Soundtrack:  'Brother' - Penny and Sparrow

{Pete}

Pete didn't know what he'd been hoping for when he'd brought Jon home—except that this wasn't it. The tension that had marked their interactions through the summer was gone—Jon did everything he asked without complaint. But the smile he was used to seeing on his son's face was also absent. He couldn't think of the last time he'd heard Jon really laugh. More than once over the weekend the fragile skin around Jon's eyes made Pete think he had been crying, out of sight. It burdened Pete that he wasn't someone Jon felt safe to cry with.

After a supper that Jon silently attended, cleaned up after and left, Pete laced up his shoes to run. For once, the rhythm of his feet didn't drown out the worried thoughts in his head. Tomorrow was the first day of the week, the first Monday in years he didn't have a job to go to, and the uncertainty of how he was going to provide for his family made his stomach twist and ache. He didn't even have a computer in their home to search for job postings: he'd dropped the laptop and his keys at the church building, clearing out his office after hours so he wouldn't run into anyone there.

His running feet carried him to the steps of the library, and he sat in front of the public computers scrolling through job sites while the sweat cooled on his back. When the PA system announced the library was closing, he dragged his eyes away from the screen—he was out of time, and it was much later than he'd thought.

When Pete, still panting from his sprint home, unlaced his shoes in the entryway, he could tell from the quiet in the house that Mel had put the children to bed on her own. He glanced into Cary's room automatically, and the bare mattress stopped his feet in their tracks. He bowed his head and prayed for Cary like he had when the boy had first come. He said a broken sorry and pleaded with God not to let his careless action undo the healing work that had been done in Cary over months in their home. The pair of texts he'd sent Cary were unanswered in his phone: he could see that Cary had read them but had chosen not to respond. Every day that went by, that silence weighed a little more on his heart.

He closed the door of his own bedroom and began to climb out of his sweaty running clothes. Mel looked up from where she was cross-legged in the middle of the bed.

"Sorry, love," Pete said. "I was at the library looking for work. I lost track of time."

She smiled at him. "Any good leads?"

He moved his shoulders, numb. "I applied to a few. I'll look again on Monday."

She sat back on her hands, watching him strip with some frank enjoyment. He couldn't lift his eyes to hers, feeling as unsexy as possible with his recent failures hanging around his neck like a noose.

"Well, I found a job," she said, and it took a second for him to grasp the meaning of those words. "An admin position at Tabby's school opened up, three-quarter time. They called me back today to ask if I could start Tuesday."

He set his hand on the bedpost to steady himself, staring at her. She shrugged shyly, still smiling. "I didn't want to say anything sooner if it was nothing. It's not much, but enough for us to get by until you find something worthwhile."

"Do you feel ready to go back to work?" Pete asked hoarsely. They had been a one-income family since Judah's death—not just because Tabitha and Bea were born in the years after, but because Mel's capacity was limited. Pete worked long hours to cover for her so she could give what energy she had to their children and their home.

"Yes," she said. "This feels like a door opening for us—a way God is giving us to get through. I think that means he'll provide for me to do it. Would you...be all right if I said yes?"

He felt some of the weight he'd been carrying lifting off his shoulders. "Yes. It's an answer to prayer."

She leaned over the bed toward him, putting her hand against his face and stroking his beard. He breathed in, trying to absorb the care in that touch when he felt so worthless. "God will carry us." Mel kissed his mouth lightly. "Don't worry."

He pulled away, avoiding her eyes. "I need to shower," he said.

It wasn't until he was out of the shower that he registered the photo albums open all over the bed. Pulling on his clean pajamas, he stole sideways glances at Mel's downturned face as she flipped through the pages. He climbed onto the bed, careful not to disturb the albums. "What are you doing?" he asked quietly. The pages tugged at his attention—glimpses into a family life that had been lost a long time ago. He hadn't been able to think about the existence of these albums for years.

"Just remembering." She drew a breath and emerged from the book in front of her to smile at him. Her face reminded him of clear light coming through a grey cloud of rain—subdued and lovely. "I had to unpack all the boxes to see what we were moving with us. I didn't even know what was in these ones." She turned back a page. "Look at them, Peter."

