Then There Was You Read online

  “I used to go to Saints United.” The confession slipped out, fell to the floor.

  Janine surveyed her, her expression suggesting she knew there was more to the story. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not really, but you should probably know.”

  Janine crossed the room and closed the door, gesturing to the couch. “Come, sit.”

  Placing the photo back in its place, Paige perched on the edge of the couch, wishing she were closer to the door in case things went badly.

  Janine settled back and kicked off her high heels, curling her feet underneath her. “Take your time.”

  Paige was shocked when the tears came, choking her throat and streaming down her face. Ugly, snotty sobs welled up from deep inside.

  Her boss didn’t say anything, just leaned forward and pushed the ever-present box of tissues across the coffee table toward her. And they weren’t the cheap ones. Three-ply with aloe vera. Clearly a lot of people did a lot of serious weeping in here.

  Paige plucked out a couple, trying to wipe up her face in between gulps of air. This was ridiculous. It had been years ago, before much worse things. Why was she losing it now, when it was all long done? She’d even been vindicated, not that hard, incontrovertible evidence had made any difference to the “true believers”.

  She blew her nose and crumpled the tissue in her hand. She could do this. Greg and Janine weren’t like the others. They seemed to care more about people than the material trappings of so-called spiritual success.

  She sucked in a deep breath. “I lived in New Jersey after college, got my first real job there. In 2008, I volunteered to help plan the annual church conference for Saints United. They’d just built the new worship center. Had plans for a whole campus. Mark and Jill were determined the conference would be bigger, better, bolder, than anything before. It almost felt like they wanted to make other churches jealous.”

  Janine just nodded.

  Paige kicked off her shoes and hugged her knees, trying to order the sordid tale in her head. It had been so long since she’d talked about it. “After a few weeks, I realized things weren’t right with the conference accounts. There were invoices for things we hadn’t ordered, or for things that we had, but for more than they should have been. I didn’t have any financial authority so I flagged it with the accountant. He said he’d take a look.

  “It was like we were hemorrhaging money. I went to Mark and Jill, but they told me not to worry about it. That the money side of things wasn’t my concern.”

  She rolled her head from side to side, attempting to loosen the growing tightness in her shoulders. “At the same time, the pressure was increasing on the congregation to give more. Every Sunday the sermons before the offering got longer, about trusting God with your finances, about giving more than felt comfortable to grow your faith. One Sunday they took up the offering three times, insisting that God had told them the service wasn’t allowed to finish until a certain amount had been given. They were so charismatic, so persuasive . . . people just believed them. I had friends who lived on noodles for weeks after giving all their grocery money. Single moms who couldn’t afford their insurance co-pays. And still the money from conference registrations just disappeared.”

  And in spite of her suspicions, she’d still been sucked in. Not able to acknowledge what was right in front of her in black and white.

  Paige drew in a deep breath. She could do it. It had been over eight years. “Eventually I approached the head of the governing board. There was over two hundred grand of expenditure that didn’t make sense. And that was just from the conference accounts.

  “The next day, I got summoned to a meeting. Mark and Jill were there, the entire governing board. They fired me.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Though I’m still not sure how you fire someone who wasn’t getting paid in the first place.” Weirdly enough, that was one of things that had hurt the most.

  “I walked out, out the building, out of the church, never came back. Thought that was the end of it.” She was blabbing, the words tumbling out on top of each other like an ugly five-car pile-up, but she couldn’t stop.

  “I had a friend who was still going to the church. A single mom. I tried to convince her to go somewhere else, but she was caught—believed everything they promised. One Sunday, when they put the pressure on, she gave so much that she couldn’t make rent. She got kicked out of her house. When she went to the church for help, they said she hadn’t had enough faith.” That was what had tipped Paige over the edge—seeing the very people the Bible spoke the strongest words about, the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed—being denied help while Mark and Jill lived in a gated community and drove matching top-of-the-line Chryslers.

  “I went to the police. I’d taken copies of some documents. Their financial crime team started looking into it. Word got back to the church. They told congregants I’d been fired for stealing, but they had decided to be forgiving and not do anything about it. That now I was a scorned woman, out for revenge, trying to destroy the church with lies and accusations.” The bitterness flowed out of her like a poisonous river. She looked at everywhere except Janine. Afraid of what would be written across her face.

  She extracted another tissue to mop up tears that wouldn’t stop. The people she had volunteered under for months, had thought were friends, had done everything they could to destroy her. She’d heard all about it. How Mark and Jill had stood in front of the church on Sunday morning, looking all sorrowful. Saying how they’d followed the biblical instructions for confronting sin in their midst, but that Paige had refused to repent and had needed to be “removed” from the congregation.

  “Next my car tires were slashed. Then I was getting death threats in the mail. Once I even got spat on in the street. Even when it was proved that there were hundreds of thousands of dollars missing, from accounts I had no access to, it wasn’t enough to stop the threats.”

  Her stomach rolled at the memories of those days, when she never knew when she might pick up the phone to find someone spewing vitriol at the other end or walk out of work or a recital to find her car had been keyed or windows smashed.

