Conviction (4 page)

I lean over to retrieve the bottles from the vending machine, and when I straighten, one of the officers walks by. The bottle slips from my hand and clatters to the ground, hissing like a live
grenade, and my heart feels like it’s about to pump itself clear out of my chest. My palms are damp.

I need to get it together. Seeing random cops walk by at the airport is nothing compared to the rest of all this.

I look around to make sure no one’s watching, and then I close my eyes again and duck my head. The thing I believe about God most of all is that sooner or later he brings everyone to
justice; I believe he protects and rewards the people who follow him and punishes the ones who don’t. And I’m scared that part of what I felt when the social worker was over was God
telling me that he brought this on us to test me—that I won’t be spared his anger unless I prove my devotion to him.

Get us through this,
I pray, and I wait to see if I’ll feel that same warning from him again. I don’t.
Protect us. I’ll do everything the way you’d want me to,
and I won’t slip up even once. I’ll be as good as I know how to be, I’ll work as hard as I possibly can, I won’t slack off or get distracted, even with all of this. And if I
do all that, and I throw my best and beat Brantley when we play them, then let that be my sign from you that I was wrong and that all this isn’t because you’re testing me. And please
let everything be okay.

I down my water in two gulps and crush the plastic bottle in my hand and force myself to walk by the cop to throw the bottle away. When I get back near the gate, there’s a younger version
of my dad coming down the walkway, with a gray T-shirt and a mostly shaved head and a wrestler’s build, and there’s a feeling like a snake uncoiling in my stomach—that’s
Trey.

He’s carrying two big bags, and when he makes his way over to us, he sets them both on the ground and says quietly, like he’s tired, “Didn’t know you
were coming, Braden. Hey, Kev.” I take a step forward to hug him at the same time he sticks out his hand and I take an awkward step back that feels like a whole-body stutter. I shake his hand
instead, and Trey says, “You got tall.”

“Yeah.” I can feel my face reddening after that aborted attempt at a hug. I was never short, but I hit a growth spurt right before high school. I got our dad’s pitcher’s
build, the five o’clock shadow because I get bored of shaving, the tan even in winter from all the baseball, wheat-colored hair from the baseball, too. Trey got our dad’s eyes and
jawline, and he looks…older, I guess, different in that way that makes you wonder if maybe this is how a person’s always looked and you just aren’t remembering right. I say, “I
guess taller than I was in sixth grade.”

“Five years will do that,” Kevin says, grinning broadly and nudging Trey in the side. “And I have to say, you’re not looking your best. Rough flight?”

My brother runs his hand over his stubbly head, his bicep bulging. He doesn’t look like he’s in much of a smiling mood. And Kevin’s right; Trey’s got dark half circles
under his eyes and deeper hollows under his cheekbones.

“Well,” he says, ignoring both our comments and hitching his bags on his shoulder in a way that means business, a way that means he’s doing this because he thinks he should and
not because he wanted to, “where’d you guys park?”

K
evin drives a blue Outback with a baby car seat and
IT
’
S NOT A RELIGION
,
IT
’
S A RELATIONSHIP
and
ROMANS
5:8 bumper stickers. It’s two hours back home from the airport, the cramped gray and the noise of
the city settling back into the wide-open fields and orchards and back roads of the Central Valley. I think if I lived someplace like where Trey does, I’d never be able to really breathe. In
Ripon, after the water tower, we pass one of the billboards advertising my dad’s show:
Mart Raynor Jr., Truth for Today’s World.
No graffiti on this one.

If Kevin’s been as nervous to see Trey as I’ve been—except why would he be? Kevin’s not the one who dragged him away from his other life—he doesn’t show it.
He asks if Trey got things with his restaurant all worked out, and Trey says yeah, mostly; he put Adam in charge (Kevin seems to recognize the names; maybe they talk more than I realized), hired
three new line cooks, and, he says, is now bleeding from the ears in payroll. Kevin says, “I saw Mona’s hiring at Jag’s.”