He took the book with cold fingers and looked. The pages were filled with ordinary photos of their ordinary life at home with the boys. Mel's hair was cropped short in a bob, and his face was clean shaven.

There was Judah standing on the sofa of their first apartment, his mouth open in an ecstatic holler—his whole body taut as a drawn bow with the joy of his yell. Jon was cross-legged beside him, his fingers in his ears, wide eyed at the noise.

There was Jon, chubby ankles poking out of his tiny socks, in his rocking chair with a book in his lap and his stuffed beagle in the crook of his arm.

"Remember how Jon used to read to his animals?" Mel said. "He would make up words for each page from his memory of what we read to him."

Pete's throat tightened and he leaned his chin on her shoulder as she turned the page. They had been so young—it had felt like such a happy adventure to be a family growing together.

There were both boys playing in the sandbox he had built in their tiny yard. Mel had let Judah's hair grow long, and the unruly curls blew around his face as he grinned at the camera. Jon had a bucket full of sand in his hands, and he looked faintly surprised to be interrupted for a picture.

"I've been looking through these books since yesterday." Mel stroked Judah's face with her finger. "You know what I forgot?"

"What?" He could barely speak.

She tapped the grinning boy in the photo. "This is Judah." She tapped the quiet, quizzical boy next to him. "This is Jon." She met his eyes and he didn't understand.

"Judah was always smiling—do you remember? Look."

She turned another page and he saw it: Judah's incandescent, ferocious joy of life in every photo, every pose. In one, Judah had his arms flung around Jon—his grin could have encompassed the world. Jon had his head pressed against Judah's chest, and he was smiling softly with his eyes closed.

"Jon's smile was so rare." Mel looked at them a long time, then shut the book and reached for another. "Now look."

This book was years later—Jon was a skinny, freckled boy toting baby Bea on his hip or pulling the girls in a wagon. In every picture—every shot where Jon was aware of his picture being taken—he was smiling.

Pete drew a soft breath, flipping forward and then back in the book. Always, Jon wore the same grin, often with a little wrinkle in his forehead, that said, I'm okay. Don't worry about me.

Mel had opened the book with the photos of Jon and Judah again, her face creased with emotion. "I can't believe I forgot our boy."

Pete closed his eyes. He'd missed it completely.

His body ached with exhaustion, but he couldn't settle his thoughts. Mel was snoring softly when he slipped out of bed and paced down the hall. Jon's door was partially closed, and he eased it open, trying to make out the shape of his son's sleeping body in the dark. He stood a long time in the doorway, holding his breath until he could be certain that he heard Jon breathing. He closed the door softly so the light from the kitchen wouldn't disturb his son and went to make coffee. It seemed it was not a night for sleep.

He wrapped himself in a blanket and went into Cary's room, propping himself against the wall on the bare mattress. From here he could see Jon's door, and the faint light of his phone charging on the floor of the hall. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes to pray.

///

It was well past midnight when a tearing gasp and a thump startled Pete to full alertness. He got up quickly and padded across the hall, his hand reaching for Jon's door when it whipped open, away from his touch. Jon swayed back, his face wiped blank at seeing Pete standing there. He clutched his blanket against his stomach, then he slammed the door shut. Pete caught his breath, laying his hand against the hard surface. On the other side of the door, his son swore softly and continuously until his voice broke.

Pete put his forehead against the door. "Jon," he whispered.

Jon fell silent. The doorknob clicked and Pete backed up, his heart in his throat. Jon stood there, shivering a little, his chin tucked in as he met Pete's eyes. There were tear tracks on his cheeks. "I'm bleeding." He pulled the balled-up blanket away, revealing his shirt front, soaked crimson. "Will you help?" He watched Pete's face, pressing his trembling lips into a thin white line.

Pete bit back a dozen shouted questions, turning aside. "First aid kit's in the bathroom." Somehow his voice came out quiet and steady. "Let's get you cleaned up."

Jon followed, peeling off his sweat- and blood-soaked shirt and sitting up on the counter like he used to when Pete had tended his scraped knees. Blinking hard on his stinging eyes, Pete rummaged under the sink. He still wasn't ready to look when he straightened up with the shoebox of assorted brightly colored Band-Aids, medicine cream and gauze pads.

