Robert Trenton of Bonners Ferry, Idaho, was seventeen and three-quarters years old when his family and the Mennonite Church sent him packing. In a lot of ways catching the boot was his own fault; by the summer of 1989 he was already on thinner ice than what covered Bottleneck lake in the winters. 

He had been huddled behind ‘Sam’s Stop and Shop’ choking on a cig as the trucker hit his back with a meaty palm when his cousin Doug and Doug’s wife Jan had walked around the side of the store. Doug had his hands stuck into his jean pockets like one of those bony little birds Robert had seen on the Nature program, and Janice followed at his side, her eyebrows eternally arched. Janice had issues with everyone, it seemed like, and she really hated Robert, but he’d be damned if he knew why. 

“Rob?” Doug had asked as Robert threw the cig behind him and coughed over his shoulder in a cloudy panic. “What’s going on?”

“Oh Goddamn,” said the trucker, putting a hand to his face. It was a very odd face: the features were incredibly wide-set and smooth, and his eyes seemed far-larger than they should be, giving the impression that they were straining against the constraints of his skull. He had a thick white hippie mustache—that was the only way Robert could think to describe it—and his dark eyes darted this way and that in a comic display of panic. “I shoulda known from how you was dressed that you’re a Mennonite. That’s my bad,” he said in apology to Robert, as if Robert had resisted the opportunity to smoke in some way. He had been helping the trucker with finding the right spares, and then he had been tossed a smoke. Who was he to turn down such an opportunity? 

Janice had been gaping at the two of them ever since the trucker had said ‘Goddamn,’ and now she finally found words powerful enough to sling at the two of them. 

“How could you!” she said after she had recovered her wits. Her tone was enough to wither Robert’s stomach. “Smoking and… and taking the Lord’s name in vain?” She whispered that last part, darting glances at the trucker and around the shop between words. Robert stayed silent, not caring to mention that he hadn’t taken the Lord’s name in vain. It wouldn’t make a difference to her. He had simply shook his head and walked back to his pickup, running a hand across the baby-blue hood and getting in. Something told him that he might not get another chance to drive for a long while.

He was right, of course. The Deacon had made a house call by that Sunday, and he had walked into the conference room with his head bowed down low, his parents flanking him to either side. 

“I’m real sorry, Deacon Evan, sir. I was having a terrible bad day is all, and I made a horrible mistake that I’ll regret for the rest of my life. I’ve been praying for forgiveness ever since, I promise.” It all came out in a rush that sounded prepared even to Robert’s ears. 

“He has, Deacon. I’ve been watching and he has.” His dad was a quiet man, so that bit had come out like pulling teeth, but it had come nonetheless. His mom had made sure that it would. Even if she couldn’t actually say such things and be taken seriously, she could still make sure they got said. 

“These aren’t good signs, Gerald. Sin has tempted your boy and he’s past old enough to know better.” 

“I know it, Evan—” he quickly corrected himself. “Deacon, sir. You’ll never hear of anything like this from my boy or my family again.” 

The deacon sighed, and his over-sized teeth shone in a mockery of a smile. His face was thin and mottled, like that of an old man, but he was much younger than even Robert’s father. He had eyes that were a little too wide for his gaunt features, causing them to pop a little when he smiled. 

“Let me talk to Robert alone for a bit, alright Gerald?” Robert’s mother hadn’t raised her head at all the entire interaction, as if showing off her head covering to the Deacon. Maybe that is  what she had been doing, like showing her faith was still strong

. When Robert’s parents were gone the Deacon smiled widely again, his teeth seeming to consume the rest of his face.

“A bad day, huh?”

“Yes sir.” Robert bent his head, trying his best to look concerned. He didn’t have a head covering to show off, of course, but he could still do his best to appear inconsolable.

“How did that cigarette taste?” Robert looked back up, confusion darting quickly along his features. The Deacon continued, clearly satisfied to have caught him off guard. “Be honest, now. How did it taste?”

“It tasted pretty good,” Robert said, to which the Deacon nodded, standing up from the table that he had begun leaning against. The room was in the back of the Holdeman Church and was usually reserved for Sunday School, so it had nice pictures of grassy fields and red seas plastered everywhere. It smelled like cookies. 

Robert had been scared shitless many a time in this room as a little kid by those stories. He almost smiled at the absurdity of thinking a word like ‘shitless’ in the presence of this room. It wasn’t really funny though, not when the Deacon was walking towards him with his hands pressed into his suit pants, palms down.