  “I moved back to Chicago to get away from it all. I didn’t go to church, any church, for over a year. I was so betrayed, so broken, that I couldn’t face walking in the doors, wondering if the worship leader was having an affair, or the pastors had their fingers in the offering plates, if they were preaching one thing and living another. I still believed in God, but I didn’t want anything to do with the institution.”

  It had been her wilderness year, wandering around in the desert, unable to believe she would ever find her way back to a place she had once loved.

  Paige paused for a moment. “That’s why I have a bit of a problem with megachurches.” She chanced a look at her boss. Tears streaked Janine’s cheeks, no hint of judgment on her face.

  “I’m so sorry you went through that.” Janine pulled a tissue from the box and blew her nose.

  Since she was here, she might as well be completely honest. “I’m the last person you should want working here. I’m so cynical. I’ve spent the last three months trying to find out what’s wrong with Harvest.”

  Janine swiped her fingers underneath her eyes. “Good. We don’t want people to just swallow everything that is said, everything that happens. We want them to ask questions, be discerning. No one on leadership here is perfect. If anyone sees anything that doesn’t seem right, we want to know.”

  Paige could feel her face collapsing as disbelief swept through her.

  Janine sighed, uncurling her legs. “You’re right. Large churches present a unique range of challenges, but they’re the same problems as in smaller churches, only on a larger scale. People embezzle at any church where the opportunity exists, people have affairs at church of any size because they give in to temptation. It’s just the bigger the church, the more far-reaching the impact, the damage, the consequences, and the fallout.”

  Janine paus
ed, seemed to be pondering what to say next. “Greg and I are far from perfect. We’re not superhuman, able to resist getting big heads and falling into the trap of believing that Harvest’s success is about us. That’s why we have ourselves surrounded with good people who hold us accountable. But at the end of the day, it comes down to our own hearts. If we neglect that, if we lose sight of our relationship with God, then this whole thing is a sham.”

  Paige shredded her latest tissue onto the coffee table.

  “Can I ask you something?” Janine’s words were soft.

  “Sure.”

  “What good things came out of what happened?”

  Paige didn’t even need to think about it. “I moved home. Got to spend more time with my family.” Because of what happened, she’d ended up back in Chicago, spending time with Ethan when they had no idea time would be so short. She wrenched a couple more tissues out of the box, attempted to stem the latest rising tide. “I eventually found a great church. One that was what a church should be. My experience with Saints United made me appreciate Chicago Hope so much more.”

  Janine smiled. “See, that’s the thing. The church at its worst is ugly. It’s corrupt and self-serving and destructive. But the church at its best? It changes the world. It defends the oppressed, cares for the poor, and walks alongside those who need it most.”

  Her boss’s hands slashed the air in emphasis. “That’s why I’m here. In a couple of months, we get to welcome thousands of women to Sydney for Grace. To help inspire and empower them to be the Church at its best.”

  She clapped her hands, then pointed at Paige’s perfectly ordered and tabbed up folder. “That’s what that is all about! Not what type of slices we serve for morning tea, or what color the ribbons on the bags are, or how many disabled carparks we need, though that’s all important. It’s about women meeting with God. That’s all that matters. If that doesn’t happen, it’s all a waste of time.”

  Paige pondered her folder, swiped away her remaining tears and smiled. “Do you think I should give Him His own line on the Gantt chart?”

  Seventeen

  Paige dropped her purse on the plush hallway carpet on her way to the living area. Her head was pounding, shoulders knotted, eyes gritty. It was like the entire day had been a never-ending, theological gymnastics event. And not the pretty type with ribbons and balls and smiling faces and pert ponytails, but the ugly kind where people grunted and flung themselves between creaking bars or contorted their bodies into impossible positions.

  She pulled her hair into a ponytail, and shuffled toward the kitchen in search of an ice-cold Diet Coke.

  Her cynically constructed image of how all megachurches operated had been blown apart. The doubts had been knocking for weeks: when she’d seen Janine drove a ten-year-old hatchback. As she’d navigated a procurement process that required three levels of approval. When she’d found out neither Greg or Janine could buy so much as a bunch of flowers with church funds. She’d tried to keep the door shut on her doubts, but today it got blown off its hinges.

  She opened the fridge, pulled out a can, and popped it open, gulping a sip before collapsing onto the couch. She kicked her shoes off, picked up the remote, and settled back for the last few minutes of one of Australia’s longest-running soaps, Neighbours. Even after three months, trying to work out what on earth the characters were talking about proved to be never-ending entertainment. Which was just what she needed right now—some angsty, no-thinking-required terrible television.

  The front door banged shut, and Paige tilted her head, peering up over the arm of the couch. Kat walked in, clad in a conservative skirt and a floral top, her hair in a French braid and her makeup flawless. That meant one thing: her father was in town.

  Kat threw her Coach purse on the floor, and sagged into the love seat across from her.

  Paige pushed a bag of mini Violet Crumbles across the coffee table. There was a woman in need of chocolate if there ever was one.

  “Thanks.” The word was a cross between a sigh and a groan. Kat reached into the bag and pulled out a fistful of candy. Tearing one open, she demolished it in a couple of bites. Reached for another.

