Conviction (37 page)

I drop the gun down on the bed next to me. I hug my knees against my chest and bury my head in my arms, gulping huge breaths that scald my lungs.

I can’t go through with it. If there’s one thing I’m not ready for, it’s coming face-to-face with God.

I told myself I was done with Trey. I told myself God was done with him, too.

When I was younger, I used to lie awake sometimes at night, tormented over all the unsaved people I knew who were going to spend eternity in hell. I’d always try to believe that if God
rejected people forever, they deserved it, that I had to respect his justice and not let feeling sorry for someone color what I knew deep down was right.

You have to try to convince yourself of that; it’s the only way to live with the idea that anyone might be damned forever. Still, though, I’d curl up in my sheets, haunted by images
of all those people pleading for mercy, and I’d feel panicked when I couldn’t silence the questions I had about how that could be okay. Faith’s always felt like a Jenga game to
me, where if you try to mess with even a single piece the whole thing can crash around you all at once, and then you’re lost. It feels so much safer to look for God’s anger and his
judgment everywhere, in everything, and to try to believe that’s how you’ll save yourself—by condemning whatever or whoever you can to prove you’re somehow pure.

But when you’re at your lowest, it’s harder to lie to yourself. And now that I’m here—now I don’t know. I don’t know if I was ever right about any of it or
why I thought it was so clear who was really God’s or not. I have no idea what to do with everything Trey told me, but no matter how much all my life I might’ve said people like him
brought judgment on themselves, I know I never could’ve stood by and watched what my dad did to him and thought that was somehow holy, or right, or from God. I never could’ve thought he
deserved it.

I don’t want my brother in hell. I don’t want to see him punished. What I want, it turns out, after all this, is the same thing I’ve wanted all along—for him to be
here.

I get up and find my phone. I hope I didn’t blow it with him forever. I hope he didn’t change his mind.

I don’t know if you’re still in Chicago or what,
I text him,
but can you come back? Now?

It takes him two or three minutes, but he writes back,
I’m here. Been waiting around in town. Be there asap.
After he does, I stay like that a long time, rereading
the words until instead of crazed and maybe kind of dangerous, I just feel empty and numb. Then I put my dad’s gun back in the drawer and wipe my palms on my pants. I wait forty minutes, and
I leave the TV off. The rain lets up outside.

I look out the window when I hear a car pull into the driveway. It’s Kevin’s, and something twists in my stomach. He and my brother both get out, and Kevin says something to Trey and
Trey nods, pats one pocket of his jeans. They talk a little longer. I don’t know why I don’t just look away. Mostly, actually, it’s Kevin talking, his head bowed so he’s
speaking into Trey’s ear. Trey keeps glancing toward the house. Then Kevin takes a step backward like he’s saying goodbye, and then, just as I’m about to get up and go downstairs
to see him, something happens. Trey kind of freezes, and then he balls his hands together and breathes into them the way people do when they’re scared, and Kevin reaches out and cups his hand
for a long moment, gently, on Trey’s hip. It’s exactly the way you’d touch a girl, something I would maybe describe as possessive and tender both, and in that moment it’s
just more than I can take. I have to turn away.

The thing is, it’s not so different on a baseball diamond than it is everywhere else—you can lie with a lot of things, but you can’t lie with what you do on instinct, and I
have spent my life learning to catch the ways people give themselves away and so I don’t miss the way Trey lets himself relax into that touch. And I don’t know what I’m supposed
to understand there, if it’s just how far my brother is lost into what I’ve always been told was sin or if it’s that I realize now I never saw him let go like that even with Emily
and that if you find that with anyone I don’t know how you’d ever give it up, or if maybe it’s just that I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alone in my life than I do
right now and I’m not sure I will ever feel that at home with another person ever. But whatever it is, even though it’s dumb, I’m kind of crying. God. I get up and wash my
face.

When I go downstairs, he’s in the kitchen, and already there’s a mound of bloodied fish scales on a sheet of butcher paper next to him on the counter. When he sees me, he looks up,
then back down, fast. “Ah—hey.”