“Of course it did, Rob. Cause that’s how He gets you. Sweet things, do you see?” The Deacon was nodding all-knowingly as he walked towards Robert. He stopped at his side, towering above him like a lone silo in an unending field.

“Yes, I understand.”

“I don’t want to have to punish you too harshly.”

“You won’t have to, Deacon, sir. Never again.”

A year after the cig incident Robert found himself in a much bigger room, and the five Ministers were watching him silently, lines etched deeply into their faces. They were super old, but they unnerved Robert for more reasons than just that. In this lighting these men that he had known since he was a little toddler seemed almost like they were made of clay, like they were incredibly detailed puppets. Gone was their friendliness, their humanity. Robert’s parents weren’t there this time, and he was in much deeper shit. It was a Tuesday, so that meant there was no Church today and he and the ministers had the whole building to themselves. 

This was more of an emergency meeting than the last; Robert and some friends from town—he wasn’t really supposed to get too close with those guys, but it was overlooked as long as they didn’t get up to any funny business—had gone down to steep canyon that ran below the Moyie bridge to look at some of the cars that had driven off the side. Those cars were hardly identifiable now—although one of the boys had confidently proclaimed the first one they found to be a Charger—as they were rusted out to the extreme, hollow brown skeletons of what they used to be. Robert sometimes wondered if such cars would prefer to be on the road or in this canyon, with the rushing water and the birds and the bugs. He thought that he probably would prefer the canyon, himself. Besides, there were other rusted out cars to keep company with. He told this theory to one skinny boy, Jeffery, and got told to shut up. 

They had headed down the canyon, looking all around for any lost valuables, when Robert had heard a strangled cry come from downriver, from before they crossed the shadow of the tall bridge which loomed overhead, like what Robert assumed a skyscraper looked like.

He had gone running back along the stony embankment before any of the other boys followed behind, mostly because he had been down there a hundred times or more. He knew where to put his feet so as not to fall. When he arrived on the scene, though, he found a very odd sight indeed: there was a man face down in the water, and he looked a little familiar, somehow. Robert had lept in without thinking, swimming rapidly towards the large fellow and grabbing him by the scruff of his shirt before hauling him out of the water. Panting, Robert had tried to begin chest compressions, until he realized that the man was staring up at him and smiling in the night. He looked back towards his friends, and realized that they weren’t even really paying him any mind at all. 

Confusedly, Robert had looked back down at the man with the wide-set face and protuberant eyes, only realizing then that this was the same trucker who had got him in all that trouble a year ago. The man was laughing now, rivulets of water falling from the corners of his wide lips. 

“Got you!” he had said, rising to a sitting position on the rough hewn rock embankment where they sat. At that moment Robert was still trying to catch his breath. “Now where were we?”

“What?” Robert had asked, rising to his feet and stumbling backwards from the trucker. “What’s going on here, man? You really messed me up last year.”

“Not enough, apparently,” said the man, still sitting, his hair drenched with river water. The trucker reached a meaty palm out to Robert and instinctively he obliged, pulling the trucker to his feet. Unexpectedly, Robert found himself in a strong embrace, his muscles seeming to lose their strength and melt away. He had struggled against the man’s frame for a brief moment before he was let go, and then he stumbled backwards, falling onto his ass. Then it was the man’s turn to offer a hand now, but Robert didn’t take it, instead scooting away from him on the wet rock. 

“Hey man, you gotta leave,” he said, feeling a twisting in his gut. “You gotta leave me alone.”

“You got it,” said the trucker a little too cheerily, turning into the night. Before Robert’s eyes, the wind had seemed to warp around the man, encasing him and then making him disappear into the blackness. Robert had screamed and his boys had come running to take him home, where he had stayed in bed for two full days before he finally had the courage to come down the rickety stairs. Whe he did, he found his mother waiting for him at the kitchen table, her head in her hands.

“What’s wrong?” he had asked after taking it all in. She looked up at him, her eyes scanning back and forth across his face as if looking for some sort of relief.

“It’s true,” she said.

“What’s true?” he said, a hollow feeling traveling the course of his torso down to his breeches. Something was severely wrong, but he didn’t know exactly what yet. He hadn’t told his parents the truth of what had happened in the canyon; it was too ridiculous to say aloud. Instead he said he had tripped and hit his head, which as far as he knew might be the truth. He had tried to convince himself of that, anyway.

