not a killer. Don’t you? Please tell me you know your son… your spark—”
“Don’t you dare,” she snapped, and Wood shut his mouth as if he’d been popped in it. “Don’t you dare say that. My spark is gone. I lost my spark when he chose to live as a homosexual.”
“I didn’t choose anything!” he yelled.
“Wood Jr.!” His father’s booming voice came from behind his mother, making his heart skip a beat.
Wood gathered himself as he thought for a split second maybe his father would be more receptive to burying this decades-old feud. He was a gay man, the end. He’d been born that way, and he’d refused to deny himself. That was why his parents had put him out his first year of art school, to teach him a lesson. And they promised that once he saw the evilness in his ways and repented, he’d be allowed back home. But once Wood left the family church and decided to live his own life—there was no forgiving him for that. Being a homosexual had been intolerable enough for his parents, but now he was a convicted felon, a man-slaughterer—seeing him as anything else but that would be impossible. He’d never again be their son.
“Dad. Good afternoon. I wasn’t trying to stop by unannounced and surprise you like this, but I been calling trying to reach you.” Wood smiled through the pain and regret. He was trying his best to show them he was still their son. Same eyes, same voice, same heart.
His father carefully inched his wife to the side and stepped out onto the porch. Wood didn’t embrace him because he had a feeling he wasn’t approaching him for that. “Boy, didn’t I tell you to never step foot back in my house again?”
Wood slumped so hard until he had to brace his hands on his knees. Jesus. “Are you serious?” Wood gritted out, suddenly feeling exhausted. “It was an accident, damnit!”
He heard his mother gasp, and his father’s imposing figure seemed to grow even larger, making Wood feel like the junior he was. Despite the sharp stabbing in his chest, Wood stood to his full height and looked his father in the eye. His old man seemed worn, and his face had aged well beyond his seventy-three years. His hair was thinned bald in the middle, leaving patches of gray fuzz around the sides. Wood stared at the man he thought he wanted to be like most in the world, stared at a man that was once his hero. Flashes of their relationship whipped through his mind as he gazed into his father’s eyes and said his final goodbye. He knew when a man was done, finished… repulsed. And he could see it all, times ten, expressed in his father.
“Don’t you take that voice in front of your mother! Listen to how you speak. Where’s your respect? You come here looking for forgiveness, boy, then you wasted your time,” his father said gruffly, never breaking their stare-off.
Wood knew he was close to giving up, but he locked his knees and stood firm, forcing himself to remember Brody’s words. He remembered that he’d paid his penance. He’d paid his debt to society. He was allowed to live his life now. But it didn’t mean he could make others forgive and forget it. If they weren’t ready to move on, then Wood had to do it alone… without their compassion.
Wood turned to his mother. “Momma. I apologize. I came here to say—whether you accept it or not—that I’m genuinely sorry. And I love you both, always have, and I always will.” Wood shook his head and swiped at the moisture building in the corner of his eyes. “But I feel that even if you two could’ve forgiven me for the accident… you’ll never forgive me for being gay. And I’m sorry, but I’m not apologizing for that.”
“Then I guess you best get going,” his father said coldly.
Wood narrowed his eyes, utterly confused. How could this have gone so damn badly? “Dad. Can I just say one more thing? How can you stand in that pulpit every Sunday in front of impressionable young people and preach God’s word on forgiveness and mercy… but then you live the total opposite? When I used to listen to those sermons, you’d call those kinds of so-called Christians hypocrites.”
“Wood Jr.,” his mom admonished. She still hadn’t moved from behind the door as if he wasn’t safe to be around.
“What pulpit!” his father yelled, and Wood