Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 81281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
“What was it like?” I can’t help but ask.
“It was brainwashing at its finest. Children were praised for obedience. Questions were not welcome. Curiosity was treated as a sin.” She looks at her coffee and smiles with a tinge of bitterness.
“But you left?”
“Escaped.” She nods. “When I was thirteen, I found out I had been promised to the head pastor. He was sixty-two. He already had four wives.” My stomach drops. “I was supposed to become the fifth on my fourteenth birthday.”
The matter-of-fact way she says it is devastating.
“But you got out,” I murmur thankfully.
“The last night of my thirteenth year.” Her smile turns almost mischievous. “It was a grand and daring escape in the middle of the night. I went to the police, and you should have seen their faces when I told my story. There was an investigation, of course. Arrests. The whole thing came down.” She pauses, a satisfied gleam in her eyes. “My parents were part of it. They’d agreed to the arrangement. They believed they’d receive eternal glory in exchange.” A look crosses her face that isn’t quite bitterness and isn’t quite grief. “They never forgave me for bringing it down. Never wanted me back.”
“Where did you go?”
“Foster care. Eventually landed with a good couple in Ohio who gave a damn.”
“And your parents now?”
“My mother contacted me not long ago. My father died and she was lonely and needed help.” She says it without inflection. “We didn’t reconcile.”
I grimace at the woman’s audacity. “I don’t blame you for that at all.”
“I considered it. I was going to go see her, and maybe one day I will, but I just don’t have any desire to do so. Is that bad?”
“Not at all. We deal with our traumas in ways that protect our souls. I’d lean into that if I were you.” I smile at her with encouragement. “And look what it brought you? You turned that into a powerful narrative for the entire world to see. You took down another church. Imagine all the girls you’ve saved between your own experience and those from the documentary.”
Juno blushes. “I never think of it like that, but yeah… I guess I did.”
“And look at me… now friends with an Oscar and Golden Globe nominee. I feel special.”
“You’re hardly special for knowing me for that,” she quips.
“Okay,” I say, lowering my voice as if I need all the tea. “Tell me a little about the glitz and glam of it all.”
Juno snorts. “I am so not glitzy or glamorous. The film festival circuit is a world away from my own reality.”
“Like how?”
She laughs. “I showed up to Sundance in a dress I borrowed from a friend and spent three days pretending I knew what I was doing. The film won the Documentary Short Award, and I stood at that podium and thanked my family and meant it. What they did to me made my success possible. It was the best and worst week of my life.”
“And then somehow you ended up here.”
“And then somehow I ended up here.” She tilts her head with a particular warmth that I’m starting to recognize as distinctly Juno. “Documenting a hockey team. Which is not what I saw coming.”
“How did Patrick find you?”
“He watched the film,” she says simply. “He reached out through my agent. Said he wanted someone who would tell the real story of this team’s first season—not the PR version, not the highlight reel. The actual thing.” She pauses. “I told him I wasn’t a sports documentarian. He said that was exactly why he wanted me.”
“And Crosby was—” I start.
“An unforeseen complication,” she says dryly, but the affection under it is unmistakable. Her face softens when she says his name, and she probably doesn’t even know it. “He didn’t want to be filmed. Made that clear from day one. And then somehow, he became the central story, at least in my world.”
“I love that you fell in love with one of your subjects.”
“It’s surprising to me it even happened,” she says, shaking her head as if caught in a fond memory. “He wanted nothing to do with me at first.”
And completely unbidden, Locke’s face takes center stage in my mind. The way he looked confused when I sat him down for wine and cheese in Newberg.
Like Crosby with Juno, Locke wants absolutely nothing to do with me.
“Crosby seems to be the glue that holds this team together,” I muse.
“He really is.” She’s quiet for a second. “He’s a good man. A very private, very guarded, very good man and I am—” She stops. Shakes her head once. “Anyway.”
She doesn’t need to say the words. I can see she’s head over heels for him.
“Was Patrick upset that you developed a relationship with one of the players?”
“Not at all. He’s kind of the ‘go with the flow’ type. Plus, I think he’s a secret romantic.”