“Mom, I really don’t know what you mean! Please, you’re scaring me.” He tried to step towards her, but she glared at him, throwing a bag of leaves onto the table. He looked down at it confusedly, cocking his head and going in for a closer look. It was then that he realized what sticker on the front of the bag said, and after that he wasn’t sure if he peed his pants or not; he was too scared to even tell. Green Goddess Marijuana, the bag said.

“That’s not mine,” he whispered, his throat clicking with dryness.

“It was in your pocket, Robert. It’s yours.”

“I promise Mom, I—”

“What are you going to do? They’re not going to be that forgiving again, you know that.”

“It’s not mine! You don’t have to tell them anything at all.” Robert was beginning to feel extremely desperate. She raised her head to the ceiling fan and wailed. It was not a sound Robert had ever heard come from a grown person.

“What did I do, Lord? What did I do to deserve this?” She called to the heavens. “I will repent, I will do anything for your forgiveness for me son! Please, Lord.”

He had agreed to beg forgiveness, especially after his dad had taken the paddle to his backside—that wasn’t something he had done since Robert had joined Youth Group, even after the trucker incident—and there he was, staring into the scuffed gray carpet floor. It was early that morning, and the light from the conference room windows shone harshly into his eyes. The one on the far right of the Minister’s half-circle spoke first. That was Theed Halvorsen. They had laughed together about the time neighbor Jim had his school bus license suspended for hitting a deer as he was driving up Black Mountain Road just a few weeks ago over dinner.

“Robert Trenton, do you admit to directly disobeying the Church and God yesterday?”

“Yes,” he said, still looking downwards. He tried to make his voice as sorry as it could possibly be. The result was that he squeaked a little when he talked, but this was no time to worry about such things. His mom had coached him on how to act with these men after his dad had finished whooping his ass.

“Do you repent and recognize that you have been tempted by Satan?” Ben Javens, his mom’s first cousin’s husband, was acting like they had never met before. He had helped teach Robert how to shoot by throwing those little rock frisbees behind the cow pasture in his farm when he was eleven, but now he looked at him like a stranger. 

“I do, I was tempted and I gave in. I knew what I did was wrong as soon as I did it, and I have prayed to the Lord and He has helped me see the light.” There had been a long silence, so Robert looked upwards. The Deacon, who sat with the rest of the Ministers, had made eye contact with him and shook his head sadly before speaking up, resuming his crocodile smile.

“He said the same thing last year, when I last talked to him.”

“There is no limit to God’s forgiveness, Evan,” said Theed.

“Of course, but Rob here doesn’t seem to be showing much improvement.,” at this Evan nodded back into the far shadows of the room at a man Robert couldn’t see all that clearly. “This is worse than the cigarette by far. Who knows if he’s going to try to get the other kids to do his drugs.”

The man in the shadows spoke up for the first time, and for a moment Robert forgot his instructions and looked directly into his eyes. Upon reflection he pinpointed that as what had been the vital mistake. The man was the trucker, but dressed like a Mennonite. Robert wanted to vomit.

“We have no room in our community for this type of deviance,” said the figure after Robert had looked back down. It had been real then, this man was some sort of devil. “Unless he can truly prove his reformation, I suggest that we excommunicate him.” Robert began to shake. Uncertainly, almost unbiddenly, the other men began to nod, and finally the one who had just spoken leaned forwards in his chair, placing his hands on his knees. “Well?” he asked. There was an infernal glint to his eyes. He was enjoying this.

“I’m terrible sorry, it won’t happen again.” It all came out as a mumble. Robert was beginning to lose hope. They wouldn’t believe him, not over whoever this was. It was over. He began to cry. 

“I’m sure you are,” said the man. His wildly thick beard of pitch black wiggling as he spoke and eyes that gleamed darkly in the morning sunlight.“But that isn’t enough. You will forsake your freedom for the next three years. During that time, you will devote yourself entirely to the Lord. You will work here, and you will serve as a ministerial understudy.” 

“I have a job already,” he began to say before he got cut off.

“This is what you have to do if you want to stay with us.” said the man. Robert felt like screaming, but he couldn’t. He felt like telling the entire congregation that this wasn’t who they thought it was, that they were being manipulated. A question lingered in the back of his mind, though: Why does he want me gone? He couldn’t hold it inside of himself any longer.

