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I love you, Zeke mouthed along with Todd.
He had ever since he’d met her, he supposed. When he’d arrived in Missouri, fresh out of an eastern city with his optimism mostly intact, she’d been there to welcome him—a newly-wed bride who had smiled widely, eyes sparkling, and had asked him questions about his sermons that made him break out his old university texts.
He hadn’t tried to love her. He hadn’t had to.
Sometimes, he thought, in the middle of dark hot nights where the sheets stuck to his skin and he could almost feel the devils closing in around him, he might have fought it off if Todd Aberdeen had been a good man. If Mrs. Aberdeen had been married to a good, kind man who loved her, and who she loved, maybe Zeke could have swallowed his feelings, kept an appropriate amount of distance from his beautiful parishioner, and stayed on the righteous path, secure in the knowledge that there was a place for him in heaven.
And then, in the belly of those nights, he would twist around in his sheets just the wrong way, feel a spark of friction, think of Prudence’s laugh, and know in his bones that there was no power that could have stopped him from loving Prudence—not a good husband, not a kind man, not G-d or the Devil himself. There is nothing that G-d can’t do, he would remind himself, and would be answered by a clenching, roaring fire in his gut. Except this. Because I’ve prayed to G-d to heal me of this, and if it hasn’t worked, what does that say about G-d?
What does it say about me?
As an orphan growing up in England, he’d never had anything of his own. Anything he loved was taken or stolen or beaten out of him quickly enough, and he’d learned early enough not to love anything that could be wrecked. And he remembered the Sunday it had happened—they’d all been sat in their row, the orphans, and the light had come shining through the stained-glass window, and he had realized, staring at the bright red blood drip down the side of a glassy Jesus Christ, that if he was faithful, that faith could never be stolen from him. It was his, and his alone, and that was better than a bath or new shoes or a fresh shiny apple with no worms. The older boys couldn’t take it from him, the headmistress couldn’t beat it out of him, and best of all, no one would ever want to steal his Bible.
And he’d had something he could love. And he’d stuck to loving what he could—the rolling hills, the soft sun in the morning, the changing colors of the sky and the sunsets. And he’d been careful, so careful, all through university, avoiding temptation in the eastern cities, and arriving in Missouri ready to uplift a community and be nothing more than a brother, a father, and a friend to all.
And then he’d met Prudence Aberdeen, all devil and angel and beautiful girl—and he was helpless in the face of something that smiled like divinity and laughed like sin.
She thought he was sweet, he knew—sweet, a little foolish, wound too tight. And he thanked G-d, in shame, every day for it: that for all her sharp wit and keen eye, Prudence had missed the fact that he was no better than a wolf hidden within the fold; that he had to swallow and look away when she wore those shorter skirts, the ones that nearly showed her ankles, and that some Sunday mornings he couldn’t meet her eye.
And then he had been trapped in a cave with Todd, and while Zeke believed that G-d loved all his children, he thought that He might have to make a bit more effort with Todd Aberdeen. And Todd, instead of relaying some disturbing story or mocking Zeke further, had lowered his weapon and dropped his guard, and Zeke couldn’t stop seeing the buffalo calf’s eyes, wide and hurt and trusting, blinking up at him.
So he’d helped Todd Aberdeen, forming the words in his head as they ran from the bear and the screams of their friend. And it was the hardest and easiest thing he’d ever done—telling the truth and lying for all he was worth.
I love you.
The worst truth he’d ever told, made passable only because it came from her husband’s lips. And Prudence, he saw, with a twist to his heart, softened and smiled.
She wants her husband to love her, Zeke realized, with a painful jolt. Of course she did—what woman would not want love from their husband? It came as a command from G-d and a relief when the constant companionship of marriage came with sweetness, too. And it was Zeke’s fault—stupid, foolish, Zeke, burying his head in the sand, who had refused to see it.
Prudence stepped forward toward her husband. And Zeke stood and stared.
“Good thing you and Prude are just friends,” Benny the Teen muttered, giving him an old-fashioned stare out of the corner of his eyes. “Otherwise, that would have really stung.”
Zeke wanted to laugh, wanted to shake Benny, confess that he’d never loved anything without a sting of some kind, that he wasn’t sure he’d know how, collapse and weep. He stared straight ahead and said “Yep.”
He loved her. And loving her hurt, but faith hurt—faith came with shame, and self-denial, and he was good at those things. And if he could love faith, embrace the way it hurt, he could love the way that Prudence hurt—hold it to his chest, crush it to his heart, and love the way she stung with all his heart.
If Ezekiel Brown was good at one thing, it was loving the things that hurt.