She's so in.Caesar wrote: ↑21 Sep 2025, 19:07The picture wouldn’t leave her—the neat stacks mid-count, Alejandra’s quick fingers, Hayley’s steady rhythm, rubber bands waiting to bite shut.
She watched the streets line up and fall away, her mind replaying the sound of bills sliding against bills and rubber bands snapping.
American Sun
American Sun
-
Captain Canada
- Posts: 4726
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
American Sun
Nigga pounded out Janae and then blocked her ass 
Jay really the biggest loser here. Lost his starting job, sister got pounded out by his opp. That's a tough year at school.
Jay really the biggest loser here. Lost his starting job, sister got pounded out by his opp. That's a tough year at school.
American Sun
Damn I thought I only had one update left to get caught up but it’s two 
American Sun
I get the feeling with how he caused the Mireya drama then Caine treating his sister like a cheap ho, he gonna pop back up next seasonCaptain Canada wrote: ↑23 Sep 2025, 12:25Nigga pounded out Janae and then blocked her ass
Jay really the biggest loser here. Lost his starting job, sister got pounded out by his opp. That's a tough year at school.
American Sun
Caine don't be getting hit. SHIFTY in the backfield. And what makes you think she can't be a bartender or something? A promoter? Something where she stays dressed?!
Got in them feels.
Because maybe she not gonna be shaking her ass. She is a respectable mother.
Oh really now?djp73 wrote: ↑23 Sep 2025, 10:09She's so in.Caesar wrote: ↑21 Sep 2025, 19:07The picture wouldn’t leave her—the neat stacks mid-count, Alejandra’s quick fingers, Hayley’s steady rhythm, rubber bands waiting to bite shut.
She watched the streets line up and fall away, her mind replaying the sound of bills sliding against bills and rubber bands snapping.
Janae knew the deal.Captain Canada wrote: ↑23 Sep 2025, 12:25Nigga pounded out Janae and then blocked her ass
Jay really the biggest loser here. Lost his starting job, sister got pounded out by his opp. That's a tough year at school.
Hey, man. He got a state championship out of it. Some balm on that burn.
Caine runs with killers. Jay not crazy.redsox907 wrote: ↑23 Sep 2025, 14:54I get the feeling with how he caused the Mireya drama then Caine treating his sister like a cheap ho, he gonna pop back up next seasonCaptain Canada wrote: ↑23 Sep 2025, 12:25Nigga pounded out Janae and then blocked her ass
Jay really the biggest loser here. Lost his starting job, sister got pounded out by his opp. That's a tough year at school.
American Sun
He’s a Sometimes God
Mireya lay on her back with Camila’s weight sunk warm across her chest. The room held the thin blue of almost morning, the kind that made shadows sat like bruises. The fan in the window pushed humid air that only moved the heat around. Somewhere outside, a siren lifted and faded.
Camila’s breath hitched now and then, tiny hiccups left over from hours of crying. Her curls were damp and stuck to her forehead. One fist was bunched in Mireya’s shirt, the other tucked under her cheek. Every so often a tremor went through her body, a leftover sob that didn’t know how to stop. Mireya kept one palm flat between Camila’s shoulder blades and felt each breath find its way in and out. The girl was heavy and hot, a small sun pinning Mireya to the bed.
The phone on the nightstand still held the last call on its face. Mireya didn’t look at it. She could hear his voice anyway, the way he had stretched the words soft for their daughter until the softness had to end. Time to sleep, mija. Tomorrow. The way Camila’s mouth had gone crooked and wet right before she broke open again. Mireya had said shh and rocked and walked the room in slow ovals until her legs shook. Nothing had helped until the girl gave up and fell asleep on her like this, chest to chest, breath warming the damp patch where tears had soaked through the cotton.
Now the ceiling was all she let herself have. A water stain spread wide as a hand. Hairline cracks traveling out like roads. She fixed her eyes on the place where two lines crossed and tried not to blink. If she moved, Camila might wake. If she moved, the crying would start over. Her shoulders ached. Her arm had gone numb where it held the child in place. She let it go numb.
She told herself not to think, which only made the thoughts louder. She hadn’t followed him. She had watched him go the way you hear rain start from inside. You don’t get wet at first. You only listen. It had felt like that. A decision that made sense when she said it out loud and felt impossible now, with her child wrung out and hungry for what a screen couldn’t give.
Another breath. Another hiccup. Mireya blinked and a tear slipped warm into her hairline. She didn’t lift a hand to wipe it away. More came, slow and steady, finding their own paths. She let them run. Her throat hurt from holding everything quiet. The fan ticked on the same blade every few seconds. She counted ten of them and then stopped because counting made time move and she needed it to stall.
Four years. She tasted the number like a word in a language you were sure you once knew. Four years of him. Of them. Everything that had built itself inside that number kept pressing against her ribs. She pictured the way he had said their daughter’s name on the call. The care in it. The patience. It didn’t make it easier. Love didn’t make anything easier. It only made it heavier when you had to carry it alone.
A car rolled slow down the block and paused, bass low enough to feel against the floorboards. The sound washed through and left the room quiet again. Camila’s breath found a softer rhythm. Mireya let her own breath try to match it. She kept her eyes on the ceiling stain until the edges wavered and doubled. She blinked the picture back into one.
She wondered what the road looked like where he was. She wondered if the light was different there, if the air felt clean unlike the muggy, humid air of New Orleans. The wondering came like a tide she couldn’t push back. Was she wrong? Should she have said yes? Should she have put her life in a bag and gone where she didn’t know anybody and started over with no map except him? The questions lined up and waited for answers she didn’t have.
Camila murmured something in sleep, not quite a word, a sound learned from both of them. Mireya’s fingers moved once, a slow circle between the small shoulder blades, then went still. The room smelled like old soap and heat. Sweat cooled under the curve of her collarbone where the fan found it. Her eyes burned and watered again. She didn’t make a sound.
A door outside shut and footsteps went past. Somewhere a faucet rattled. A train called far off, low and tired. Morning collected itself behind the curtain one thin shade at a time. Mireya thought of nothing and of everything and of nothing again, the way you do when you are too tired to sleep and too full to speak.
She didn’t move. She didn’t wipe her face. She let the tears be what they were, quiet and bare. She held her girl and stared at the ceiling and let the ache widen, then settle, then widen again. She listened for the next hiccup and the next breath and the next. She thought the thought she had been trying not to think. Maybe she had made the wrong choice. The words formed and sat in the room with her and didn’t leave. She didn’t argue with them. She didn’t agree.
The light thinned to gray. Her shoulders throbbed. The fan kept ticking. Camila’s mouth fell open a little and a tiny snore caught and released. Mireya swallowed and felt it scrape. She didn’t let anything out. There was nothing left to say that wouldn’t break them open again.
She lay under the weight she loved and watched the stain that wouldn’t fix itself while morning took its time.
