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Alex, Sisters by Design, book 6

By Sharon Srock

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Chapter 1
Divorced?
Alexandra Conklin looked at the papers her son had just spread out on the dining room table. She jerked her hands into her lap and twisted the thin silver band on her left hand. As long as she didn’t touch them, maybe they wouldn’t be real. Hard to deny the presence of her signature, though, and Hunter’s. It made no sense. They’d fixed that more than two decades ago.
Hadn’t they?
She looked up at her husband. Hunter sat across the table, his expression no less confused than hers.
“Mom, Dad?” Older by four minutes, Benjamin took the lead while his twin, Sean, sat back, arms crossed against his chest, his eyes moving from one parent to another.
Hunter crossed his own arms and sent Alex a hooded glance before speaking. “Where did you get this?”
The boys looked at each other. Something passed between them…some twin communication Alex had never been able to understand or participate in. A look, a twitch, a shrug. Benjamin spoke again.
“Your anniversary is coming up in a couple of weeks.”
“Three,” Alex said.
“Whatever.” Benjamin’s single word was filled with frustration. “We wanted to surprise you with a special gift. We needed a copy of your marriage license. Since we didn’t want you suspicious, we went to the courthouse to get it. The clerk asked us if we wanted a copy of the divorce filing as well.”
Another look at Sean, and the younger boy spoke for the first time. “How could we say no?”
Alex sat back and looked at Hunter. “Did you know about this?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped.
Well, they didn’t agree on much these days, but at least they were on the same page here. A rather dumfounded page.
Benjamin leaned on the edge of the table and tapped the papers. “Are you telling us that you didn’t know about this?”
Sean mirrored his brother’s pose. “Those certainly look like your signatures.”
“Yep, I got pretty good at forging your name when we were in junior high.” Benjamin sent his mother a sarcastic smile. “But if this is a forgery, it’s a professional job.”
Alex stared at her sons, distracted by the forgery statement for a second. She gave her head a tiny shake and brought herself back on track. Her sons were adults now, beyond grounding for an adolescent prank, and concerned about something much more serious. Tonight had been their once-a-month Tuesday dinner. Something Alex looked forward to every month. Not just because the twins made it a point to save the night for family time, but because she could count on Hunter to be home at a decent time. Her sons, both finishing up their sophomore year at the University of Oklahoma, had seemed distant and preoccupied ever since they’d arrived. Had this moment of confrontation been on their minds all through dinner? She looked at Hunter, expecting him to take the lead. Her expectations died when he expelled a heavy breath, lowered his head into his hands, and rubbed his temples.
The reaction didn’t surprise her. Hunter could handle the five hundred members of his congregation with the ease of a conductor directing a symphony, but parenting had always been just a half step beyond his reach. Not that he didn’t love his boys—he did. But for most of their life he’d been the occasional cheerleader, the wait-until-your-father-gets-home disciplinarian, or the absentminded granter of favors instead of the day-to-day, down-in-the-trenches parent. That job belonged to Alex.
“Mom,” the boys said in unison. They understood where their answers would come from.
“Yes, your father and I signed those papers. We also called the lawyer and told him that we’d changed our minds.”
“I don’t think he got the message,” Benjamin quipped.
“This isn’t funny,” Sean barked at his brother in a rare display of annoyance.
“Throttle down, bro, I’m not laughing,” Benjamin said. “Just stating the obvious.”
“Boys.” Alex gathered the papers and tapped them together. “Not now.”
“Wait.” Benjamin motioned to them. “What are you doing?”
“Your father and I will get to the bottom of this once the county offices open in the morning.”
“And you think Sean and I are just going to go back to school tonight and pretend this didn’t happen?”
The thought…hope…had crossed her mind. Instead, the boys exchanged a frown, settled into their chairs like their butts had been sown to the cushions, and fixed identical stares on Alex. The confusion in their expressions twisted Alex’s heart. Maybe if she downplayed it…
“There’s nothing to tell. This is obviously a clerical error of some sort. I’ll get to the bottom of it. I’ll let you guys know—”
“Nothing to tell?” Benjamin’s expression was an exact replica of the don’t-mess-with-me face Alex had used on them their entire life. “We don’t even know if our parents are married or not. How is that not important?”
