Every part of my life hinged on the belief that leaving would only bring me Hell and destruction—and that staying was good and righteous. I just couldn’t leave until I saw differently. How could I?”
As I reasoned aloud, another thought occurred to me: Wasn’t the same true of my mom? The indoctrination, the physical enforcement, the absolute unwillingness to tolerate dissent of any kind—all of these had been hallmarks of my mother’s upbringing, too. The fact that she was now in her fifties didn’t suddenly give her the freedom to throw off the shackles of those beliefs. If anything, it just meant that she’d had more years to marinate in them. She could no more decide to deny those ideas than she could spontaneously decide not to believe in the existence of gravity.
“Who do you think is responsible, then?” Laura asked. “Your grandfather?”
I shook my head and continued to pull my fingers through her hair. “I don’t know. He didn’t invent these ideas, either.” I told her about the sermon that Gramps gave after the September 11 attacks, how amazed I’d been to see that the doctrines we preached had once been mainstream. In high school, one of my English textbooks had contained “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a famous fire-and-brimstone sermon by the influential American theologian Jonathan Edwards. The sermon sounded so much like my grandfather that it was startling, and the beliefs it espoused were by no means fringe at the time it was preached. Edwards himself was even president of the college that would later become known as Princeton University—not a reviled man, but honored and respected.
“So here’s a question for you, Megan.” Laura’s voice was gentle. “Does it really matter where that line of responsibility lies? Would knowing that change anything about where you go from here?”
“It really is a moot point, isn’t it?” I said after a minute. She was right. Ultimately, it didn’t matter how much any single one of us was responsible for any particular wrong we had wrought in the world. It was good that we hadn’t intended to do evil, but our intentions didn’t erase the harm we’d done. The fact was that harm was done, and what mattered now was finding a way to address it.
“I guess I just want to say that I’m truly not looking to avoid taking responsibility for my actions,” I clarified. “That isn’t really the point of the question. I think the point is that … I just have a hard time blaming my family. I don’t think they’re bad people. I think they’re good people who have been trapped by bad ideas … There just has to be a way out.”
* * *
He finally called me on the phone late one snowy evening.
I’d already known that I loved his words and his humor and his biting wit, but that night I fell in love with his voice: soft and sonorous with just a hint of country twang. I paced the creaky wood floors of the inn’s old library as Chad and I talked for nearly an hour, my fingers twisting in my curls, daydreaming of the time when his would do the same. Other than to have my family back, I can’t recall ever wanting anything in my life as much as I wanted to meet him, to see him with my real eyes for really real in real life.
It seemed that he didn’t want the same, though, despite his words to the contrary: he had already twice reneged on his commitment to come see me in Deadwood. Back in December, he hadn’t told me that he had canceled his plans to visit the Hills after Christmas. He just became withdrawn. Slow to respond. I got the message.
MEGAN: You’re so careful with me, Chad. Oh, so careful. Are you always so cautious?
CHAD: I’m not cautious. I’m Scandinavian. I’m shy and loud. I like the intimacy of large parties.
Meg. I’m almost 40. You’re not.
MEGAN: I’ve face-planted so many more times than you.
I talk too fast.
I used to picket soldiers’ funerals.
CHAD: When I smile, the sides of my eyes wrinkle. I smile often. When I was 26, that didn’t happen.
I’ll see you out there somehow, before you leave.
In spite of myself, I fell for his promise. My heart soared at the prospect of finally laying eyes on my constant companion, this friend who also happened to be—quite literally—the man of my dreams. And then, as the day of my departure from Deadwood neared,