“I imagine it must have been helpful to have someone who understood what you were going through. Survivor’s guilt and all that.”
“I suppose.” I smooth a few curls behind my ear, wrinkling my nose. “It definitely changed us, as any traumatic event would. But while I questioned how a God who was supposed to be this loving being could take my mother, Sawyer went in the opposite direction. In his mind, there was a reason God spared him. He saw it as his calling to spread His word.”
“Ah,” Wes exhales, nodding. “So he became a priest.”
I laugh, grateful for the moment of levity. “We’re not Catholic, but close. He went to college. Studied divinity with the hope of becoming a pastor of his own church. He has an incredibly charismatic personality. Couple that with being a survivor of a famous church shooting, and he had quite a bit of negotiating power when it came to accepting a post at a church. But he was missing one thing a lot of churches want in a pastor, especially after all the scandals with priests in the Catholic church.” I give him a knowing look.
“A wife.”
“Bingo.”
I steer us off the main path through the park and toward the tree-shrouded garden walk, preferring the semblance of privacy to share the next part of my story.
“Like I mentioned, we became friends, even though we were on somewhat different paths. He volunteered as a youth pastor in high school and during the summers he was home from college. I preferred to spend my free time building furniture or going to the park with my sketch pad. Four years may not sound like a big difference, but when you’re a teenager, it’s the difference between a shy, awkward fourteen-year-old girl and a mature eighteen-year-old man. That is, until the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college.”
“What happened then?”
I shrug. “I think he finally realized I wasn’t just a little girl anymore. That I’d become a woman. He definitely didn’t look at me like I was a little girl anymore.” My cheeks heat as I steal a glance at Wes. I wasn’t sure how he’d react to hearing about my ex, but he seems more intrigued than anything. “We went on a few dates, but nothing serious ever came of it.”
“But something serious eventually did come of it, right?”
“I suppose you could say that. After that summer, I went back to school in upstate New York and didn’t really think twice about the few dates we’d gone on, if you could even call them dates. I focused on my studies, since I was there on a scholarship. We exchanged the occasional email or text, but nothing with overly romantic tones. Since we didn’t have any sort of agreement to be exclusive, I dated a few guys here and there, had even told Sawyer about a few of them, and he didn’t seem to care. But when I went home the next summer, things were…different.”
“Different?” Wes tilts his head. “How do you mean?”
“Sawyer had interviewed at a bunch of churches, mostly in Virginia. There was one that was extremely interested in him. It was a pretty big deal, too. This wasn’t just some small church in the middle of nowhere. It was a large church closer to D.C., one with a great deal of influence. One where he’d have a great deal of influence.”
“Let me guess. They were hesitant to hire him because he wasn’t married yet.”
“Yes. I knew all this, too. Heard him talking to my father about it when I was home for spring break. I figured it was their loss if they would pass over someone they were truly interested in just because he wasn’t married. Sawyer was barely twenty-four at this point. He’d only been out of college a few years.
“Then one day, my father asked me to come see him at the church after I got off my shift at the local hardware store where I worked during my breaks from school.”
“And?”
I stop walking, facing him. With a shrug, I smile half-heartedly. “They had it all planned. I’d marry Sawyer the following month before he went back for his final interview with the board at this other church.”
“And you agreed?”
“I honestly didn’t think I had a choice. Ever since I lost my mother, I felt compelled to do whatever my father asked of me, for the most part. He chose me instead of her—”