{Cary}

He caught the bus home for the last time, the paper driver's licence folded in his jeans pocket. The examiner had been an older woman with a husky smoker's voice that had put him oddly at ease, and he had navigated around local streets and a parking lot without difficulty.

Now, he needed to know if he had a car of his own or not—the Whites needed that car. He pulled out his phone and thumbed in his mom's number, figuring he would rather hear whatever she was going to say on a bus full of strangers who didn't give a shit about his problems, instead of letting her get him alone in his room.

He listened to her phone ringing, trying not to picture her face when she saw his name light up her phone screen. He put his eyes on the ads running above the windows of the bus. Maybe she wouldn't even pick up.

"Beverly speaking." She sounded crisp and together.

Cary made spit in his suddenly dry mouth. "Do you want the car back?" There was a long pause that made him afraid she had hung up. "Mom?"

"It was a gift, Ciaran," she said coldly. "I don't need another car. I don't need the trouble of selling it again. Do what you like with it."

He hung onto the phone and the thread of their conversation with white knuckles. "Do I need to make payments?"

She laughed sharply. "God, Ciaran, of course not. It's paid for. My lawyer will send you the papers. Consider it my parting gift. You finally have what you wanted—freedom to go. So go. Live your life."

He opened his mouth to say something, but she wasn't finished. "Please don't contact us again. Goodbye."

The line went dead.

He slumped in his seat and shoved the phone back in his pocket. He let his eyes run over the tops of the buildings that passed, reminding himself to breathe. He tasted poison in the back of his throat and swallowed, closing his eyes. Another staple had pulled free.

He had a car. He could go anywhere now, until the money for gas ran out. But she was wrong—he didn't want to go and never had, really. He'd run when he simply couldn't take another beating, but he'd always come back. Now there was nothing there to come back to.

///

Mel was setting the table when Cary checked the kitchen. She gave him a smile, the pinched lines in her face telling him she was worried and sad. It resonated with his own sadness, and he made the effort to smile for her in return.

"Got my driver's license." He held it up for her to see.

Her face brightened, and that look made him feel a little less like he was gaping wide open. "You passed your test—good for you, Cary!"

"I talked to my mom—we can keep the car." He wanted to keep this happy moment a little longer. It hadn't escaped his notice that Jon's room was empty, the pillows and blankets stripped off the bed. "It's paid for. So. We have a second car now."

She gave him a smile over her shoulder. "You're full of good news today." She brushed the back of her hand over her face and her smile faded, the lines deepening.

Cary shifted his feet. "Jon?"

She put a hand on the counter like gravity had just got a little heavier. "He's gone to a treatment centre. For 10 days."

Cary frowned.

"It was his choice."

He turned his face down the hall, still frowning. How was Jon going to do without his family? He might think he didn't want them around, but Cary was pretty sure he wouldn't find better people somewhere else.

"Can you call the girls for supper?" Mel asked, stooping to pull a pizza out of the oven. "They're playing in the back."

Jon's family took their places around the dinner table, and Cary pulled out his usual seat next to the empty chair at Pete's left hand. Pete looked tired, and he fumbled with his words as he tried to explain to the girls that Jon had to be gone for a few days to get better. Cary kept his eyes on his plate, doing his best to blend into the wallpaper.

When the family joined hands to pray, Pete reached across the empty space between them and clasped Cary's hand. He lowered his head and said the opening words he always said: "Dear Heavenly Father—"

There was an abrupt pause like something had gotten stuck in his throat. Cary glanced sideways at him—Pete's face was crumpled like someone had punched it right in the middle. His lips were shut tightly in his beard, holding in whatever was fighting to get out. His hand was squeezing Cary's tightly and Cary felt the room getting smaller around them.

Pete sucked in a breath. "I'm sorry—I just need a moment." He let go of Cary's hand and pushed away from the table.

Bea asked, in a high, shaky voice, "Dadda, what's wrong?"

Pete was gone, the screen door slapping behind him.

Tabitha looked white and grim. "I hate it when Dad cries. I hate it the worst."

"Momma, what's wrong?" Bea's lip quivered.

Mel pushed a handful of hair back from her face, looking to each of her daughters. "Your father is just sad." Her face said she was sad too—it shone out of her, soft and grey, like sun through rainclouds. "About Jon being sick. I'll pray and then we can eat, okay?"

Cary had frozen in place as soon as Pete had stood up beside him, and he couldn't thaw enough to take Mel's hand across the table. He still had Bea's hand, her soft fist fitting in the middle of his curled fingers and palm. She felt like the only warm thing in the room. Mel rested her fingers on his arm and said a simple prayer, asking for help for them and Pete and Jon. When she was finished, she served up the children's plates. Cary sat with his eyes on his plate, a lump of ice in his middle.

"Is this like how Judah got sick?" Tabby tried to sound matter of fact. "With cancer?"

"No, sweetheart," Mel said in a strained voice. "Jon is going to get better. He'll be home in 10 days."

Tabby frowned at her, then at Cary, like she suspected he knew what was going on. "What's wrong with him, then? Is it catching?"

"I don't want to get sick, Momma," Bea cried, tears starting in her eyes.

"Girls, you are not going to get sick."

Bea started to cry, and Tabitha snapped at her, "Stop being such a baby, Bea!"

Mel got up from her seat and gathered them both in her arms. Bea clung to her, crying, and Tabby's stiff posture melted a little in her mother's embrace.

Cary shut his eyes and breathed, while the comforting sounds Mel made for her girls melted the ice in the middle of him.