The motel AC rattled and blew air that wasn’t cold. Caine lay on top of the blanket anyway, eyes on the popcorn ceiling, counting bumps the way he once counted cracks. Dawn nudged the edges of the curtain. Not full morning yet. Just a gray that made everything look paused.
He rolled to the side and reached for the floor. Palms down. Body up. The first push-ups were slow so his shoulders could remember. By ten his breath had found a rhythm. By twenty the motel’s stale air felt thinner. By thirty his head finally cleared enough to stop replaying the moment Camila broke down on the screen last night, both hands crushed to her face, the way her chest hiccupped when he told her it was bedtime. The sound lived in his ear now. He did five more just to push sound out.
Sit-ups next. He hooked his heels under the chair and curled up clean, eyes on the off-white wall and the shadow of the cheap lamp. Up, down. Up, down. He counted under his breath, soft, not to wake anything in him that would turn into panic. This is just a room, he told himself. Just a morning. He finished with his abs burning and his back damp, that clean sore that said he still owned his body.
He sat there a second, elbows on knees, the carpet rough against his fingers. He saw the way Camila’s lip had trembled when he said tomorrow. Saw the way she tried to be brave and then lost it completely. Mireya’s voice somewhere off-screen, gentle but stretched thin. He could have said one more story. He could have asked for another minute. He hadn’t. He had told her sleep and promised the sun would come back. He hoped that counted for something.
Shoes. The laces looked new enough to squeak. He slid his feet in and tugged them tight, double knots neat against the tongue. He stood, rolled his neck, took the single keycard off the dresser, and stepped out into the hallway.
The door thudded closed behind him. The early air met him, a cool hand to a hot face. Pines held the night’s damp along their needles. Somewhere water licked inside a sprinkler head that hadn’t kicked on yet. A truck down the road coughed and faded. No sirens. No bass. No voices rising from porches before the sun. The quiet was a new kind of loud.
He started with a walk that turned into a jog by the edge of the lot. The pavement still held last night’s cool. His breath stayed easy, arms loose, the way coaches used to tell him to run even when he was thinking about something else. A rabbit flashed across the grass and vanished under a hedge. Birds argued in a live oak and then fell into agreement. He passed a small church with a brick sign and a message about that Sunday. The letters were straight. The grass around it was cut right to the curb.
He crossed toward the low sprawl of campus. Buildings sat clean and square. Windows caught the first light and held it. He could smell wet dirt and mown green and something like laundry. Even the trash cans were tidy. It made his shoulders sit strange. He wasn’t used to the world smoothing itself out for him.
A man in a yellow windbreaker jogged past, earbuds in, eyes on nothing. Caine nodded. The man didn’t see him. Two girls came out of a residence hall in matching shorts and clipped ponytails. They ran with quick feet and soft breaths, talking about nothing heavy. They didn’t look up either. He wasn’t mad about it.
He kept going. Past an empty parking deck where the concrete swallowed his footsteps. Past a row of oaks that looked older than the brick around them. Past a field that would belong to him soon enough, white lines not painted yet. He didn’t step on it. Not today. He followed the blacktop’s curve and let the route pick itself.
Statesboro smelled like early rain even when there was none. The trees here held their own weather and gave it back slow. Dew soaked the edges of his socks where grass leaned over the sidewalk. His shirt stuck between his shoulder blades.
Last night lived along the edges of his mind. Camila’s voice had been small at first, then big with crying, the kind that made her whole body work. He had told her to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. He had counted her breaths with her. That would have to be enough.
He turned down a side street that ran along a stand of pines. The trunks rose true and straight, their bark grooved. A squirrel scolded him from high up and then forgot about him. A sprinkler finally clicked on somewhere and pattered the edge of the sidewalk. He took the water on the calf and kept going. His body found that old groove where the work did itself.
On the far edge of campus he passed a small lake that wore the morning like glass. A duck cut a clean line across it and left the surface fixing itself behind her. He slowed just enough to see his reflection bend and come back together on the water. He looked older than he felt some days. He let that be true and pushed back into pace.
New Orleans made noise even when it slept. It sweated through walls. It watched you back when you watched it. This place did none of that. The quiet here had no eyes. It left him alone with himself, which could be its own kind of trouble. He breathed in the green anyway and let the quiet lay itself on him.
He cut across a quad and counted the steps between one lamppost and the next. He told himself he’d make it to ten and then ten more and then ten after that. Not a finish line. Just a staying line. He could keep a promise that small. He could keep a promise that looked like motion.
His legs warmed, and the chill at his ears gave up. The sky shifted from gray to the thin blue that always came right before the day picked up speed. Somewhere behind him a door opened and closed and somebody laughed, new and bright, the sound bouncing off brick and dying quick.
He pictured a different morning two states away. Mireya on her back staring up at the ceiling paint, Camila starfish on her chest, both of them caught in a tired that didn’t let go. He put a hand to his own chest the way he would have eased Camila’s breath and then dropped it again, a small gesture no one saw.
He ran until the thought stopped stinging and turned into something dull he could hold without flinching. When the motel roof finally showed again over the trees, he didn’t cut toward it. He kept the road under him and let the town stretch a while longer. He wasn’t ready to be still.
He didn’t look for a route back. He didn’t need one. He would know it when the circle closed. For now, the only thing he had to do was move through the clean air, let the green pass on both sides, and feel the quiet ride his shoulders without crushing him. He kept running and let the years he’d promised himself drift out ahead.
The sanctuary held the kind of cool that made skin rise with gooseflesh even in May. Fluorescents hummed. Paper programs whispered when people shifted them against their laps. Pastor Franklin Hadden stood at the pulpit with his Bible open and one hand resting on the wood. His voice carried steady down the center aisle.
“Obedience,” he said, not loud, just sure. “It’s not about being seen doing right. It’s about turning away when the world offers easy and you want it. When nobody’s looking. When the door is cracked and the music’s playing and you know better.”
He paused and the organist’s foot tapped once and went still. Second row, the family sat in order. Marianne closest to the aisle, hat brim modest, hands folded over her program. Next to her, Caleb in a dark suit with a clean white shirt, shoulders pulled straight. Gabrielle had her phone screen down in her purse, the strap looped around her wrist. Tommy’s jacket showed a sharp crease at the sleeve. Beside him, Laney’s dress skimmed her calves and hid everything it was meant to hide. Next, Rylee let a hem flirt with the line of what her father allowed. At the end, Jesse wore a tie that had started out neat and now sat a little crooked, his eyes following his father’s hands.
Pastor Hadden’s voice kept its even climb. “You can’t hold the cross in one hand and the world in the other. Choose. And keep choosing.”
Rylee’s thumbs moved under the lip of her program. The glow leaked through. Without cutting her eyes from the pulpit, Laney reached across and plucked the phone out of her sister’s hands. A soft plastic crack came from the case. Rylee sucked her teeth, low and sharp. Laney didn’t turn. She slid the phone into her own purse and answered the sound with a small look that landed like a tap on the wrist. Rylee folded her arms and stared at the hymnal rack, jaw set.
