Annabelle

Sold Out

The best gifts in life are often the most unexpected. And, to be sure, becoming friends with Laura Anne was unexpected. In a matter of hours, her signing me on as her cohort had earned me four invitations from her circle of friends. And, for someone who had felt so utterly alone in her new town, that was a very happy occurrence.

“So it’s kind of ironic, right?” Father Rob asked as soon as I got to work the next week. “You were so stressed about meeting Laura Anne, and now you two are”—he paused and then, in a singsong, tween voice, he said—“besties!”

I laughed, and Junie sighed audibly from her desk.

“What’s the matter with my favorite little month over there?” Rob asked.

She shook her head. “It’s just that someone in this office has to get a little bit of work done.”

“I’m so sorry, Junie,” I started, but Father Rob put his hand up to stop me.

He walked around to where Junie was sitting, took the pile of papers from her hands, and set them back on the desk. “Junie, my love, the work of the church shouldn’t be such a burden.”

“Well,” she said crankily, “someone has to file all of the parishioners’ donations and keep track of the pledges.”

Father Rob perched on the corner of the desk, his hands out in front of him as if painting a landscape with his bare fingertips. “Just picture it . . . a world where the work of the church is the work of the Holy Spirit. The work of the church isn’t filing and paperwork and mundane e-mails. It’s extraordinary callings and saving the poor and oppressed from their distress.”

I smiled at Junie, who was rolling her eyes at Rob, who was clearly goading her. “Well,” she said, her voice crackling, “that’s all well and good, but the Holy Spirit can’t pay your salary if someone doesn’t get all this paperwork done.”

Rob hopped down from the desk, gave Junie a solid pat on the back and said, “Well, then, thank the Lord for you.”

I could see the tiniest smile escaping from the corners of Junie’s mouth. She didn’t want to be, but you could tell that she was endlessly amused by her new boss. He had given more vibrancy to these last decades of her time on earth than she would have imagined, like a menopause baby forcing a retiree out of the loathed last third of hobby-filled life.

“Junie, would you like to come with me to interview some new musicians?”

“Musicians?” she croaked like a frog. “We’ve already got an organist.”

“Yeah.” He scratched his chin. “But, in the spirit of the good old Holy Spirit, we’re going to jazz up the ten thirty service a little. Make it a little more fun and family friendly.”

Junie shook her head. “I won’t have any part in it. When Mrs. Taylor comes in looking for a neck to wring, the autopsy won’t be mine.”

He turned to me and winked. “Ok, then, Annie, looks like it’s you and me.”

He held his arm out and, as he escorted me to the church, said, “So, are we going to talk about that pale fellow that showed up at the party?”

I could feel my eyes turning toward heaven. “What was that? I mean, what sort of ex-fiancé just shows up unannounced like that when a person is happily married?” I could feel the shame and anger rising toward my face.

“On the bright side, that little song he sang—and the proclamation of love beforehand—ensured that everyone in this town knows your name.”

I put my hand up to my forehead as if shading the sun from my eyes. “I honestly can’t even talk about it. I’m trying to pretend it never happened.”

He said, “Yeah. You’re right. I won’t remind you.”

Then, as if by total accident, he started singing under his breath, “I can’t live, with or without you . . .”

“Stop it,” I said, slapping him on the arm with the back of my hand. “It’s not even a little funny.” But I laughed anyway. Holden had heard that Ben had won me over by singing to me at his show. I think he was trying to even the score a bit, pay us back by mortifying us like he had been so deeply embarrassed.

“Actually,” he said, “he doesn’t have a bad voice. Do you think we could get him to sing in our new band?”

I laughed again. “You know, in reality, I deserved this. I mean, I embarrassed him, he embarrassed me. Now we’re even.”

I thought of my inbox full of messages from Holden. I kept thinking that they were going to stop, but, so far, he had been very persistent.

“What did Ben say?”

“Pretty much nothing,” I said, trying to push away the nagging feeling that Ben should have taken care of the situation somehow, when, in fact, it was Rob that had pulled Holden off the stage and defused the situation saying, “All right, a beautiful singing telegram from Ben to Annabelle, with love.”

The crowd had laughed and clapped, but Ben had seemed like it was pretty much business as usual.

As we watched a very talented guitarist strum in the sanctuary, I said, “So, do you actually think you’re going to pull this off? I mean, the older members of this congregation are going to have a fit if you mess with their service.”

He shrugged. “My calling in life is to bring people to Jesus, to show them how much better their lives would be if they were completely sold out for Christ.” He shrugged. “Changing this service is what I’m supposed to do, so I can’t help but know that there’s some great purpose here.”

I smiled and, thinking of my sheltered little life, of how worried about my social status I’d been, started to feel a bit like a sellout of a different kind.

Four hours later I was wrangling myself into my most stylish, skinniest jeans, noticing they felt a little snug, and saying, “I know you’re tired, honey, but this will be fun.”

Greg and Laura Anne had invited us to be their guests for supper club at Kimberly’s house. You couldn’t help but notice that befriending Laura Anne had immediately improved my social status. Ben walked to me, interrupting the very ambitious zipping I was trying to do, and kissed me. I lingered for a long moment, my lips on his, and he said, “But I can think of so many more fun things we can do right here, all by ourselves.”

I thought of my top dresser drawer spilling over with lingerie and how little use it had gotten over the past several weeks. And so I said, “Honey, I promise, we’re not going to become one of those couples.”

It struck me, as I plucked a sleeveless silk top, the perfect weight and dressiness for a casual dinner, that we already felt a little like one of those couples. That can’t-breathe-without-touching-you passion was still there in spurts, but it broke my heart a little to realize that, contrary to what I had believed such a short time ago, I could, in fact, survive the day without making love to the gorgeous man I had pledged all my days to.

He kissed my neck, wrapping his arm around my waist, and whispered, “You’re all I want for the rest of my life.”

I turned and kissed his mouth again, upturned in that sincere smile that always drew me in so fully.

“Who needs friends?”

Two hours later, sipping chardonnay on Kimberly’s slate patio, I remembered that, actually, I needed friends. Maybe the statute of limitations on only having to have your husband is a year because, since we had moved to town, this was the first time I felt like I could breathe. Laura Anne was balancing on the arm of the very sturdy outdoor chair on which I was perched, saying, “It is so, so fun to have a new BFF! It’s like, from the second we met, I just knew we were going to have so much fun together!”

From the looks of the girls surrounding me, I could tell that they were as jealous as if they were a room of single girls searching for the perfect man, and I was flaunting my sparkling, six-carat forever. But I had been to high school, and I had seen Mean Girls, so I knew as well as a person could that, if the queen bee says you’re her new best friend, the other girls will hate you behind your back, sure. But they’ll be stuck on you like a mosquito in a spiderweb to your face, because, in reality, you’re now their best shot of becoming really, truly “in.”

I should have watched that movie again, though. Because, somehow, basking in the glow of the attention of my new friend group that night, I forgot that the leader of the pack would just as soon eat you as share her throne.