Soundtrack: 'Wash me clean' - Josh Garrels

{Jon}

It was midafternoon when Jon's mother texted to say Cary was finished his testimony and heading home. When they heard the front door open and close, he and Kadee exchanged glances and hurried upstairs.

Cary was in his shirtsleeves in the kitchen, his head buried in the fridge.

"How'd it go?" Kadee asked brightly.

Cary's head appeared above the fridge door, his face pink and startled.

"Surprise." Kadee's dimple deepened. "You didn't think I'd miss this, did you?"

He backed out of the fridge, his arms full of leftovers, and shut it with his heel. It took him a minute to compose his answer. "It's done." His smile was a little lopsided and bleak, but it was more expression than Jon had seen in his face in 48 hours. "I didn't fuck it up." Cary glanced at her as he piled food onto his plate, colour still high in his cheeks. "How long you been here?"

"All day," Kadee said. "Babysitting Jon."

"Hey," Jon protested.

"Kidding." Her smile sparkled mischievously at him for a second before she looked back at Cary. "I couldn't sit around and wait for you to text me back a minute longer."

Cary took a breath, a very Mel-like expression of worry in his face.

"It's okay," she said smoothly, before Cary could speak. "I get it." The expression on her face softened. "I've been praying for you, a lot. Whatever you want. Take the space you need, okay?"

Cary rubbed his hand over his mouth, his eyes bright above his flushed cheeks. Jon looked away, wishing he could have skipped this part of the conversation. "I don't want space," Cary said softly, and Jon rolled his eyes.

"Please—get a room, you guys," he grumbled. "I'm right here."

Kadee's grin sparkled with mischief, and Cary ducked his head to hide his smile. He started to eat the lasagna cold from the pan, using a pancake to wipe up the messy bits.

Kadee had pulled up a chair up next to him, but now leaned away. "You're disgusting," she remarked. Jon laughed.

"They didn't give me a break for lunch," Cary protested. "I'm hungry."

"Clearly," she said.

There was a pause, and she looked at Jon like she wanted him to say something more. He guessed she was as anxious as he was to know the details of the trial.

"How did it go...with your father?" Jon asked tentatively.

A shadow passed over Cary's face and he shrugged. "He barely looked at me. He never spoke."

Jon thought that sounded ideal, but that wasn't what he was picking up from Cary. "How did you feel about that?"

Cary gave him a level look. "I don't feel anything about that shit." His voice was pressed. "You know that, Jon."

Jon sighed, running his hands through his hair in an unconscious Pete gesture.

Kadee's head was tilted as she listened, her face soft and serious. "You don't know what you feel about that shit. That's not the same as not feeling."

Cary's eyes slid to her, and his mouth tucked in at the corner. He ducked his head in a nod. He was quiet for some time. "It felt like I was dead to him," he said finally. "Like he couldn't hear me and he would never. Hear me." He caught his breath, flattening his hands against his chest.

Kadee put one of her hands on top of his. "You're not," she said, as if she could push the words inside his chest. "He so heard you—he just didn't like what you said. Because you're still standing, and you have a voice now, and you won't just shut up and go away."

Cary made a dry, cracked noise. "That is actually my plan. To shut up and never fucking talk about this again."

"You spoke up when it mattered," Jon said quietly. "And you will again if you need to." He met Cary's eyes, lifting his shoulders. "Secrets keep us sick, right? I'm listening. Your voice matters to me—more than, like, almost anyone else's."

Cary's eyebrows drew together as he looked at them both like he couldn't quite translate what they were saying.

Jon checked the time. "When are Mom and Dad home?" he asked.

Cary lifted his shoulders, ducking his head and shovelling in four more bites of lasagna. "Think they're staying to the end."

"Will there be a verdict today?" Kadee asked.

Cary's eyebrows drew together. "Don't know. Guess I don't care."

Her eyebrows lifted, then she brightened. "Let's go to my house then and hang out at my pool."

"The girls will be home any minute," Jon said. "If Mom and Dad aren't coming back, we'll need to do their supper."

Cary looked doubtfully at the large dent he'd just made in the lasagna. "Think we can feed them this?"

Kadee laughed. "Oh my god, you two. Let's just bring the girls and my mom will feed us."

She stepped out of the room to make the call and Jon put his elbows on the table, looking sideways at Cary. "You really okay?"

Cary nodded, glancing sideways at Jon. "Feels different—knowing what I know now. He's stuck...blaming me." His dark eyes flashed with heat. "I'm not stuck."

///

The girls were thrilled to spend the afternoon at Kadee's pool, and her tiny, elegant mother seemed just as pleased, beaming as she brought a tray of smoothies and wafer cookies to the pool deck. She bowed politely to Jon, who felt for a moment like he was seriously underdressed in his swim trunks and T-shirt.