“Yeah, thanks, asshole.”

Kevin grins. “Hey, now. Watch your language around your little brother.”

“Not all of us lead Christian youth groups.” In the rearview mirror, I see Trey raise his eyebrows at Kevin pointedly. “Anyway, I told you I’m supposed to be writing that
cookbook.”

I lean forward. “You’re making a book?”

“That’s how I could afford to up and leave my job like that.”

People willing to pay to have a part of you in their homes—that’s got to be a good feeling. “That’s pretty cool. It’d be nice to make something that didn’t
just disappear when people ate it.”

He says, “Mm,” like maybe I said that wrong. Then he says he was supposed to have it finished months ago, but I’m pretty sure he’s only telling Kevin. I stay quiet, until
eventually I’m not part of the conversation at all.

It’s when they start talking about actual food, something Trey’s doing with dehydrated shrimp powder or something else that I guess is technically food, that I start to get queasy.
Tonight is the longest I’ve been in a car since the accident. I lean my head back against the seat and close my eyes, and it’s maybe fifteen minutes later that they lower their voices
and I figure they think I’m asleep.

“This is the first day all year I haven’t gone in to work, I think,” Trey says. “Right? It’s weird as hell. I don’t know what to do with my hands. I was
jittery as fuck on the plane.”

“I’m sure your seatmates loved that.”

“Ha. So what’re Jenna and Ellie doing right now?”

“They’re having dinner with Jenna’s folks.” Then Kevin adds, “Next week’s our anniversary.”

“Oh.” There’s a pause. “Right. That’s right.”

“Five years.”

“I know that. What are you doing for her?”

“I’m taking her camping.”

“You’re what?”

“Camping. Did you forget what that was since moving to your fancy city? Tent. Campfire. S’mores. Stars. Sleeping bags.”

“That’s it?”

“What do you mean, that’s it?”

“I mean Jenna had your
baby
, and you’re making her sleep in a
tent
? Making her burned hot dogs? Take her to San Francisco or something. Buy her a nice dinner. Buy her
jewelry. At least get her a hotel.”

“You know what, how about I’ll ask you beforehand next time I’d like ideas on what to do with my wife.” Kevin clears his throat. “Have you talked to your dad yet?
Since—”

“Why would you even ask me that?”

“I’m guessing that’s a no.”

“I told you I talked to the social worker. That was plenty.”

“Has his lawyer talked to Braden?”

Trey says, “No idea.”

“You still haven’t asked him about it, either?”

“He doesn’t need to think about that. Give him a shitload of homework this week, will you? Keep him distracted.”

“Right, Trey. That sounds like exactly what he needs.” Then he adds, “My parents have everyone they know praying.”

“You can tell your parents that’s not necessary. Tell them I said no thanks.”

Kevin sighs. He never finished, because he became a teacher instead, but I know he was in seminary for a while to be a pastor like his dad. “You know I’m not going to.”

“Fine. Then don’t.” Then Trey says, “Wait, wait,” and I can’t tell from his voice whether he’s frowning or smiling. “You’re doing it, too. I
know you. You’re praying, too.”

“Of course I am.”

“Don’t you have some things of your own to discuss with God already? Maybe instead you should ask—”

“Give it a rest, Trey. How’d it go explaining things to your employees?”

“It didn’t.”

“What do you mean, it didn’t? Did you still not tell them?” I can hear the frown in Kevin’s voice. “You just left? That’s it? No explanation?”

We go another mile or so. Then Trey says, “People always talk. Whatever. If they know, they know.”

“Well, it’s your restaurant, I guess.”

Trey snorts, and when he talks, his voice is mean. “Isn’t that generous of you.”

Kevin’s quiet. Then he says, “You’ve had a long week.”

We go over something in the road, a pothole maybe, and I’m jostled back and forth. I clench up at that feeling. Then Trey says, less meanly, “Did, uh—did Braden say very
much?”

