Important to make the kids proud. Give them something to be proud of in their daddy.

And then, the woman undermining him. Betraying him. Injunction—that was what pushed him over the edge.

Forbidden to approach within one hundred yards of the house and forbidden to approach within one hundred yards of the children and forbidden to approach within one hundred yards of the woman who has requested the restraining order.

Wife, she was. Former wife, it would be written.

Daddy’s secret, he’d never wanted kids. Your kids judge you. Your kid are too close up. Then they outlive you. They cry because of you or they disappoint you. In the boy’s face a look like shrinking, drawing back from his dad, Christ!—all Earle could do to keep from grabbing the little bastard and shaking him so hard his brains rattled like marbles.

But no. No. He didn’t mean it, Christ.

How he’d leaned down and shouted into the kid’s (scared-white) face. Opening his mouth wide, feeling his face turn ugly, shouting. Don’t you try to get away from me, you little shit.

Hadn’t meant it. Any of it. Therapists sympathized. Everyone loses his temper. Parents lose their tempers. Nobody is perfect. A perfect dad does not exist.

Crucial to forgive yourself, the Catholic chaplain said. Between love and hate we may choose hate out of fear of choosing love.

Saying to him, how we don’t want forgiveness for our sins when it is our sins we love.

He’d come close to crying, being told such a thing. For it was true, it’s his sins he loves, nothing else has meaning to him.

No one but her. But fuck her.

Driving fast on Strouts Mill Road, and then faster. Eyes steady in their sockets. He was gripping the wheel correctly. He was gripping the wheel as you would grip it if it were alive and trying to get away from you.

He prayed with his eyes open. He had nothing to hide. His eyes took in all things. He did not spare himself. He’d loved his kids more than his own life, but he’d hated their mother more than he’d loved them or himself, and that was the truth he had to live with.

He was fearful of Jesus. The love in Jesus. The love of Jesus was a pool that could overflow and drown a man.

He could understand meanness. He could see why people were cruel to one another. But forgiveness and love he could not understand.

He was sorry for the crimes he had committed. He believed that Jesus would forgive him, but Jesus would not forgive the crimes his (ex)wife had perpetrated against him and the children.

She’d told him he would have to leave. They would all be happier if he left, she said. He’d said, Happy! We are not on this goddamned earth to be happy.