Reinventing Rachel by Alison Strobel

her face and clenched her teeth. “Look, what’s done is done. You can’t go back and change how you handled things, and I can’t just pretend like it’s not a big deal. I need more than a vacation. I need to get out of here, out of my sheltered life, and start everything over from scratch.”
    “You can’t run away from your problems, Rachel.”
    “No? Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
    Her mother slammed the teakettle back onto the stove, making Rachel jump. “Don’t you dare judge me. You have absolutely no idea what I’ve been through.”
    “You’re right, I don’t. But that’s your own fault, not mine.”
    Her mother gripped the edge of the counter and closed her eyes. “Oh Jesus, give me patience.” A sound of disdain escaped Rachel’s throat, and her mother turned to her and glared. “You ought to be praying too, Rachel, for a more respectful attitude.”
    “If I was going to pray, it would be for something a lot more useful than that.”
    ‘What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “It means, if I was willing to talk to God, I’d be asking him for something a little more practical, like an explanation for why all this is happening when I’ve been so careful with how I’ve lived my life. I mean, don’t you ever wonder why he’s repaying all your years of service and obedience with this? A psycho husband and a pending divorce?”
    “Your father’s illness and our separation has nothing to do with God, Rachel.”
    “It doesn’t? But everything comes back to God and faith—that’s what you’ve always told me.”
    “But the Bible tells us that in this life we’ll have trouble.” Her mother’s voice cracked with emotion. “What made you think you were exempt?”
    “What about how ‘he holds us in his hand’? What about ‘ask and you will receive’? I don’t feel very held, and I certainly haven’t gotten what I asked for. Don’t throw the verses at me, Mom; I know them all as well as you do, and I’m having a hard time believing them right now.”
    “Isn’t my faithfulness a testament to you? Isn’t the fact that God is sustaining me—and has sustained me for twenty years—evidence that he’s there? That he loves me, loves us?”
    “Maybe you’re just too deluded and scared to face reality. All you have left is God. A comforting lie is better than the depressing truth, right?”
    Her mother’s hand moved so fast Rachel had no time to react. The sting of it against her cheek took a moment to register through the shock. They stared at each other, stunned, tears in both theirs eyes, until Rachel stood on shaking legs and pulled a sticky note from her pocket.
    “My new address.” She dropped the note to the table. She avoided her mother’s eyes as she moved to the front door. “I’ll e-mail you when I get there. Say good-bye to Dad next time you talk to him.” She let herself out and got in her car before her mother could see her break down. Part of her hoped her mom would come after her, pull her from the car, and wrap Rachel in her arms. But when she didn’t, Rachel knew the damage was done.
    Her final bridge in flames, she drove home to her empty apartment for one last sleepless night in California.
    o
     
    Rachel had five minutes before the airport shuttle arrived, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d forgotten something. Her bags sat by the door, packed to bursting and just a few pounds under the weight limit. The rest of her things had been shipped the day before for an ungodly amount of money, but short of putting them on pack mules, she couldn’t have chosen a cheaper option. Her car and her few pieces of furniture had been taken care of, and all the random things she didn’t want to bring she was leaving for Trisha to deal with.
    As far as she knew, that was everything. So what was she missing?
    Dropping her purse by the door, she set out on one last tour of the apartment, eyes peeled for items she might have missed. The frames on the