Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 102079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 510(@200wpm)___ 408(@250wpm)___ 340(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 510(@200wpm)___ 408(@250wpm)___ 340(@300wpm)
We laughed and drank until I was certain we’d confessed all of our sins to each other, knowing neither would remember the next day.
“Sarah? Eve?” Mom called from downstairs.
Thunk!
I rolled off the bed and hit the floor, scrambling to stand as I lost the towel around my head and the one around my body. Eve giggled, covering her mouth. Then I snorted as I snatched a towel off the floor and wrapped it around my waist.
“Sarah.” Eve pointed to my breasts, and I looked down.
“Oops …” I giggled again, pulling the towel over my breasts and stumbling across the hall to my bedroom.
“Sarah?” Mom yelled again.
Quickly closing and locking the door, I turned, pausing as I faced my bed, where Isaac’s guitar case lay with a folded note, my cream cowboy hat, boots, and the bag of clothes he bought me.
I looked around as though I thought he was hiding somewhere.
“Sarah?” Mom knocked on my door.
I scrambled to hide everything under my bed and shoved the note into my nightstand drawer.
“Open the door, Sarah.”
I held my arms out, fingers stiff like a cat falling from a tree. “Be cool,” I whispered to myself. If I could just stay cool, chilled, and calm, she wouldn’t know I was drunk.
“Hey,” I said, opening the door.
Mom grimaced. “Where are your clothes?”
The towel!
I dropped the towel in the process of hiding the guitar, and I forgot to cover up before opening the door.
Slapping a hand over my mouth, I laughed.
Mom stepped closer. “You’ve been drinking. You’re drunk.”
I shook my head, but I couldn't stop laughing.
“Go to bed right now. If your dad finds out, he’s going to be livid. This week has been unbearable for him. You, out of all people, should know that. This is disrespectful to everyone. I don't know what has gotten into you lately, young lady, but this has got to stop.”
“Welp, tell that to God. Maybe he should have thought about that before He let my friends die.” I tipped my chin up, making duck lips as if I had a valid point instead of an acute case of too much tequila.
“Sarah Elaine Jacobson, you are alive. If that’s not by the grace of God, then I don’t know what is.”
When the door closed behind her, I stepped back until the side of my bed hit my legs, and I fell onto the mattress, closed my eyes, and surrendered to the alcohol.
CHAPTER THIRTY
THE CLASH, “SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO”
At eleven thirty, I woke up to vomit.
At midnight, I woke to the sound of Eve vomiting.
At eight the next morning, I lifted my heavy head from my pillow when I heard my parents arguing. That was a first. They didn’t argue with us in the house.
There had been a lot of firsts that week. Then I remembered the guitar, and I cringed as both my head and my stomach protested upon sitting up. I opened my drawer and retrieved the note.
Take your time. Be vulnerable. Feel everything. Then find courage in the face of fear. I love you, Sunday Morning.
—Satan
I laughed through my tears as I set the note aside and opened the guitar case. Then I slowly cupped a hand over my mouth. It wasn’t his guitar; it was a shiny new white guitar with a silver strap and “Sunday Morning” stitched into it. When I lifted it from the case, I uncovered an envelope. Inside, there was cash—a lot of cash.
Why did he give me a guitar and cash? It made no sense.
After throwing on a nightshirt, I sat on the bed and played my new guitar. It wasn’t long before the arguing downstairs stopped, and Mom opened my door, peeking inside and eyeing my guitar.
I paused my fingers, staring at her for a few seconds while I returned the guitar to the case with the envelope of cash. “Are you fighting about me?”
Before she could answer, my dad stepped into my room, too, and closed the door.
“I should have died,” I said, latching the case.
“Don’t say that,” Mom said.
“It would be easier for both of you.”
“Why do you think that?” Dad asked.
When I lifted my gaze to him, he kept his emotions well-guarded, unlike the day I came home from Nashville.
“I’m a whore,” I said.
Mom winced as Dad’s jaw clenched.
“That’s what you’re going to think.” I blew out a defeated breath. “And I don’t even care. Not anymore. Trying to please you, Matt, his parents, and God … it’s all too much.” I closed my tired, swollen eyes for a few seconds. “My faith has been tested, and I’m not passing the test.”
“Sarah—” My dad started.
I shook my head. “You can’t fix this. Not you. Not anyone. I can’t pray my way out of this awful feeling that everything I’ve believed about God is wrong. Is He indiscriminate or calculated? Is everything part of a grand plan or by chance? Because I can’t wrap my head around the idea that I’m here by God’s grace, and Heather and Joanna are not. Good people die every day, and evil people live. The only way I can imagine forgiving God is if I can believe that He did nothing. That He does nothing but give us free will to live. To make mistakes, even if they cost us everything. But if you want me to believe He has a hand in it, then I’m out. I cannot worship that kind of god.”