When She Returned

by Lucinda Berry

“Matthew twenty-five, verses thirty-five and thirty-six, sums up our entire philosophy. Jesus said, ‘I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me . . . Whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me.’ That’s how we live our lives, and it’s the closest thing we have to a creed.”

“It’s just the small-town mentality of people not liking change and being resistant to anything that doesn’t fall within their traditional ideologies.”

But I wanted him to grow and change, experience new things too. His contentment with sameness was more maddening the older I got. How could we live our lives based on decisions we’d made when we were seventeen?

The problem with having a fairy-tale relationship story was how much other people were invested in keeping the fairy tale alive. It wasn’t just our story—it was everyone’s.

“You are tied to the life you created when you were a teenage girl to survive, but that life no longer serves you. Yet you can’t let go of it. Am I getting close?”

“I don’t know who I am without him. I’ve always wondered who I might be on my own. But I feel like the world’s most terrible person for even having the thoughts.”

One of the worst things you could do to someone in the midst of tragedy was to give them a cliché, because the intensity of the loss was too big. I’d heard it all after James died. Sometimes it was better to say nothing.

Traumatic grief was groundless, a free fall into space. Unless you’d been there before, you couldn’t understand what it felt like.

I’d been secluded at a remote cabin in the woods with another recently converted disciple, Willow. New disciples were always paired up and served as each other’s mirror while undergoing their Phase One training.

The Lord said, ‘From this moment forward, you shall be called Abner. You are the Father of Light.’”

Scott’s inability to see how hard some of this was hurt. Obviously, what I was going through paled in comparison to what they were going through, but this wasn’t easy. None of it had been. It didn’t help that he’d barely touched me since she’d been back. Last night I’d made an effort to connect with him before we fell asleep, and he’d pushed my hand off him, mumbling something about being exhausted. It wasn’t just that he didn’t want to make love. He hadn’t hooked my pinky with his like we did every night as we fell asleep, and that hurt more than his rejection.

“Why didn’t you tell me once you trusted me?” “Once you’ve told a story so many times, it just becomes the truth.” “But you passed the polygraph . . .” My voice trailed off, thick with unspoken meaning. He had passed the polygraph with flying colors; only seasoned liars could pull that off.