A cough came from somewhere near the choir loft. The air smelled like starch and a gentle, sweet perfume that lived in the older women’s gloves. The pastor moved a page with his ring finger. “Temptation promises freedom. It pays in chains.” He let the sentence sit. A child whispered and was shushed. The organ gave one breath as if it agreed.
The benediction closed clean.
“Go in peace,” he said, and the congregation rose with the soft thunder of heels and dress shoes, wood groaning under the movement. Marianne touched the back of the pew in front of her and waited for the aisle to clear. In the pew shuffle, Jesse rescued his tie with two quick pulls and a palm press.
Outside, sun brightened the chrome bumpers. Heat came off the blacktop in soft waves. Greeting lines formed in natural lanes near the portico and along the garden beds where hedge trimmings lay dark on the dirt. Pastor Hadden and Marianne took their places under the shade, hands offered, smiles measured, the easy cadence of “Good to see you,” “How’s your mama,” “We’re praying with you.”
Tommy and Caleb stood near the steps. Laney held her place a half step behind Tommy’s shoulder.
“Late relief is the failure point,” Tommy said. “You can’t walk the leadoff. You get strike one, then you live on the edges. No free bases.”
Caleb huffed a laugh. “Man, you’d bench your own shadow. He was nibblin’, sure, but the zone been funny all week. Ump had a mood.”
“Adjust anyway,” Tommy said. “You miss, you miss down. Not chest high.”
Caleb tipped his head. “I’ll give you that. Ball looked like a gift and got re-gifted to the bleachers. Still, they’re fine. Bats will cover a bruise.”
“Discipline covers it,” Tommy said. “Bats go cold.”
Caleb grinned without showing teeth. “You love talking like it’s a field manual. ‘Secure the ninth. Eliminate traffic.’”
“That works,” Tommy said, mouth tightening. “No traffic.”
“Alright, Captain,” Caleb said, easy. “But I’m telling you, if Strider finds his slider, it’s a quiet week. Whole pen breathes again.”
“Find it before the seventh,” Tommy said. “Not during.”
Caleb chuckled. “You allergic to joy, huh? Let a man fool around with one pitch. Summer’s long.”
“Games are won now,” Tommy said. “Not in August if you waste May.”
Caleb’s eyes narrowed like he was lining up a box score in his head. “Fair. But you hear the park last night? Folks were loud. That matters. Boys feel that.”
Tommy’s hand cut a small line through the air. “Noise fades. Reps don’t.”
Caleb nodded once. “There you go again. See, I say let Ronald swing free and trust the pen to remember who they are.”
“Remembering is not a plan,” Tommy said.
“It is if you practice it,” Caleb said, softer. “They will.”
Tommy gave one crisp nod that closed the point. Caleb smiled. Laney stayed where she was, mouth pressed into a straight line as she listened to the two cadences—tight and loose—braiding and unbraiding in front of her.
Gabrielle paced just to the side, phone to her ear, voice even. “No, that number was net. We can walk through it Monday.” She turned away from the steps and back again, a heel clicking, a bright line of polish on her nails catching sun when she gestured at nothing.
Laney watched. Rylee stood twenty yards off on the edge of the lot with a boy whose hair fell into his eyes. His shirt was tucked in sloppy and the smile that pulled at his mouth made him look like he believed in himself. Rylee played with the strap of her purse and leaned on one hip, head tilted, listening. It wasn’t a laugh, not exactly, but something like one lived around her mouth. Laney’s stare held steady, neither warning nor welcome, just a claim to the territory of her sister’s choices.
Her eyes slid to Jesse. He kept near the curb, hands in his pockets, a step back from everything. He was watching Rylee and the boy, same as her, not with judgment, not with hunger, just attention, as if he had appointed himself to see what other people missed. The tie sat right now. He had fixed it for good.
An older woman in a pale blue suit and sensible shoes came toward Laney with a satisfied pace. She reached for both of Laney’s hands. “Honey, thank you for the women’s meeting last week. You pulled it together so smooth with Mrs. Nelson down sick.”
Laney let the woman’s hands warm hers. “Yes, ma’am. It wasn’t a problem.”
“Bless you.” The woman turned her shoulder and caught Tommy in the angle of her smile. “And it’s real good you’re home a while. World’s gone crazy. We don’t need our men dying overseas in some desert.”
Tommy’s jaw worked once. He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
“Well.” She patted Laney’s forearm, then moved into the stream toward Pastor Hadden and Marianne, already talking to the next person before her heels found the first step.
Laney held her place behind Tommy and let the talk about the bullpen drift back to her. The heat leaned on her shoulders. A bees’ hum worked the hedges. Gabrielle’s voice carried one clean line from the phone and then softened again. Rylee touched the boy’s arm and Laney’s stare tightened by a degree. She didn’t move closer. Distance worked better. People behaved when they felt seen. Jesse shifted his weight and kept watching.
Laney angled up so her voice would reach only Tommy. “You need anything?”
He glanced at her, mouth easing, and tipped his chin toward the daycare. “Grab me something to drink?”
She nodded. “Alright.”
He went back to Caleb and the Braves, hands making little squares in the air in the shape of a diamond. Laney adjusted the strap of her purse and stepped off the shade into the bright, the line of her dress crisp in the light. She started for the daycare’s kitchen, steps graceful and practiced. She didn’t have to turn her head to keep Rylee and Jesse inside her view. She knew where they were, the way you know where a flame sits near curtains.
Marianne stood with Franklin under the portico, her hand on a congregant’s elbow, his Bible still open in his palm.
Laney walked on, eyes cutting back once to the lot, then to Jesse, and back to the path, her attention stretched between all three as the door to the daycare came closer.
The sun sat high and mean, turning the gravel pale and the concrete piles into dull white teeth. Heat came up from the ground and into Mireya’s knees, into the clipboard pressed to her ribs. The slip on top bled sweat at the corners. She blinked slow, eyes grainy from no sleep, and held it steady while the driver climbed down from the cab.
“Need this verified,” she said, voice low from the hours. The man took the slip and squinted. Somewhere behind them a forklift beeped and then kept droning. Diesel licked the air. Her shirt stuck between her shoulder blades.
“Yeah, that’s mine,” the driver said. He dragged a thick finger down the page. “Y’all had us runnin’ two drops on one ticket.”
“Sign the line,” she said. “Print your name under it.”
He nodded and took his time with the pen. The tip scratched more than wrote. She breathed through her mouth, counting the seconds because counting was easier than thinking. The pen squealed, stopped. He handed the slip back and she held it flat, checking the truck number and the initials.
“Mireya.”
She didn’t turn. A small wind lifted dust and laid it back down. She tapped the bottom corner with her nail and the paper crinkled. The driver watched her face and then looked over her shoulder like he knew better than to stay.
“Mireya,” again, closer now, feet on gravel.
She slid the slip onto the stack and lifted her eyes.
