​Two women came from the States, separately—to visit me during the months after my terrifying expulsion from the one man’s ministry—with many intentions crammed into their agendas. The one that hit me was the fact they both felt strongly called to sit me down and tell me to let go of Dan.
 
One said, “You’re so tied up in Dan you can’t move forward.”
 
“I am not!” I hotly denied.
 
“Suit yourself,” she shrugged. “But you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face. You need to let go.”
 
The other said, “Maggie, your lack of finances is a result of holding onto Dan.”
 
I said, “You’re the second one in two weeks to tell me I am holding on to Dan. I don’t get it. How can I be? He’s buried in the hills of Tennessee, and I’m buried in the hills of France.”
​

​Dan called once a month the first year I returned to France. They allowed him to use the office phone and tolerated an international call, which he paid for. Living in Greg and Alice’s house—called a Trinity because there were three floors, and each floor had one room—I established myself in the bedroom constituting the top floor. The telephone reverberated through the house, ringing on the bottom floor and reaching the top floor with insistence. Dan called in the middle of the night, being six hours earlier and not wanting to use prime time rates. By the time I woke up and hustled down those stairs, I didn’t care who was calling; I didn’t want to hear from them. But Dan evoked something in me that I couldn’t release.
 
He called on our anniversary, October 24th. It would have been our 34th, but fortunately I wasn’t there. It wasn’t an event I wished to celebrate. It’s not that I rejoiced at being divorced; I didn’t. I just felt the thirty-three years had been a sham and all the other celebrations a deceit.