Page 119 of The Confidant
“It’s Xander,” Dad said gently, putting a hand on my shoulder. “The revelation says that you’re meant become spiritual partners with Jethro Alexander Pierce.” He sighed. “Xander, for short. He is the one the Lord commanded you to perform the ceremony with.”
“It’s Xander?” My mind calmed for a second, because at least Xander was familiar. Close to my age. Safe…
But then something else occurred to me.
“Is that why you’ve been trying to set me up with him all year?” A sense of betrayal filled my whole body.
My dad had known this was coming this whole time and hadn’t even tried to clue me in!
Sure he said that he thought there would be more time, and he didn’t know that there was a specific timeline until this morning. But if he’d told me what he did know all those months ago, I would have had at leastsometime to prepare.
But I only had two weeks?
Two weeks to perform some ceremony that may or may not include an act I’d been saving for my future husband—for the man I loved and wanted to share my life with.
Not someone who might be nice and seemed like a good-enough guy but wasn’t someone I was even close to feeling comfortable doing that with.
“So…do I have to marry Xander then?” I asked. “Is that what’s happening here?”
“It’s what I think would be right,” Dad said. “Spiritual partnerships worked differently in the past. The act of consummation joined them spiritually, but not necessarily legally. But since the gospel teaches that sex outside of the bonds of marriage is a sin and the church has progressed since then, I don’t see why you two wouldn’t be married. Xander says that he’s willing to marry you.”
Xander waswillingto marry me.
That wasn’t exactly the way I imagined my future husband would feel about the prospect of spending our lives together. I’d imagined words more likeexcitedandanticipatingandeager,thrilled,exhilarated, ordelightedwould be how my future husband would feel about marrying me.
Butwilling? It just made it sound forced.
Which…I guess was how it kind of was in this situation. Predestined since before we were even born.
“So Xander already knows?” I asked.
“He knew before I did,” Dad said solemnly. “The knowledge was passed down through his family.” He gestured to the journals on his desk. “The journals are his.”
Was that why Xander had tried telling me about spiritual partners a couple of weeks ago? Why he’d offered to let me read that journal?
Because he knew exactly why we were being set up and wanted to give me a heads-up?
Dad continued, “Xander has known about his part since he was young, but he wasn’t sure who he’d be performing the ceremony with until he started his internship with me last summer. It wasn’t until after that when he had a vision of you two standing across the altar from each other.”
“He had a vision?” My eyebrows shot up. I’d never actually heard of anyone I knew having a vision—not in modern days, anyway. Not since Samuel Williams died.
Visions were things that only happened in the olden days as far as the stories I’d heard.
“Xander told me that in his vision, you were both dressed in ceremonial clothing and standing in the Holy Room of the church.” Dad sat on the edge of his desk. “When he first told me about it, he said he didn’t want to believe it because you two barely knew each other and he knew how protective I am of you. But then he remembered reading this passage a few years ago when he was researching Samuel Williams and realized that you did fit all the descriptors of the revelation.” He shrugged. “And the High Priest confirmed it.”
The High Priest confirmed it? That almost made it sound like the High Priest hadn’t known about the revelation until Xander talked to him about the journals and his vision.
How was it fair that Xander was able to receive a vision and have almost a full year to prepare…while I got nothing?
Nothing but a meeting with my dad, a peek into a journal, and a ticking time bomb hanging over my head.
I had less than two weeks before I was supposed to give up all my plans for the future in order to give birth to some special baby.
This couldn’t be right. This had to be some sort of twisted joke.
Or could this be some sort of test to see if I was willing to follow God’s plan for me?
Like when Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac only for God to stop him at the last moment, saying, “Never mind, I was just testing you to see if you actually had enough faith to follow me.”
