Page 32 of Devil's Advocate
“Hey sugar,” a waitress walked up to the table and poured me a cup of coffee.“What can I get for ya?”
I’d forgotten all about food.Without looking at the menu, I ordered fried chicken with all the fixin’s.After she left the table, a question filled my head.
Where’s my courage?
ChapterTen
Jimmy
Isat in the truck with the engine off and the key cold in my hand, staring at Daddy’s house like it might change shape if I watched it long enough.The porch light was off, which meant he’d either gone to bed or he was brooding in the study with only the desk lamp on.From the street I could see a thin wedge of yellow through the curtains, and a tired halo on the far side of the room.The rest of the house was dark.
I should’ve been shaking.Maybe I was, somewhere underneath the steadiness that had settled over me at the Cracker Barrel, right after Sheila pushed back her chair and walked out into the night like she owned herself.Something in me had clicked over then—quietly, not like fireworks, more like a lock turning from the inside.
I was done.
A moth battered itself against the windshield and left a pale smudge of powder.I could still taste coffee and fried chicken from the restaurant, but the taste that stayed was Sheila’s courage.The way her eyes lit up when she said the name Raj.The way she didn’t flinch from the truth even when it scared her half to death.
I breathed slowly.In for four, hold for four, out for six, like the internet had taught me.
“Okay,” I said, because sometimes you had to hear yourself say it.“Let’s do this.”
I got out of the truck and shut the door carefully, the latch catching with a soft thunk.My feet knew the path up to the porch, the cracked third stone I always avoided, the way the board to the left of the welcome mat creaked if you stepped too close to the nails.The deadbolt stuck like it did when the air went swampy, then gave with a sigh.
The slice of light from the study lay across the hallway runner like a blade.I followed it, feet both careful and loud in my own ears, and stopped in the doorway.
Daddy was facedown on the desk.One arm curled under his head, the other flung out like he’d been reaching for something and changed his mind halfway there.The desk lamp burned a circle into the wood, and in its light the empty whiskey bottle gleamed.Bills fanned out under his cheek like a paper pillow—rent notices, a long sheet printed with numbers and words I recognized from his money talks: insurance, lease, maintenance, all probably overdue.His pen had rolled to the edge of the blotter.
I didn’t move.He snored faintly, the same ugly little buzz he’d denied for years when Mama was still alive.Up close, the lines at his eyes looked etched instead of painted.
A pang went through me, swift and mean.This was the man who’d turned Scripture into a whip and told me it was mercy.But he was also the man who’d taught me to tune a guitar, who had stood with a hand on my shoulder at my mother’s grave and not said a word because there weren’t any worth saying.He was a lot of things, and tonight he was a man passed out under the weight of his own fallen empire.
Guilt rose like bile.You’re abandoning him, the old voice hissed, the one that spoke with Daddy’s cadence even inside my head.He needs you.My eyes went to the bills again.To the ring of whiskey on the oak.
“I can’t rescue you,” I whispered, and the words surprised me with how steady they sounded.“I have to rescue myself.”
He didn’t stir.I stepped back from the door the way you step back from a sleeping dog—slow, weight centered—and the floor didn’t betray me.
The stairs complained softly under my feet on the way up.In my bedroom, there were posters still on the wall from a youth group concert, and the cross over the bed I’d stared at for hours like it was a security camera.There was the trophy on the dresser from a Bible trivia bee I’d won by remembering the exact order of the minor prophets.
I set my suitcase on the bed and opened it.The zipper rasped loudly as a match.I folded clothes I actually wore: jeans, three soft t-shirts, two button-downs from Belk that didn’t make me look like a mannequin.Socks.Underwear.The sweater my mother had bought me on sale the winter before she died, a color she called “sea” and I called “blue,” because she’d said it looked like my eyes when I was happy and had insisted we pretend I had more days like that than I did.
The framed photo of her stood on the bookshelf between a couple of worn-out paperbacks.She was at the park the summer I turned nine, hair back in a messy ponytail, laughing at something just off-camera.Her mouth was mid-open, her eyes creased.I picked it up and held it to my chest.The glass was cool under my fingertips.
“I’m going,” I told her, and if that was crazy, I didn’t care.“I’m going to try.Please—just… be proud of me.”
I nestled the frame on top of the folded sweater.The case had room for more, but I didn’t want to carry this house with me any farther than I had to.The weight of what I was taking was already heavy enough.
The nightstand held the rest of what mattered: a guitar pick with a chipped edge; a letter my mother had written me when I was twelve (“be gentle with yourself” underlined twice); and a lined notebook I used to pretend I had a future that involved words that weren’t Bible verses.I flipped to a clean page and sat on the bed with the pen balanced over the paper.
Daddy,
I wrote, and my hand shook.
I don’t know what I believe anymore.I only know it isn’t what you’re preaching.Maybe that makes me lost in your eyes.I can’t change that for you anymore.I have to be my own man.
The words arrived unevenly, like calves trying to find their legs.I paused and stared at the page until the room blurred, then blinked and kept going.
I can’t keep living a lie to make you comfortable.I’ve prayed over this many times, and I have begged God to make me pure the way you want me to be.But I can’t do it and stay alive.