Jon's hands gripped the edge of the counter, white-knuckled and spattered with blood, black with gore under his fingernails. The waistband of Jon's pyjama pants was soaked. Jon's stomach was smeared, and a ladder of cuts, angry, swollen, and seeping blood, climbed down to his hip.

Pete's throat made an involuntary noise.

Jon's face was hidden, turned to the wall. "Scratched them open—by accident. Mostly," he said tightly. "Trying to wake up. From a bad dream." Shivers chased over the bare curve of his shoulders.

Pete ran warm water over a cloth. He couldn't remember the last time his son had let him touch him, and his stomach knotted, realizing he was probably the last person Jon wanted to find him like this. "Can I wash them?"

Jon slumped back against the mirror, pulling his waistband down on one side to reveal the last cut, crossing the pale skin under the jutting bone of his hip.

Steeling himself, Pete carefully sponged Jon's stomach clean, rinsing and going over the damaged skin again before pressing a gauze pad over the weeping cuts. "Hold that there," he said softly. "To stop the bleeding."

Jon spread his hand over the gauze, his fingers brushing Pete's.

Pete's hands were shaking a little as he squeezed ointment onto clean squares of gauze. When Jon had been 13, he'd had nightmares regularly, and Pete had often woken up to the sound of him crying and gone into his room to pray with him. The season of troubled sleep seemed to pass after Jon was baptized, and he'd been grateful that God had answered their prayers in that way. He never could have imagined they would be here two years later. He swallowed. "Was it the nightmare you had before? The one where you're sick?"

He caught Jon looking at him, his eyes dark to the bottom and wide with something like surprise. They had never talked about those dreams in the light of day. "Yes." Jon ducked his head again, lifting the gauze to check, and then laying it aside. "Trying to hide so I don't—burn." His voice was soft and flat. "Sometimes they burn you instead. The air is full of ash and everyone's—gone."

Pete took an unsteady breath and began to lay the soft white squares of gauze over the inflamed line of cuts. "That sounds worse than before."

Jon was silent a moment, his expression shadowed. "I didn't tell you everything, Dad."

Pete put his eyes back on his work. Now that he was looking—now that Jon wasn't wearing his smile—he could clearly see their quiet, sensitive child looking out from Jon's face. His son was older now—and carrying so much more hurt than Pete had ever wanted for his child. His throat was too tight to speak.

The ointment made the squares stick in place and Pete covered them with a bigger pad, his fingers fumbling as he taped them as best as he could. "How's that?" he asked when he was finished.

Jon climbed stiffly off the counter without looking at him, holding the bandage with his hand. "Thanks," he said quietly. He opened the medicine cabinet and frowned. "Where's the Ibuprofen?"

Pete noticed the bare shelves for the first time. "I have no idea." The realization of who had cleared out those shelves to keep Jon from taking pills by the handful dawned on him as Jon said, "Cary."

Jon's face twisted and he turned aside, hunching as he made his way back to his bedroom.

Pete collected Jon's sticky T-shirt off the floor, bundling it up with the bloodstained sheet and took them downstairs to launder. Once the washing machine's lid was shut and the water was rushing into the tub, he broke, barely holding himself up as he shook with sobs, wordless cries tearing out of him for the life of his boy, who seemed to be hanging by a thread even in the safety of his own home. There was so little he knew how to do to heal Jon's hurt. He'd never felt so entirely helpless.

When he could collect himself, Pete dried his face and climbed the stairs. Jon's door was closed again, a sliver of light underneath it. He knocked once and opened it, his throat raw and aching, taking in the sight of his son lying in bed with his arms wrapped over his face. Jon's room was bare now, the desk empty, the floor clean. The only object in it besides Jon's desk and bed was a stuffed beagle lying on Jon's stomach.

"I'm just going back to sleep, Dad," Jon said without uncovering his face. "There's nothing sharp in here. You don't need to worry."

Pete's hand gripped the doorframe hard, holding himself back from the impulse to cross the distance, shake Jon and hug him and yell at him and plead with him. "I love you, son," he said hoarsely. "I'll just be here if you need me."