“This man,” he said to the other ministers, looking at each of them in turn. “Is the Devil. He planted those drugs on me, he gave me that cigarette. You have to believe me, he’s Satan!” The stranger threw his hands into the air in an exaggerated motion. 

“Do you see how the Devil speaks through this boy?” he said in a near shout as his eyes bulged like fat grapes from his head. He had then looked directly into Robert’s face, although he still spoke to the whole room. “Lies and trickery to save his back so that he can poison this community!” The other men were beginning to nod, their faces transforming into frantic masks. They were looking at him not as Robert, the boy that they had all helped to raise, but as a monster wearing a sheep’s skin. 

“Yes,” said the Deacon, beginning to nod. He was smiling once more at the support the other man had given his proposition. “These lies are exemplary of the problem at hand! We must remove him from our midst before he infects the rest of us.” He had not managed to command the room nearly as much as the stranger had, but he still reveled in the success of his cause. Robert began to sob, to plead.

“No, I’ll do it! I promise you will never hear another bad word from me. I promise—” Once more he was interrupted by the stranger.

“You are free to leave,” he said with a stern look. “Do not come back.”

Robert moved out that very night, packing his clothes as his oldest sister cried on the stairs. Robert was grateful for it because neither of his parents had made a sound since the day before. He would have preferred the paddle over his father’s silence. 

In 1993 Robert still hadn’t found another home. He was living in St. Paul, Minnesota, but it wasn’t much of a life. The GED had helped him to survive those last four years; he was able to get a job as a nurse’s aide at the United Hospital, and he had been able to make a livable wage. He could afford food and a small one room apartment, and he had made two friends. He didn’t really like them all that much, but they got him out of the cluttered apartment and that was something.

On February 15th of that year, his future wife walked into the lobby of the Diabetes and Endocrinology clinic on the third floor of the United hospital, the stranger at her side. Robert’s breath caught in his throat when he saw her and it exploded outwards in a strangled cry when he saw the man.  His hand was on her shoulder, as if guiding her, but they weren’t even speaking. 

“You!” he said after a pause, the clipboard in his hands falling down to his side. Julia looked up from behind the front desk where she was deep into Wednesday’s Sudoku, and he felt a rush of panic, as if her seeing this man could somehow ruin him. The man’s dark eyes danced with a fanatic firelight, and his face stretched into a wicked smile. He hardly looked a day older than he had when Robert had first met him at the truck station.

“I’m sorry?” she asked, her words rounded and full. One of those Arab accents, he thought to himself confidently. She was very short—hovering somewhere at that five foot mark—with deep brown skin and long black hair tied back from her face. Her eyes were hazel and they seemed to pierce through him, their pupils like sharp little bullets. Her cheeks were covered in little dark marks like freckles. Much later, when they had teenagers, Robert learned that those were acne scars. It was a strange thing to have never come up in their eighteen years together, but it simply hadn’t. Robert wasn’t even sure that he liked that gaze, although she was undoubtedly beautiful. When he looked back behind her the stranger was gone. Robert did a double take, and then looked back towards her.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am.” he said after a moment. “I was talking about the man you were just with. The one with the oval face and the thick beard.” He added that last part because she still seemed confused.

“What?” she asked after a moment, eying the top of Julia’s head. She was back to her Sudoku already. Robert shook himself and smiled at her.

“Never mind,” he said quickly, eyeing the hallway. He would have to go check out there as soon as he had helped her. “What’s your name?” His polite work accent was failing him now, frazzled as he was.

“Angelica Atif,” she said. “A-T—”

“I got you,” Robert said a little too quickly, making a check on his clipboard and opening the door for her. She walked through, head held high. They didn’t speak aside from instructions as he took her blood pressure and checked her vitals, and Robert found himself at a loss for anything to say. He hated himself for his silence, but nonetheless there it was. 

In Youth he really hadn’t had any trouble talking to girls he had a crush on, but he was practically a recluse in Minnesota. The winters were somehow more brutal than they had been in Bonners, so most of the time he just didn’t go out. His friends always took him to bars where he would drink and laugh, but dating and beer were both new concepts for him, and he still hadn’t really gotten used to them. He was still a kind-of-Mennonite, after all, even if the Holdeman Church didn’t recognize him anymore. He was pretty sure he was, anyways. Robert believed in God and the stories, that was for sure, even if he didn’t really follow the church’s rules. He hadn’t had premarital sex or blasphemed the Lord in any way, and he figured the rest was mostly rules made up by the church. He couldn’t even remember all of them, much less follow them. 