"Eat, children," Mel said, soft and firm. "We'll all feel better with some food inside us."

Cary's hands obeyed, taking a slice of pizza off the pan so he could eat it slowly.

Partway through the meal, Pete came in from the backyard, his face blotchy from crying. He washed up at the kitchen sink and dried his hands, face and beard on the dishtowel.

When he sat back in his place, he looked each of them in the eye. "I'm sorry if I frightened you, children." His voice was fragile. "I want you to know that it's all right to cry when you feel sad or hurt." Cary watched him from under his eyebrows. This was not a thing he had ever heard a man say, and it shook him to hear it from Pete. 

"Even daddies cry sometimes." Pete made a smile for Bea especially, and then shared it with Tabitha. "That's nothing to be afraid of—we have a daddy who is even bigger than me, don't we?"

"Yes, Daddy," Bea said solemnly. She got down from her seat and went over to wrap her small arms around him. "I like a hug when I'm sad."

"Me too," Pete said softly. Cary saw him give Mel a look over Bea's head that said a lot more without words. It looked like I'm sorry to him, and he wondered what a man like Pete ever needed to say sorry for.

{Pete}

They walked the girls to the playground after supper. Mel reached across the distance between them and silently took his hand. It undid the tightness around his heart a little. Pete watched Bea run after her sister to the swings, feeling the rock and sway of their uncertain future under their feet.

"I'm listening now," he said. "I want to hear you." He looked sideways at her, at the soft light on her lifted face as she watched their children play. "There isn't any voice I value more than yours." He felt himself bend to say the next thing, his crusty pride breaking and flaking off. "Not even my own."

Mel laughed softly and sighed. Her hand tightened on his. "How's your sermon?"

They sat on a bench on the edge of the playground, and he folded to set his elbows on his knees. "The manuscript is finished." He turned his ear toward her, but couldn't look at her directly. "Am I preaching it this Sunday?"

She was still and quiet beside him and his breath caught.

"Do you want me to quit?" he asked, his voice a little rough. "I'm not...I'm not bound to this contract. Not really. I can resign if that's what we decide I need to do." There was a whole ugly series of meetings and emails that went with that, and he couldn't let fear of that, or his own shame at being unable to complete his commitment, keep him from hearing what Mel was saying.

"I don't know," Mel said. "Have you told anyone at the church yet about Jon?"

He smoothed a hand over his mouth. "No. Who would I tell?" He remembered Jon's anger at him, just months ago, when the church found out about his fight at school. "Is it really their business?"

"Are they your church?" Mel asked in return. "If we don't have anyone there we can lean on when we're in trouble, then this is just a job to you. That doesn't feel right."

The faces of his congregation went through his mind. It was a short list of people Pete would trust to lean on in trouble like this.

"I'm not suggesting you report it to the Elders' board, or announce it to everyone," Mel said. "But someone in our church should know and care enough to pray for us."

"It's a risk," Pete said in a low voice. "You know there are people there who wouldn't take this well."

"It's a test," Mel answered. He met her eyes. "The church is supposed to be a safe harbour for people in trouble—you've been preaching that for months. If we can't find anyone in this church who is willing to care for us when we're in trouble, maybe that means they're not a church." She said it without anger, but it hung in the air like a condemnation.

"I don't think that can be ours to judge," Pete said.

She let out her breath slowly, smoothing her hair back from her face. "Peter, I can't keep standing by, watching you break yourself for a group of people who don't care the hurt they're causing. It's not just you—it's anyone who walks through the doors of that building and needs a crumb of grace. If that makes me judgemental, or ungracious, or weak—" She shook her head once, sharply. "Then so be it. I want a church that cares for us—as people. Not just as their employees. I need that. Our children need that." She met his eyes. "You need that. You're not super-human. You can't keep going with just you and God."

He sat still, weighing those words, holding them up to the Father for him to test if they were true. If he was honest, he wanted to be just an employee right now and keep his personal problems separate from work. He felt like he'd had a limb severed—all the trauma and pain of missing something he had cared for and counted on. The connection he had shared with his son, the friendship he had so carefully tended over the years, from the time when Jon had been a tiny child, to an inquisitive young boy, to an obedient older boy with a ready smile. That was missing now, and he was moving slowly and carefully to keep from jostling the stump.

It felt dangerous to admit how raw and tender he was really to anyone other than Mel. He was keeping on his feet, and it seemed to him that the best way to keep going was to hide that hurt from the outside world. Someone needed to get up and go to work to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, and between him and Mel, the someone who was strong enough to do that was him. 

He'd done it the year their son was fighting cancer, when he had been working as a contractor. He'd gone to the worksite every day and then come home for a shower and gone to the hospital to spend the night. In the weeks after they had put Judah in the ground, he'd kept on working, coming home at the end of the work day to make meals and do the laundry for their remaining child, even though the colour had bled out of his world. 

Whatever happened here with Jon, it was his job to hold their house up with all the strength he had. That was what he did for their family. He couldn't afford to let this hurt make him weak and let them all down.

"Who could I—who could I trust with this?" His voice was low and rough.

Mel was quiet, holding his hand. "The Yoshenkos, perhaps? I know she is a woman of prayer."

She had named the wife of the one elder he trusted. Mr. Yoshenko did not speak much in their meetings, but he had an ability to hear both sides and bring clarity and a possible place for compromise to their messier conversations.

"What do you want me to say to them?"

"We need their help," Mel said simply. "We need them to pray for us, and for Jon." 

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