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Chapter 24: Betrayal

For the next few weeks, I laid low. I didn't go to parties, didn't hang out with friends. I just, laid low. On Christmas day, I was scrolling through my phone and came across a familiar picture. It was Katherine and her family with Jordan wedged right in the middle. Must be last year's picture. I thought as I kept scrolling, but something in my head told me to examine it further. I flipped through the pictures that had been posted through the last year and came across the family Christmas picture from the year before. It was the exact same, but everyone was wearing green pajamas with candy canes on them. I flipped back over to Katherine's post, hurriedly, and saw that everyone in that picture was wearing red flannel pajamas. "No," I gasped.

"What is it?" My mom questioned beside me on the couch.

"I think Katherine and Jordan are back together,"

I gaped at the picture on my phone. "I think he's out of rehab."

"It wasn't rehab," my dad scoffed from his recliner.

"Then what was it?" I stared.

"It was a center where people learn to recover from addictions and grow closer to God."

"So, it was a Christian Rehab center," I stated.

"No, it wasn't, and don't call it that. Yes, they're back together. Have been for a while," he said without tearing his gaze away from the television.

"What?" I said breathlessly.

"Katherine told me. They got back together a few weeks after he left. I've talked to him a handful of times. Seems like he's really on fire for God."

The way he spoke about Jordan was familiar. It was the same way they had spoken about him when we had first met.

~ ~ ~

That Sunday at church, my fears came to reality. Katherine and Jordan were walking hand in hand. In their other arms, they carried their Bibles. Everyone stopped them as they passed by and I listened as I overheard the older people tell Jordan how wonderful he was and how proud of him that they were. I forced myself to smile when people asked me about them and about how Jordan was doing. "I don't know, but they're here this morning if you want to ask them yourself," was my go-to answer to the questions that berated me from people of all ages.

I tried to stay away from them and out of their way as much as I could that Sunday and it worked. That Sunday night, though, I wasn't as lucky. Jordan had been asked to speak about his experience at Jericho Lake (the rehab center) and about how it had changed his life. I sat in the back row and listened as Jordan told the church his story. He told them about the wreck in Colorado before he moved to Georgia, about jail, and probation and the mistakes he had made since then. He told them about his anger, the drug use, the alcohol, and the lies he had been telling everyone including himself. If I didn't personally know him, and if I could dissect the words he was saying from the man saying them I would have found it very inspirational.

I had spent months making bad decisions that ultimately led to "the bad thing" as I had started calling that night at Matthew's. I knew I wasn't being the "good Christian girl" my parents had raised and I felt like it was catching up to me. I didn't agree with my dad's belief about drinking. He thought even a sip of alcohol was a sin. I knew that for me, I could handle it, but it had led to so many other mistakes. I knew the drugs and the sex were wrong and as my head buzzed with all of the things I had done since Jordan and Greyson had come into our lives, and I realized I had become a different person.

"Hey Ind!" Jordan called to me after the service had ended.

"Hey, Jordan," I said with a smile. "Glad you're back."