Faking Faith (11 page)

Abigail asked Chastity to take over Martha and the cupcakes, then looked at me.

“Come on, let’s double-check the room,” she said, linking her arm in mine and guiding me toward the living room. The furniture had been pushed back against the walls, and folding chairs and card tables were set up in the middle of the room. Mrs. Dean had spread white tablecloths on each one, and Abigail and I had collected bright flowers from the garden to put in little bud vases. A long table by the window was already half full of food.

“What do you think?” she asked me, looking anxious. “Is it nice enough?”

I realized she was even more stressed out about this than I was.

“Of course it’s nice enough!” I said, bumping her gently with my hip. “It’ll be the most elegant luncheon ever. Why are you so nervous?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said wistfully. “My sister Rachel used to do all these things when she was still at home. You know, decorating and preparations. She’s so good at making things look lovely.”

“And so are you!” I said.

“You’re sweet.” Abigail gave me a small smile. “But there’s just so much to learn, you know? How to cook and clean and sew and decorate and teach and host. Sometimes I’m just overwhelmed with everything I need to know. And I worry that I won’t be … good at it.”

“I’m sure you’ll be good at it,” I said with a shrug. “And you still have plenty of time to learn it all, right?”

Abigail was staring blankly at the room, chewing on her lower lip.

“Right, Abigail?” I repeated.

She blinked, and then looked at me. “Sure … lots of time, I guess,” she said vaguely.

“What do you mean, you guess?” I asked, confused.

Instead of answering, she linked her arm in mine again and said, “Let’s go get dressed! I have a surprise for you!”

. . .

Abigail’s surprise turned out to be a Regency-style dress for me to wear. It was like something you’d see in a Jane Austen movie—a soft shade of yellow with an empire waist, small cap sleeves, and a delicate white ruffle around the modest neckline.

“You’re a little bit shorter than me,” Abigail said as she examined it on me. “But if I pin it a bit here, it should be fine. What do you think?”

I stared at myself in the mirror in her room. The dress was gorgeous. I’d never worn something so perfect. The dresses I’d bought at the mall for school dances in the past seemed cheap and gaudy in comparison.

“Abigail, it’s lovely!” I said. “You really made this yourself?”

She smiled. “Yes.”

“Wow, you’re really an amazing seamstress.” I swished around the room, enjoying how the fabric felt draped over me.

“I’m going to wear this one,” she said, pulling a white dress with a dark pink sash out of her closet. It was so clean and pretty, I was drawn to it like a moth to the flame.

“Abigail!” I said, holding the white dress up so I could admire the detail of it. “Look at you! This is fabulous! You should, like, start a business or work as a costumer for movies or a theater or something. These are so awesome!”

She shrugged. “Oh, they’re nothing. Just a silly little impractical hobby. I could never think to do anything else with them … ” She took her white dress back and looked embarrassed.

“Right, of course,” I said, trying not to sound sad. I had said the wrong thing again.

. . .

As much as I was dreading it, the Ladies’ Luncheon turned out to be very interesting.

The guests ranged in age from older teenagers up to late-middle-aged women. There wasn’t a stitch of denim to be found in the whole group. Mrs. Dean had even dressed Mercy up in a frilly little dress and bonnet. Other guests had brought any small children they couldn’t leave at home with older siblings, and babies were passed around and potluck dishes exclaimed over and recipes exchanged. Abigail introduced me to everyone, and they all smiled warmly and welcomed me without question. They’d all dressed up in similar old-fashioned outfits, even the older ladies.

The yellow dress really helped me get into character. I simply pretended that I was performing a reenactment of
Pride and Prejudice
or something. I laughed demurely, said “how do you do” to each new lady, and sat with my legs crossed at the ankle, sipping my tea and nibbling on tiny sandwiches.

“We love to wear pretty things when we get together,” Abigail explained to me. “Ah, isn’t fellowshipping wonderful?”

I glanced around the room. Everyone was smiling and talking happily. The sun shone through the gauzy white curtains onto the plates of delicious-looking food, and the room smelled of summer flowers.

“It really is,” I said genuinely. I’d never done anything like this at home. My parents had their couple-friends that they went to dinner with every few months, but Scottie and I were never invited. Mom and I had once made vague plans to join a mother-daughter book club a few years ago, but we’d never followed through. And with my parents not belonging to a church or volunteer group or political committee or any other sort of multigenerational organization, there’d never been a reason to socialize as a family.

Hanging out with women of all ages was honestly kind of nice. Until we got to the next part of the event.

After we ate lunch, Chastity was sent outside to babysit the kids who were mobile, and everyone sat and listened quietly as Mrs. Dean talked for a while about some Bible studies she’d done that past month which had spoken to her.

“Dear ladies, we must ask ourselves the question … are we fully submitting to our husbands or fathers the way that our husbands or fathers submit themselves to the Lord? I would say this is something that we all stumble upon.”

She looked around the room with raised eyebrows, as if daring someone to claim that they never stumbled.

“Can any one of us declare that we haven’t once nagged our good, hardworking men? That we haven’t felt a smidgen of doubt in our hearts about their leadership? That we have put aside being meek and mild and feminine, and instead believed that we, us weak women, knew better than our godly leaders? Ladies, we cannot listen to Satan whispering in our ears! To have a full, obedient heart for our amazing men is to have a full, obedient heart for the Lord. ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.’ That is what we are told in Luke.”

Around me, women were nodding their heads.

I looked down at the half-eaten vanilla cupcake on my plate, feeling a bit of it rise in my throat.

