| |
SHE WAS LATE FOR SUNDAY school. Even after all Greg’s lecturing last night about how she was always supposed to be the first one to church and the last one out, even when the walk from her front door to the downstairs Sunday school room was less than a hundred steps away, she ended up coming in and slipping into her chair right after her husband finished his opening prayer.
He glanced at her, but she couldn’t tell if his expression was one of concern or anger. She wouldn’t worry about that. Whatever he felt about her tardiness, she couldn’t do anything to change it now. Realizing she’d forgotten her Bible at home, she reached out timidly for one of the extras stacked on the table in front of her, keenly aware of two dozen sets of eyes staring at her.
What kind of pastor’s wife shows up late to Sunday school?
What kind of pastor’s wife leaves her Bible at home?
What kind of pastor’s wife has a very intense, very realistic, and horrifically inappropriate dream about her voice teacher?
She did her best to blink away the headache creeping up behind her eyes. She’d never gotten headaches in Long Beach, not one, but now they were an every-week occurrence, sort of like her fights with Greg about the utility bill at the parsonage. She glanced at her husband, who was now lecturing about the historical background of the church of Galatia. She’d been so young when she first fell for him.
Talk about inappropriate.
But she’d waited. They’d waited. Even though her attraction started years earlier, Greg told her several times it hadn’t been until she was halfway through her senior year that he first noticed her as anything other than another girl in his youth group.
And even then it was two more years before they started dating. The months leading up to their wedding felt like such a blissful blur. Falling in love. Realizing that the man she’d been infatuated with for half of her teen years no longer saw her as a child and was in love with her too. Tearful nights crying into his shoulder because her mom was being so unreasonable about their relationship. Hurrying off to get married almost as soon as they got engaged so her mom couldn’t do anything more to stop them.
Sometimes she still couldn’t believe it. She was married to this man. This man she’d loved for years.
Only the marriage was nothing like she’d planned. When Greg mentioned moving back to the town where he’d grown up, Orchard Grove had felt so exciting. So exotic.
So far away from her caustic mother who would try to poison their marriage for as long as they remained within driving distance.
Somewhere to start a new life, a new beginning with her husband.
They should have never left Long Beach. At least there she’d be busy with rehearsals during the weeknights. Something to get her out of the house, a way to connect with her friends in the orchestra.
Her family.
Greg was discussing Paul’s greeting in the first chapter of the book of Galatians, but his voice had become so grating over the past few months Katrina did her best to tune him out. Think about happier times. Purer times.
When she and Greg were just starting to date, just beginning to fall in love, imagining a future that seemed so promising, so beautiful, and so far off in the distance. Like a dream.
Except now, the dream had ended, reality had set in, and all Katrina wanted to do was find a way to put herself back to sleep.