“What he said.” Sean wagged a finger between his parents. “You guys got married, changed your minds, filed for divorce, and changed your minds again? An explanation seems appropriate, ’cause I sure don’t remember you ever being that indecisive when it came to making decisions for us.”
After another unproductive look at Hunter, Alex surrendered with a sigh and gave them the abbreviated version of the story. “Your father and I married very young. I was barely twenty-three and he was twenty-four. I was teaching first grade in the city, and your father had just moved to town to take the youth pastor position at the church I was attending.”
Alex glanced at Hunter from under her eyelashes. She longed to feel the zing of attraction that’d charged the very air around them all those years ago. She waited in vain. Somewhere, the fire between them had been tamped down to polite distance. This wasn’t a new revelation for Alex, but it still stung. It’d been love-at-first-sight for them, followed by a whirlwind courtship and an elopement four months later. Hunter Conklin had been everything she’d ever dreamed of. A smart, good looking Christian boy who wanted to change the world for God. So did she. It was their individual approach to that task that got them into trouble.
“You guys were youth pastors for five years,” Sean said, “and then Dad got the opportunity for the assistant pastor position here in Garfield.”
“He moved up to senior pastor three years later,” Benjamin added. “We know all that. We lived it.”
“We married in the spring,” Alex said, “four months after we met. Just me and your father, alone in the judge’s chambers with the judge and his secretary for a witness. No music, no flowers, nothing fancy. I don’t have a single picture of the ceremony. When school started again in the fall, Dad wanted me to stay home, and I wanted to return to my teaching position. We hadn’t discussed my job. I suppose we…I… just thought life would go on as a couple like it had as singles.” She clutched the papers in her lap. “It wasn’t quite that simple.”
Her hand trembled when she lifted her glass to sip at her tea. “He wanted me to give up the career I’d trained for, one I loved, to be a full-time minister’s wife. I didn’t see the need. I love the ministry and certainly wanted to be as much help to your father as possible, but he wasn’t making a lot of money, and there was so little I could do at the church.” She shrugged. “I wanted to teach for a couple more years. I thought my calling, at least part of it, was ministering to the kids in my class. We fought about it. We couldn’t resolve it. We decided to go our separate ways. Once we realized divorce wasn’t a part of God’s plan, we called it off. End of story.”
Silence fell around the table.
“The whys aren’t important,” Alex assured them. “All that matters is that, once we realized our mistake, we fixed it.” She waved the bundle of folded papers. “Or so we thought.”
“So you’re not worried about not being married?” Sean asked.
“It’s not an issue.” Finally, Hunter spoke up. “We’ve always been married in the eyes of God. A piece of paper doesn’t change that, especially a piece of paper we didn’t know existed.” When Benjamin opened his mouth, Hunter held up a hand to silence him. “I understand that there are valid legal reasons for marriages being documented by the state. I agree with them, but it doesn’t change the facts. Your mother and I have been married for almost twenty-three years regardless of what a misfiled piece of paper has to say about it.”
Benjamin held his hand across the table. “Can I have those back for a minute?” Once Alex passed them over, he spread them out on the table a second time and studied them. He looked at his mom and dad and then at his brother. “God changed your mind about the divorce?”
Alex nodded over the churning in her stomach.
“These papers are dated six months before Sean and I were born. Did God change your mind, or did being pregnant change your mind?”
Alex closed her eyes. Her precious baby boys had grown into intelligent young men. She had no one but herself to blame if they’d outsmarted her. “I’d call finding out you were having twins God’s final word on the subject, wouldn’t you?”
***
Alex crawled into bed five minutes behind Hunter. His back was to her, and she couldn’t see if his eyes were open or closed, she didn’t care. They needed to talk whether he wanted to or not. She nudged his shoulder.
“Hunter, you can’t possibly be asleep. I know we tried to minimize this situation for the boys, but we need to talk.”
He rolled to his back, eyes still closed, hands clasped at his waist. “I’m tired. I worked like a madman in order to finish up and be home for your dinner tonight. There’s nothing about this that can’t wait until morning.”
Alex remained braced on an arm while she studied her husband in the dim light of the bedside lamp. His hairline had receded in the last few years, but not much gray had threaded through the brown yet. His handsome face boasted a chiseled nose, finely drawn lips, and his jawline had an attractive end-of-day scruff. Behind his closed lids lurked dark green eyes the exact shade of a weathered emerald. Members of their congregation often commented that Hunter’s eyes could bore straight through to your soul. God had blessed him with a gift of deep discernment. A pity his gift faded to dormant when it came to his family.
