Last time we met up, we met Courtney Gamble, a young evangelical princess who discovered that her dream husband was actually a beast in disguise. Today, let’s meet Ashley—whose husband-hunt has taken a very different path. Like Courtney’s, Ashley’s story is cobbled together from a multitude of women whose paths ended the same way. But they both end in tragedy.
(This post and its audio ‘cast first went live on Patreon on 10/30/2025. They’re both available now! Tag for Halloween marriage posts. We’ve been talking about this general topic for some years now—here’s the OG OP for Ashley’s tragic story. Discord invite code (case sensitive): 8pkasaySuD )
The music-maker’s daughter and the prince of the forest
When Ashley Durant turned 30, she would become a wraith forever. But she didn’t know that yet when she was just a teenager exploring the foreboding forests around Dawn Ridge, South Carolina.
Though she grew up poor, Ashley’s parents filled her life with song and music. Her mother led the worship team at Valley Baptist Church, while her father ran a legal office in a larger town some miles away. Ashley, the middle child, couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t loved and adored. Or when she hadn’t been in church nearly every day of the week doing something.
For a while, Valley Baptist had other kids her age. One, Wyatt, became her instant hero when they met when they were only 7 years old. He was big for his age, happy-go-lucky, and steeped in that natural charm that backwoods country boys sometimes catch like lightning in a jar.
The girls her age, though, apparently wanted nothing to do with her. She struggled hard with their ostracism. She couldn’t understand why they excluded her from their frequent get-togethers. Sometimes, she wondered if it had to do with her parents’ background, or even with her mother’s music ministry.
Slowly, each and every young family with kids began moving elsewhere. She said goodbye to countless people she’d considered family. Eventually, the church’s older-kids’ youth ministry collapsed, so Ashley and Wyatt began attending “big people Bible study” with their parents before Sunday services.
Ashley tried to be subtle about her growing feelings for Wyatt. But in truth, she was about as subtle as a hound dog that’s just spotted a rabbit outside its fence. Wyatt always seemed oblivious, though.
Until she got much older, Ashley had no idea anything was amiss about her appearance for many years. Nobody said a word to her about it, so it took a while to suspect something was preventing her from achieving the evangelical dream for women: A loving marriage and big, harmonious family.
The princess enters the story
When Ashley was 17, two major things happened that would change her entire life.
First, her church’s Board of Directors hired Rick Gamble to be their pastor. He relocated his family to Dawn Ridge, of course, which is how Ashley met his eldest daughter, Courtney.
Courtney was absolutely beautiful. Slim, pretty, blonde, blue-eyed, sparkling with cosmopolitan sophistication. She made those dimly-remembered church girls look like the pretentious, snobby pretenders that they’d truly been. Best of all, she adored Ashley. Ashley had never been good friends with another girl before, and the experience showered golden sunlight into every dark, overgrown corner of her world.
Second, Ashley came face-to-face with her feelings for Wyatt. At first, she’d really feared Courtney would catch his eye. Ashley fretted: He was so friendly, so outgoing, that he’d undoubtedly catch hers in turn.
But when Ashley tentatively mentioned Wyatt’s potential as a boyfriend to Courtney, she got back a pause, then a slow shrug. “He’s not who Jesus has set aside for me,” Courtney replied, watching her carefully. Ashley took that as the promise that it was, and finally allowed herself to feel all-consuming love for the first time.
Of course, a couple of months later—with Wyatt still unconfessed-to—Courtney met Tom Bartleby, the missionary’s son, and it was very obvious that she’d fallen hard for him. Then, the four of them had all the busy activities of the school year taking up their time.
The confession at last
The night Ashley confessed her love to Wyatt would live in her memory forever. She’d always question if she’d said everything correctly, or if she’d come on too strong, or if she’d offended him somehow. But the long and short of it was simple.
He drove his pickup truck to her house to pick her up for choir practice. On the way over through the dark woods, Ashley was positively thrumming with anxiety.
“You all right?” Wyatt asked, briefly glancing toward her.
“Yes,” she stammered. And then: “Wyatt, I really like you.”
He didn’t respond at first, but then he slowed the truck considerably. “I like you too,” he said, but his voice told her what would come next: “You’re my sister in Christ.”
“Do you ever think about going out with me?” she pressed on, her bright brown eyes earnest.
Another pause. Then: “I don’t feel led by Jesus that way, Ashley. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” she forced herself to say. “I just wanted you to know.”
“I’m glad you told me,” he said, as he sped up the truck again. They continued through the decaying forest, plowing through the dirt road to church.
But by far the worst part was yet to come.
Ashley held herself together until after choir practice. Wyatt left very quickly, as did the others. Her mother, who led the choir, had noticed very quickly that something was amiss. After the rest of the choir left, she begged her daughter to tell her what had happened. When Ashley’s story spilled forth from her lips, her mother said:
“You’ll find a man one day who won’t care about looks. That’ll be the man Jesus wants for you.”
