It was so different building a relationship on a foundation of friendship. It was as easy as slipping on a new pair of Uggs — they were new, but they felt old, like we’d taken this walk before. It was comfortable already knowing Jeremy, which was why when I slid into his car, and leaned over to kiss him, I knew something was wrong.

“What’s up?” I asked as he edged from the parking space in front of my dorm.

He shrugged. “My mind is still all over the place. It’s hard for me to get over that I haven’t heard from Pastor Robinson in more than two weeks.”

“I know.” I twisted so that with one hand, I could massage the back of his neck as he drove.

His eyes stayed straight ahead. “It’s like they never really cared for me. When they talked about me being the son they never had, they never meant that.”

“You know that’s not true. Lady Robinson told me so many times how she felt like she’d almost birthed you herself and that always meant a lot to her since she wasn’t able to have children. You really were their son.”

“That they just abandoned.”

This was something that I’d been praying about. I didn’t want Jeremy to feel this way, though abandonment was the only feeling that could come out of this situation.

I said, “You know what? Why don’t we just go over there?”

“Where?” he asked as he pulled his car to a stop in the parking lot of his apartment building.

“To the Robinsons. We should just go over there. Really, I can’t believe you haven’t done that already.” It was the sound of his silence that made me ask, “Have you?”

“No.”

Then his eyebrow twitched and I frowned. Why was he lying to me?

But before I could ask, he changed his response to, “I mean, yeah. In a way. I haven’t been to their house. I haven’t knocked on the door. But I’ve driven by. More than a couple of times.”

“Why didn’t you just go in and talk to them?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess part of me is afraid. For Reverend Robinson to have done this, something horrible had to happen.”

“And you don’t want to know what it is?” I didn’t give him a chance to respond. “Wouldn’t talking to Lady and Reverend Robinson help? Wouldn’t that give you closure?”

He paused for a moment. “And if I close that door, what will be ahead of me?”

I didn’t even let a second pass before I told him, “I don’t know, but whatever you have to face, I’m going to be there with you.”

He gave me a long glance before he gave me an even longer kiss and then, he churned up the engine of his car.

There were so many things I wanted to tell Jeremy, so many things I wanted him to know so that he’d be prepared for whatever the Robinsons said to us. But I said nothing to him, and just took my prayers to God, asking Him to reveal it all to Jeremy so that he could leave the Robinsons with his questions answered, even if his heart still was not whole when it came to them.