It’s my secret.  Mine and Jesse’s.

So far, I’ve kept it quiet.  From everyone.  Jesse and I agreed not to tell anyone yet about what’s happened between us, not even my daughters.  I’m not worried about Rhiannon—she, at 14, can keep a secret, especially one as important as this one, but Sonnet?  My younger daughter is still in junior high school and there is too much to lose if she should slip and mention the miracle that has come into my life.  They’ll figure it out soon enough though.  They are intuitive children, always have been, and they see and hear more than most people ever know.  Besides, how long can Jesse and I keep them from seeing what’s between us?  Sonnet has already noticed the way he looks at me when he’s pretending not to.

It’s actually harder to keep the secret from my best friend, Jan.  She’s quite a bit older than I am, a well-known Christian artist of angels and occasionally fairies, and a sort of surrogate mother to me.  Whenever we’re together, our bond extends beyond friendship and into maternal instinct, and she quickly notices the little things, like how I become quiet at the mention of Jesse’s name and how I evade certain questions, even when I think I’m being smart.  She’s clairvoyant herself, and though I’ve managed to keep this thing with Jesse a secret since mid-October, I’m not sure I can keep it up.  Jan knows I’m hiding something.  I’ve avoided dropping by her house for lunch for two weeks now because her questions are getting more and more intense.

“Have you heard back from your friend?” she’ll ask, her eyes boring through me, and I’ll find a way to look the other way or change the subject or tapdance around the truth. 

I don’t think she’d understand this empathy Jesse and I have developed so that we can feel each other’s thoughts miles away.  She doesn’t think I should be dating just one person yet, that I should be enjoying dating in general but relishing my freedom.  She insists I need to be on my own a while to figure out who I am.  She doesn’t want to see me go from an abusive relationship to a new relationship with a man who is as wounded from his last marriage as I am.  When what I tell her about Jesse doesn’t match up with her idea of what a romance should be, she tells me to forget him and move on.   Even if Jesse and I weren’t spending every possible spare minute together, I couldn’t move on from what I’ve found.  When you form this kind of soul-level connection with another person, you can’t just dismiss it if they miss a phone call and Jesse’s not the most organized man I’ve ever met…but I accept him as he is.

Maybe it was a mistake in telling Jan about discovering my “energetic connection” with him.  At the time, I didn’t think anything of it.  I was so surprised and overwhelmed to find myself inches away from the man Leo had prophesied that I ran straight home and called my two best friends, Jan first.  The initial conversation, in both cases, had been met with delight but that quickly faded into concern.  Was I about the repeat my past mistakes and give up control of my life to the first guy who walked through the door?  Jesse wasn’t exactly a take-control-and-command-everyone kind of guy, but they didn’t know that.   To one friend, I was newly divorced and independent and fragile, and I was supposed to know better than to get roped into another emotional relationship so fast.  To the other friend, I was a Third Degree High Priestess, newly minted, and I was supposed to know better than to think I could have a life with anything in it other than the suffering of spiritual servitude.