24. Lane

The match is a hard-fought victory. I didn"t start, but I get a decent amount of field time, since once I'm on, the ball almost never makes it past me. Lionel jokes that he's almost bored in the keeper's box.

The other team"s defense is almost just as good, though. Almost. We manage to get one in the net, thanks to an impressive assist by Noah. He only spent a few minutes on the field in the last bit of the second half, but he makes one of the biggest impressions of the entire game. I'm not even mad at the way he swooped in. When the game ends, every player on the field runs to high-five him. He approaches me before we walk off the field, and I give him what he wants.

"Crazy what happens when you actually pass the ball," I joke, lifting my hand in the air for an obligatory high-five. The jerk intentionally misses my hand and smacks my butt instead. He finds the glare I give him funny, but I"m not the least bit amused.

"You ready for some fun family time?" Noah asks me. He looks at me curiously while I lift my eyes around the locker room, grabbing my bag from my locker. "Aren"t you going to shower? We have to meet our parents in like half an hour."

Averting my eyes when he takes his jersey off, I make my excuses and start moving towards the exit. "I need to grab something from the dorms. I"ll take a quick shower there and meet you at the restaurant. You can ride with them, right?"

"I mean, I guess, but?—"

I don"t give him a chance to discuss it any further, cutting him off with a, "Cool, see you there," and running out of the locker room before his already half-naked self can follow me.

The jog back to the dorms helps me clear my head. We may have just finished playing, but I have a lot of nervous energy. Knowing my mom and Scott were in the stands both distracted me and made me more determined. I think it"s why I was able to be so single-minded on the field. I needed to hone my attention on defending my zone so I didn"t overthink dinner tonight.

I'm hoping I can put on a good face and let Mom see that I'm fine. How well adjusted and successful I am at being a normal college guy. Then maybe she won"t try to ask me questions, and I can keep avoiding this whole thing.

I don"t want to talk about the camp or the patients. I don"t want to talk about all the evidence they found and showed her when they were trying to talk her into getting me to testify. I keep telling them I didn"t see anything. That I don"t know anything.

I think I"m a bad liar.

I"ve just pulled on some pants and am drying my hair with a towel when there"s a knock at the door. Assuming it"s one of Noah"s dumb friends coming to drag him to a party, I don"t bother putting on a shirt to open the door and scowl, but it"s my mom. She gives me a timid smile, and I open the door to let her in, apologizing about my state of undress. My scowl stays in place, though. Why is she here?

"I was going to meet you all at the restaurant," I say, pulling on an undershirt.

"Noah told me, and tried to talk me into coming by to see your dorm after dinner, but we really need to talk, Lane."

"I"m fine, Mom?—"

"I"m not fine, Lane. I saw the pictures, and I know?—"

"You don"t know anything!" I yell. She flinches, and I immediately feel like the lowest kind of person. "I"m sorry," I say in a softer voice.

She absentmindedly runs a finger over the detail in the faux marble countertop of our kitchen, avoiding eye contact. My eyes close as I hold back the tears that threaten. I don"t want her to be afraid, I just want her to stop. Stop trying to be the mother that she was for Noah and not me. Stop trying to make things better. Stop trying to fix things that will always be broken.

"I"m sorry," I say again.

"It"s okay," she says, tentatively coming to me and wrapping her arms around my waist.

"It"s not okay. I don"t want to be like him."

She looks surprised when her eyes meet mine. She thinks I idolized him because I"ve always deferred to what he raised me to be, because I"ve held onto his Bible, or because I bring up what he"s taught me. But that couldn"t be further from the truth.

"He was wrong," I say, my voice so low it rumbles in my chest, dislodging all the hurt I"ve been trying so hard to tamp down. "About so much. My thoughts still get messed up. I'm trying hard to be better."

My grandfather told me a lot of things. A lot of things that were wrong. Maybe I always knew they were wrong, but when it"s the only thing you grow up hearing, it takes being hit in the face with reality to learn the truth. And then, even after you learn the truth, it"s still so hard not to hold on to those old ideals. Unlearning the values that have been beaten into your mind from before you can even remember is harder than anyone realizes.

I don't want to talk about it. But I don"t think I can run from it any longer, either. I have a lifetime of built-up fear and rage and sadness, and the more I try to pretend it doesn"t exist, the more it creeps up on me in the few moments of peace I have—like when I"m sleeping, or when Noah looks at me. The moments when he"s touching me.

My cheeks flush at the thought, and I do the only thing I can to deflect from my errant thoughts: I keep talking.

"I changed my name because I didn"t want to be the person I was in that place. The person he wanted me to be."

"They hurt you," she whispers.

I don"t answer, instead I close my eyes against the barrage of memories that have been wreaking havoc on my brain since news of the raid broke months ago. I spent days in a near catatonic haze when the detective visited us. I lied to the police when I told them I didn"t know anything about what went on in the basement of the church. I lied to my mother when I insisted I was fine. I lied to myself that she didn't care, because if she did, she would have taken me with her when she escaped.

"I"m sorry," she says, sitting on the edge of the couch. I sit next to her, trying to temper my emotions so I can get through this. She"s been good to me since I moved in with them, and I know she was a good mother to Noah. I can"t really blame her for saving herself, even if it hurts that she didn"t keep me. "I should have fought harder."

Wrapping an arm around her smaller body, I pull her into my chest.

"It"s not your fault," I tell her, as realization trickles in the recesses of my brain. "They hurt you, too."