“I want to talk about it tonight,” she said. “This is serious. I thought you contacted the lawyer and halted the divorce proceedings.”
Hunter tossed the sheet aside, slid up against the headboard, and crossed his arms over his bare chest. “So this is my fault?”
Alex stared at the man she’d been married to…thought she’d been married to, for half her life. “I think assigning fault is less important than discussing a solution.”
Hunter finally turned to face her. His green eyes remained calm. His whole aspect was one of unconcern. “I called the lawyer the day you told me you were pregnant. We were well within the six months that Oklahoma gives you. He said he’d take care of it. I had no reason to doubt his word. He probably did. You said yourself this must be a clerical error of some sort.”
“What if it’s not?” How could he be so unconcerned?
“Then we’ll fix it.”
“You mean we’ll get remarried.”
“If that’s what it takes.” He narrowed his eyes. “In the meantime, I expect you to keep this business to yourself. I meant what I told the boys. Our marriage vows were a covenant before God. A piece of paper doesn’t break that. Nevertheless, there are some in the church who might be offended to find out that the pastor they respect once considered divorce, even worse carried through with it. I’ve worked too hard for too long to have what I’ve built threatened by senseless gossip.”
The pastor they respect? He’d worked? Indignation crawled up Alex’s spine and drew the corners of her mouth tight. Of all the self-serving…condescending…“We. You mean we’ve worked, right?”
“Yes, Alex, we.” He brushed her concerns aside with a sweep of his hand. “This is a delicate issue. I hope I don’t need to remind you that your silence needs to include that group of women you run with.”
“The women I…” Alex sputtered to a stop. Sometimes his attitude made her angry enough to pull out her own hair. She chose to carve some time out of her week for a social life. He didn’t. Each was a personal choice. Neither was wrong, except that his choice to be busy twenty hours out of twenty-four left his wife feeling neglected and alone. He wouldn’t think of that though, not with a higher calling on his time. “Those women you’re referring to are all God-fearing, faithful members of our congregation. Yes, we share among ourselves, but you couldn’t torture a confidence out of any of them if you tried. You needn’t worry, though. I’m aware of my place as a pastor’s wife.”
Silence settled between them for a few seconds. Eighteen inches of mattress separated them. It felt more like a yawning chasm. Hunter reached across the small space and took her hand. In a rare show of physical affection, he lifted it to his lips and brushed a kiss across her knuckles, his voice conciliatory when he said, “I didn’t mean to sound harsh or dismissive. You’ve been a wonderful pastor’s wife.” He let go of her hand and smoothed the sheet where it lay across his waist. “I know most of your concern is for the boys. They’re upset, and I’m sorry for that, but once we put this behind us, they’ll be OK.”
“I think the timing hurt them.” Alex settled on to her pillow. “Thinking that we got back together just for them.”
“Is that a bad thing? They’re not little boys anymore. Maybe it’s time for you to let them be men.”
Irritation pricked a second time. Hunter, the barely-there father, Hunter who couldn’t tell her either boy’s favorite sport or favorite meal or how they liked their eggs, was going to tell her to let the sons she’d raised be men. “How could you sit across the table from them and be so clueless?”
“What are you talking about?”
How could he have missed the hurt and confusion on their faces? Like lost little boys. How could he? Because Hunter Conklin had ceased to consider earthly things years before. The reminder saddened her. The reminder infuriated her. Not bothering to respond, Alex twisted out of the bed and grabbed her pillow.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to the guest room. I’m not sleeping with a clueless, maybe husband.” She slammed the door on her way out.
***
Across town in the darkened bedroom of Lisa and Dave Sisko, the Pastors of Valley View Church, Lisa raised her head from her husband’s chest. “Dave?”
“I’m awake. I have been for a few minutes.”
“Is God nudging you to pray too?”
His arm tightened around her. “Yep.”
“Alex and Hunter?”
“Yep.”
Lisa settled her head back against the pillow of Dave’s chest. “Jesus…” she whispered.
Dave’s voice was a soft rumble in her ear. “Father, we don’t know the situation, but You do. You were concerned enough to wake us up and call us to prayer. Please bring peace and comfort to our friends.”

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