  Wow. A visit to her dad was usually a tumultuous experience, but this was a whole new level.

  Paige took a sip of her soda, let her cousin work her angst out on the candy. She’d talk when she was ready.

  “My father thinks I should freeze my eggs.”

  Paige choked, snorted, bubbles filling her nose. She clamped her mouth shut, barely avoiding spraying brown fizz everywhere. Finally, she managed to swallow. “You’re joking.”

  Her cousin yanked at the hair tie holding her hair in place and ran her hand through the end of the braid with vigor. “I wish I was.”

  “Do you want to have a baby?” Her cousin had never seemed like the maternal type.

  An expression Paige couldn’t decipher stole across Kat’s face. “It’s a bit more complicated than that.” Another wrapper hit the floor.

  “What exactly did he say?”

  Kat bit her lip. “That I’m thirty-two and my eggs are getting more substandard by the minute.”

  Ouch. Though, to be fair, Kat’s substandard eggs were probably still better than most other women’s A-grade contenders.

  “Anyway, my father entertaining half of Sydney’s elite discussing my reproductive organs over lunch brings me to my real problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I think I should break up with Dan.”

  “Say what now?” Kat and Dan had been together for three years, not that they saw each other very often given her jet-setting lifestyle and the fact he worked six weeks on/six weeks off on an oil rig in the North Sea.

  Paige wandered back to the kitchen and opened both the freezer and the pantry. “You want ice cream or more chocolate?”

  “Bring both.”

  Paige snagged a spoon from the counter and handed Kat the container of vanilla fudge ripple and the block of Berry Biscuit chocolate. She had to give the Southern Hemisphere points for chocolate variety. She’d thought Dove was heaven. Then she met Whittaker’s.

  Kat ripped off the lid to the ice cream and dug her spoon in. “I realized as I was driving home that I can’t see myself having kids with him. Even if I wanted to.”

  “Are you in love with him?” Paige asked the question cautiously. Her cousin was a bit of an enigma on the romance front. She played her cards close to her chest.

  “He’s a great guy. But . . .” Kat shrugged. “We hardly see each other which, to be honest, is not that hard. It should be harder, right? If I loved him, long distance should be torture. I should be counting the days until I see him again. Wasn’t that how you were with Alex?”

  Alex. With a start, Paige realized her ex-boyfriend hadn’t crossed her mind in weeks. Not since J—She shook her head before the thought could even finish itself. “I guess. Sort of.”

  “See?’ Kat dug her spoon into the ice cream and loaded it up.

  “Are you sure that it’s not just that with your job you’re used to not being with the people you love all the time?” Paige took a last swallow of her soda. “So it’s not that you don’t love him. It’s that you have good long-distance coping mechanisms.”

  It was a shot in the dark. The only other time she and Kat had lived in the same city was a brief blissful period in their teens. The last five months were the first time she’d seen Kat with a guy in real life. From what she’d seen, Kat and Dan had a good thing going.

  “Maybe.” Kat didn’t seem to be buying it.

  Paige put her can back down on the coffee table. “What do you think is missing?”

  Kat shrugged. “I don’t know. The X-factor. The magic. Butterflies. The thing that makes you sure it’s meant to be your forever. I’ve never been giddy about Dan. It’s just always been . . . nice. Easy.”

  “Maybe the real problem is that nice and easy is underrated.” She’d been circling that thought lately. Pretty much every t
ime she had a message from Nate, talked to him.

  Kat licked the spoon. “Ha!”

  “What?”

  Her cousin pointed the spoon at her. “You’re one to talk.”

  “About what?” Paige was so confused.

  “You have a thing for Josh.”

  “What?” She tried to make her tone appropriately shocked.

  Kat rolled her eyes. “Good try, but fail.”

  “What makes you think I have a thing for Josh?” This time she switched her tone to lighthearted, as if she were just humoring her cousin. Her cheeks betrayed her, though, as they filled with warmth.

  “Are you saying you don’t?”

  “You know how I feel about megachurches.” Even if Harvest was the exception to the general rule, she wasn’t cut out for the scrutiny, the expectations, that would come with being associated with the Tylers.

  “And yet you work at a megachurch and attend that same one every Sunday. And I saw you trying to sneak that tithe envelope into the offering bag last Sunday.”

  “I have no intention of staying here.”

  Kat lifted an eyebrow. “Because your coming was such a well thought through plan.”

  “He’s a musician.”

  Her cousin dipped deeper into the carton. “So are you.”

  “I was.”

  “No, you still are. Just because you can’t bring yourself to play at the moment doesn’t make you any less a musician.”

  “But if I don’t.” Her arm twinged just thinking about playing. “The last thing I would want is to be with someone who reminds me every day of what I used to be.”

  “You’re reminded every day anyway. In case you haven’t noticed, everywhere you go there is music. Church, the mall, the car, in your own head. Why wouldn’t you want to be with someone who loves music as much as you do?”

  The answer was so complicated, she wasn’t sure she understood. The truth was, she hadn’t yet found a way to be the better person, to watch someone else pick up an instrument and do what they loved and be happy for them, instead of wondering what she’d done to deserve losing that privilege.