Page 82 of Wrap Around
"What if it was someone older, like an elder or a teacher?"
Breath leaves my chest in a painful heave. I hadn't thought about that possibility. Lily was very young when she got pregnant, and she's fully admitted that she was woefully without any knowledge or education on sex. It could be possible.
"I still think we should talk to her first. If anything, we can get some more clues from her."
"We?"
"Yes, we. If any of us has to go back there, we should all go together. I wish we could delay the trip, but I'm glad you'll be there with her. I'm contractually obligated to be here until next Thursday, but I'm coming straight after."
"I don't think that's a good idea, Silas."
"Are you really so pissed at me you can't be around me at all?" I can't decide if I'm heartbroken, sick, or angry that our relationship has come to this. "After everything we've been through, Gideon?"
The defeated tone of his voice hurts more than anything else. "Look, I'll keep you updated, okay? And we’ll talk, after all this is through, but please don't come there."
The call disconnects with a finality I feel in the pit of my stomach.
CHAPTER 30
GIDEON
The whole flight to Tennessee, I agonize about Silas. About the way I purposefully made it sound like the reason I didn’t want him to join us was because of the struggles we’ve been having recently. Because I don’t want him here.
The truth is that I don’t want him here, but not because I don’t want him or because I’m pushing away from him.
It’s to keep him safe.
I can’t think of another reason that my father and Sister Paula won’t accept my phone calls, other than my sexuality. There have been plenty of signs over the years, not to mention an almost confession in the form of my breakdown after one of his sermons, one that was heavily laden with anti-homosexual ideology. Neither of us ever said the words out loud, but why else would he have pushed me so hard with prayer and discipline? Why else would he start supporting me more with hockey, when he’d only ever begrudgingly allowed me to play sports, because he felt they didn’t center and glorify God’s love?
Then there’s the questionable use of one line of scripture I used asan explanation for leaving home the way I did. That one little line is probably what gave it away, if anything did.
And if there’s a chance that Sister Paula knows, that means there’s an even bigger chance that Elder Caldwell knows. He’s been a high-ranking member of the church, one of my father’s most trusted deacons since before any of us were born. There’s no way he wouldn’t speak to Abe Caldwell about something he perceives as important, or something that could damage the church’s reputation or his congregation’s trust in him.
Whether or not our fathers actually know anything, I don’t want Silas near that man. There’s no telling what he’s capable of. I’ve long suspected that Abe Caldwell was dealing with some form of mental illness. Not only has he always had a tendency to get irrationally angry over perceived slights, but he’d often speak of hearing whispers. He’d go on long rants about particularly elaborate and far-fetched interpretations of scripture. He believes, or at least he did, that God spoke to him directly, that he was a prophet.
In his eyes, his wife suffering and dying in childbirth was part of God’s punishment to women for Eve’s disobedience. Not only that, he told everyone that his own wife’s traumatic childbirth was a sign that she wasn’t as pure or godly as she professed to be, as her father had advertised her. Therefore, she deserved more pain and suffering. To make it even worse, the Elder Caldwell preached that his wife died the way she did, in agonizing pain, for opening her legs for the devil. He said Silas wasn’t even his son by blood, never mind that he looks like a younger, more muscular version of himself.
That horrible excuse for a father once beat Silas half to death because he dared to question his father’s rigid bigotry. What would he do if he knew the truth?
I don’t want Silas anywhere near that man.
The plan is to spend a couple of days doing what needs to be done, checking in with the doctors and figuring out how bad this thing is for Mom. Whatever arrangements need to be made to ensure our mother is cared for properly, I’ll make them. Then we’re getting the fuck out before this place has a chance to taint everything good we’ve built since moving away from here.
And while we’re here, I plan to poke around and see if I can find any breadcrumbs to follow about Lily’s pregnancy and who caused it. I’ll be paying close attention to anyone who so much as looks in Lily and Addy’s direction.
Checking the rearview mirror for probably the hundredth time since leaving the airport, I try to catch my sister’s eyes. She’s sitting in the backseat with Addy, who is napping quietly after a long, stressful day of flying. Her eyes flutter closed when the rental car’s tires bump over the dirt and gravel roads that lead us away from the main parts of town.
I honestly thought, or hoped, anyway, that we’d never come back to this place. Without Lily’s sense of duty and wanting to keep her safe, there’s not a chance in hell that I’d have come anywhere near this hell hole again.
Said hell hole materializes in front of us as the church’s land, and our parent’s house, comes into view. It’s an almost serene landscape—if you weren’t plagued by the confusion, self-doubt, and fear of God that were forced onto us from birth.
We pass the main church, then wind down the bend towards our parent’s house. We head for the trailer at the very back of the property, where Lily and Silas lived after they got married. As I’m pulling down the drive, I notice my father’s tan truck come down the path from their driveway to pull in behind us. Great.
Dad gets out of his truck and stands beside it, observing us with a displeased expression. He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t welcome ushome. Just frowns and acts like we’re late, when we’re actually almost an hour ahead of the expected arrival time we’d given him.
Lily makes an effort to arrange her expression into something pleasant.
“Hey, Daddy.” With one arm outstretched, she moves in for a hug, but he steps back. The way her face falls guts me.
