“I was humiliated and scared, of course, but determined to have the baby. I wanted to be a mother. I wanted to give my child the sort of love and affection I’d never received from my own parents. I grew up in a very hostile environment,” she said with a shudder. “And I wanted to create a loving home for my own family.”
“I had no idea,” Ginger said. “I’m so sorry.”
With a wave of her hand, Lydia added, “That’s not something anyone in town talks about, because I pretty much kept it under wraps. Jack knew, however. And when he found out I was going to have a baby and there was no father to stand up and take responsibility, Jack converted the boathouse on his parents’ property into a cottage so I could live there and raise my child. He even offered to help me. Marry me.”
A tear pooled in Lydia’s eye and it tugged at Ginger’s heart. Her nemesis had a very disturbing past, and Ginger could see the shame, guilt and sadness she’d harbored all this time.
Standing, Ginger pulled a few tissues from the box and handed them to Lydia. “What happened after that?”
“I had a miscarriage.” This brought on more tears that Lydia wiped away. “I was devastated. I had so wanted that child. It didn’t matter if I had to raise it on my own. I was determined to do whatever necessary. I loved it from the moment I learned of its existence.”
Ginger placed a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry you lost your baby, Lydia.”
“Thank you.” She took a few moments to compose herself, then said, “I went to church and confessed my sins. I needed something to get me through the trying time and Jonathan offered guidance and introduced me to a faith I believed was unwavering.”
This caused Ginger to eye her skeptically. “Are you saying your faith isn’t unwavering?”
Lydia’s lips quivered as she spoke. “When Jonathan and I fell in love, I thought of it as my second chance. Redemption and salvation and all that. He’s such a warm, kind man and I loved him dearly. I still do. But for three years we tried to get pregnant and…nothing happened. After all that time, making love felt tawdry. As though it was a sin, because we weren’t accomplishing anything. We were just…having sex.”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, I’ve spent twenty-five years being a virgin, and I don’t feel it was the least bit tawdry to—” She pressed two fingers to her lips as her eyes widened over her monumental slip. Lydia’s brow lifted, but it was too late for Ginger to cover her tracks. Her hand dropped from her mouth and she said, “When it’s with the right person, it’s not a sin, Lydia.”
The reverend’s wife turned away again, wandering aimlessly about the store. Eventually, she stopped her pacing and looked back at Ginger. “I enjoyed it,” she admitted. “I enjoyed making love with my husband. But I thought I was being punished for what I’d done when I was eighteen and I didn’t want him to be punished as well.”
“So you kicked him out of your bedroom? How is that not punishing him?”
Mortification crossed her plain features, but only for a second. She said, “Ryan told you we have separate bedrooms?”
“He mentioned it. Not in a gossipy way. There was context around it that pertained to me and him.”
“Well,” she said as she folded her arms over her chest again, this time in a defensive way. “The fact of the matter is, I didn’t ask Jonathan to sleep in a different room. He chose to do it all on his own.”
Ginger gasped. She couldn’t even imagine how deeply that would cut.
“I don’t blame him,” Lydia was quick to say. “Why not move out? All he received in my bedroom was the cold shoulder as I rolled over to my side of the bed every evening without so much as a goodnight kiss.”
“Lydia.” Ginger closed the gap between them and gripped the other woman’s upper arms. “Have you ever considered you’ve gone too far?”
More tears pooled in her eyes. “Of course. But when you’ve reached the end of the path, there’s no going back.”
“Yes, there is. You don’t have to keep up this pious behavior. Being a good Christian isn’t about shunning others for their choices, it’s about helping them and letting them find their way. It’s about accepting the differences people inherently have. You can’t force everyone to be just like you. Especially when you’re not the least bit happy with who you’ve become.”
It was an easy call to make, now that Ginger had seen the vulnerability Lydia had hidden behind her holier-than-thou attitude.
“You’re not seeing the bigger picture, Ginger.”
“Then tell me what it is.”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t approve of promiscuity and pre-marital sex because I don’t want girls like you and Liza Brooks making the same mistake I did. All I can think is that the reason God won’t grace me with a child is because I got pregnant when I was eighteen and unwed.”
Releasing Lydia’s arms, Ginger raised hers in the air and proclaimed, “Lydia, that could happen to any eighteen-year-old, unwed woman! And whether she loses the baby or not could have absolutely nothing to do with divine intervention. Furthermore, your inability to have children could be physical or biological—not God’s punishment. I mean, have you and Jonathan even seen a specialist about this??
?
Her shoulders tensed. “No, we have not. I wouldn’t subject him to that after all we’ve been through.”
“So you latched onto the easiest explanation and then cast your condemnation of your own actions onto others in town.” Ginger shook her head. “Shame on you. And for the record, Liza and I are not girls. We’re sensible women in love, Lydia. For better or for worse.”
Lydia’s shocked expression over Ginger’s outburst turned challenging. “Really?” she demanded. “For better or for worse?”