{Jon}

Numb, Jon watched the fields scroll past. There had always been things he didn't talk about with his dad: Judah, Mel's depression. His own growing doubts. Every year he got older, the weight of the things kept quiet inside him felt a little heavier.

When his dad had taken a new church and moved their family across the country, Jon had added to the burden he already carried, the difficulty of his new school, and the bruises Todd Klassen had started leaving on him. When he came home from school, he no longer felt safe—he felt like the person he really was had been buried under the weight of everything he carried for his family.

Meeting Cary had been such a relief: one person he could say the shitty truth to, one person he didn't have to pretend for. For a while, having Cary for a friend had eased the burden because Cary saw him—saw that the real Jon White was tired and angry and hurting, and did what he could to share the load.

For a second, he'd had that friendship back, and now they were leaving Cary behind, and he was carrying everything alone again. All he had were Cary's words from the night before about his parents, that he needed to tell them... something. Some part of all the things he'd been carrying, if he could figure out what didn't need to be a secret anymore. He closed his eyes, his breath fogging the window and vanishing.

Pete cleared his throat. "Your mom and I want to hear from you before we make a decision to move. We wonder if...after the difficult year you've had...if you want to go back to our old home. We thought you were happy there."

Jon tried to gather himself to give a shit about the conversation his dad clearly felt they needed to have. He asked the first question he always asked himself. "What will be good for Mom?"

Pete rubbed the side of his beard, his face creased in the familiar expression of concern he wore when it came to Mel. "I think she misses living close to Grandma. But—she wants you to be well more. We both want to give you the best chance at recovery that we can."

It was hard to imagine going back to his friends in Ontario now. Impossible to imagine any one of them sticking by him while he waded through recovering from an opes addiction. "Just go where you can get a job, Dad," he said in a low voice. "I don't care. I said bye to everyone a year ago and—haven't talked to them since. We don't have to go back for me."

Pete let out his breath. "We've been looking at homes in the city," he admitted. "The girls don't want to start in new schools."

Jon shrugged. He was honestly having trouble feeling anything other than exhaustion, and a headache was starting to thud in his skull.

Pete glanced sideways at him, wincing a little. "I imagine you want a fresh start in a new school—away from Todd Klassen?"

"Yes," Jon said, soft and even. Away from both Klassen brothers.

"Your mom found a few options that she wants to talk to you about. To see what you'd like."

Jon said nothing. His hand wrapped over his mouth as he looked out the window. Starting again at a new school anywhere when he didn't know anyone was going to be hell. Maybe this time he could keep his head down like he'd learned from Cary and keep from being noticed by assholes like Todd.

His dad opened his mouth and closed it several times before he finally spoke again. "The treatment house gave us some resources—some contacts and advice about how to help you."

Time for the lecture about addiction and how he needed to make treatment his priority. Jon put his forehead against the window, wishing he could push through the glass and exit the car.

Pete exhaled. "Do you want—to go back to Hope House or...?"

Jon looked at him, waiting. His dad was going to tell him what he wanted him to do, and that was what he was going to do. Pete glanced back at him, his eyes tight with worry. "What do you need, son?"

Jon blinked, clearing his dry throat. Pete actually wanted an answer. "I don't need their taper meds...anymore. I think it's out of my system. I would rather..." be at the farm with Cary. His hand clenched on his stomach, and his dad's attention flickered to it. Jon quickly knotted his fingers together, squeezing them between his knees. "I would rather be at home—than in treatment. Do the outpatient thing the doctor talked about."

Pete breathed a huge, naked, sigh of relief. "We would like to have you at home. Your mom has been worrying about whether you have enough blankets—whether you get enough to eat—whether you're hydrating."

Jon made a dry noise, almost a laugh. "Sounds like Cary," he said without thinking, then shut his teeth. He didn't know what had happened between the two of them, except Pete was angry and maybe Cary was too.

It was silent for a few minutes and Jon's shoulders slumped. It felt like Cary had died and they were driving away from the funeral, Pete drawn and grim, and Jon pressed small and numb with grief so big he didn't know how to carry it yet. He squeezed his hands tighter, studying the ball of white knuckles and fingertips pressing into his own skin. Not dead. Just five hours away.

"I think we need to make some guidelines—for you in our home." Pete's voice was a little rough. "For your sake. And the girls' safety."

Jon nodded, eyes on his hands.

"I don't—I don't know how to do this part with you," Pete said in a low voice. "We've never even had to give you a curfew before."

Jon's shoulders crept up to his ears. They'd never needed to give him a curfew because they'd made it clear in every other way what they expected from their oldest son. "Just tell me the rules," he said.

"I think you should see a counsellor," Pete said, but his words lifted up at the end like he didn't think Jon would agree.

"Yes," Jon said.

His dad breathed out, pushing his palms against the wheel as he stretched his arms. "Jon, if you were me—what would you say the rules should be?"