I mumble it back.

“I would’ve got here sooner, but I went by the store to get stuff for dinner.” He looks solid and ordinary in front of me, a little closed off that way he always does, and I
don’t quite believe what I just saw out on the driveway in the dark. “Just fish. It’s not much. I thought you might be hungry, and I figured you’d just want something
fast.”

“That’s fine.”

“I’m almost done.”

“All right.”

He puffs his cheeks full of air and blows it out his lips, then turns his head away again. “So, ah—I’ll be finished soon.”

I wait at the table with my head wrapped inside my arms while he cooks. My stomach’s caving in on itself; I don’t remember the last time I ate anything. Trey doesn’t speak
again until he raps on the table with his knuckles next to where my head is and says, roughly, “All right.”

In front of me there’s a platter with a whole fish. He takes two spoons and lifts the fish’s head, then does the same thing with its tail, which comes away with bits of flesh
clinging to it. There’s peas, green beans, salad, and bread. Once I take a few bites, it turns out I’m not that hungry after all. Trey eats methodically, gripping his water glass with
his other hand, which he doesn’t move the whole time he eats; I’m not sure he even realizes he’s doing it.

Twice he looks like he’s about to say something, then he doesn’t. The refrigerator is rattling and the fluorescent light overhead is buzzing and both seem louder than normal. Under
the table, I press down on the joints in my knuckles until they crack.

“Still hungry?” he asks, when he’s done eating. “You want anything else?”

I shake my head. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked him here. I didn’t mean I needed him to come bring dinner; that doesn’t even touch what I need from him.

“There’s more if you want it later.” He pushes the leftover peas into a line. The fork scratches against the plate and the sound makes my shoulders clench together. He
hasn’t shaved in a couple days and he looks tired, maybe, or maybe something else. Maybe a lot of things. He sucks in a deep breath, and his cheekbones hollow out and something goes over his
face, flickers for just a second, and is gone.

“Okay,” he says. “Um—look, Braden…” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded paper, which he unfolds and smooths on the table. “I’m no
good at this, so Kevin made me write everything out, so, uh…let me just make sure I remember….” He makes a fist and breathes into it, then he rubs his hands together and stares
down at his piece of paper. Under the table he’s jiggling his leg up and down. “Kevin said you have to…ask. For, um, for forgiveness. So. Uh…” He swallows.
There’s beads of sweat on his forehead. “Look, I know I don’t deserve it, and I know you probably hate me for bailing on you every single time it counted, but I hope maybe
someday, you’ll maybe…” He reaches up and bites at a hangnail with his front teeth, then lets his hand hit the table with a thud. A couple seconds later he says, quietly,
“Yeah, I’m not asking you that.”

I tear off pieces of my paper napkin one by one, then crumple the mutilated remains into a ball. “Trey?”

He doesn’t look at me. “Yeah.”

“I lied about what happened. In court.”

“Did you,” he says, but from his expression I’m pretty sure he already knows.

“And I don’t know what happened, but I know they read the verdict today, and—”

“I thought you knew.” He frowns. “You didn’t hear?”

“I couldn’t watch.”

“I see.” When he speaks, his voice is measured, like he’s making an effort to sound neutral. “Not guilty of aggravated first-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter, or
felony hit-and-run. He got one count of resisting an officer.”

Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty
clangs in my ears. “You watched?”

“I went.”

“You—what?”

“I thought you might be there. He got four months, with credit for time served, and a two-hundred-dollar fine.”

Four months. I’d been wondering if he was just going to show up back home. “Are you surprised?”

“That he got off? No. He always does.”

He must blame me for it. But I didn’t mean that, exactly. I guess what I meant is I want to know if Trey knew all along what my dad did and if he knew all along what I’d do, too, but
I don’t say it. There’s something I need to say to him, but it’s something I’m scared to touch. I say, instead, “Do you want to know the truth?”

“Not really.” Then he catches himself and makes a go-ahead motion with his hand. “Yeah. Tell me if you want.”

