Thelma shrugged. She was used to people being shocked at her apparent lack of knowledge, but she had rather hoped not to commit such a faux pas in front of Gretchen. “I’m sorry, I’m way out of my wheelhouse here.”
“I’d say. Don’t worry. Megan told me about your background.”
Ah, there it went. Thelma’s brain, right down her throat and into her stomach. “Excuse me?” she whispered, heart pounding and fingers sweating around her mug. “My background?”
“Yeah. I get it. I see stuff about that on YouTube all the time. Kinda went down this rabbit hole for a while about it. It’scrazyhow prevalent it is in this day and age. Then again, the past couple of years kinda taught me that people aren’t what they always seemed. I’m not surprised religiosity is what it is now.”
Thelma was utterly lost, but she couldn’t let Gretchen know that she didn’t know her ownhistory.“Of course. It really is.”
Gretchen tensed again. “Sorry. Was I not supposed to bring it up?”
If only I knew what “it” was!“Guess that depends on what you thinkitis. Are we on the same page, Gretch? What did my gra… I mean, my cousin tell you?”
“Um, well…” Under other circumstances, Gretchen would have been adorable as she cleared her throat and attempted to backtrack.She has these little dimples that are just…Thelma wasn’t against pinching a woman’s cheek pink, but she supposed this wasn’t the right time. After all, they barely knew each other. “She mentioned something about a… cult…”
Oh, she had to go withthatstory!Sighing, Thelma dropped any pretense that she had control over her own tale. It didn’t help that Megan was fantastic at making up stories on the fly.How many iterations of this cult has she told now?Sometimes, Megan forgot her own backstory for her grandmother and still referred to Thelma as “the granny I never had,” implying that Thelma was insufferably “old-fashioned,” despite how well she had adapted to modern fashion styles.It’s my hair, isn’t it?Thelma still curled it like she always had.I won’t change my hair.It washerhair, damnit!
“Megan likes to make it sound worse than it was.” Thelma drummed her fingers against her tea mug with a sigh. “In truth, I grew up in a place trapped in the past. There was church, but it wasn’t the way Megan makes it sound.”
“This is the family that adopted you, right?”
“Right. Adopted me.” At least Megan kept that part consistent. “My mother—not Debbie, the woman who raised me—was a devout Lutheran, I’ll have you know. I know my Bible inside and out and quite like James 1 lately.”
Gretchen’s eyes were glazed over.
“You know.” She was ready to recite it. (From the Revised Standard Version, of course, with all respect to King James.) “Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
Slowly shaking her head, all Gretchen could say was, “Wow.”
“What’s your favorite Bible verse?”
With her fingers pinching the bridge of her nose and her elbow digging into the table, Gretchen was on the verge of… something. Thelma couldn’t quite place it.Suppose she’s either trying to remember Sunday school or about to argue with me.Gretchen was aware that secularism was on the rise in the modern world, but surely, Gretchen was old enough to have a favorite Bible verse!
“Can’t say I have one,” Gretchen said through laughter. “Never read the Bible.”
“Really?” Thelma leaned back in her seat. “I cannot fathom that. I had to read it forward and backward so many times. Heck, when I was a kid, that was one of the only books we still had to read in full. That and a few volumes of Dickens. You see, my dad was a collector of first editions and after the Depre…” She stopped. “After he lost his job, he had to sell most of them. I learned to read from the Bible.”
“Whoa. You couldn’t go to a library?”
“There weren’t many back then. I mean, there.”
“That’s wild. So, I’m guessing they didn’t have Pride there.”
“Nope.”
“What about gay people?”
Are they related somehow?“I had one friend. She was a lesbian.” Thelma had to turn her face away and gaze at the succulents lined up on Gretchen’s windowsill. Most of their rubbery leaves were soft, but one was a cactus with spikes that looked primed to prick.Like Sleeping Beauty.Thelma had watched that movie with Megan, who insisted on showing her grandmother all of the Disney animated films she had missed.Starting with Sleeping Beauty…The movie had come out mere months after Thelma’s disappearance.
She felt like Princess Aurora now.I pricked my finger on the spinning wheel and fell asleep for sixty years.Yet where was Prince Charming to wake her up from this strange dream?
“Was she treated okay?” Gretchen asked.
Thelma was still choked by the last memory she shared with Sandy. She wasn’t even necessarily thinking about the sex, although that clutched her heart as well. Instead, she dwelled on the cucumber sandwiches and the iced tea they shared in the backyard while talking about their families and Sandy’s work.I never realized how much I actually loved her.Like “that.” Now, in this environment where Thelma had learned homosexual couples could getmarried…
Was she a little jealous? That girls like her granddaughter had the option?I thought Bill was my only option…Sandy didn’t even put up too much of a fuss. She knew.
“You know how it is. As long as you don’t rock the boat and make too many waves, people leave you well enough alone.” Thelma paused. When Gretchen said nothing, she continued, “She had to keep it secret. I was one of the only ones in the area who knew.”
