As they approached the Interstate 95 on-ramp, Suzanne looked at the highway signs. She could take the southbound exit and head to Florida, to her mother’s house. But she followed Rick, like she always did. It was the way God commanded, after all, and children need a father.
Rolling northward, Suzanne erased her negative thoughts and focused on the highway. She didn’t know she was driving her family to hell.
2
SETTLING IN
Cora Cooper’s white bungalow was tucked between an auto-repair shop and a Coca-Cola bottling plant. Suzanne pulled the van into the driveway and killed the engine. Her mother-in-law stood smiling on the front porch.
Suzanne took a deep breath. This wasn’t her kind of place. Sure, the Blue Ridge Mountains were picturesque, but the narrow, winding roads into town were lined with derelict factories and stores. The clapboard houses had appliances rusting on the porch, and Fords rusting on the lawn.
Jeffrey, Lena, Benjamin, Peter, and Chad poured out of the van and into their grandmother’s arms. Suzanne pulled John David from his car seat. Rick parked the truck in the space behind them.
The house was dark, smaller than Suzanne had remembered.
“You can stay as long as you like,” Cora said, almost reading Suzanne’s thoughts. “I’m happy you’re here. Happy to have my grandbabies right here, where I can hold them.”
Suzanne walked from room to room, trying not to feel horrified. Elvis figurines and other knickknacks covered the tabletops. Suzanne envisioned six little pairs of hands smashing it all to smithereens. The worst awaited on the enclosed back porch. Out there was the bathroom: one toilet, a claw-foot tub, no shower. No lock on the door. No privacy. No laundry facilities. She’d have to use the coin laundry down the street.
Rick called in the older children. Suzanne washed walls, floors, and baseboards, Cora watched the babies, and Rick and the bigger kids carried in boxes and tidied away the clutter.
It was close to midnight when they finished. Everyone collapsed into sleep.
Everyone but Rick. He sat up in the kitchen and looked forward to his bright future. The tight quarters didn’t bother him. If he could live on a submarine, he could live anywhere. Life was about pleasing God. Hardship was part of the journey. If Jesus was leading them here, who was he to question it?
* * *
Word of Faith Fellowship pulled the Coopers into a whirl of worship services, parents’ meetings, weddings, and noisy Friday night fellowship dinners.
The children enrolled in the church’s Christian school and nursery programs, and a few weeks later Suzanne found she was pregnant again. She wondered how they could manage another child, but Rick was upbeat. Children are blessings, he said. Didn’t Genesis command the faithful to “be fruitful and multiply”? But Suzanne knew the new baby had more to do with Rick’s libido than God’s will.
Meanwhile, Rick set aside his Bible school plan. He’d need to work to support his growing family, and two of the church leaders offered him a job at their construction company. But he saw that life at Word of Faith was an education in itself. He listened to every word Jane Whaley uttered during Sunday morning and Wednesday night services, and when weekday morning sessions were offered, he went to those, too.
The church numbered five hundred souls and was growing fast, and Rick felt he was on the ground floor of something big.
This wasn’t just a church; it was a community. It stood on thirty-five acres on the edge of Spindale. Sanctuary, fellowship hall, classrooms, and executive offices were clustered in a main building, with smaller buildings scattered over the site serving other needs.
The perimeter was secured by a line of tall, sturdy pine trees. Old Flynn Road, a narrow two-lane, was the only way in and out. Members of the security team manned the front gate and monitored every car. Services were private, by invitation only.
The Whaleys had bought the property in the mid-1980s. Everything was neat and clean—just the way Jane Whaley liked it. Sam and Jane had preached all over the world, and forged ties with similar churches overseas. Twice each year, their weeklong Bible seminar sessions at the Spindale campus attracted thousands. When the week was up, followers often stayed behind and joined the church. It was a multicultural place, with members from England, Scotland, Switzerland, Germany, Brazil, and Ghana as well as Americans from all over.
The diversity was a selling point. People of all races and nations prayed together, with a leader who herself defied the old white male preacher stereotype. It was a safe, clean, popular place, on its way up.
“This is what we’ve been looking for,” Rick told Suzanne. They joined the church. Suzanne was dismayed one Sunday morning when church elders surrounded little John David, laid their hands on him, and shouted for the demons to leave the boy and flee back to hell. The ritual dragged on for a good ten minutes, and Suzanne could see the fear in her son’s face. Yet many of the other members were smart, fun people, welcoming and exceedingly kind. And Jane Whaley’s personal attention opened Suzanne’s heart. When Suzanne cut her finger at a church function, Whaley lovingly bandaged her wound. She held Suzanne’s hand and told her how much she loved her family. It was a sweet, motherly gesture by a woman revered by hundreds of followers.
When Blair, the Coopers’ sixth son, was born on February 10, 1994, Whaley made sure the family had everything they needed, from a crib to diapers. Members visited the hospital and prayed with them, babysat, cooked, and cleaned. Suzanne was amazed.
Whaley took a personal interest in Suzanne’s life. She phoned several times a week to see how she was doing. She gave clothes and other gifts to Suzanne and Lena, the only girls in a family of men.
Slowly, over time, Suzanne found herself agreeing more and more with Jane and her ministers. When Whaley praised her, it made Suzanne’s day. She began to believe what Rick always said: God is good. Maybe the Lord didn’t want Suzanne to suffer, after all. She found satisfaction in volunteering for nursery and kitchen duty at the church and school, babysitting, and carpooling, helping other mothers the same way she had been helped.
Even if she and Rick had nothing in common except their children and church activities, by early 1994 Suzanne felt hopeful and happy.
* * *
After Blair was born, Wanda Henderson came from Florida to meet her new grandson and give Suzanne a hand. She found her daughter had changed.
The Suzanne she knew loved to gossip about her sisters and updated her mom on her children’s progress in math, their outgrown shoes, the funny things they said. She’d sometimes complain about Rick, but then they’d talk about politics or movies.
But now her daughter only wanted to talk about Jane Whaley and Word of Faith Fellowship.
Wanda worried. Suzanne was a caretaker, a natural follower; she had always been easily led.