Leo jogged the last few steps, breath even, grin set. He wore a T-shirt that looked new this morning and already had a dark stripe down the middle. He tipped his chin toward the office trailer.
“You’ve been spending a lot of time with that blonde bitch,” he said, easy like he was asking the weather. “The one that’s always in our books.”
Mireya shrugged. “Yeah.”
He waited. She didn’t give him more.
“Why?” he asked.
She started to move, past him, toward the dock to drop the slip. “It’s not your fucking business.”
Leo sidestepped smooth, not blocking, just close enough she had to change the angle of her shoulder. “If it’s extra work she’s giving you, you could’ve come to me,” he said. “I don’t mind helping you out.”
She kept walking until the dock’s shadow cooled her face. The sweat there went chill. “Why would I do that,” she said, “when I know what you expect for that help?”
Leo’s laugh came quick and short. He glanced toward the warehouses.
“Because you’ve done it before,” he said, eyes on her mouth, then her hand on the clipboard. “So, I don’t know why it’s different now. ’Except you think you’re better all of a sudden.”
A truck horn groaned on the street. The sound sat in her teeth. Mireya held the board, fingers digging into the wood, and looked at him, really looked, until his grin twitched.
“I might be too old for you now,” she said.
For a second it caught him wrong. He licked his bottom lip, smile trying to find itself again.
“You’re funny,” he said. He leaned in a half inch, not enough to call it out, enough to lay a line. “I’m saying if Stasia got you doing extra shit, then I can give you some extra shit to do, too. All you gotta do is ask nicely.”
Mireya’s fingers tightened around the metal clip until it bit. The yard hummed. Somewhere a radio bled a slow song through static. She saw the sun flash on a puddle that wasn’t water. She saw the driver’s taillights blink at the gate. She saw the day keep stretching without mercy.
She shifted the board to her other hand. “Could you fuck off? Jesus Christ.”
Leo’s jaw set. “Don’t get self-righteous now.”
She stepped into him. The shoulder bump was small, the kind you could call an accident if anyone asked. She felt the heat of him for a second, then nothing. The stairs to the office were three steps up and split by a rail shiny from hands. Her boot hit the first one and slipped a little on dust. She didn’t pause.
The office door hung open enough to let the old air leak. Inside smelled like toner and coffee gone sweet. She didn’t go in yet. She turned just enough to catch him in the corner of her eye. He shook his head like she’d disappointed him then angled off toward the warehouses. Boots on gravel, steady, not a hurry. He didn’t look back.
Mireya let the screen door kiss the heel of her hand and settle. The clipboard was a weight she could hold. Her breath went out and didn’t come back right away. She pressed the slip on top with her palm until the paper warmed under her skin.
Out in the lot, a gull cut low and lonely across the sky like it was lost and pretending it wasn’t. The heat pushed through the doorway and found her again. She blinked and stepped inside.
The probation office smelled like paper and last Friday’s coffee. Ceiling tiles held old water shadows. A box fan churned behind a desk stacked with manila folders. James Bethel wore a pale green polo tucked neat into tan pants and white shoes that looked like they belonged on grass. His sunglasses sat upside down on the desk, watching the room.
He didn’t tell Caine to sit. He didn’t sit either. He tapped the tower under the desk with the side of his shoe until the computer woke and blinked blue. Keys clicked. A cheap printer rattled once and fell quiet.
“You done any drugs lately?” Bethel asked without looking up. His voice came slow and easy, vowels stretched, edges soft.
Caine shook his head.
“Mm.” Bethel squinted at the screen. “I was about to give you the long speech on rules,” he said, a brief smile. “But you ain’t new.”
He leaned back just enough for the chair to complain, then caught himself and stood straight again. “Text me every other day. Don’t need no paragraph. Just proof of life. Every other Wednesday you come in, you piss in a cup, then you mind your business. That clear enough?”
Caine nodded.
“And you mind your Ps and Qs over at that church,” Bethel went on. “Don’t do nothin’ stupid. On campus neither.”
Caine’s eyebrow rose before he could stop it.
Bethel saw it and grinned. “Look. I got four total. That’s it. Two ain’t even from here. You, and a fella from Florida who don’t pay his child support.” He lifted one hand and let it fall. “We out in the sticks. School’s gonna keep you straight anyhow. Make life easy for both of us and Atlanta can worry about Atlanta problems.”
The printer woke for real, coughing out a stack that curled at the edge. Bethel scooped the papers, flipped the corner with a nail, and slid them across the desk to Caine. “Now, sign that and go on over to the church to meet Pastor Hadden. I got a tee time to get to.”
The pen scratched. Caine signed where the lines told him to sign. The paper felt hot from the printer, the heat thin as breath. Bethel gathered the sheets, tapped them even on the desk, then handed Caine a copy in a cloudy sleeve.
“Text me before sundown,” Bethel said. “So, I know you ain’t runnin’.”
“Alright.”
Bethel nodded once. He picked up his sunglasses. “Go on.”
Outside, the air carried cut grass and a slick of heat off the hood of Caine’s car. The light hit different than home. Clean, like it had been sifted.
…
He drove the short stretch to the church and parked where the painted lines were still bright, then followed a side path around the daycare until the building opened to a small back porch.
Pastor Franklin Hadden sat there with a Bible on his lap, thumb inside the pages. The porch boards creaked when Caine stepped up.
“You the pastor?” Caine asked.
Hadden nodded and stood. He had the soft tired at the corners of a man who used his voice for a living. He shook Caine’s hand with a grip that didn’t overdo it. “Mr. Bethel gave me the basics,” he said.
He waited as if expecting more. Caine held his peace.
Hadden’s nod slowed. “Walk with me,” he said.
They took the steps down and crossed a strip of shade. The main sanctuary rose simple and squared off, brick straight, windows cleaned into mirrors. Hadden lifted his chin toward it.
“That’s the big room. You’ll be in and out when we need chairs moved, tables set. Daycare’s here. You’ll help where Delaney says help.” He pointed at the shed, doors chained but not tight, paint scuffed where tables had kissed it. “Extra tables and chairs in there. Hall’s beyond. Men’s group meets there some Tuesday nights. My son Caleb takes it now and then. You’ll set up and tear down.”
“Okay,” Caine said.
“Manual labor suit you?” Hadden asked without looking over.
“I did construction back home.”
“That’s good,” Hadden said. “Working with your hands is godly. Jesus was a carpenter after all.”
They moved past a patch of grass cut low enough to show the scalps of earth. Somewhere a child laughed and the sound bounced off brick and died. Hadden stopped and turned. “You religious?”
“My mother is Catholic,” Caine said, tone even.
Hadden’s mouth twitched at one corner. “I asked if you were religious.”
Caine’s eyes wandered out to the patch of grass and back to the man’s face. “Haven’t had much time to think about that.”
Hadden let it sit. “I suppose that makes sense,” he said. “Come back in a few days. Meet with Delaney. She’ll put you to work.”
Caine nodded. The sun leaned lower and found the top of the daycare windows. The gleam made him squint. Hadden lifted the Bible from his palm to his forearm.
“That’ll do for today,” Hadden said. “Office is closed on Sundays. Delaney checks messages. You’ll answer to her here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hadden gave him the same small nod Bethel had given, though this one carried a little weight at the end, like a period in a sentence that expected another sentence after it. He turned for the porch. Caine walked the path back out, past the hedge that needed water, past a trash can that smelled faintly of coffee grounds and paper cups.
The lot was half full of cars that had learned the lines by heart. A bulletin had blown under a tire and lay there with the date showing. Heat gathered in his shirt and lingered. He unlocked the car and sat for a second without starting it. The quiet here carried its own hum.
He took out his phone and opened a message. His thumbs hovered, then moved.
Where’s Camila?
He watched the bubble pulse and vanish. He added one more line before he could edit it back.
Wanna check on her.
He hit send, then put the phone face down on his knee and watched the church doors through the windshield while he waited.
Mireya lay on her back with Camila’s weight sunk warm across her chest. The room held the thin blue of almost morning, the kind that made shadows sat like bruises. The fan in the window pushed humid air that only moved the heat around. Somewhere outside, a siren lifted and faded.
Camila’s breath hitched now and then, tiny hiccups left over from hours of crying. Her curls were damp and stuck to her forehead. One fist was bunched in Mireya’s shirt, the other tucked under her cheek. Every so often a tremor went through her body, a leftover sob that didn’t know how to stop. Mireya kept one palm flat between Camila’s shoulder blades and felt each breath find its way in and out. The girl was heavy and hot, a small sun pinning Mireya to the bed.
The phone on the nightstand still held the last call on its face. Mireya didn’t look at it. She could hear his voice anyway, the way he had stretched the words soft for their daughter until the softness had to end. Time to sleep, mija. Tomorrow. The way Camila’s mouth had gone crooked and wet right before she broke open again. Mireya had said shh and rocked and walked the room in slow ovals until her legs shook. Nothing had helped until the girl gave up and fell asleep on her like this, chest to chest, breath warming the damp patch where tears had soaked through the cotton.
Now the ceiling was all she let herself have. A water stain spread wide as a hand. Hairline cracks traveling out like roads. She fixed her eyes on the place where two lines crossed and tried not to blink. If she moved, Camila might wake. If she moved, the crying would start over. Her shoulders ached. Her arm had gone numb where it held the child in place. She let it go numb.
She told herself not to think, which only made the thoughts louder. She hadn’t followed him. She had watched him go the way you hear rain start from inside. You don’t get wet at first. You only listen. It had felt like that. A decision that made sense when she said it out loud and felt impossible now, with her child wrung out and hungry for what a screen couldn’t give.
Another breath. Another hiccup. Mireya blinked and a tear slipped warm into her hairline. She didn’t lift a hand to wipe it away. More came, slow and steady, finding their own paths. She let them run. Her throat hurt from holding everything quiet. The fan ticked on the same blade every few seconds. She counted ten of them and then stopped because counting made time move and she needed it to stall.
Four years. She tasted the number like a word in a language you were sure you once knew. Four years of him. Of them. Everything that had built itself inside that number kept pressing against her ribs. She pictured the way he had said their daughter’s name on the call. The care in it. The patience. It didn’t make it easier. Love didn’t make anything easier. It only made it heavier when you had to carry it alone.
A car rolled slow down the block and paused, bass low enough to feel against the floorboards. The sound washed through and left the room quiet again. Camila’s breath found a softer rhythm. Mireya let her own breath try to match it. She kept her eyes on the ceiling stain until the edges wavered and doubled. She blinked the picture back into one.
She wondered what the road looked like where he was. She wondered if the light was different there, if the air felt clean unlike the muggy, humid air of New Orleans. The wondering came like a tide she couldn’t push back. Was she wrong? Should she have said yes? Should she have put her life in a bag and gone where she didn’t know anybody and started over with no map except him? The questions lined up and waited for answers she didn’t have.
Camila murmured something in sleep, not quite a word, a sound learned from both of them. Mireya’s fingers moved once, a slow circle between the small shoulder blades, then went still. The room smelled like old soap and heat. Sweat cooled under the curve of her collarbone where the fan found it. Her eyes burned and watered again. She didn’t make a sound.
A door outside shut and footsteps went past. Somewhere a faucet rattled. A train called far off, low and tired. Morning collected itself behind the curtain one thin shade at a time. Mireya thought of nothing and of everything and of nothing again, the way you do when you are too tired to sleep and too full to speak.
She didn’t move. She didn’t wipe her face. She let the tears be what they were, quiet and bare. She held her girl and stared at the ceiling and let the ache widen, then settle, then widen again. She listened for the next hiccup and the next breath and the next. She thought the thought she had been trying not to think. Maybe she had made the wrong choice. The words formed and sat in the room with her and didn’t leave. She didn’t argue with them. She didn’t agree.
The light thinned to gray. Her shoulders throbbed. The fan kept ticking. Camila’s mouth fell open a little and a tiny snore caught and released. Mireya swallowed and felt it scrape. She didn’t let anything out. There was nothing left to say that wouldn’t break them open again.
She lay under the weight she loved and watched the stain that wouldn’t fix itself while morning took its time.
~~~
The motel AC rattled and blew air that wasn’t cold. Caine lay on top of the blanket anyway, eyes on the popcorn ceiling, counting bumps the way he once counted cracks. Dawn nudged the edges of the curtain. Not full morning yet. Just a gray that made everything look paused.
He rolled to the side and reached for the floor. Palms down. Body up. The first push-ups were slow so his shoulders could remember. By ten his breath had found a rhythm. By twenty the motel’s stale air felt thinner. By thirty his head finally cleared enough to stop replaying the moment Camila broke down on the screen last night, both hands crushed to her face, the way her chest hiccupped when he told her it was bedtime. The sound lived in his ear now. He did five more just to push sound out.
Sit-ups next. He hooked his heels under the chair and curled up clean, eyes on the off-white wall and the shadow of the cheap lamp. Up, down. Up, down. He counted under his breath, soft, not to wake anything in him that would turn into panic. This is just a room, he told himself. Just a morning. He finished with his abs burning and his back damp, that clean sore that said he still owned his body.
He sat there a second, elbows on knees, the carpet rough against his fingers. He saw the way Camila’s lip had trembled when he said tomorrow. Saw the way she tried to be brave and then lost it completely. Mireya’s voice somewhere off-screen, gentle but stretched thin. He could have said one more story. He could have asked for another minute. He hadn’t. He had told her sleep and promised the sun would come back. He hoped that counted for something.
Shoes. The laces looked new enough to squeak. He slid his feet in and tugged them tight, double knots neat against the tongue. He stood, rolled his neck, took the single keycard off the dresser, and stepped out into the hallway.
The door thudded closed behind him. The early air met him, a cool hand to a hot face. Pines held the night’s damp along their needles. Somewhere water licked inside a sprinkler head that hadn’t kicked on yet. A truck down the road coughed and faded. No sirens. No bass. No voices rising from porches before the sun. The quiet was a new kind of loud.
He started with a walk that turned into a jog by the edge of the lot. The pavement still held last night’s cool. His breath stayed easy, arms loose, the way coaches used to tell him to run even when he was thinking about something else. A rabbit flashed across the grass and vanished under a hedge. Birds argued in a live oak and then fell into agreement. He passed a small church with a brick sign and a message about that Sunday. The letters were straight. The grass around it was cut right to the curb.
He crossed toward the low sprawl of campus. Buildings sat clean and square. Windows caught the first light and held it. He could smell wet dirt and mown green and something like laundry. Even the trash cans were tidy. It made his shoulders sit strange. He wasn’t used to the world smoothing itself out for him.
A man in a yellow windbreaker jogged past, earbuds in, eyes on nothing. Caine nodded. The man didn’t see him. Two girls came out of a residence hall in matching shorts and clipped ponytails. They ran with quick feet and soft breaths, talking about nothing heavy. They didn’t look up either. He wasn’t mad about it.
He kept going. Past an empty parking deck where the concrete swallowed his footsteps. Past a row of oaks that looked older than the brick around them. Past a field that would belong to him soon enough, white lines not painted yet. He didn’t step on it. Not today. He followed the blacktop’s curve and let the route pick itself.
Statesboro smelled like early rain even when there was none. The trees here held their own weather and gave it back slow. Dew soaked the edges of his socks where grass leaned over the sidewalk. His shirt stuck between his shoulder blades.
Last night lived along the edges of his mind. Camila’s voice had been small at first, then big with crying, the kind that made her whole body work. He had told her to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. He had counted her breaths with her. That would have to be enough.
He turned down a side street that ran along a stand of pines. The trunks rose true and straight, their bark grooved. A squirrel scolded him from high up and then forgot about him. A sprinkler finally clicked on somewhere and pattered the edge of the sidewalk. He took the water on the calf and kept going. His body found that old groove where the work did itself.
On the far edge of campus he passed a small lake that wore the morning like glass. A duck cut a clean line across it and left the surface fixing itself behind her. He slowed just enough to see his reflection bend and come back together on the water. He looked older than he felt some days. He let that be true and pushed back into pace.
New Orleans made noise even when it slept. It sweated through walls. It watched you back when you watched it. This place did none of that. The quiet here had no eyes. It left him alone with himself, which could be its own kind of trouble. He breathed in the green anyway and let the quiet lay itself on him.
He cut across a quad and counted the steps between one lamppost and the next. He told himself he’d make it to ten and then ten more and then ten after that. Not a finish line. Just a staying line. He could keep a promise that small. He could keep a promise that looked like motion.
His legs warmed, and the chill at his ears gave up. The sky shifted from gray to the thin blue that always came right before the day picked up speed. Somewhere behind him a door opened and closed and somebody laughed, new and bright, the sound bouncing off brick and dying quick.
He pictured a different morning two states away. Mireya on her back staring up at the ceiling paint, Camila starfish on her chest, both of them caught in a tired that didn’t let go. He put a hand to his own chest the way he would have eased Camila’s breath and then dropped it again, a small gesture no one saw.
He ran until the thought stopped stinging and turned into something dull he could hold without flinching. When the motel roof finally showed again over the trees, he didn’t cut toward it. He kept the road under him and let the town stretch a while longer. He wasn’t ready to be still.
He didn’t look for a route back. He didn’t need one. He would know it when the circle closed. For now, the only thing he had to do was move through the clean air, let the green pass on both sides, and feel the quiet ride his shoulders without crushing him. He kept running and let the years he’d promised himself drift out ahead.
~~~
The sanctuary held the kind of cool that made skin rise with gooseflesh even in May. Fluorescents hummed. Paper programs whispered when people shifted them against their laps. Pastor Franklin Hadden stood at the pulpit with his Bible open and one hand resting on the wood. His voice carried steady down the center aisle.
“Obedience,” he said, not loud, just sure. “It’s not about being seen doing right. It’s about turning away when the world offers easy and you want it. When nobody’s looking. When the door is cracked and the music’s playing and you know better.”
He paused and the organist’s foot tapped once and went still. Second row, the family sat in order. Marianne closest to the aisle, hat brim modest, hands folded over her program. Next to her, Caleb in a dark suit with a clean white shirt, shoulders pulled straight. Gabrielle had her phone screen down in her purse, the strap looped around her wrist. Tommy’s jacket showed a sharp crease at the sleeve. Beside him, Laney’s dress skimmed her calves and hid everything it was meant to hide. Next, Rylee let a hem flirt with the line of what her father allowed. At the end, Jesse wore a tie that had started out neat and now sat a little crooked, his eyes following his father’s hands.
Pastor Hadden’s voice kept its even climb. “You can’t hold the cross in one hand and the world in the other. Choose. And keep choosing.”
Rylee’s thumbs moved under the lip of her program. The glow leaked through. Without cutting her eyes from the pulpit, Laney reached across and plucked the phone out of her sister’s hands. A soft plastic crack came from the case. Rylee sucked her teeth, low and sharp. Laney didn’t turn. She slid the phone into her own purse and answered the sound with a small look that landed like a tap on the wrist. Rylee folded her arms and stared at the hymnal rack, jaw set.
A cough came from somewhere near the choir loft. The air smelled like starch and a gentle, sweet perfume that lived in the older women’s gloves. The pastor moved a page with his ring finger. “Temptation promises freedom. It pays in chains.” He let the sentence sit. A child whispered and was shushed. The organ gave one breath as if it agreed.
The benediction closed clean.
“Go in peace,” he said, and the congregation rose with the soft thunder of heels and dress shoes, wood groaning under the movement. Marianne touched the back of the pew in front of her and waited for the aisle to clear. In the pew shuffle, Jesse rescued his tie with two quick pulls and a palm press.
Outside, sun brightened the chrome bumpers. Heat came off the blacktop in soft waves. Greeting lines formed in natural lanes near the portico and along the garden beds where hedge trimmings lay dark on the dirt. Pastor Hadden and Marianne took their places under the shade, hands offered, smiles measured, the easy cadence of “Good to see you,” “How’s your mama,” “We’re praying with you.”
Tommy and Caleb stood near the steps. Laney held her place a half step behind Tommy’s shoulder.
“Late relief is the failure point,” Tommy said. “You can’t walk the leadoff. You get strike one, then you live on the edges. No free bases.”
Caleb huffed a laugh. “Man, you’d bench your own shadow. He was nibblin’, sure, but the zone been funny all week. Ump had a mood.”
“Adjust anyway,” Tommy said. “You miss, you miss down. Not chest high.”
Caleb tipped his head. “I’ll give you that. Ball looked like a gift and got re-gifted to the bleachers. Still, they’re fine. Bats will cover a bruise.”
“Discipline covers it,” Tommy said. “Bats go cold.”
Caleb grinned without showing teeth. “You love talking like it’s a field manual. ‘Secure the ninth. Eliminate traffic.’”
“That works,” Tommy said, mouth tightening. “No traffic.”
“Alright, Captain,” Caleb said, easy. “But I’m telling you, if Strider finds his slider, it’s a quiet week. Whole pen breathes again.”
“Find it before the seventh,” Tommy said. “Not during.”
Caleb chuckled. “You allergic to joy, huh? Let a man fool around with one pitch. Summer’s long.”
“Games are won now,” Tommy said. “Not in August if you waste May.”
Caleb’s eyes narrowed like he was lining up a box score in his head. “Fair. But you hear the park last night? Folks were loud. That matters. Boys feel that.”
Tommy’s hand cut a small line through the air. “Noise fades. Reps don’t.”
Caleb nodded once. “There you go again. See, I say let Ronald swing free and trust the pen to remember who they are.”
“Remembering is not a plan,” Tommy said.
“It is if you practice it,” Caleb said, softer. “They will.”
Tommy gave one crisp nod that closed the point. Caleb smiled. Laney stayed where she was, mouth pressed into a straight line as she listened to the two cadences—tight and loose—braiding and unbraiding in front of her.
Gabrielle paced just to the side, phone to her ear, voice even. “No, that number was net. We can walk through it Monday.” She turned away from the steps and back again, a heel clicking, a bright line of polish on her nails catching sun when she gestured at nothing.
Laney watched. Rylee stood twenty yards off on the edge of the lot with a boy whose hair fell into his eyes. His shirt was tucked in sloppy and the smile that pulled at his mouth made him look like he believed in himself. Rylee played with the strap of her purse and leaned on one hip, head tilted, listening. It wasn’t a laugh, not exactly, but something like one lived around her mouth. Laney’s stare held steady, neither warning nor welcome, just a claim to the territory of her sister’s choices.
Her eyes slid to Jesse. He kept near the curb, hands in his pockets, a step back from everything. He was watching Rylee and the boy, same as her, not with judgment, not with hunger, just attention, as if he had appointed himself to see what other people missed. The tie sat right now. He had fixed it for good.
An older woman in a pale blue suit and sensible shoes came toward Laney with a satisfied pace. She reached for both of Laney’s hands. “Honey, thank you for the women’s meeting last week. You pulled it together so smooth with Mrs. Nelson down sick.”
Laney let the woman’s hands warm hers. “Yes, ma’am. It wasn’t a problem.”
“Bless you.” The woman turned her shoulder and caught Tommy in the angle of her smile. “And it’s real good you’re home a while. World’s gone crazy. We don’t need our men dying overseas in some desert.”
Tommy’s jaw worked once. He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
“Well.” She patted Laney’s forearm, then moved into the stream toward Pastor Hadden and Marianne, already talking to the next person before her heels found the first step.
Laney held her place behind Tommy and let the talk about the bullpen drift back to her. The heat leaned on her shoulders. A bees’ hum worked the hedges. Gabrielle’s voice carried one clean line from the phone and then softened again. Rylee touched the boy’s arm and Laney’s stare tightened by a degree. She didn’t move closer. Distance worked better. People behaved when they felt seen. Jesse shifted his weight and kept watching.
Laney angled up so her voice would reach only Tommy. “You need anything?”
He glanced at her, mouth easing, and tipped his chin toward the daycare. “Grab me something to drink?”
She nodded. “Alright.”
He went back to Caleb and the Braves, hands making little squares in the air in the shape of a diamond. Laney adjusted the strap of her purse and stepped off the shade into the bright, the line of her dress crisp in the light. She started for the daycare’s kitchen, steps graceful and practiced. She didn’t have to turn her head to keep Rylee and Jesse inside her view. She knew where they were, the way you know where a flame sits near curtains.
Marianne stood with Franklin under the portico, her hand on a congregant’s elbow, his Bible still open in his palm.
Laney walked on, eyes cutting back once to the lot, then to Jesse, and back to the path, her attention stretched between all three as the door to the daycare came closer.
~~~
The sun sat high and mean, turning the gravel pale and the concrete piles into dull white teeth. Heat came up from the ground and into Mireya’s knees, into the clipboard pressed to her ribs. The slip on top bled sweat at the corners. She blinked slow, eyes grainy from no sleep, and held it steady while the driver climbed down from the cab.
“Need this verified,” she said, voice low from the hours. The man took the slip and squinted. Somewhere behind them a forklift beeped and then kept droning. Diesel licked the air. Her shirt stuck between her shoulder blades.
“Yeah, that’s mine,” the driver said. He dragged a thick finger down the page. “Y’all had us runnin’ two drops on one ticket.”
“Sign the line,” she said. “Print your name under it.”
He nodded and took his time with the pen. The tip scratched more than wrote. She breathed through her mouth, counting the seconds because counting was easier than thinking. The pen squealed, stopped. He handed the slip back and she held it flat, checking the truck number and the initials.
“Mireya.”
She didn’t turn. A small wind lifted dust and laid it back down. She tapped the bottom corner with her nail and the paper crinkled. The driver watched her face and then looked over her shoulder like he knew better than to stay.
“Mireya,” again, closer now, feet on gravel.
She slid the slip onto the stack and lifted her eyes.
Leo jogged the last few steps, breath even, grin set. He wore a T-shirt that looked new this morning and already had a dark stripe down the middle. He tipped his chin toward the office trailer.
“You’ve been spending a lot of time with that blonde bitch,” he said, easy like he was asking the weather. “The one that’s always in our books.”
Mireya shrugged. “Yeah.”
He waited. She didn’t give him more.
“Why?” he asked.
She started to move, past him, toward the dock to drop the slip. “It’s not your fucking business.”
Leo sidestepped smooth, not blocking, just close enough she had to change the angle of her shoulder. “If it’s extra work she’s giving you, you could’ve come to me,” he said. “I don’t mind helping you out.”
She kept walking until the dock’s shadow cooled her face. The sweat there went chill. “Why would I do that,” she said, “when I know what you expect for that help?”
Leo’s laugh came quick and short. He glanced toward the warehouses.
“Because you’ve done it before,” he said, eyes on her mouth, then her hand on the clipboard. “So, I don’t know why it’s different now. ’Except you think you’re better all of a sudden.”
A truck horn groaned on the street. The sound sat in her teeth. Mireya held the board, fingers digging into the wood, and looked at him, really looked, until his grin twitched.
“I might be too old for you now,” she said.
For a second it caught him wrong. He licked his bottom lip, smile trying to find itself again.
“You’re funny,” he said. He leaned in a half inch, not enough to call it out, enough to lay a line. “I’m saying if Stasia got you doing extra shit, then I can give you some extra shit to do, too. All you gotta do is ask nicely.”
