this time I was hoping he would understand.

“Actually, I’m just going to shut the door for a moment, if you don’t mind,” he said to them, never taking his eyes off of me. But he didn’t wait to find out if they minded or not.

He took a couple of steps into the house, not letting go of my hand. From my mushroom-like position, I was twirled around as Ben got to the other side of me, and I was suddenly facing the inside of the house instead of the front yard as I had been. He used his foot to shut the door behind me and then reached for my other hand with his free hand and pulled me to a standing position.

“Come here,” he whispered with a smile.

I was only about a foot away from him, so I couldn’t get much closer. But it would have been rude to not even try . . .

“We probably shouldn’t make them stay outside,” I said as I inched closer. “They might have groceries to put away or something. I’d hate for their ice cream to melt.”

He smiled but he didn’t respond to that. Instead he released my hands, and as they fell, he placed his hands behind my neck and pulled me to him gently. “Do you realize I had to go three weeks without kissing you?”

The thought had occurred, yes.

He leaned in and tenderly captured my lips with his.

With slightly staggered breath once our lips had parted, I said, “If you’re trying to make me forget how nervous I am, it’s not going to work.” Of course I was not entirely sure that was true. When it came to controlling my emotions, I was pretty sure Ben Delaney could do anything he set his mind to.

“I’m not trying to make you forget anything,” he said softly, his lips only inches from mine. “I’m actually trying to help you remember something.”

“I knew it. You are using your powers for evil.”

He didn’t say anything in response, but he leaned in and gently kissed me once again.

I sighed. “And also good, I suppose.”

He smiled down at me and said, “If you want to go, we’ll go. If you want to meet them another day, then that’s what we’ll do. I’m not going to pressure you into staying, but I do want you to understand that they already love you.” He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “They were the first people I ever talked to about you. I talked with them after I found out about the books you had written, and I talked with them after I got to the church this morning and saw Laura and all the cameras, and their advice both times was the same.”

“What? What did they say?”

“They said, ‘The past has absolutely nothing to do with the future God has in store for the two of you.’ Our past shapes us and our past prepares us, Sarah, but our past does not define us. In that same regard, Beth and Gary aren’t just Christa’s parents. They’re my friends and my spiritual mentors and my daughter’s grandparents. And they love you. They love you for the joy you’ve brought to my life, and Maddie’s. They love you for being a woman dedicated to discovering God’s will for her life. And they love you for taking that picture of me running from the goose, because they just think that’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen.”

I laughed and felt all of my worry and fear melt away.

“Mostly,” he said with a smile, putting separation between us for the first time but grabbing on to my hands, “they love you because I love you. So you don’t have anything to worry about because that’s never going to change. Remember that, okay?”

“Well, then,” I said, opening the door, “I guess we should let them get their groceries put away.”

Thankfully, they didn’t actually have any groceries with them, and as they walked into their home their arms were free to hug me.

“This is Sarah,” Ben said with affection as Beth wrapped her arms around me before she was even all the way through the doorway.

She pulled away from me and rolled her eyes toward Ben, for my benefit, as Gary swooped in for his introductory hug.

“Of course this is Sarah, Ben,” Beth said as she slapped him on the arm before kissing him on the cheek. “I don’t know who else he thinks we think he’d be bringing over.”

“Plus we saw you on The Tonight Show,” Gary added as he took Beth’s handbag from her and hung it on the coatrack.

My eyes widened and Ben laughed as he draped his arm around my shoulders. “Well, at least we’re diving straight into your worst fear, right?” he said to me.

“Worst fear? Are you kidding me?” Beth asked incredulously. “Oh. Because you don’t like to dwell on the Raine de Bourgh stuff?”

I blushed. “I guess it’s safe to say there are quite a few things I would do differently if given another chance.”

“We all have things like that,” Beth said. “That’s understandable.”

Gary walked out of the kitchen with four plates in his hands. “But I don’t think appearing on The Tonight Show should ever be one of those things.”

“Agreed,” Beth said as she made her way to the kitchen. “But I have to say, it just hasn’t been the same since Leno left.”

“I always preferred Letterman,” Gary interjected.

“Anyway, who’s hungry?” Beth called from the kitchen.

Ben and I looked at each other and shrugged. Lunch with Gary and Beth sounded much more appealing than the media circus we knew awaited us whenever we were finally discovered, so we didn’t see any harm in postponing the onslaught just a little bit longer.

As a woman who’d spent almost her entire adult life using the services of caterers and restaurants to prepare everything apart from brownies, I was absolutely no help whatsoever to Beth as she prepared the meal. She and Ben took care of that, and Gary and I set the table, prepared iced tea, and discussed the sermon he had delivered in Algonquin that morning.

