A Bride for 100 Days

eight: family dinners and spoken secrets

"My parents..."

Jeb bit his lip. "Wait. First, I should tell you that my brother googled you."

"What?"

"Is your father George St Georges?"

I nodded, slowly.

"He's a producer or director or something, right? That superhero movie with Chris Pratt?"

I nodded again. "Among others. I mean, he has an Oscar."

"OK, well, I saw the Wikipedia page."

"Well, I saw the Wikipedia page for your brother-in-law," I confessed.

"Guess we're even."

"But - just so you know? He's not me. I'm not secretly rich or anything."

"Ditto here," Jeb's voice was soft. "So what are you on the run from, Alice?"

I reached down to my phone and opened the browser. I scrunched my eyes closed before the bookmark could load and took in a couple of deep breaths. Then I handed it over to Jeb.

He was quiet for a long time. I forced myself to stay quiet even though every instinct was to rip the damn thing out of his hand and run, run, run...

"This is you," he pointed.

"Mmmm."

"But you're not actually...."

I shook my head.

"And they know that?"

I slapped my hands over my eyes so he wouldn't see me cry. "They know. They do. When my mom married Garth, I didn't even know about Biblical patriarchy or complementarianism, or evangelical vs charismatic, or prosperity gospel..."

Jeb glanced at his house and back at me. "You're talking Martian to me and we got maybe 5 minutes."

"Right. So after my parents divorced, my mom moved me back here - this is where she was from. She started working at that megachurch over in Kirby. Garth's a senior pastor - he and two other guys started the whole thing from a little one-room church. Anyway, when I was 10, mom and Garth got married." I paused, remembering the insanity of the day. 

"Sounds like a trip."

"A really strange one. Garth had 3 older sons from his first marriage - she died. When I was like 14, Garth and mom told me about my future with the church and how Alonzo - Lonnie, the oldest one - had been given a vision that he was going to marry me."

"14? And he was...?"

"21. They said it would happen after I finished high school. I thought it was a joke. But it wasn't. Suddenly, Lonnie was everywhere I was..."

"You OK?" Jeb patted my arm, awkwardly. "Did he...I mean..."

"It was supposed to be "courting", which is what they do instead of date. But he was always there. He was always finding a reason to be touching me. I just avoided him as much as I could and kept myself busy outside the house."

"Jesus."

"The day I finally graduated, there was a massive argument. They expected me to set the wedding date and when I balked, Mom said it was immoral for me to live in a co-ed dorm and I was going to commute. She'd cancelled my housing contract. She said she would cancel my enrollment, too, because letting me go to a secular university had been a mistake. Unless I got married and Lonnie agreed to it. I was still 17 and, well, I pretty much burned the world down because I was so pissed off."