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Mrs. Kim nodded. “Is that why you resigned?”
“Not really.” She wondered if she could get into the details of it. They wouldn’t be what Mrs. Kim might have thought. “I actually have personal reasons I am sorting through.”
“You mentioned wanting to live near your retired parents.”
“Yes, that too.”
“Oh. Let’s talk about it then, if you want. No charge.” Mrs. Kim waited.
“Now?”
“Now is fine. This is important to the health of our church.”
Maggie glanced at the open door. “I left my purse in an unlocked drawer out there.”
“Go get your purse, lock the front door, and we can talk.” Mrs. Kim sighed. “See what I mean? If we have a ministry assistant out there, then we don’t have to lock the door every time we need to talk or attend a meeting. There will always be someone at the front desk.”
Maggie returned as quickly as she could.
“We can leave that door open now that you’ve locked the front door,” Mrs. Kim said. “Is this private enough for you to talk about why you’re leaving Midtown Chapel?”
Maggie nodded. “Actually, I don’t want to leave Midtown at all. When I handed in my resignation at the end of November, I was very reluctant to do so. I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing, but my heart was broken and I didn’t know what else to do but to go.”
“Everything we discuss here is confidential.” Mrs. Kim pointed to Maggie’s shoes. “Feel free to kick off your shoes and relax.”
Mrs. Kim slid out of her Mary Jane shoes and folded her feet under her wool skirt as she sat on the loveseat.
Maggie kept her shoes on. She related the events in the last few months, how she had been helping Levi to snag a date with Forsythia. The entire time, her heart was in agony because she had fallen in love with Levi. She decided to keep it a secret because Levi was her best friend and she didn’t want to ruin the friendship.
“You’ve already fallen in love with him. And yet you continued to be good friends with him, right?”
“Well, yes. Good point, Mrs. Kim. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“My husband and I are each other’s best friends.”
“I’ve heard. Pastor Kim has talked about your family in his sermons.”
“However, the feeling is mutual between my husband and me.” Mrs. Kim paused. “From what you said, you don’t know if Levi feels the same way about you as you do about him.”
“I think he sent me mixed signals. He cared for me, sometimes more than a friend. At the same time, he asked me to help him get a date. What kind of a person is he?”
“What do you think?”
“Maybe he was confused about his feelings.” Maggie shrugged. “In any case, he was besotted with Forsythia. Every time I felt that I’d lost Levi, my heart felt sad. I couldn’t stop crying. I prayed about it and I thought maybe if I moved hometo see my parents for a while, I could reset my emotions. So I resigned and started packing up the house because my parents want to sell it after I leave.”
“If he isn’t all that into you, there’s no point breaking and entering.”
“That’s what I thought. I didn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore. I felt that my emotional health has been adversely affected.”
Mrs. Kim nodded.
“Ironically, his date with Forsythia on Tuesday night didn’t go well—he won’t give me details—and since that time, he has stopped talking about her.”
“What does he do now?”
“He’s still paying the same attention to me. We text each other every day. Tonight we’re going out to eat. Then we’ll come back to church for the Christmas concert.”
“At least he’s not asking another woman to go with him to the concert.”