Again, it felt like his dad actually wanted an answer. And this was a question Jon actually had an answer for. "No cutting." Jon's voice was low but steady. "No lying. No substances." Pete looked sharply at him. Jon shut his eyes to think, frowning. "Go to school. Come home. Do counselling. Grounded on weekends. Grounded on weeknights." He slumped in his seat, turning his face to Pete.

"Seems a little harsh," Pete remarked.

He expected Pete to be harsh: it was what he deserved after a summer of fucking up.

His dad rubbed the side of his beard. "You don't think you'll want some nights out with friends you trust?"

Jon made a sharp noise. "No. The only person I never used opes with this summer—is Cary. I don't trust anyone else."

Pete looked dismayed. "Did your friends from church know—? Were they—?"

Jon shook his head. For all that he hated the Jon he remembered from the summer, these were things that didn't have to be secret anymore. "It was my private thing. I don't think they guessed until Kurt..." Told everyone. He shut up a second, breathing in through his nose. "Whatever. I'm just saying—I probably shouldn't see them anymore. If I want to stay quit." He leaned his face against the cool glass of the window, feeling as hollow and tight as a drum, his headache beating out a counterpoint to his heart. "We're leaving my only friend behind."

{Pete}

Pete knuckled his eye, unwillingly remembering the texture of Cary's thick hair under his hand, and the tension that had jumped into the young man's body when he'd put his hand on his neck. How tightly had he gripped Cary? With a sinking feeling, Pete realized he had been furious—and instead of noticing that and taking care, he had unleashed that anger on Cary. He regretted his actions more with each kilometre that passed under their tires. Seeing Cary's hard, tear-stained face in the rearview of his memory, Pete doubted he would have a second chance, or even an opportunity to say he was sorry.

More than an hour passed before either of them spoke again. Jon had balled his sweater up against the window and seemed to be sleeping. "When are we moving?" he asked softly.

Pete pulled himself out of his unhappy reverie. "As soon as I find a job," he said. "We'll be able to make an offer on a house." Jon's face turned and he could feel his son looking at him. "Are there pastoring jobs in the city?"

"I never looked," Pete said flatly. He was nowhere near ready to face an Elders board again or answer for the spiritual wellbeing of his family and an entire congregation. "There's plenty of construction going up in the city. I thought I'd fall back on that—to give you time to stabilize."

"Oh," Jon said faintly. He drew an unsteady breath, closing his eyes. "I'm sorry, Dad."

It struck Pete that Jon had said this already and he'd been moving too quickly to pay attention. He felt Cary leaning against his chest, his feet dug into the gravel, slowing him down. He pressed his fingertips against his moustache, then spoke. "This wasn't your fault, Jon." His son met his eyes quickly, pressing his trembling lips together.

"They didn't fire me because of you. I resigned—for a lot of reasons." Pete turned his eyes back to the road. "I think you know...this Elders Board was very divided. The power dynamic was—unbalanced. From before we came. I couldn't heal the rift." He tucked his chin in, distantly aware that this experience had shredded him deep, and maybe those wounds were still open. He couldn't afford to look at that until his family was safe. "Even if—you never took a pill. Or we never took Cary in. Some of the Elders would have found other reasons to make things difficult."

From the corner of his eye, he saw Jon watching him, his cut-up arms wrapped tightly against himself. The corner of Pete's mouth pressed in as he tentatively felt his way forward. "Maybe you got hurt in the midst of that? With Rob Klassen's boys in your youth group and at your school..." Pete checked his son's face.

Jon looked down at his lap, his hand touching the line on his eyebrow where Todd had split it open on the edge of a locker room bench. "I don't want to go back," he said.

"We're not," Pete said firmly. "We'll find a new church."

Jon was quiet a moment, then shook his head. "I don't want to go. To church anymore."

Pete took a breath to speak, and then caught himself. His son met his eyes from under his wave of untrimmed hair, pressing his trembling lips together. Please listen.

"We've always gone to church," Pete said slowly. "It's part of who we are as a family. When—your brother passed—the church was our lifeline."

"Not for me," Jon said in a thin voice. "You were my lifeline, Dad. I go—for you. And I don't want to anymore. Does that make me—not part of our family?" Jon was white as milk, watching him for his answer.

Pete swallowed. "You're part of our family, no matter what," he said in a low voice. It made his chest hurt that it needed to be said, that his son would really believe his love was conditional on church attendance. "If you need a break—I don't blame you. I think we're all... hurting after this last church. Your mom and I are going to try again, but you don't have to come with us. We'll still—love you. Wherever you're at."

{Jon}

Jon held his breath as Pete said that, absorbing not only his dad's words, but also the concern lining his bearded face. He wanted to believe him, that his parents' love would hold steady no matter what—because the thought of walking into a church building right now made him want to duck and cover.