“Let’s all go around and talk about a way in which we could be more obedient to these wonderful, visionary husbands,” Mrs. Dean suggested. “And for you unmarried girls, speak of how you have stumbled on being submissive to your father, as he is a stand-in for your future husband.”

Um, gross. I wondered what my dad would think if I told him what I was listening to. I’m sure he’d be as squicked out as I was.

I listened as they went around the circle in a weird sort of group therapy session, anxiety growing in the pit of my stomach about what I would report. One woman mentioned getting short-tempered with her husband when he tracked mud into the freshly cleaned kitchen. A girl about my age talked about how she had sassed back to her father when he asked her to do a chore, and how she had been rightly punished.

Another woman, who had a sleeping infant in her lap, spoke with tears in her eyes of how she had doubted her husband to his face about his ability to bring in money for the family.

“I’m so ashamed,” she said, as the women closest to her patted her on the back and made soothing noises. “He says that God will provide and that it’s my fault because I need to have more faith, but it’s hard when he hasn’t worked in weeks, and he spends all his time on the computer and won’t tell me what he’s doing on it, and there’s hardly money for groceries.” She took a deep, shuddering breath, and then smiled dimly. “But he’s right, of course. God will come through for us. I’m sure it is my fault for doubting my dear husband.”

Her fault. Right.

When the circle came around to me, I smiled to hide my discomfort and said that since I was just visiting, I didn’t know what to say.

“Well, think of something from when you were with your family last week, dear,” suggested Mrs. Dean with an encouraging smile. “I’m sure there was a time when you stumbled.”

“Um,” I said, my mind racing, and spoke without thinking it through. “Well … I suppose that, at times, I’ve wondered if I’m the daughter that my father wanted.”

I looked around the room. There were a lot of confused, furrowed brows.

“And in my heart, I’ve wished that I could make him more proud. And that maybe he would … uh … be a bit more attentive. To me.”

Abigail was giving me a sad look, like she couldn’t feel more sorry for me.

“So what do you think the Lord would want you to do differently?” asked Mrs. Dean.

I cringed. “Be a better daughter, I guess?” I suggested.

She nodded encouragingly. “And perhaps you could reach out to him? Let him know that you need more direction from him. Not framed in a critical way, of course … no one likes a demanding, opinionated girl. But gently and lovingly ask for more guidance, because you value his leadership and his place in your life so much.”

“Right,” I said. “I suppose I could do that.”

“I’m sure that he is proud of you, Faith,” Mrs. Dean said. “Some men just don’t remember to express it. Their minds are too wrapped up in other, more important matters. But sometimes we need to ask for what we need.”

I couldn’t argue with her there.

FOURTEEN

T
hings had gotten awkward with Asher.

There was just no other way to put it. Over the few days I’d been there, I’d caught him looking at me several times. Sometimes he would smile, sometimes it was as if he didn’t see me, and other times he would look irritated and stormy, as if my presence bothered him.

The last one, at least, I was used to.

He rarely talked to me, except for obligatory things like “Excuse me” and “Please pass the salt.”

I had no idea what to think about him, especially since Abigail had told me about his past. I wondered if he was still in love with that girl, or if he actually believed he’d acted wrongly.

I really couldn’t accept that I’d come all this way just to crush on a confused fundamentalist Christian boy who would despise me if he knew who I really was—a crush that could lead to nothing but trouble and heartbreak. Perhaps even more trouble and heartbreak than Blake had rained down. Hadn’t I learned anything at all?

Plus there was the fact that I didn’t want him to get in trouble by interacting with me too much.

The safest thing to do was be as cold as possible and pretend he was just another face in the crowd, I decided. No matter how sweet and upsettingly attractive he was.

. . .

The day after the luncheon, Abigail and I were sent out to gather eggs from the chicken coop by the barn. I found this chore to be particularly traumatizing—sneaking through the straw and hunting for eggs felt like I was stealing from the mama chickens or something. And their beaks and jerky bird movements made me nervous.

I much preferred to get my eggs out of a carton. From the air-conditioned store.

So when Abigail was called inside to help her mom with something, I snuck over to the far side of the barn and stopped working. Though it smelled like manure and was littered with rusty old farm implements, at least I was hidden from the house. If anyone caught me I could say I was taking a break.

Though I didn’t expect Asher to be the one to find me.

“Good haul today?” he asked, from right over my shoulder, scaring the hell out of me.

“Oh! Um, yeah!” I said brightly, holding out my basket so he could see the eight eggs inside.

As he looked into the basket and then smiled at me, I tried not to notice the way his sweaty gray T-shirt was glued to his chest or the way his hair damply stuck up in all directions. He’d obviously been working hard.

I found my mind drifting to wondering what it would feel like to have those arms around me, pulling me close …
stop
.

“So, what have you been up to today?” I asked, trying to distract myself.

He shrugged, wiping his forehead with a red-and-white checked bandana he had in his pocket. It was adorable.

“This and that,” he said. He leaned back against some bales of straw that were stacked behind the barn, letting himself slide down until he was crouched on the ground. “Dad’s got me running all over today. I sometimes hide out back here, too.”

“It’s a good hiding spot,” I said, sitting down beside him, the straw tickling my back as I crouched. “Sort of like its own little world.”

As I sat down, I felt Asher go still next to me, like a startled woodland creature.

“Y-You know, I better go,” he said quickly, glancing around, sounding almost in a panic. He moved to stand up.

“Why? Can’t you take a break?” I asked, inwardly cringing as I hoped that didn’t sound flirty.

“Well … ”

“Um, sorry. I’ll just move down here,” I said, getting up and walking at least ten feet away to stand by some neglected gardening tools. “Is this okay?”