Searching for a husband who cares only about inner beauty
Until that very moment, it had never occurred to Ashley that her “looks” might be an issue. Yes, she was a plump girl, with chubby cheeks and a dimpled smile like the sun over a field. But most of the people at church were bigger than her—except for the younger girls. The younger girls, like her, were willowy and perfect, with tumbling blonde locks and bright blue eyes. Standing next to any of them, she always felt like a misshapen ogre. She just could not compare.
In reality, as you might guess, Ashley wasn’t that big. Most of us would kill to be as slim as we were when we first considered ourselves overweight. But comparison truly is the thief of joy, as they say.
Ashley once asked Courtney how she stayed so thin. Courtney was surprised. She hadn’t ever thought about it. “I guess it’s natural?” she replied.
With her mother’s help, Ashley embarked on one diet after another. Nothing seemed to bring her weight down.
When Courtney got married to Tom Bartleby, Ashley was one of the bridesmaids. Courtney had thoughtfully chosen bridesmaids’ dresses that would look nice even on someone bigger. But only one bridesmaid needed that consideration. None of the girls who’d moved away asked Ashley to be their bridesmaids, not even girls who’d been in the choir and had known Ashley and her mom for years. Of the much younger girls, none asked her, either.
The music-maker’s daughter seeks a husband
Ashley went to a much larger town to go to college for Music Ministry, like her mother had. She hoped that at a Christian college she might meet someone. Maybe the problem was that Dawn Ridge was just too small, too insular! But no, the problem seemed even worse at college. Ashley saw lots of couples form out of the campus’ singles ministry, but no men expressed interest in her. When she dared ask one out or confess an attraction, they turned her down as gently and as inexorably as Wyatt had. Her heart broke like a flooded dam, every time.
Speaking of Wyatt, in her first year of college Ashley got an invitation to his wedding to another girl in a slightly larger town near Dawn Ridge. She didn’t even know his bride, but she guessed that Wyatt must have known her for a while. In the picture sent with the invitation, they looked so happy: Wyatt in a brand-new flannel shirt and jeans, one arm around his size 4 blonde bride-to-be. Ashley sent the couple a gift from their registry, but couldn’t bear to attend the wedding.
At chapel every day, Ashley prayed for a husband. Sometimes, she felt a “still small voice” in her heart that told her it wouldn’t be long now, but nothing ever came of these feelings. She tried to find comfort in ministry and in volunteering at the local Baptist church serving her college.
Above all, she tried very hard not to become bitter, which is Christianese for anger that’s lasted longer than men think it should. But it was hard not to feel angry. She knew the irony of being an undesirable virgin. If no men wanted her, then her sexual purity held zero value.
After graduation, she found a low-paying job at a large church just outside Nashville. It paid her bills, barely. When that stopped being the case, her parents invited her to return home. They told her she could become a “stay-at-home daughter” until she married.
At first, Ashley resisted. At 27 years old, she had been enjoying the relative freedom of being a single evangelical woman in a large-ish city. But eventually, she relented.
The slow decay of the music-maker’s daughter
Soon after her return to Dawn Ridge, Ashley realized that she was cruising dangerously close to 30 without having found a husband. But Dawn Ridge, with its stately decay and nobly-rotting buildings, didn’t exactly boast a plethora of eligible bachelors. Nor did the towns around there. Slowly, that entire region was losing its younger generations—once the kids grew up, they moved away to places with more opportunities and better jobs. The tombstones in the nearby Titch River Cemetery continued to molder and weather down to rubble, with a few new ones popping up every so often.
She joined some dating sites, but never got any serious attention. She let her few college friends know she was available, but none offered to fix her up with a brother or anything like that.
After a year or so back home, men stopped so much as noticing her if she entered the room. In church, she had to pipe up if she wanted to express an opinion—because nobody would ask for hers otherwise. She had become that dreaded spinster woman: a potential threat to the common good and lawful order, an expression of the shortcomings of evangelical myths about marriage.
Naturally, she still prayed for a husband every day. She felt like her life couldn’t even begin without its main character, its hero, entering the story. Until he arrived to her life, nothing else could happen.
As the days passed, she began spending more and more time in her room. She read, or she composed music, or she sewed or knitted clothes for herself or her mother. Daily, she helped her mom with chores. She did most of the family’s cooking, making daily hearty meals for them all—and she was pleased to note that she’d somehow become a better cook than her mom. When she visited relatives with kids or people visited Valley Baptist and brought their kids, she became an overjoyed “auntie” for a brief while.
Despite those few bright spots in her life, Ashley’s reflection began to lag a bit in the mirror. When she moved, it took a moment for it to move. She didn’t notice right away. Every month that passed seemed to make that reflection more translucent and ghostly around the edges. And it moved more and more slowly than she did. Once she noticed that reflection’s growing transparency and slow movement, it terrified her. But she didn’t know how to tell anyone what she was seeing.
When she turned 30 years old, as her home’s upstairs clock struck midnight, Ashley Durant finally faded completely away. The hymn she’d been singing hung in the air a few moments longer, and then that dissolved away as well.
NEXT UP: Another amazing evangelical guess about why oh why churches keep failing. See you soon! <3
Please support my work!
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being part of our community! Here are some ways you can support my work:
0 Comments