*
Gideon struggled with it all: the man on the floor, the revelation. His mother loved Adrian Wall. What did that mean? Did he kill her or not?
Gideon looked again at his father. He sat with his arms around his knees, his face buried. There’d been no abduction. His mother met her killer at the church or some other place. Not in his kitchen. Not as he’d watched from the crib.
Was it Adrian?
How could Gideon know? Could she possibly love him? That question was too big. It was massive, incomprehensible.
There’d been no abduction.…
The boy closed his eyes because the larger questions were coming hard and fast.
Was she leaving for good?
Was she leaving him?
She couldn’t be that flawed, that … wrong.
“She was a good woman, son, warm-spirited and loving, but as conflicted as the rest of us.”
“Reverend. Black?”
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, Gideon. It seemed like an important moment, and I didn’t want to interrupt, either.”
“You startled me. I barely recognize you.”
“It’s the beard, or the lack of it. Then there’re the clothes. I don’t always wear black, you know.” The preacher stood in the gloom at the edge of a green curtain. He smiled and stepped all the way inside. “Hello, Robert. I’m sorry to see you in such a state. Let me help you.” He extended a hand and drew Gideon’s father to his feet. “Difficult times, I’m sure. We must strive to rise above them.”
“Reverend.”
Robert dipped his head and tried to tuck the bottle out of sight. Reverend Black smiled. “Weakness is not a sin, Robert. God built us all with special flaws and left us the challenge of addressing them. Facing the things that hurt us most is the real test. If you came to church with your son, you might understand the difference.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Next Sunday, perhaps.”
“Thank you, Reverend.”
“What are you drinking?”
“Uh…” Robert scrubbed a forearm across his face and cleared his throat. “It’s just bourbon. I’m sorry … uh. What I said about Julia. Hitting her, I mean. I guess you heard that?”
“It’s not my place to judge you, Robert.”
“But, do you think I got her killed, somehow? She ran from me, and then she died. Do you understand how it could be like that?” Robert was teary-eyed, still breaking. “I’ve carried that secret for so long. Please tell me she didn’t die because of me.”
“I’ll tell you what.” The reverend put an arm around Robert’s shoulders and took the bottle, holding it up to find it almost full. “Why don’t you find someplace quiet?” The reverend walked him past the bed, toward the door. “Not home. A place close by. Take this with you, and have a nice quiet drink. Spend some time with your thoughts.”
Robert took the bottle. “I don’t understand.”
“The garden, perhaps, or the parking garage. I don’t really care.”
“But…”
“No one knows more than I about the depths of human frailty. Your own. Those of your wife. I’d like to help your son understand, if I can. In the meantime, enjoy the bottle. I give you permission.” Reverend Black pushed him into the hall and closed the door down to a crack. “Tomorrow is soon enough to contemplate the multitude of your sins.”
He closed the door the rest of the way and stood for a long time in the silence. To Gideon, he looked different, and it wasn’t just the clothes or missing beard. He seemed stiffer, narrower. When he spoke, he sounded less forgiving, too. “Your father is a weak man.”
“I know.”
“A man with no will for necessary things.”
The reverend turned from the door, and his face was all dark eyes and angles. They’d spoken often of necessary things. Sundays after church. Long prayers on difficult nights. And the prayers weren’t like Sunday sermons. The reverend had explained it more than once, but Gideon didn’t pretend to understand it all: the Old Testament versus the New, an eye for an eye as opposed to a turned cheek. What Gideon did understand was the concept of necessary things. Those were the things you felt in your heart that no one else would do for you. They were difficult things, things you kept to yourself until it was time to act. The acting is where he’d failed. “About Adrian Wall…”
“Shhh.” The reverend held up a hand, then pulled a chair beside the bed. “You did nothing wrong.”
“I didn’t pull the trigger.”
“All I ever said was to follow your heart and be unafraid to act. Adrian Wall’s fate was always in larger hands than your own.”
Gideon frowned because that’s not how he remembered it. The reverend’s talk of necessary things had not been so much about following as about acting. Always the acting.
This is the time they let prisoners out.
This is the place they go.