He had planned to use his time away from home to get okay again, to get the hurts and cracks well contained so he could act normal. Instead, he felt more exposed and raw than ever—like he couldn't ignore his hurt anymore and fit himself into the required box to pass as a good Christian kid. For the first time, it felt like maybe Pete saw that about him and accepted it. The concern in his dad's face was for the way he saw how Jon had been hurt—not his son's failure to perform. Jon turned his face to the window and let his breath out shakily.

"Thank you," he said.

"Love you, Jon," Pete said simply.

Jon pretended to sleep for most of the drive, hyper-aware of the sound of his dad's little movements beside him. His headache made his skull feel like a bombed-out crater, and he just wanted to lie down.

"We're coming up to the city now," his father said, after hours of silence.

Jon opened his eyes without moving his head, watching out the window as fields turned into freeway overpasses and industrial buildings. The concrete of the city seemed to swallow them all at once, and he hunched a little smaller. When they entered their neighbourhood, it was depressingly unchanged: streets lined with small, older houses and massive old fir trees. Jon's eyes snagged on the house he'd used to visit for a top-up of his opioid pills.

"That's my dealer's house," he said. "Yellow siding and red door. He has a basement suite and a private entrance in the back." He dragged his eyes away and slid down lower, digging his shoulders back into the unyielding seat. He wasn't sure how to negotiate "no lying" with his parents, but he was determined to be brutally honest about at least this part of his life with his dad. He knew he didn't want to drag himself through withdrawal a second time.

Tucked in a dark closet of his mind, he thought if he was going to take steps to end this headache, he would do it permanently.

Pete glanced sharply in the rearview to try to see which house Jon meant. "Do you think he'll try to get in touch with you again? Get you back as a...customer?"

"I don't have a phone," Jon said in a low voice. "And he doesn't know where I live. So no. I don't think so."

The tires bumped into their driveway, and the van fell silent. Jon pushed his door open and got out before his dad could say any last words. He was stiff from working all morning in Tru's garden, then sitting for hours in the van. He rolled his shoulders and his aching neck. Tru's garden felt like years ago instead of just hours.

He would probably never see it again.

He put his head down and headed into the house.

Bea's welcome was loud enough to make Jon wince as she tore down the hall in her footed pyjamas and collided with him in a hug. Tabitha appeared in the door of their bedroom, checked to see who was with him, then disappeared. Jon's mother hung back at first, her eyes shining, then stepped forward and folded him carefully in her arms.

He buried his face in her shoulder, taking a short breath. "I'm okay, Mom," he said softly.

She drew back to check his face, tipping her head and smiling in a way that made him afraid she saw more than he was saying. "Do you need some supper?" she asked.

He nodded and followed her down the hall to the kitchen, the familiar sights and smells of home pressing him until his eyes stung. The only thing that had changed here was him. He ran himself a glass of water and drank it down, then turned. "I think I'm just going to bed."

He caught a glimpse of his mom's worried face, but he was too tired and his head hurt too much to fix it. "Your bed's made up," she said. She glanced from him to Pete. "How is Cary?"

Jon saw his father's face flush before he turned it away. Jon shrugged. "He's all right. His aunt Tru has lots of work for him there so—keeping busy."

"Of course he'll be staying with us next week with the trial," Mel said.

Jon looked silently at his dad to see how he would answer that. Pete drew in his breath. "He might not." He met Mel's eyes, his face creased with some strong emotion. "Mel, I...made a mistake with him. He might not want to come back here."

Jon's eyebrows raised, and Mel steadied herself with her hand on the table. "What on earth happened?"

His dad rubbed his hands over his face. "I lost hold of my temper. I grabbed him." His voice was strained. "I frightened him. I felt him..." He pulled his arms tightly around his body, sucking in a breath as he met Mel's eyes. "Like he thought he was going to get hit." Tears welled, unshed, in Pete's eyes, and Jon tucked his chin in and folded his arms over his chest as he watched. "It was a terrible mistake. I was angry, and I didn't want to hear what he had to say, and so I—overpowered him. Shut him down. And I regret everything about that."

His mom was silent, appalled. Jon watched his dad fight with tears, heat stirring in his gut. This was something he could tell the truth about. "Just say sorry." His voice was a little rough. He held his dad's look. "Text him and say sorry. He knows grown-ups fuck up sometimes, even good ones like you. It makes all the difference if you admit it. Instead of covering up what you did wrong. It's the same as you want from us. The same standard applies to you."

Pete's eyes were dark as their gazes clashed. "You think he'll forgive me?" he asked in a low voice.

It occurred to Jon that the question could be about more than Cary. He let out his breath, lowering his eyes. "Probably he will. He loves you a lot, Dad." He turned aside, his shoulders bowed. "I'm just going to bed."

*What do you think about how Pete's responding to Jon - from his initial rush to get Jon picked up and solve this, to now? Do you think he can come back from his mistake with Cary, and all these years of missing Jon?*