“Oh, volumes. You know him. He adores talking. There I was, trying to focus on driving, and he wouldn’t let up with the—”

“Kev, come on. That was a real question.”

“Then no. No, he doesn’t talk about it ever. It’s very clear you two are brothers. You need to talk to him.”

“He seems fine.”

“It’s been all over the news how the DA’s office is seeking the death penalty, Trey. Why would he be
fine
?”

It has been all over the news, but so far everyone’s at least had the decency to not say stuff like that around me, and this is how it feels when you hear that said aloud for the first
time: like someone’s pouring acid down your throat. Like the words you read in the articles have come to life and are circling you with ropes and matches and gasoline.

We pull through the gates of the country club and drive up the sloping landscaped hill and past what Trey always called the McMansions to the end of our cul-de-sac. When Trey and I get out,
Kevin leans closer to Trey and says to him, quietly, “I know I said it already, but I’m proud of you for doing this,” and then he drives away and, for the first time in five
years, it’s just us.

“Does it look the same?” I say, more for the sake of conversation than anything else, but he looks around the cul-de-sac as if he’s hunting for an answer. It smells a little
bit like manure, the way it does sometimes here when it’s warm and the wind blows east from the Niederhost ranch a few towns over in Royalton.

Trey draws a long breath, taking in so much air his chest swells up, then lets it all out in one sharp exhale. “Smells like shit.”

He unlocks the side door to the garage and we go in. I’m pretty surprised he even still has a key. “Hey,” he says, stopping short and frowning at the empty garage, “what
happened to the car?”

I blink at him. “I mean, they—they took it for evidence or whatever, so—”

“I know
that
. I meant the other car.”

“Oh.” The Mustang was Trey’s, originally; my dad bought it for him when he turned sixteen but gave it to me when Trey dropped out of college and stopped ever coming home.
“Ah—it kind of got messed up.”

“You crash it or something?”

“Uh—sort of.”

He raises his eyebrows like he’s not at all impressed, but he lets it drop. That’s at least a small relief. I follow him in and then upstairs, hanging around as he goes into his
room.

“I washed the sheets and stuff for you,” I say from the doorway. “Are you hungry or anything? You want to get something to eat? I didn’t eat yet, either.”

“I ate about fifty packs of peanuts on the plane.”

His room looks exactly the same as it did when he was in high school, which is to say, obsessively neat. Trey used to do puzzles with my dad sometimes, and he always separated every single piece
into piles according to shape, which my dad always said made him look like a serial killer. On his dresser there’s an old picture of Trey’s mom and, next to it, one of the three of us
at AT&T Park that last time we went. My dad has his arm draped around us and he’s smiling, and I’m grinning with a tooth missing, and Trey’s not smiling but he’s looking
back at the camera amused, kind of, so you can tell he had fun in the end, too.

It helps, remembering that; it gives me something to hold on to. That the three of us, him and me and Trey, we all come from the same place.

Trey takes his laptop out of his bag and sets it on his desk. “What’s the Wi-Fi password here now?”

I give him the number, and his expression changes. The password’s Trey’s birthday. I say, “Dad set it.”

He ignores that. He leaves the laptop shut and puts the bag down next to it, then reaches down to untie his shoes.

“My games start this week,” I say, watching him. “We’re the defending state champions. I told you that, right?”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah. Except it’s even more pressure now. We have a big game coming up pretty soon against Brantley. You could come watch.” I pick at a scab on the back of my hand.
“Actually, I think the Giants game is still on right now, too. First spring training game. Four–four in the eighth.”

He makes a sound like
hungh.

“You still follow them much? Or are you, like, a Yankees fan now or something?”

“Really, Braden? The
Yankees
?”

I smile at the disgust in his voice. “Well—you want to watch the rest of the game with me? Ramirez is pitching. Just went in.” Then I add, “And Brett Kirk’s
catching, too. He kind of reminds me of you.”