The Red Signal (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (28 page)

“When I’m seeing faces like this in my dreams, I just need to back up,” she told me, and I took it to mean that she wanted to back away from me.

There it was – Sherrie was having the types of prophetic warning dreams about evil afoot that she’d had before about Desmond and another woman. It was the way I’d wanted my name to be connected to his – but this plan wasn’t turning out like I’d hoped.

I wanted the fun without the fires of affliction, but when you’re talking adultery, even non-sexual but emotional cheating, “Ain’t no ‘sicha’ thing,” as my grandfather might say.

My relationship with Desmond was bringing out a side of Sherrie that I just didn’t like, but I eventually would realize was for the best. This tempest had to be stirred up within her – it was all a part of the plan to keep me from ruining my life and myself.

It started coming to a head when I left Desmond after some crazy crash driving event at the new location and headed back to the old location to hang out with Sherrie. During the after service time, Desmond called and joked with me, telling me he was stranded – knowing my nerves were already a bit jangled from watching a teenager crash his car into a curb mere hours before as he taught her how to drive.

“I was just about to tell you to stay right there, that I’d come get you,” I laughed into the phone, covering my eyes with my hand to avoid Sherrie’s gaze.

“You turned into like this schoolgirl around him,” she’d tell me during many quiet nights later, as we dissected the events next to the fireplace in my living room.

But that day, I was all about Desmond. I continued chatting on the phone as Sherrie and I walked out to our cars, and I opened the electronic sliding door of my minivan and sat low on the floor, talking to him.

“I’m going to go,” Sherrie said, tired of waiting. I smiled and waved her away.

Soon thereafter, when I texted and called Sherrie both on her home phone and cell phone to find out if I could schedule her for a certain location on a certain day, I got no response.

When she found out that Desmond and his wife had come over my house for dinner to hang out with Trevor and me, she got even more upset.

“Do you think it’s wise to work so closely with someone you’re attracted to?” she asked me, after I forced a smile out of her while offering her a plate of red beans and rice with freshly sliced tomatoes atop one afternoon.

Part of me felt sorry that I even confessed my feelings for Desmond to her, especially since it seemed she was throwing them back in my face. But perhaps she was only being my accountability partner – one of those terms Christians love, along with words like “transparency” that should be in the Christianese dictionary – like I felt I was doing when I called her to the carpet on actions in her past, statements she believed were being thrown up in her face as well.

At least I admitted my jealousy when Desmond liked the younger woman at first; I thought Sherrie was hiding her true ugly emotions behind a bunch of holy-sounding words. But that’s neither here nor there, I didn’t exactly bite back at her queries like I did my husband when he was acting all holier-than-thou.

It really reached the apex when Sherrie and I ended up at the same location one Wednesday night, and right beforehand she’d finally found her phone and discovered how to call me back. I wasn’t having it, so I barely spoke to her the whole night.

The melee got back to Desmond – and by the following Wednesday night, he pressed me for details about what was going on.

“I feel something in my spirit,” he said, sitting there in the darkness next to me. “I can sense it.”

I hemmed and hawed around, avoiding his questions, thinking of what to say. I may have been head over heels and “wide open” for the man, but I was still smart enough not to say, “Sherrie’s mad because you and I have been so close and I told her I was crushing on you.”

Talk about a recipe for disaster. This was a man whose thigh I’d touched, and he’d tapped the side of my leg several times, leaving me hoping my muscles felt strong and taut.

We were alone, in the dark – and not strong enough to avoid the mutual attraction between us. I literally grew hot as I tried to explain the situation in safe terms to him.

“You see, you’re like Jesus,” I told Desmond. “And I’m like John. I’m the disciple whom Jesus loved. And Sherrie is like Peter. You know how they went at it sometimes.”

Desmond tried to take in my biblical scenario, growing more confused. I decided on more direct, simpler terms, holding up my fingers to illustrate.

“At first there were five of us on the team, then four, then three,” I described, with three digits in the air, folding one finger down until only two remained aloft. “Then you and I came down here…and it’s just us two.”

“Oh,” he exclaimed. “You mean she’s feeling like the odd-man out?”

“Yes,” I said, glad that I’d given him an answer that satisfied his cravings, yet didn’t tell too much of the danger afoot. I was happy he was no longer mad at me for holding out on him like he’d seemed minutes earlier, drinking his water slowly, pausing when I asked if he were mad at me.

“No,” he’d said, after several seconds.

“That was a long ‘no,’” I’d said, and the anger turned to laughter.

When Desmond darted out of the room and called the pastor, summoning him to talk to Sherrie at the other location, I had no idea he’d planned to do that. When he grabbed my arm and dragged me away from the soundboard in front of everybody as he chatted on the phone, I wondered if my arm inadvertently hit his belt or something else. I didn’t want to know.

All I knew was that as he carted me down the hall arm-in-arm, it was too much. We were crossing all kinds of lines for two people that were married, but not to each other.

The mess with Sherrie would explode into a bunch of feelings the next morning, as she warned me against confessing my feelings to our leader. I couldn’t take the lies and covering up any more, so during a conference call between the three of us, I confessed to Desmond – with Sherrie listening – that this trouble was because I felt an attraction to him.

Desmond didn’t admit it then, but waited to call me later to say that he told our pastor that the attraction was mutual, and that he and I would be sent to separate church locations. Like two lovers ripped apart, our conversations grew more intimate, and we still found ways to see each other at the new church location.

“It doesn’t have to be weird between us when we see each other,” he said, but something had to give. 

“It’s Mr. McDonald again!” my son would say, handing me my Droid phone when Desmond called back unexpectedly, right after I’d hung up with him.

I didn’t want my kids seeing their mom act in inappropriate ways like I’d seen both my parents act whilst growing up a time or two or three. Maybe that’s why I gave myself away, turning to my laptop to write out the somewhat lusty, fictionalized tale of Desmond and I, and posted the screenplay online in a contest.

Accompanying the movie script was a trailer video, wherein I spoke of coming close to cheating on my husband, with somebody else’s husband. Though I didn’t expect it, someone from church found the video and my writings, and snitched on me to the pastor, who promptly – along with Desmond – kicked me off the team and out of that church location.

At first I cursed the cyber spy in my head, thinking they had a lot of nerve trying to curry favor with the head guy by telling on me. But then I learned to bless God for that person – even if it was Desmond’s wife, or whomever was Googling me – because they were used as a pawn to get me away from a dangerous situation, and to help save two families from being destroyed.

Though I didn’t see it in the days following being kicked out of church and thrust away from the people there who claimed to be as close as my family – especially during the mornings when I was so sad I could only drive to a nature park and lay my head against the driver’s side window and sob – but that event would have the hugest impact on not only driving me back to God, but driving my marriage back closer together.

And beyond those bountiful blessings, it would have an amazing impact on finally granting me the Hollywood career I craved. But not without a lot of miraculous days and magnetic drama first…