The result of this reclusivity was a festering silence as he filled out her chart. The ceiling fan whirred uneasily on its hinge, as if it could fall and smash into the middle of the small room’s linoleum floor at any moment. Angelica is a weird name for an Arab, he thought to himself. He decided he would ask about it. That was something, at least.

“Is that your real name?” he asked, nodding at his clipboard without looking up from what he was writing. 

“Yes,” she said simply. His heart sank a little.

“I just ask cause I thought you might be an Arab or something.” He looked up after saying it to see her frowning, and his mouth fell open in an attempt at an apology. She spoke before he could get it out.

“Aye-Rab?” she said mockingly. “You sound ridiculous.” Robert opened his mouth to respond but came up dry. 

“I’m really sorry, Ma’am,” he said. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“You didn’t,” she said after a while and they went back to silence. Robert wondered about the stranger, but there was no way that he was still in the building. Perhaps it had been a trick of the eyes. He didn’t really believe that, though. He had seen the man, and he would remember that face everywhere. He opened the door to the hall and turned back towards Angelica. She was watching the back of his head, and he blushed once more. She didn’t seem angry, at least not anymore.

“The nurse practitioner will be with you in a moment,” he said in his practiced tone. It came out smoothly, surprisingly. She nodded, and he left the room, internally punching himself. 

Once he had shut the door behind him, he stood rooted to the spot outside of her door, hands trembling. It wasn’t just that she was pretty; he had to ask her about the stranger who had come in with her. It hadn’t just been in his head, he was sure of it. This was real, as real as how that man had come into his life like a whirlwind and upended everything that mattered to him. Just thinking of those large dark eyes and that wide-set face sent chills down his spine. 

Robert was sure of it now, he was sure that the man was real and had come for him with some vendetta. He had hardly thought of those events very clearly in the past years; it was like a protective haze had surrounded his mind, blocking off the stranger or the trucker or whatever he was. He turned to look back towards the door, reaching out to the handle and turning it slightly to come inside. Angelica was waiting there, and her eyebrows arched when she saw it was him again. She really was very pretty, he thought to himself. 

“Hi,” he said after a moment of indecision on the threshold. “You came in with a man holding onto your shoulder, I saw him.” She cocked her head, narrowing her eyes at him.

“There was no man,” she said after a pause, as if she had to consider it. Robert was as confused as ever, but he pressed on.

“Yes,” he said. “There was a man and I know him too, kind of.” She shifted uncomfortably on her seat, watching him closely. “He kicked me out of church and left me all on my own.” At that Angelica jolted upright, her eyes boring into Robert’s.

“What’s your name?” she asked after a moment, trying at least somehow to understand the situation.

“Robert,” he said quickly, going to sit down in the chair opposite her. “Did he do the same to you? Kick you out of your home?”

“In a way,” she said after a moment, cocking her head to look at him from another angle. “I wanted to leave and he helped me.”

“Oh,” Robert said. “So who is he?”

“I’m not sure. He helps me when I need it, though. Tells me what to do.” They were silent for a moment and Robert seemed to be scanning his shoes for dirt. Finally, he looked back up at her.

“I didn’t want to leave,” he said after a moment. “Not really, I don’t think. He just kicked me out and left me alone.”

“From where? I think… I think he helped my brother, too. He’s an Imam.” Robert cocked his head, clearly not understanding. “A Muslim Priest,” she said. “I needed to leave and he helped me. He also told me to come here in a dream, but I didn’t know why. I thought maybe I have diabetes and he’s…” she paused and laughed awkwardly. “My guardian angel or something.” Robert leaned forwards from where he sat across from her, his hands clenched against each other.

“He ruined my life,” Robert said. “He made up lies and tricked me so that my family and my church would excommunicate me.” Angelica closed her eyes, clearly trying to think.

“Maybe that’s what he does,” she said after a moment. “He helped me leave Islam and my Ammi—my Mother. Maybe that’s what he does, he rescues people.” 

“You don’t understand,” he said emphatically. “I didn’t want that, I loved—I love my family. I wish I could go back.”

“They won’t take you back?” Angelica asked. “If you went back to them?”

“No, I don’t think that they would. He arrived one day and convinced them that I was a liar.”

“If your own family would believe him over you,” Angelica asked, “why would you want to go back to them?” Robert put his head in his hands and began to cry, not caring about his job or even the woman across from him, no matter how beautiful she might be. He felt a hand on his shoulder then, and an embrace. She was holding him, and he realized that he had never been held like that before, not even when he was home.

