Page 278 of What We Brave
"Yes."
"And they know? About each other?"
"We all know. We chose this. We live together."Slow down."Yes. They know."
Mom looks at Reid. Then at Blake. Then back at me.
"How long?"
"About six months."
The quiet stretches. Someone's singing near the main fire — soft, in Kaqchikel, something that sounds like a lullaby. It feels like it's coming from another planet.
"Six months." Mom's voice is careful now. Controlled. "And you didn't tell us."
"I wanted to. I've been trying to figure out how?—"
"We talk every week, Laine. Everyweek." She's not shouting. Mary Mitchell doesn't shout. But the hurt lifts her voice and my stomach drops with it. "And not once — in six months of phone calls — you couldn't?—"
"I was scared."
That lands. I watch it hit her. Not because it's a surprise — because it confirms the thing she already suspected. The distance. The fourteen months. The phone calls that were always a little too careful.
It wasn't the job. It wasn't busyness.
It was this. Okay, not just this. But everything that came before it. Everything that made us break the first time.
"Scared ofus?" Her hand goes to her chest. "Of your parents?"
"Of losing you."
Don't cry. Not yet. Hold it together.
Her eyes fill. Fast, the way mine do — that Mitchell thing where the tears show up before the thought is even finished. She blinks hard.
Dad's plate is on the ground now. His hands are flat on his knees and he's staring at the fire, unblinking.
"David." Mom's voice stretches thin. "Say something."
He takes a breath. Holds it. Then, quiet and measured — the voice he uses for everything that matters:
"'A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.'"
Genesis.Of course. The verse I've heard since I could sit still in a pew. Two become one. The sacred math. The math that only works with two.
"Dad—"
"One flesh, Laine. Not three. Not whatever this is." He gestures — a small wave that takes in the space between our chairs. Everything and nothing at once. "This isn't what God designed."
"You don't know what God designed for me."
His eyes come to mine. Steady. Disappointed.
That's worse than angry. Angry I could fight.
"I know what Scripture says."
"Scripture also says—" My brain scrambles. Flipping pages, twenty years of Sunday school and Bible study and sitting in churches on four continents —come on, come on— "It says don't judge. 'Do not judge, or you too will be judged.' And it says — love is patient, love is kind — it says love is—" My voice catches.Get it together."They are so kind to me, Mom. Both of them. They are so, so kind."