"I have been praying for you, Jonathan." Her accent made the soft words sound musical.

A shard caught in his throat, and he crossed his arms against his front—he couldn't help but remember all the times that phrase had been used to tell him God was watching him for mistakes, and the people at the church were too.

"And for your family," she went on. "Your father is a good man. A good pastor."

He swallowed the shard down hard. "Yes he is."

She looked over the pool deck, at the girls splashing and jumping in the shallow end, her daughter swimming the length of the pool in smooth, strong strokes, and Cary sitting on the side like he wasn't sure it was safe to get in, his curving back bare in the sun. Mrs. Yoshenko's eyes disappeared in her smile. "The White family is welcome any time in our home."

"Come and play, Cary," Bea called.

He looked sheepish as he dropped in the water and waded over to her. "Can't swim."

Kadee kicked over to them and stood, her hair up in two brightly colored knots and still dry. "Can't swim at all?" she asked, incredulous.

"Never took lessons," Cary said, and Jon understood that the child-Cary couldn't take his shirt off the way he did now.

"We'll teach you," Bea said, tugging his hand. She was still brown from the summer, and she threw her little body back in the water, shooting her arms and legs wide to float like a starfish. "Like this, see?" She stood up again, finding her feet easily on the bottom of the pool. "Now you."

Cary ducked into the water up to his shoulders and Jon started to laugh at his expression of dismay. His friend was all awkward elbows and knees with Bea on one side and Kadee on the other, trying to steady him and hold him up in the water.

"Relax," Kadee said, exasperated. "Put your head back—your ears won't melt."

And then, after getting water up his nose and soaking Kadee's hair, Cary got it—spreading his body wide under the clear sky, eyes squinted shut against the glare. Kadee and Bea let him go and Cary hung there, loose and weightless in the blue on blue.

Bea clapped her hands, crowing in triumph and Cary's eyes popped open. He dunked himself, his arms and legs wind-milling to find the bottom. Breathless and laughing, he hauled himself out of the pool and headed for the hot tub.

Tabitha swam up to prop her elbows on the edge next to Jon, watching Cary with her fair eyebrows knitted in a frown. "That's what his dad is on trial for?"

"You never saw his scars before?" Jon glanced at her.

She cut him a glare. "I was trying not to look."

He laughed quietly. "Yeah, that's what his dad's on trial for."

She frowned straight ahead. "So we're adopting him now?"

"Basically, yeah," he said. "I think of him as my brother."

"I could be okay with that," she said loftily and swam away.

///

The girls were stretched on the lounge chairs, Jon's sisters imitating Kadee's movie-star pose, when Jon's cell phone chimed. His stomach dropped and he clambered out of the hot tub. Cary sank into the steaming water up to his cheekbones, watching him check it.

It was from "Your Parents." "Verdict is in." Jon punched his fist into the air. "Guilty!" He paused, scrolling down. "Sentenced to two years minus a day. Probation, blah blah. And a fine."

He looked up, his mouth tight. Cary ducked his head under water, an explosion of bubbles breaking the surface.

"That's it?" Tabitha said sharply. "That's all he gets?"

Kadee met Jon's eyes, her look smoldering with as much anger as he felt.

One by one they joined Cary in the hot tub, sitting on the bench around him as he came up, gasping, shaking his hair back from his streaming face. Bea took one of his hands and Kadee looked like she wished she could do the same. She put her hands under her legs instead.

A grin split Cary's face, crooked and wobbling, but the light of it shone out of his skin. "They listened to me." He made a dry noise. "I can't believe it."

Jon breathed out, closing his eyes, his mouth curving in an answering smile. Right. No punishment was going to feel like enough. A life sentence wouldn't give Cary back what his father had taken from him. This was the best they could have hoped for from a trial—not justice, but a fair hearing.

Cary slid back down into the water until it covered his mouth. The smile still glowed in his eyes in the softening evening light.

"Good job," Bea said, patting his head. "Now you're ours to keep." She leaned over to hug his head, leaning her cheek against his hair, and Cary closed his eyes.

*Sighhhhh. Trial over, verdict in. I had conversations with a police sergeant and a lawyer friend to help me with this part of Cary's story. When I discovered Conall's likely sentence (2 years minus a day) I was p*ssed. He's a wealthy, well-educated, white man with no prior criminal record. Apparently the system would prefer not to mess up his career over this. Whatever.

Do you resonate with Jon's reflections at all? What would have felt like a just verdict here?

Tabitha is finally coming around to having Cary in her family! One more little thread of this story woven in and tied off .*