A little while later, we were at the dinner table, holding hands as Gary prayed a prayer of blessing over the food. It was one of those prayers in which even though the person is talking to God, you know they’re saying things a certain way for the benefit of those present. It was very Maria from The Sound of Music, when she thanked the children in her pre-meal prayer for making her feel so welcome, after she sat on a pinecone they’d planted on her seat. Or when she prayed for Liesl by name as Liesl snuck in through the window.

“Heavenly Father, thank you for this meal, for the nourishment it provides, the enjoyment we take from it, and the fellowship we share as we eat. Thank you for family, Father—those in other places today, those who now sit in your presence instead of ours, and especially those sitting around this table. Thank you for Sarah and Ben. Help us to be for them a source of strength, love, and protection, as you are for your children. Amen.”

And then, dear Lord, about Liesl . . .

I understood what Ben meant about them getting it. Not only were they kind and so hospitable in a way few other people could have been in their situation, they were also just incredibly cool. We discussed movies and music—Gary has a sincere appreciation for Taylor Swift—and ganged up on Ben when he made the ridiculous claim that Rocky IV was actually the best of all Rocky movies. They both knew the Bible every bit as thoroughly as Ben did, but they were somehow less nerdy about it, and I loved listening to the three of them throw passages out there as if there were an applicable verse for every situation in life. They were just comfortably engaged in what was a typical type of conversation for their family, of which I was now a part.

By the time the discussion came around to the call I had received from Joe, I had no qualms about discussing it openly. I explained to them some of the ins and outs of my publishing contract and all of the potential repercussions.

“Well, waiting a little while to get your Christian romance out there isn’t really all that bad, is it?” Beth asked over dessert. “And this other book you have to write in the meantime, well, that could be anything, right? So that could be fun. And now maybe the pressure is off. If they’re not going to promote the book, you don’t have to worry about book tours and all of that. That frees you up to focus on some things closer to home for the next couple of years.”

I almost asked what things she was referring to, but Ben’s hand suddenly grabbed mine under the table, and I realized that within a couple of years we would be married and it was possible I would finally be a mother. My emotions threatened to overtake me, and while I felt comfortable enough to let them, I also didn’t want to get so caught up in my tears that I couldn’t eat Beth’s homemade coconut cream pie, which was possibly the best thing I had ever tasted in my life. So instead I put Ben’s feet to the flames and took a bite. Of the pie, not Ben’s feet.

“I guess.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. Ben hasn’t even given me a ring yet.”

“Benjamin! Is that true?” Beth asked.

“I’m not even sure it’s official until you give her a ring,” Gary added.

Ben laughed. “Of course it’s official.”

“Still, she needs a ring, Ben,” Beth added.

I would have felt bad about the lighthearted attack he received from them if I hadn’t been so joyfully stuffing my face. Never mind that we’d still only known each other a couple months, and never mind that that day—that horrible, life-altering, exhausting day—was the first time we had seen each other since the day after he’d proposed. And never mind that he was on unpaid leave from a job that didn’t pay all that much to begin with. None of that mattered. What mattered was pie.

“She will get a ring, I assure you.” He turned to face me. “I will get you a ring, you know.”

I smiled and winked at him as I chewed and then looked down at his untouched pie. “Are you going to eat that?”

As talk finally came back around to the prospect of unemployment and diverted dreams for both of us, I voiced my frustrations in a way I don’t think I had even allowed myself to think on them.

“I know that we don’t always get to know God’s plan. I understand that. But I’m pretty sure we were right about the basics of the plan. This new book I’ve been working on, it was like God gave it to me almost fully written. I’ve been so proud of it, knowing that I was finally going to be putting something positive out there. And Ben . . . I mean, you guys know what a great pastor he is. They’ve had to add rows of chairs at Mercy Point every week since he’s been there, and he’s making a difference in the lives of so many. It’s not as if we weren’t doing good things, right? And now Ben’s reputation is damaged, if not ruined, despite the fact that it was all lies. People are still going to have it in the back of their minds, no matter what happens next. I don’t know. I just can’t understand it.”

Beth had been listening from the kitchen as she cleared the table. As she walked back in with a pot of coffee, she said, “This reminds me of a story I used to tell Christa when she was a little girl. There once was a girl who was sickly and poor throughout her entire childhood.”

Ben and I looked at each other and started laughing. We just couldn’t hold it in.

“Sorry, Beth,” he finally said, still laughing as I covered my mouth with my hands. “We know this one, actually. Well, we know separate but equally bad versions of it—though I am really intrigued to hear how you think it could possibly be relevant to this moment. The only thing we learned from it was that our mothers were both horrible storytellers.”