“I don’t know if that means legally you’re on the hook for any—”

“It’s fine. Whatever. Just go.”

So I tell him. Everything—starting from the championship game, that first night I tried to contact my mom. He kind of nods like he’s listening, but he doesn’t say much. When I
finish, I say, “I know it was wrong.”

“Yeah,” he says, matter-of-factly, “it was.”

“I don’t know what to do now.”

He rearranges the peas on his plate again. “Doesn’t sound like there’s much to do.”

“And we play La Abra next week, too, and I’m scared as hell of going. And I just—what am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know, Braden. Sometimes it’s too late.”

That’s what I was scared of. Maybe I’ll skip the game, maybe I’ll keep hiding out, but you can only do that for so long. “The other part is—every time he was there,
it was because of me. Frank Reyes, I mean. Every time he was ever there, it was when I screwed up with Dad somehow and then I asked God for help. And I keep thinking how that night, if I
didn’t get out of the car—maybe it would’ve been me instead.”

“It’s possible.”

“And I’m really scared that—do you think Frank Reyes took what was supposed to happen to me? Because I asked God to just erase my mistakes and I should never have asked for
that?”

“No.”

“But it was like he got sent every time—”

“No, Braden, come on. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Well, you don’t even believe in God.”

“I never once said I don’t believe in God.”

“Oh.” I twist the bottom of my shirt into a knot. “Also, Trey?”

“Yeah.”

This is the part I know I need to say to him. “I just—I wanted to say I don’t think it’s okay what Dad did to you.”

His face is unreadable. “All right.”

“I mean it.” My chest feels tight. “And I know I let you down, and I’m sorry and I hate myself for doing it, but I couldn’t—if it hadn’t been the death
penalty—whatever he did, even though I know it was wrong, I just couldn’t—”

Without warning, I’m on the verge of breaking down in front of him. I can feel my face contorting with the effort to stay controlled. I turn my back so he won’t see.

I don’t just mean I’m sorry to Trey. I am sorry, but that’s not all of it: it’s just he’s the only one I can tell it to because I can’t say any of this to
Frank Reyes.

In my peripheral vision I see him start up from his chair like maybe he wants to reach for me, or maybe leave, I’m not sure which. Probably leave. But he sits back down.

“It’s fine,” he says. “You do what you have to do. I did the same thing.”

If he means he let me down, too, there’s no comparison. I swipe roughly at my eyes and turn back to face him. “What do you mean, you did the same thing?”

He looks like he regrets saying anything. “All right, listen, I’ve never told this to a soul. Not even to Kevin. But what I told you about, what happened with Dad—the part I
didn’t tell you is he swore to me he’d find out who I was seeing and ruin him. You ever—” He clears his throat and starts again. “You ever feel that way about someone?
Like you’d move heaven and earth to protect them? Kevin’s the only one it’s ever…been that way with, and it’s always been, and it made me crazy thinking what Dad
could do to him. So after Dad went to bed that night, I went into his room and got his gun, and I stood there with it about ten minutes thinking about how easy it would be to end him. I was this
close.”

I say, “You didn’t, though,” which is stupid. Obviously he didn’t. I guess I just don’t know what to say.

“No. I didn’t. I left him to live. Just like you. So I know how you feel.” He reaches for my plate, and stands. “I’ll tell you what, though, it fucks you up coming
that close.”

He’s done with the conversation, I can see it, but there’s still one more thing I need to ask him first. I watch him clean up, thinking how even as I sit here time is spooling out
between now and the La Abra game, how I don’t know where to go from here. Maybe if I were a different kind of person I’d go to Judge Scherr now, or to the cops, and tell the truth. But
if I’m being honest with myself, I don’t regret what I did, not really. I hate myself for it, and I don’t know how I’ll live with it, but I’d also do it again. And I
don’t know where that leaves me now.

When he turns off the faucet and reaches for a towel I work up my nerve. “Hey, Trey—there’s something I need you to do with me.”

“What’s that?”

I know he won’t like it, but at this point I’d risk just about anything to not feel so broken this way all the time. “Will you go with me to see Dad?”