I know I"m right by the way her limbs tense.

"They took you from me," she says, her voice small and mournful, as if something had died inside her. "You were the only good thing to ever happen to me, and they took you." Her fists ball in her lap. She"s trembling.

"Grandfather said?—"

"He said a lot of things," she says, sniffing.

"What happened?"

I"m not really sure I"m ready to know. But who is ever truly ready for hard truths?

"I was barely sixteen. I didn"t even know I was pregnant with you until I was more than halfway through my pregnancy. I was so sick all the time. My father made me stay in bed and told me nothing. We were never taught what causes pregnancy, or what happens to your body. I don"t even know how long they knew before I did; I just knew that I"d displeased him on an inconceivable level. The kind of anger where he didn"t need words."

I nod, feeling the burn of his icy glare, the judgment of his silence. The sharp pain of rice digging into my knees as I knelt and prayed for forgiveness for my sins every night. The searing heat of a belt lash.

"Long story short, he tricked me. He told me the church would beseech God for forgiveness on my behalf, that I could atone for my sins and the church would welcome my child, if I let him lead me as a father should." She pauses to stretch out her fingers, releasing her clenched fists. There are indentations in her hands where her short fingernails have bit into the skin. "I was so na?ve. And I was a good girl. I did everything he and the other elders of the church told me to." Her eyes dart up to mine with the layered meaning of that statement, before closing again. "I signed away all my rights to you. Not that it mattered. My name was never even on your birth certificate, and I never stepped foot in a hospital. They took you from the room before you even cried. I just wanted to hold you. I never even got to hold you."

She breaks, sobbing into her hands. I keep my arm around her shoulder, tightening it to pull her closer to my side. It takes several minutes before she"s able to speak again. She straightens her spine and lifts her chin, and for the first time I see myself in her image instead of the man I've always known fathered me.

"I know now that my signature wouldn"t have been legal, that I could have gone to the police. But I didn"t understand any of that until many years later, when it was too late. Without any proof, how could I get to you? I spoke to a lawyer when I managed to get on my feet and find some stability, but she wasn"t confident that I could win a fight against the church. They"d paint me as a runaway, and I barely had a good enough job to keep myself housed and fed. I didn"t have proof of anything."

"Why did you leave?" I know why she left the compound. What I really want to know is why she left me.

"The day after I gave birth to you, they handed me a bag with a change of clothes, a bus pass, forty dollars cash, and escorted me through the gates. I was no longer welcome. I"d forsaken God and His son, and the only way to save your soul was to keep you away from me." She swallows and pushes her bangs off her forehead. "They shunned me from the compound. When I was found passed out on the ground next to the gate, they called the police to have me removed from the property. I think they might have told them I was some kind of grifter or addict. I woke up in the hospital a few days later. I almost died from an infection related to an injury I sustained in childbirth."

I blurt the next question on my mind without thinking first. "How did you get pregnant?"

She pulls back, raising her eyebrows. "I gave you all those books when you didn"t want to talk to me or Scott. I didn"t want to push you, but I thought?—"

Embarrassment heats my face. "Not how. Who? What happened?"

Now it"s her turn to look just as embarrassed as I am. "It"s easy to manipulate someone with zero understanding of how the world works," she answers cryptically.

"Was it Pastor Gideon?" I ask bluntly. I know the answer, but I want to hear it from someone else. Confirmation from someone that doesn"t think I"m inherently evil because I was born out of wedlock, or because I was nice to a broken boy. My resemblance to Gideon Larsen is a little too coincidental.

She doesn"t say the words, but she looks down for a moment before giving me a clipped nod.

"I hope he rots," I tell her.

It"s the first time I"ve said anything so harshly against any of the church members. But I mean every syllable.

"So do I," she says, her voice rough. "But not for me." My brow furrows. I don"t understand why or what she means. "For what he did to you. I know what they did down there, to those boys."

"I used to think they were helping them. Praying with them. Leading them to salvation," I admit to her with a sick feeling in my gut. I was so blind.

"It was nothing less than torture."

I learned that the hard way.

Part of me really wants to tell her, but I don't see how burdening her with something that happened in the past would do anything but hurt her more.

We"re quiet for several long moments before I get too antsy and have to move. I get up and go into my room to get the button-down shirt I'd planned to wear to dinner, and then grab my keys and wallet. The restaurant is less than ten minutes away, and neither of us breaks the silence, pretending to listen to the radio the whole way there. The parking lot is almost full, but I find a spot near the back.

"Mom?" My voice is embarrassingly weak as I call out to her before she can get out of the car.

She sits back and looks at me curiously. "Yes?"

"Do you think any good came of it? Did they fix anyone?"

"Honey, no." Her face falls, and she closes the door again before leaning over the console and brushing a gentle hand over my temple. "There was never anything to fix."

"I-I"m not?—"

She shakes her head and holds her hand up to stop me. "It doesn"t matter, Lane. People are who they are, and they love who they love. As long as they aren"t hurting anyone, there"s nothing wrong or unnatural or ungodly about love."

"But, the Bible?—"

"Has a lot of different interpretations." She gives me a wry, apologetic smile. "You can believe in and love God without all the bullshit. It took me a long time to unlearn everything I learned in that place, and I know you"re going through the same journey."

She pauses and grabs my hand, holding it gently between both of her own.

"Let me ask you something I learned at a church of all places—if there"s a Creator who is all knowing and powerful, do you really think he or she made mistakes?"