Page 146 of The Confidant
“It is?” He narrowed his gaze, like he wasn’t sure how I meant that. After studying my face for a second, he asked, “Do you think any of what the essay says is true?”
I thought about his question and tried to figure out how I felt about all of the things I’d been reading.
“I’m not really sure what to think or believe right now,” I said. “It’s just so crazy. All the things it said Samuel Williams did—the ways he’d manipulated and swindled people…the real reason why he’d taken so many teen brides…” I closed my eyes briefly, feeling the pain of betrayal creeping in as my brain formed new connections to everything I’d learned so far.
Because when you looked at the stories separately, just story by story, they could be interpreted in whatever inspiring way you wanted to see them. There was a lot of wiggle room.
But when you actually took a step back and looked at all the stories in the actual context of what was happening during that time period, you could see the true motivations for when certain revelations came about.
It made everything look completely different.
And after seeing it that way, I couldn’t help but worry that I’d been lied to my entire life.
Was it possible that Hunter had actually been right all along? That the church I loved was just something a man in the 1800’s had made up because he’d seen how easily he could convince people of anything? Because he loved power and knew that turning himself into a god could be a lucrative career move?
He’d been so untouchable.
He’d had so much power, and when anyone spoke against him, he’d used that power to threaten and silence them…or expel them out of the community altogether.
Once the naysayers were all gone, the ugly truths were easier to keep buried since he owned a printing press and could control the narrative.
Plus, the Internet wasn’t a thing back then, and people were afraid of what might happen to their families if they spoke up about the things this powerful man did behind the scenes. The real truth only came to light when someone noticed the puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit and started looking into things with the chance that it might blow up their whole world.
I swallowed, my eyes pricking with tears. If I came away from the research rabbit hole I had dove into and decided that I had been brainwashed my entire life, would I ever be okay again?
Would I become another person for the members of The Fold to look down on? Someone they’d write off as being weak-minded or never having enough faith in the first place?
Would my dad feel that way about me?
A wave of nausea came over me as I wondered if I was already on my way to becoming a permanent disappointment to my dad if I did step away.
The church was literally his whole life.
“Are you okay?” Hunter asked in a gentle voice when I must have seemed lost in my thoughts for too long. “Do you need me to do something?”
“I don’t know if I’m going to be okay,” I said in a wobbly voice. “All my life, I’ve been told that Samuel Williams was this amazing man. That he was basically at the same level as God and Jehovah because of all the miraculous things he supposedly did.” I wiped at the corners of my eyes. “I was told that if I ever did hear someone speaking evil against the Lord’s anointed, then I needed to ignore it because it was just Satan trying to persuade us away from the straight and narrow path because his greatest goal was to confuse us.” I drew in a shaky breath as I tried to push back the overwhelming emotions: Sadness. Hurt. Anger. Confusion. Betrayal.
I shrugged. “I'm just wondering if now that I know more of his background, if maybe there were actually legitimate reasons for him to have so many enemies. If maybe instead of being a hero, he was actually the villain. But because he was a master manipulator, he was able to use those skills to pull the wool over our ancestors’ eyes and use his own paintbrush to smudge a few brush strokes here and there and paint himself as the good guy. Because even villains want to be the heroes of their own stories.”
“It is definitely something to consider,” Hunter said, like he was trying to be as unbiased as he could and give me the support and space I needed to figure out my feelings and all the thoughts running through my head.
“I just don’t understand,” I said, “that there can be so much out there—on the church’s own website—that most faithful members don’t even know about. Don’t even think to look into.”
* * *
I did moreresearch over the next day and a half—choosing to skip church because just the thought of stepping onto church property after my traumatic experience made me feel sick to my stomach.
But after reading until my eyes hurt, and I had a crick in my neck from hunching over my phone and books for so long, I had to catch my ride back to Eden Falls with Hunter and get back to real life.
“How did you not just read this stuff twenty-four seven?” I asked Hunter as his parents’ driver drove us back to the school Sunday night. “Because there’s still so much for me to read that I don’t know how I’m going to concentrate on my classes or do any of my homework this week.”
“It was pretty all-consuming,” Hunter said. “But since I started my research at the end of the school year, I was able to do my most intense reading over the summer.”
“How long did it take you to decide you were done?” I asked. Over the past two days, I had already gone back and forth on what I wanted to do about a dozen times.
One minute I was sure the church was a load of crap, and then the next, I was back to hoping that if I just found the right piece of information, everything would magically be okay again and I could go back to believing it was true.
“It was a few months before I felt like I had enough information to leave,” Hunter said. “But it’s definitely different for everyone. My parents were fine leaving after just a few weeks.”
