“I guess I wanted to give you clues, in case you ever went looking for me.”

“It worked.”

The evening sky is purpling into darkness and all along the horizon the sun stretches out orange and rosy. So much to say, so hard to put it all into words.

“I’ve had a good life,” Luke says. “Found somebody who loved me.”

“I’d like to meet him,” Asher offers, hoping he’s ready to see his brother with a man, see Luke with his arm around someone, perhaps even kissing him.

“Found the church where I belong. The place I belong.”

Asher wants to say so much. But there is time for that. He has nothing but time. “There wasn’t a day I wasn’t thinking of you, wishing I had had enough sense to handle it differently.”

“I didn’t run off to punish you. I left because you—all of you—made me feel ashamed. Do you know what it’s like to walk through the world with everybody thinking they know everything about you?”

Asher wants to explain that he does, but he knows a viral video isn’t the same.

“Back home people didn’t accept me once they figured me out. They tolerated me. Even you. I wasn’t about to live that way, as the town freak. But I probably wouldn’t have found my way if you hadn’t turned against me, Asher.” