Sleigh Bell Dreams (Mistletoe Meadows Sweet Christmas #1)

Chapter 23

“Are you coming home for Christmas? I was really hoping the whole family would be there.” Terry held the phone to her ear, standing in the office of her clinic. She wasn’t sure she would ever get tired of having her own office in her own clinic in her own hometown. She definitely was enjoying it today, except...there was something wrong with Isadora, her youngest sister.

“No. I just can’t.”

“Why?” Terry said, hearing the distress in her sister’s voice but unable to think of a reason for it. It was true she was pregnant, and she did have a one-year-old and a three-year-old, so her life had to be crazy and hard and tiring and all the things that happened with raising little humans. It was so hard.

“I haven’t told anyone yet, but Frederick has been cheating on me.”

“No!” Terry drew the word out, pain ripping through her. Her sister, her beautiful, perfect younger sister. She didn’t know her very well, because she was so much younger, but she had always been so happy and cheerful, so cute with the little pigtails and the big blue eyes and the chubby cheeks, and she’d grown into such a beautiful teenager, poised and pretty and more popular than all of her siblings. Isadora was probably the one who would call her the most often when she was in med school. Isadora had even said she wanted to be a doctor just like Terry.

And then she had met Frederick.

“Yeah. I’m devastated. Except, I think part of me suspected this for a very long time.”

She wondered how long, since her sister was six or seven months pregnant.

“I just... I feel like such an idiot.”

“Isadora. This is not your fault.”

“I know. I understand that he didn’t cheat on me because of something lacking in me, although mentally, I still feel that way. But what I’m saying is, Mom told me. She told me I was wrong.”

Terry hadn’t been home much, but she remembered those arguments. She got texts from both Isadora and their mom, talking about how frustrated they were with the other one. How the other one wouldn’t listen, how they were insisting on their own way. Each of them said the exact same thing about the other, only Terry could see that their mom was right and Isadora was wrong.

“You even tried to tell me that Mom was right,” Isadora said, as though she too were going through all the things that had been said and done at that period of time.

Terry didn’t want to say it. Because Isadora was right. Their mom had told them, and Terry had said that she was right, and Isadora was so determined to be with Frederick that she wouldn’t listen.

“Mom said he wasn’t a Christian. She said the first rule of a relationship was to make sure that he was a Christian. She drummed that into our heads from the time I was a baby.”

“Me too. Me too.”

“She quoted that verse, ‘be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers,’ a million times to me. I knew it. But Frederick was older and dashing, and when he started to pay a little bit of attention to me, I was so flattered.”

“I saw that you were. It started with those texts, and I know Mom knew that you were texting him and she told you to stop. She said it wasn’t wise. She said you’re going to end up—”

“I know. I know. I can hear it like it was yesterday. I can hear her saying that I was going to end up hurt. That sin was always found out, and that if God said that we shouldn’t be unequally yoked with unbelievers, I shouldn’t even open the door to the possibility that something might develop.”

“Mom never would let us text people of the opposite gender. I know it’s a common thing, and I thought she was so stupid and old-fashioned and untrusting, but I’m glad she didn’t. Because she’s right. It starts out with an innocent text, and you put one foot on the slippery slope, and then pretty soon something happens and they are the one person that responds to you, and...”

“Before long, you’re telling them things that you shouldn’t be, and they’re responding with real sympathy, instead of telling me that I need to grow up and stop complaining and do the right thing and all the things that parents say and siblings say and people who know me say. He acted like he really cared.”

“I understand that. I could see that. And I wished I could help you, but feelings are so strong. You have to have the character to see where it’s going, to listen when people tell you that it’s a bad idea, and to realize that they have a view that you don’t have.”

“I have that view now,” Isadora said bitterly.

Terry was silent. She didn’t want to rub anything in to her sister. She felt bad enough for her. Of course she would go back and do things differently if she could. Of course she would listen now that she knew where it was headed; she wouldn’t be texting someone that she shouldn’t be. Of course she would do what her mom said. But when she was younger, she just couldn’t see the wisdom.

“Mom even said I would end up with small children, crying and hurt in the divorce. She said sin always hurts. She would point to her own heart and say her heart was hurting, that the sin had already started hurting her, and I just laughed. I was so stupid. How could I have been so callous?”

“You know if you go to Mom, she’s not going to laugh at you.”

“I deserve it. I laughed at her and thought she didn’t know what I knew. I knew he was an upstanding, upright, wonderful man. So what if he wasn’t a Christian? He was better than a lot of the Christians I knew!”