“Ah.” She smiled. “Well, I’m guessing that’s where the problem is. Maybe, if you think you can stand it one more time, you can give me a shot at telling it?”

We stopped laughing and nodded, and she began again.

“There once was a girl who was sickly and poor throughout her entire childhood. She had no one and nothing, except for the ability to sing a beautiful song that possessed healing powers, a gift from her mother. Her father, however, possessed only evil inside him, and he cursed her with the inability to ever sing the song of healing and restoration for anyone outside of their small family, and only within their small hut. He wanted her melody to be only for the benefit of himself and his wife. If she sang the melody outside of the hut, or if anyone entered in as she sang, she would lose the song in her heart—both the gift and the curse of it.

“One dreadful winter, her mother and father traveled far from their daughter, in search of food. Without her song to heal them, they died and she was left alone, with only a song. Night after night, day after day, she lay in her bed, shivering from the cold, singing with all her might. The song was her only friend and her only warmth.

“One day a local trader passed by and heard the song from afar. ‘Who is that, singing with the voice of an angel?’ he asked. ‘Why, it’s no one, sir,’ the townspeople said. ‘It is but only a sickly girl with a song in her heart.’ ‘Lead me to her,’ he pleaded, but the townspeople refused, insisting she would not survive the visit, for they knew of the curse the girl’s father had placed.

“Another day, a jester from the court of the king passed by and heard the song from afar. ‘Who is that, singing with the voice of a majestic harp?’ he asked. ‘Why, it’s no one, sir,’ the townspeople said. ‘It is but only a sickly girl with a song in her heart.’ ‘Lead me to her,’ he begged, ‘and I will take her before the king.’ But the townspeople refused, insisting she would not survive the journey to the palace—for they knew that if she left the hut, she would lose her song.

“Still another day, the prince himself passed by and heard the song from afar. ‘Who is that, singing with the voice of my own heart’s desire?’ he asked. ‘Why, it’s no one, your majesty,’ the townspeople said. ‘It is but only a sickly girl with a song in her heart.’ ‘Lead me to her,’ the prince commanded, ‘and I will take her as my wife.’ The townspeople, of course, could not refuse the prince, but as they approached the girl’s hut, the singing stopped.

“‘She’s dead,’ the townspeople cried, full of despair and disbelief that the girl was gone, and they would never again hear the song that they’d always believed would someday heal her. That evening, as the townspeople mourned, they heard a melody from afar, and it was more beautiful than any they had ever heard. Even in their sadness, they could not deny its power and they ran to it. Much to their dismay, it came from the hut of the girl, but it didn’t stop when they entered. The voice—more beautiful than that of an angel, more majestic than a harp, more than even a prince could ever know to desire—belonged to a beautiful woman they didn’t recognize and yet felt they knew.

“They had deprived her of adventure and fame and wealth, and even marrying a prince, but not to be cruel and not to keep her gift for themselves. All of the pain and isolation had been the means to an end—the gift of a village who cared for her, and not just her song.”

Gary chuckled as Beth stood and picked up the coffeepot. “Yep, I remember that one.” She walked behind him and leaned over and kissed him on the head. “Couldn’t be any plainer than that, could it, hon?” He stood and followed her into the kitchen with our cups.

Meanwhile, Ben and I sat, stunned and speechless. What had just happened? Gary and Beth walked back in a few seconds later, and we hadn’t budged. They looked at each other and shrugged, and then looked back to us.

“You see, the song wasn’t who she was,” Beth said, speaking slowly and clearly. “The song was what healed her. It was how she got from point A to point B, but it wasn’t her identity.”

“She had to go through some pretty rotten stuff, and the townspeople allowed it to happen,” Gary added. “They let all of these really good things pass her by, and maybe that seemed cruel at the time, but sometimes we have to pass up ‘good’ in order to get to ‘right.’ You know?”

“Yeah,” I whispered, still not moving or blinking.

Gary and Beth looked at each other and then back to us once more, I think starting to get a little bit concerned.

Gary spoke softly, as if worried he’d startle us. “The two of you are certainly having to go through some rotten stuff. And you’re having to let some really good things pass you by.”

“Like this book for you and Mercy Point for Ben,” Beth interjected. “And maybe it seemed like they were the ultimate goal, but maybe God has even better things in store. Maybe they are just a means to an end.”

Ben finally looked up. “Yeah, we get it. Thanks.”

I heard Beth giggle from the kitchen. “Hey, babe, let’s give them a minute.”

Gary walked behind us on his way out. He patted Ben on the shoulder, and then we were alone.

“How have we been missing that?” I asked.

“Well, in all fairness,” Ben said, still in a bit of shock himself, “we never heard that story.”