This is harder than I imagined it would be. What must they be thinking? Are they thinking I must have been a lousy father that my son ran away from me? Does it matter? I can’t let it matter. For Sarina’s sake, for Denny’s sake, this must be said. The blame must rest where it should and not on the innocent. Max drew a deep breath, lifted his shoulders, and continued.

“A couple of months after Hannah and I were married, the doorbell rang and there was Zachary and Sarina, who was about to have a baby. As many of you know, that lovely little girl was christened Sarah, right here in this church.”

Heads nodded again. Some people smiled.

“It seems that there were riots in India, so it was safer to get out of there. Only, coming back to Covington wasn’t what Zachary wanted. Still, he had no place else to go. Instead of tending to his wife, comforting her—after all, the girl’s separated from her family, her home—he disappears every afternoon. For weeks no one knows where he’s off to, what he’s doing. Well, Zachary went gambling and gambled away what little money he had.”

A murmur of “no’s” spreads through the crowd.

Max nodded. “That’s right. He gambled. After the baby came, we tried to talk with him, to get some idea of what he wanted to do with his life. Turns out what he wanted was land. My son wanted to hack down trees and build houses for rental income. Income to do what with? Sit on his duff? Gamble and ignore his wife and baby? I said no. Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe I should have given him what he wanted.”

Max grasped the podium with both hands. He leaned forward, his eyes raking the congregation. “Well, I didn’t.” The memory of the day they took away his cows rose before Max. His body trembled, and he planted his feet firmly on the ground.

“The day they took away my cows, Zachary came charging at me, cursing. I thought he was going to strike me, that I’d have to fight him. Luckily, it didn’t come to that. When the truck with the cows left, I went inside to talk to him. But he was nowhere about. He’d vanished, packed a bag and left without a word to his wife or anyone. Until a few days ago, none of us knew where he was or if he was coming back.”