“Hasn’t he told you that he didn’t want you going to church?”

“Yes. He won’t go with me. He doesn’t want me to go, and he definitely didn’t want me to go and dedicate our children. I wanted to, but I struggle to even be able to go on Sunday mornings, let alone any extra services.”

“Those extra services are where you really learn,” Terry said, knowing she’d missed more than a few of them herself because of the schedule that she had to keep in med school and residency. Also, in the city it was often hard to find a good church, especially in the Northeast where she had spent those four years.

“Oh, Terry, I can’t explain to you how bad this hurts,” Isadora said, sounding like she was doubled over in pain.

Terry could only hold the phone and wish that her sister was closer so she could give her a hug. “I wish I could hug you. I wish you were closer. I wish you could come home,” she said.

“I can’t even come home! Gilbert’s there. And he has a wife who loves him, and she’s dying. I can’t just drop in, but I don’t know what I’m going to do!”

“Do you think Frederick would be willing to apologize? Would you take him back?”

“When I confronted him about it, he told me that he wasn’t attracted to me and didn’t love me anymore. That I was repulsive to him and I could never be as good as this woman that he’s found. She’s everything that I’m not.”

“Wow,” Terry said, wanting to grab a hold of Frederick and rip his throat out. Hold the bloody pieces of his windpipe in her hand and squeeze it until he was dead.

That was a little violent. She tried to get a hold of herself. Just because the man had hurt her sister didn’t mean that he wasn’t still a child of God. It didn’t mean that she shouldn’t still be loving him, caring for him, praying that he would get right and get saved.

But by far, her sister was the most important thing in this equation, her sister and her children.

“I know Mom wouldn’t care if you moved in, and I would feel better if you were closer.” It sounded like there was no hope of reconciliation.

“I don’t even know if I can do that. I just feel so...exploded. I don’t know how to explain it. Just can’t do anything, I can’t think of anything, I can’t respond, my whole world has crashed down, and it’s all I can do to take care of the kids.”

Terry swallowed. There were a lot of times in her life where she wished she had chosen a different career. Where she had gone in a direction where she would have more time for family and friends.

If Isadora were here, she could at least help her in the evenings and Saturday and Sunday when she wasn’t at the clinic. But as it was... “I can drive out this weekend, Friday evening, and stay there until Sunday evening. I can take care of the kids.”

Her sister lived near Virginia Beach, which was four hours away from Mistletoe Meadows. She could leave even Thursday night after work, if she rescheduled her Friday appointments.

“No. Don’t tell anyone. I... I need to get it reconciled to myself first. I can’t handle other people talking to me about it until I can deal with it myself.”

“All right. Are you sure? Because I’d be happy to do that.”

“I’ll call Mom. Just...give me time.”

She knew from personal experience, especially for emotional wounds, time was often the best healer. As long as a person could get it out of their head. The problem was, a person had to stop thinking about it. Had to stop rolling it around in their head, they had to stop and take every thought captive, which was not an easy thing to do. Especially with something like this. Thoughts of revenge, thoughts of regret, thoughts of hurt and anger and a desire to lash out and induce the pain that they had been dealt on someone else, were hard to get past. She certainly didn’t expect her to get past it at this point. It was akin to someone being in a car accident and a doctor saying get up and walk, when both legs were broken. It just took time for the legs to heal.

It was going to take time for Isadora’s emotions to heal.

And like broken legs, Isadora would probably never be the same again.

And the really, really hard thing was that she had been counseled not to. But she had thought that she knew better than her parents and that it was just a little thing, just a tiny bit of disobedience by marrying a man who wasn’t a Christian. But now it had exploded on her, definitely on her children, and she’d already hurt her mother, and now everyone who was involved in the mess, everyone would see her pain and hurt because of her.

Terry had seen this more than once, in the volunteer work that she had done at women’s shelters. There was not a high percentage of Christians in the shelters, but there were some, and to a woman they almost all said that their parents had counseled them to not begin the sin, but they thought it was harmless.

“I love you, Isadora. I’ll do anything you need me to do,” Terry promised, knowing that she didn’t want to close her clinic, but if it meant saving her sister, she would move out there in a heartbeat.

“Thanks. I,” she seemed like she was struggling, “I... I just need time.”

They hung up, and Terry said a prayer for her sister, knowing that she would be praying hourly, even minute by minute for her sister to be able to heal quickly and at least take care of her children, both the two that were born and the baby she was still carrying. And Terry would do whatever she could to help.