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HER VIOLIN DAYS WERE over. That’s all there was to it. She’d never play again, not like she used to. Her mom had warned her before she moved to Orchard Grove. “You’ll grow rusty without your lessons and your symphony.”
Katrina hadn’t believed her and like a baby had blindly followed her husband to this desert wasteland, where even the apple trees knew better than to grow in the middle of such an ugly, miserable town. The summer heat was oppressive, worse than anything she had experienced in Long Beach. Of course, the parsonage didn’t have an air conditioner, but even if it did, Greg would have refused to touch it. Heaven forbid they rack up an extra ten bucks on the church’s utilities bill.
Then after a bleak autumn came an even bleaker winter. Katrina had been so excited to live in a state with occasional snow. She didn’t know that every single dusting of white turned to mud within a day or two. The smog-stained skyline of Los Angeles was more appealing.
She hadn’t played a single note on her violin since Greg stormed out of the sanctuary an hour earlier. She had thumbed through his song folder and was reminded again how stubborn he was for forcing contemporary choruses on a church as rigid and traditional as Orchard Grove Bible. Ditties like those had worked fine in Long Beach, but this was different. Different audience, different culture, different life.
Katrina thought of her symphony friends, wondered what pieces they were working on now. The string section had given her such a touching good-bye, taken her out for dessert at The Cheesecake Factory, tried to get her to drink a celebratory glass of wine in honor of her upcoming wedding. Nearly all of them had hugged her good-bye, and when she got to Orchard Grove there was a wedding card signed by all the violinists and half the other musicians waiting for her.
That had been a real family. Not the bickering, back-stabbing members of Orchard Grove Bible Church who could spend twenty minutes arguing about whether the new tablecloths should be put into the kitchen line-item of the budget or women’s ministry. As if that had anything to do with saving the lost souls of north-central Washington.
She thought about the night ahead. Greg was probably angry. Would probably still be angry no matter what time she headed home. She hated living so close to the church. If they rented a place of their own, he could commute to work. How much trouble would that solve if they weren’t constantly in each other’s space? She had been keeping her eye on the Orchard Grove classifieds just in case a part-time job popped up.
It wasn’t just the extra money that made the sound of work so appealing. It was time out of the home. Six months after the move, she still felt like a guest living in someone else’s house. People felt free to stop by unannounced any time, night or day. Since the parsonage belonged to the church, that gave every single member of Orchard Grove the assumed role of landlord. Landlords who made their tenants salt their own frozen walkways and unclog their own drains.
Landlords who complained over every single utility bill.
But if she had a job of her own, she and Greg could at least cover utilities at the parsonage even if they didn’t rent their own place. It didn’t need to be much, nothing full time, just something to save her from the deplorable apple country boredom. She had looked into opening a violin studio, but the Orchard Grove public school system didn’t even have a strings program, and she wasn’t about to start with a classroom of first-timers and spend six months on Twinkle, Twinkle.
She twisted her wedding ring. Dinner would probably be late. Another reason for Greg to be grumpy. He wouldn’t say anything about it, not outright, but he would make a show of looking at his cell phone during the meal and declare something like, “Wow, where’d the evening go?”
She eyed her case. She felt like she had betrayed Dmitry by playing simple church ditties and then just holding him after Greg left. Her husband probably thought she was over here rehearsing his choruses. Oh well. At least it was an excuse to get out from underneath the same roof for a change.
She was halfway through tucking her violin in his case when she heard the door of the church open. “Pastor Greg? You here?”
Katrina glanced around, wondering if there was time to sneak behind the baptistery without being seen.
“Oh, hello, Katrina. Is that you?”
She glanced up, pretending to be startled. “Nancy. I didn’t hear you come in.” She hadn’t seen the Higginses since that awful lunch on Sunday.
Nancy glanced around the sanctuary. “Do you come here to practice?”
Katrina flushed but couldn’t have said why. “Sometimes. I mean, I was just getting a few things ready. For church.”
Nancy had crossed her arms and was scrutinizing her. “Well, since we’re here alone, I hope Pastor Greg passed on my phone message to you the other day. I just felt like you might want to know it’s not uncommon what you went through. They say one out of four ...” Her voice trailed off.
Katrina had heard that statistic, too, but it didn’t make sense. How did so many women pick up the pieces of their shattered dreams and go on living their normal, everyday lives?
“I’m still sorry to have stumbled onto the truth the way I did, but now that it’s out in the open, I hope you’ll be willing to talk about it if that would ever be helpful.”
Katrina stared at her violin case. “Thank you.”
“Well, I better be going.” Nancy straightened her scarf, which Katrina recognized from one of her mom’s fancy catalogs. “I only stopped by to drop off some canned food for the Christmas boxes.” She gave a little nod. “You call me if you need anything, all right?” She looked around the sanctuary. “Nobody else’s here, are they?”
Katrina shook her head.
“Good.” She held out her car keys. “I’m going to prop open the back door until I’ve emptied the trunk. Don’t tell anyone I’m wasting heat.” She gave Katrina a conspiratorial wink. “I hear some people pitch a fit over the utility bills around here.”