Chapter Nineteen, Part Two

          True to her word, Sandra picked up Elizabeth at exactly eight o’clock in the morning on the Saturday of the retreat.  They drove silently over to the church.  The only sound in the car was Elizabeth clicking her teeth together in nervousness.  Over the last few days, she had gotten to thinking—she had met Benjamin only that one time and they hadn’t even really said anything to one another.  She didn’t actually know the man she was supposed to marry—the man she was supposed to be bound to for eternity.  These thoughts hadn’t helped her nerves.

            Upon arrival at the church, Sandra immediately took Elizabeth’s hand and led her to the outdoor entrance to the colony, rather than to the church.

            “What’s this retreat for anyway?” Elizabeth asked finally, adjusting her small bag of clothes on her shoulder.

Chapter Nineteen, Part One

          Elizabeth didn’t tell her family about Benjamin.  She didn’t want to deal with the raised eyebrows, the disappointed stares, the shocked faces.  It was hard enough for Elizabeth to digest what Sandra had gotten her into, what Pastor Simon had told her.  The last thing she needed on top of that realization was her family.  For this reason, she took to locking herself in her room even more often than usual, if that was possible.  She ignored phone calls, she stopped eating downstairs, she didn’t answer when her siblings pounded on her door or yelled at her or tried to get her attention.  Her father had attempted taking down her door, but that had failed miserably.  Elizabeth still hadn’t emerged from her room and she ignored everyone as actively as before.  She even took to avoiding Jacqueline.  She didn’t want anyone to know what was going on, not yet.  Instead, she sat on her bed and read her Bible and prayed and waited until Sandra would tell her when the retreat would be.

            One night, she flipped absent-mindedly through her Rose notebook, only half reading the notes she had made.  The phone rang, but she ignored it.  Let someone else get it, she thought and turned another page.  Staring back at her was the Bible verse she had copied down and highlighted so long ago that she had intended on asking Sandra about:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

--Ecclesiastes 9:11