It was a Saturday afternoon and Robert had finally left his apartment, this time unprompted. Two months had passed since the stranger’s hospital visit and his room was beginning to feel unsubstantial around him: the walls were buzzing with an electricity that asked to be left alone. He couldn’t understand any of it; it just didn’t make any sense in his head. Why would the stranger help her but not me? What did she do differently?

He was leaning over the edge of a bridge in Como Park, watching the algae-covered water shimmer darkly in the summer light. He was trying to talk to God, but he wasn’t quite there. It felt like he was never quite there. A couple walked by, holding hands and whispering into each other’s ears, and he hated them for their connection. That made him hate himself for hating them, and he gave up on praying. He was filled with a tranquility that served only to remind him that he had never been more alone. 

The park was distinctly beautiful; during springtime the greenery had forced its way upwards with a violence that could only have been spurned by the suppression of a grueling winter. Summer had fostered their growth even further, making them wild and almost overwhelming to the eyes. The park felt cluttered with beauty. 

He turned to his left and walked across the rest of the bridge, following the path towards whatever was on the other side. He didn’t really care where he was going. The silence of the park carried him forwards on its back, and in what seemed only an instant Robert was staring into the wide expanse of Como Lake, overwhelmed. He stood on the end of an empty dock, his feet precariously resting on halfway rotted wood, and he thought about what to do next. There was nothing here for him, nothing and no one. Alone in the Minnesota expanse, Robert thought about returning home. Perhaps they would take him back, let him in once again. He could be good, could follow all of their rules, even the ones that didn’t make much sense. It could work, he was sure of it. They would let him back in and he could start driving log truck for his dad. He was sixty-eight years old now, probably wanting to pass the torch to someone else. He wondered if any of his sisters had been married away yet. He wondered if the littlest, Angie, had her hair in a Huabe now. She probably did, he guessed. The thought broke his heart. 

The reflection of Como Lake took shape before his eyes, transforming into a rippling mimicry of that room, the one he had dreamed of so often those past four years. The stranger wasn’t there, but the other four Ministers were, plus the Deacon. They were gigantic and made of overlapping waves, their faces each frozen into a rictus of fanatic zeal. They had cast him out as surely as the stranger had, as surely as his parents had. They had all forsaken him. There was no running back now. The waves lapsed back into random patterning, and he put his head in his hands, tears running through his fingers and falling wetly onto the soft wood bellow.

“This is what you wanted,” said the man who had ruined his life. Robert turned around, and a cloud passed over the sun overhead, turning the world a soft gray hue. He was standing there, head cocked to one side. Robert’s eyes drifted shut and then opened again in the world’s slowest blink. His mind felt like it had been swaddled in a soft cloth of understanding, and he felt no surprise. 

“Who are you?”

“Freedom.”

“Leave me alone,” Robert said after a digestive pause. “You’ve ruined me.”

“The world is yours,” the stranger said as he spread his arms to either side. “You can have it all!” Robert’s calm vanished with this, replaced by an anger that had been festering for four years.

“You turned them against me! They hate me because of you.” He walked forwards until he was nose to nose with the man, staring into his protruding eyes. There was nothing there, no expression at all.

“I showed you what they are,” said the man. “I showed you their darkness. Would you stay with those that forsake their own so easily? Ask yourself, if they abandoned you at my word, did they ever care for you?”

“Of course they did,” Robert said as he took a step backwards. The man shook his head sadly as he turned away. 

“I gave you this chance because I thought you could take it. Here you are, though, stuck in the past.” Robert took another step back and reached out for God. Still, he couldn’t feel Him. The stranger was walking away now, head bowed down almost sadly.

“Why would you help her, and not me?” asked Robert in a choked tone, the words barely escaping from his lips. The man gave no response but Robert didn’t need one; he knew the answer. The man had done the same thing for the both of them, but Robert hadn’t been able to move on.

The past never left Robert Trenton, not really. It did fade though, and the weight of freedom became easier to bear with the passing years. He found love in Minnesota, made a new family from scratch with Angelica. He began to enjoy this new life, despite the losses he had faced. On lonely nights, though, he thought of his sister and his parents. He wondered if they were alive and if he would ever see them again in another life. He wondered if he was still the same boy who had loved them, if he could be that man for them now.