Mrs. Saintly and The Recluse

I’m writing out my life in a timeline, so to experience my story the way its supposed to be told, start at I Was That Girl In School… then proceed chronologically by post date.

I went to school. I went to work. I hung out with Boyfriend. This became my routine once I started college. I did not have the ‘typical’ college experience had by most. Being the old fashioned people my parents were, if I wanted something, I had to work for it, and college was no different. So instead of going straight to a 4 year university where I would have to either a.) sell a vital organ, or b.) sign my life away by taking on the enormous burden that is student debt, I stayed with my parents for my first 2 years of college. I worked around my classes to save up enough to break even for the impending semester. Oh-what-a-life!

Often times, I would kill two birds with one stone by spending time with Boyfriend at his place and do my schoolwork (mainly mooching off his parents’ wifi). His parents lived on a sort of compound – for lack of a better term. They lived in the main house, with a detached building behind which contained a storage room and office with a church sanctuary above (since Boyfriend’s mom was a pastor…), then scattered around the property were a handful of trailers; one of which Boyfriend lived in.

There was another trailer adjacent to Boyfriend’s that saw many a tenant: friends, family, who ever needed a place to stay were welcome. At this point, a guy that worked for Boyfriend’s stepdad was living there until he could get back on his feet. Boyfriend’s mom had approached us one day and asked us to spend some time with this guy because he didn’t really know anyone in the area and he wasn’t very social (neither were we, but we obliged). Boyfriend and I invited The Recluse over to hang one evening. We got to talking about how he met Boyfriend’s mom at a soup kitchen and she offered him a place to stay and a job with the family’s construction business to get him off the streets (I know, how very saintly).

But you know what Mrs. Saintly and The Recluse left out…? He was in prison before hitting the streets as a homeless person. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe in giving people second chances, but is it too much to ask for full disclosure in such instances??

We confronted The Recluse a few weeks after getting acquainted, so he told us his reason for being locked up… He was living with a family at some point in his life, and struck up a relationship with the 16 year old daughter. Parents found out and pressed charges against him for statutory rape (obviously). He said that the relationship between the two of them was completely consensual, but the parents didn’t like it, since he was at least 20 years her senior!

This situation is somewhat understandable: the heart wants what the heart wants. The parents just couldn’t understand, yada yada yada. He goes to prison for sometime, then gets released early on probation for good behavior, winds up in (shall we say) the right time and place, meets Mrs. Saintly, and he’s back on track. Sounds like a fairly innocent situation, doesn’t it? Well it would have been if he were actually being truthful…