NOTE: Here the story switches to Sarah's point of view. Please do not believe that I share Matt's opinions about women, or Sarah's opinions about love and marriage. I just wanted to provide a believable reason why a person living in the 21st century would marry someone they had just met.
Also, I still do not own any of these characters or anything else having to do with the show. Those are solely the province of Brenda H. and her minions. With those caveats, please read and enjoy.
Marry in Haste …
Chapter Four: What Sarah Knew
All the way to California, staring out the window of the plane at the clouds, Sarah had been trying to think of a way to tell her parents.
Mom, Dad, it's over. Matt and I are through.
It would be a painful admission. Sarah Glass Camden had always been a girl with a lot of pride, and telling her parents that her marriage was a dismal failure would be a double blow. Not only would she have to admit defeat, something she had always hated, but she would have to watch as her parents struggled not to say "I told you so." They had been dying to say it ever since she had come home and told them she was marrying Matt Camden, preacher's son, after only one date.
Why had she done it? Looking back now, it was hard to see what had compelled her. Matt was good-looking, yes, that was true, and Sarah had been attracted to him from the first. But she had dated good-looking, sexy men before and had never been overwhelmed by desire the way she was with Matt, tempted almost beyond reasoning. Maybe it didn't put her in the best light, but she had to face it: a major part of her decision to marry had been because she wanted him, badly, and she hadn't wanted to wait.
There were other factors in her decision, she reminded herself. There had been fallout from the whole situation with Kenneth -- dating for three years and still no closer to marriage after all that time. Kenneth had seemed content to keep things as they were for as long as possible, millennia probably, and after a while she had started to wonder why a guy who said he loved her so much was so content not to sleep with her. Finally, she had broken up with him, convinced that he would never change.
She had come home to her parents' house as she always did when things went wrong in her life. Rabbi and Mrs. Glass disliked Kenneth and were not sorry to see him go, but they were sympathetic to her misery. She had wasted so much time and energy and love on the guy, and all for nothing. They reassured her during her moments of despair when she wondered if she would ever find someone, when she worried that she had missed her chance at happiness and she might never get another.
While at her parents' house, she had discovered a huge box of old photo albums in the downstairs closet. They had belonged to her grandmother, a fanatical photographer who took dozens of pictures to record every family occasion. There were many, many photos in the book of her grandfather, and Sarah had marveled at the kind of love that would compel a woman to take pictures every day of the man she had been married to for decades, a man she must have known as well as she knew herself.
Sarah's grandparents had lived in neighboring villages in Russia. They had known each other only a week before they ran away together, first to the city to get married, then to America. Yet here, carefully preserved on thick black cardboard pages, was proof of the bond that had tied them together for nearly 70 years, until their deaths. Their love for each other was clear to see on every page.
Perhaps that was what she was doing wrong, Sarah thought. She was taking things too slowly, too carefully, waiting to see how things would work out before she was willing to make any kind of sacrifice or commitment. Maybe with something like love, it was better to follow your instincts, to do what your heart told you rather than holding back.
That was what had been foremost in her mind when she went to work her shift at the hospital and overheard orderly Matt Camden say he was looking for a wife.
So maybe she hadn't really been in the best frame of mind to make a decision when she and Matt went on that fateful date. Maybe it was true that once the excitement of the wedding had worn off, some of the excitement had seemed to wear off their marriage also. But still, she had done her best. She had been determined to make things work, all the way up until the night before last.
He had come in late, flustered and obviously upset, unwilling to look her in the eye. They hadn't been getting along very well for days and she had the suspicion that he was trying to avoid her as much as possible, but there was still something different about the way he was acting that night. Before, he had been excessively patronizing of her, treating her as though she was a burden he was expected to bear stoically, but he had never acted so … She searched for the word. Guilty, she realized with a shock.
Quietly, she asked, "Who is she, Matt?"
Bull's eye. He turned bright red and began stammering -- what was she talking about, who did she mean -- but it was obvious. He was a terrible liar. And with her suspicions confirmed, the pain she'd been suppressing for weeks became unbearable, and she lost it.
"Don't lie to me!" she wailed. "I can see it written all over your face. How could you do it, after everything we've been through! How could you do this to me!"
Matt grabbed her by the arms and held her, looking into her eyes. "Sarah, listen to me. It was nothing. I just stopped by to see a girl in my psych class. She called because her boyfriend broke up with her and she wanted to talk. It was nothing. I swear to you, I didn't sleep with her."
She wavered for a minute. He was looking right into her eyes, desperate for her to believe him. Then she noticed the way his eyes would flicker off past her, over her head, while he talked. He didn't sleep with her …
"How far did it go, Matt? Did she stop you before you got what you wanted?"
He could say nothing.
She twisted out of his arms and ran into their tiny bedroom and locked the door.
Two days later, she was on the plane to Glenoak.