As Angela drove through the darkness, towards the lit farmhouse in the distance, her knuckles tightened at ten and two on the steering wheel.

Normally she would listen to the radio, WRGN 88.9, and its religiously themed programs, but tonight those ideas and thoughts only cruelly reminded her of the mistakes she had made in the past.

Alex

And now…..Dwight?

He was acting so strangely towards her lately, so unlike the man that she knew and had fallen in love with. Because that man was straightforward with his feelings, he was strong, and made sure she knew he wanted her. There was never uncertainty or lingering questions that twisted her stomach into sickening knots at night. Any questions she asked, he answered dutifully and honestly.

But now it felt like they were broken somehow, and she had no idea how or why it had happened. Whenever she brought up the subject of their future together, of them joining together in matrimony, he never answered her directly. He seemed to be pulling away from her slowly but perceptibly, masking his once honest emotions with averted glances, mumbled excuses, and physical seduction.

Today he hadn’t sent her the daily e-mail on the office infractions, malfeasances, and changes that he always did. It wasn’t the list of things she cared about, though they were disgusting, base, and usually involved Jim, but rather the little message that he always finished the e-mail with. Sometimes it was a poem; sometimes it was just a couple sentences on how much he loved her.

Didn’t he know how much she looked forward to that e-mail?

Didn’t he know how much those words meant to her?

Everyday she would print out the e-mail, delete it immediately from her computer, and then take it into the bathroom on her next break to read privately. Away from those horrible cameras, and her equally lecherous co-workers, she would smile widely at his thoughtfulness, and wonder at how she had found such a wonderful man in such an unlikely place…or really at all.

But him not sending her an e-mail today underscored that something was wrong between them. It made her desperate and hopeless at the same time, and so weak that she had had to talk to Pam about it.

Though Angela had to admit, despite the fact that she was picking pumpkins with her second boyfriend of the year, Pam’s advice resonated within her.

She had to talk to him. They had to be honest with one another, because she had questions, and she needed answers.

How did he feel about her?

Why didn’t he love her enough to want to talk about marriage?

Because if this was some game for him, just a set of lies to get sex, like it had been with Alex….if she had trusted again, physically and spiritually, only to be betrayed, than that was it.

She would never trust a man ever again.

Her knuckles tightened on the wheel, blanching them an even fairer shade of ivory, and shooting a pain throughout her hand that desperately tried to distract her mind from the whir of uncertainty and fear that spun through it.

If this was a game to him, if she had been fooled again, then it would be okay. She knew life alone wasn’t so bad anyway. She had lived most of her adult life alone, physically, and especially emotionally, so going back wouldn’t be terribly difficult. There was safety in being by yourself, it meant not having to constantly worry about what someone else was thinking, and how they were thinking about you. It would be completely okay.

Angela stopped the car in front of the farmhouse, but instead of going inside, she bowed her head so that it rested on the coolness of the middle of the steering wheel. Her desperate and half-hearted rationalizations did nothing to quell the worry in her, and the pain she felt. The collision of emotions pushed her mind back to the night before.

She had been lying alone in bed because he had called shortly before dinner and informed her that he wouldn’t be coming over, not for dinner or for dessert. The disappointment in her heart at his phone call made the words he had spoken to her hazy, but she remembered something about farm business with Mose that needed immediate attention.

Why that would take so long, or preclude him from at least spending the night in her bed, holding her and protecting her from the encroaching cold of the season, she didn’t know. His words had been curt and few, and her questions had remained inside of her and unanswered.

So she had gone to the place where she had always found them. Her well-worn copy of the Bible. But even there, on pages where the answers were supposed to be clear and simple, the words she read twisted and conjured themselves into manifestations of her fears and worry.

It had been completely innocent on her part. She had thought to re-read the Gospel of Matthew, at least in part, because of The Sermon on the Mount, which contained several of her favorite passages. However, it hadn’t been enough to soothe her, and so she had continued to read. It was then that she was struck more strongly than Paul on the road to Damascus.

“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven….”

She had read the words before, many times in fact, but this time, alone and yearning so desperately not to be, they struck her completely differently. All she could think of was Dwight, and how in the past two years he had been her rock. How whether she had initially wanted to or not, she had built herself upon him. He was her foundation, her constant source of strength in days when she needed him to be. Days when Michael simply became too much, or when she tried so hard to re-capture the happiness of her college years with the Party Planning Committee, only to be meet with incompetence and indifference.

It was why she had given him the keys to her kingdom, to her heart, and to her body. It was why she loved him completely, unwaveringly, and unquestioningly. It was why she wondered why suddenly business with Mose took precedent over being with her. It was why she was sitting in a parked car, in front of the farmhouse, wondering if confronting him on his behavior was the best thing to do.

As she exhaled sharply, Angela looked up at the house and she saw his silhouetted frame against the light that poured through the opened front door. There was no more time to think, only to act, and suddenly doubt in her actions disappeared under the heavy, dark waves of necessity to know. To know not only what he thought, but to know that he wasn’t Alex, and that the worst moment of her life wasn’t about to replay itself.