Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
“If what helps?”
“I offered to help Delaney with the wedding stuff. Any aesthetician stuff, I’m game. If she’s sure she’s got the girls hair handled, and I can do the rest, then you won’t have to worry about getting a call asking you for the favor of a lifetime. Right?”
Neither woman moved.
Gracen’s eyebrows lifted high like her messy, blonde bun while Margot puckered half her face in preparation for something unkind from the woman sitting across from her. Not that it would happen. Gracen wasn’t as upset about the wedding as everyone apparently thought. That was just an unfortunate detail involved with everything else.
“Delaney is cool with you helping?” Gracen asked.
Margot nodded.
“Will you really do anything, though?” she pushed harder. “They’re not allowed to wear makeup or get their nails done, so—”
“You’re sounding a little judgy,” Margot pointed out quietly. “And Delaney said they could on special occasions wear or do something little that enhances their natural beauty. Nude or clear gloss, French tips. You know, simple stuff.”
“Right,” Gracen scoffed. “In the image of God, and all.”
“Again, a little judgy there.”
“What difference does it make if a bride has hair that reaches the floor on her wedding day, or a bob? It’s foolishness and shouldn’t determine who is the most faithful to God. Delaney says it’s ridiculous, too, and she grew up in that fucking church, Margot.”
“Exactly, so she can say it. In a way that explains how it hurt and affected her. I’m not so sure you should.”
That comment made Gracen’s jaw snap shut because nobody had put her in her place regarding her opinions about the very conservative, fundamentalist church and its congregation on the hill. Although, if she were being honest, Gracen didn’t tend to share those opinions of hers outside of Delaney, who had helped to form most of them.
“Take a second to think—a lot of the church’s congregation are willing participants in their faiths demands. They attend nightly service three times a week, work hard to give back twenty-percent tithe to their church’s community, and in return they have security and a place of worship that provides back for them so no one in their community must struggle. All in all, as an atheist like me looking at it,” Margot said as she unpeeled the cheap bottle of wine’s cap to find the screwed on top underneath, “they don’t have the general idea wrong. I’m just not about the bible-thumping bit, you know?”
“You say that and also blatantly ignore red flags about their—” Gracen made air quotes with her fingers. “Faith’s demands.”
“You mean the modesty restrictions?”
Gracen let out a hard breath, already over this whole conversation even if Margot had been kind with her argument. “To start. Even that’s glossing over some of it. Let’s not overlook the purity culture they stuff down every girl’s throat from the time she can walk; how does color or lack of it make you closer to God? No, it’s all about dresses long to the ankles and sleeves to the wrists so work and devotion are what’s on everyone’s mind, and not the sin of temptation—blah, blah, blah.”
Her hands flew up in a gesture of peace because nobody needed Gracen Briggs to go into a rant. Plus, maybe it wasn’t her place to discuss the lives of people she wasn’t actively helping in some way. “I get they have a choice, but I learned with Delaney that their other option is when they grow up and say, hey, no. I don’t want to wear only black dresses, or I want to cut my hair, or no, I don’t want to get married to the only boy I’m approved to date ... The other option is no community, no support—no one who is supposed to love you. That kind of thing damages, too.”
“Well, yeah,” Margot conceded.
Oh, but, Gracen wasn’t done. If her biases made her judgemental, then so be it. That didn’t mean she had to be shallow about it; there were also valid reasons for her feelings. “In high school, Delaney had two phones so she could actually have friends outside of the maybe five Pentecosts that went to school with us. Her other one was tracked by the church; every device they can use to access the internet is tracked with an app they’re required to download.”
“So what, if you see some porn, the pastor’s having a chat with you?” Margot asked.
If only it was that simple. Gracen worried it went way deeper than that when even Google searches about their faith or teachings had been enough to get people called in for a talk—or so Delaney told Gracen.
It was entirely possible that Gracen just had too much time and YouTube on her hands, but she could recognize specific behavior—cultish behavior—when she saw it.
“Look up the BITE Model—Steven Hassan basically wrote the how-to for quick and easy cults,” Gracen said even knowing the joke was lame. “Just because they’re doing their thing in a sleepy, small town, and it doesn’t look harmful doesn’t mean it’s not making generational trauma somewhere down the line.”