Page 45 of Time Out

“I’m having a hard time keeping my mouth shut and not telling you exactly what I think of your parents, you know.”

“Belle never did. She actually suspected I was from the Blessed Movement show—my clothes back then still weren’t nearly as stylish as they are now, to put it lightly. But anyway, she’d come out to the parking lot with me to talk about my voice and if I was represented by anyone. Saw me living out of my car, and demanded I live with her.”

“And you did?”

“Not for two more weeks. I was trying to find something else, but she kept chasing me down. I don’t even know how she did it.”

“Belle doesn’t strike me as someone who gives up easily.”

“She’s not, but she wasn’t pushy about it, either. She offered to have me record a demo too.”

“Have you?”

“No. I wasn’t sure I had the guts back then to really do it, and then I didn’t want to make it only because I got close with Belle. But for the last two years, I’ve been too busy trying to save enough money to get a new car and my own place, so I haven’t done much singing at all.”

“There’s nothing wrong with taking help when it’s offered if you need it, you know.”

I thought about her reaction to my offering money. Not following her dreams because Belle could make it happen. There was stubbornness and there was conviction and confidence.

“I know. And someday I might let her, but not until I’m able to try hard enough on my own first.”

I had a feeling if she ever went to sing, Belle would ensure influential people were in the crowd. I didn’t figure Belle was the kind of person to follow a stranger out of a bar unless there was real talent there. She’d heard and seen too much in her life in that industry.

“So,” Maggie said. She tore a chunk off a garlic knot before dipping it into garlic sauce. “Now that we’ve delved into my entire life history, tell me more about yours?”

Chapter 14

Maggie

I’d always planned on telling Davis who I was, and I wasn’t sure yet if he was realizing how this might impact him. If someone in the media saw who I was when we were together, I could very well be recognized. If he had some wholesome good guy image to maintain, I wasn’t sure how it would go to be connected to me.

But I wasn’t quite ready to delve into that.

Truth was, I’d done a lot of healing, a lot of research, and a lot of work on myself after my parents told me to “take the car and don’t come home until you’re ready to repent” conversation. The very last one we’d had.

Different and extreme, sure, but their convictions made sense in the context of their teachings. The problem I realized when I went away to college was I didn’t think their context was always biblically correct—or, at minimum, necessary. I’d left out the worst parts of the story to Davis, but he could read between the lines. When I told stories on the college campus to friends about how we were disciplined and punished, they’d cried and hugged me. I hadn’t even realized until then that it wasn’t discipline, but abuse. Funny how a Christian college with strict rules regarding genders spending time together and a list of rules almost as long as the dresses I used to wear was what opened my eyes to see that differences, even among the same religion, were okay.

It also made me hate my parents and their teachings deep in my soul in a way, I’d planned to not return home after I graduated anyway. I couldn’t. I’d changed too much and learned too much.

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know about my family,” Davis said. “If you answer one or two more questions from me first.”

He already knew everything.

“Deal.”

“What are your siblings’ names?”

Well, now that was a common question. One I had no problem answering. “Jedidiah, Zachariah, me, Adam, Timothy, Ruth, Paul, Leah, Joy, and Martha.”

“Why Joy? It’s the only one that’s not a biblical name.”

“Joy came after a miscarriage. And my mom was almost forty then. The doctors warned her too many more children could be difficult for her, but Joy was born healthy and normal and her pregnancy was as easy as the rest of them. Any more questions?”

“Do you talk to any of them? Since you’ve left?”

“Zach called me a few times, but he and I were never close to begin with and he was too much like my father. He’s already married with four kids, and they’re barely twenty-five. He’s working in my dad’s church and he only calls to tell me how I’m destroying my internal hope.”

“A lovely conversation, I’m sure.”

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