Mireya’s fingers tightened around the metal clip until it bit. The yard hummed. Somewhere a radio bled a slow song through static. She saw the sun flash on a puddle that wasn’t water. She saw the driver’s taillights blink at the gate. She saw the day keep stretching without mercy.
She shifted the board to her other hand. “Could you fuck off? Jesus Christ.”
Leo’s jaw set. “Don’t get self-righteous now.”
She stepped into him. The shoulder bump was small, the kind you could call an accident if anyone asked. She felt the heat of him for a second, then nothing. The stairs to the office were three steps up and split by a rail shiny from hands. Her boot hit the first one and slipped a little on dust. She didn’t pause.
The office door hung open enough to let the old air leak. Inside smelled like toner and coffee gone sweet. She didn’t go in yet. She turned just enough to catch him in the corner of her eye. He shook his head like she’d disappointed him then angled off toward the warehouses. Boots on gravel, steady, not a hurry. He didn’t look back.
Mireya let the screen door kiss the heel of her hand and settle. The clipboard was a weight she could hold. Her breath went out and didn’t come back right away. She pressed the slip on top with her palm until the paper warmed under her skin.
Out in the lot, a gull cut low and lonely across the sky like it was lost and pretending it wasn’t. The heat pushed through the doorway and found her again. She blinked and stepped inside.
~~~
The probation office smelled like paper and last Friday’s coffee. Ceiling tiles held old water shadows. A box fan churned behind a desk stacked with manila folders. James Bethel wore a pale green polo tucked neat into tan pants and white shoes that looked like they belonged on grass. His sunglasses sat upside down on the desk, watching the room.
He didn’t tell Caine to sit. He didn’t sit either. He tapped the tower under the desk with the side of his shoe until the computer woke and blinked blue. Keys clicked. A cheap printer rattled once and fell quiet.
“You done any drugs lately?” Bethel asked without looking up. His voice came slow and easy, vowels stretched, edges soft.
Caine shook his head.
“Mm.” Bethel squinted at the screen. “I was about to give you the long speech on rules,” he said, a brief smile. “But you ain’t new.”
He leaned back just enough for the chair to complain, then caught himself and stood straight again. “Text me every other day. Don’t need no paragraph. Just proof of life. Every other Wednesday you come in, you piss in a cup, then you mind your business. That clear enough?”
Caine nodded.
“And you mind your Ps and Qs over at that church,” Bethel went on. “Don’t do nothin’ stupid. On campus neither.”
Caine’s eyebrow rose before he could stop it.
Bethel saw it and grinned. “Look. I got four total. That’s it. Two ain’t even from here. You, and a fella from Florida who don’t pay his child support.” He lifted one hand and let it fall. “We out in the sticks. School’s gonna keep you straight anyhow. Make life easy for both of us and Atlanta can worry about Atlanta problems.”
The printer woke for real, coughing out a stack that curled at the edge. Bethel scooped the papers, flipped the corner with a nail, and slid them across the desk to Caine. “Now, sign that and go on over to the church to meet Pastor Hadden. I got a tee time to get to.”
The pen scratched. Caine signed where the lines told him to sign. The paper felt hot from the printer, the heat thin as breath. Bethel gathered the sheets, tapped them even on the desk, then handed Caine a copy in a cloudy sleeve.
“Text me before sundown,” Bethel said. “So, I know you ain’t runnin’.”
“Alright.”
Bethel nodded once. He picked up his sunglasses. “Go on.”
Outside, the air carried cut grass and a slick of heat off the hood of Caine’s car. The light hit different than home. Clean, like it had been sifted.
…
He drove the short stretch to the church and parked where the painted lines were still bright, then followed a side path around the daycare until the building opened to a small back porch.
Pastor Franklin Hadden sat there with a Bible on his lap, thumb inside the pages. The porch boards creaked when Caine stepped up.
“You the pastor?” Caine asked.
Hadden nodded and stood. He had the soft tired at the corners of a man who used his voice for a living. He shook Caine’s hand with a grip that didn’t overdo it. “Mr. Bethel gave me the basics,” he said.
He waited as if expecting more. Caine held his peace.
Hadden’s nod slowed. “Walk with me,” he said.
They took the steps down and crossed a strip of shade. The main sanctuary rose simple and squared off, brick straight, windows cleaned into mirrors. Hadden lifted his chin toward it.
“That’s the big room. You’ll be in and out when we need chairs moved, tables set. Daycare’s here. You’ll help where Delaney says help.” He pointed at the shed, doors chained but not tight, paint scuffed where tables had kissed it. “Extra tables and chairs in there. Hall’s beyond. Men’s group meets there some Tuesday nights. My son Caleb takes it now and then. You’ll set up and tear down.”
“Okay,” Caine said.
“Manual labor suit you?” Hadden asked without looking over.
“I did construction back home.”
“That’s good,” Hadden said. “Working with your hands is godly. Jesus was a carpenter after all.”
They moved past a patch of grass cut low enough to show the scalps of earth. Somewhere a child laughed and the sound bounced off brick and died. Hadden stopped and turned. “You religious?”
“My mother is Catholic,” Caine said, tone even.
Hadden’s mouth twitched at one corner. “I asked if you were religious.”
Caine’s eyes wandered out to the patch of grass and back to the man’s face. “Haven’t had much time to think about that.”
Hadden let it sit. “I suppose that makes sense,” he said. “Come back in a few days. Meet with Delaney. She’ll put you to work.”
Caine nodded. The sun leaned lower and found the top of the daycare windows. The gleam made him squint. Hadden lifted the Bible from his palm to his forearm.
“That’ll do for today,” Hadden said. “Office is closed on Sundays. Delaney checks messages. You’ll answer to her here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hadden gave him the same small nod Bethel had given, though this one carried a little weight at the end, like a period in a sentence that expected another sentence after it. He turned for the porch. Caine walked the path back out, past the hedge that needed water, past a trash can that smelled faintly of coffee grounds and paper cups.
The lot was half full of cars that had learned the lines by heart. A bulletin had blown under a tire and lay there with the date showing. Heat gathered in his shirt and lingered. He unlocked the car and sat for a second without starting it. The quiet here carried its own hum.
He took out his phone and opened a message. His thumbs hovered, then moved.
Where’s Camila?
He watched the bubble pulse and vanish. He added one more line before he could edit it back.
Wanna check on her.
He hit send, then put the phone face down on his knee and watched the church doors through the windshield while he waited.
-
Captain Canada
- Posts: 4726
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
American Sun
That first section of the update was sad as hell but potent. Going to be interesting how we progress and what will come back from the last season/chapter (whatever).
American Sun
love the contrast between Rusol and Bethel
American Sun
It's always tough times when the lil' ones are sad.Captain Canada wrote: ↑23 Sep 2025, 22:04That first section of the update was sad as hell but potent. Going to be interesting how we progress and what will come back from the last season/chapter (whatever).
Roussel, bro.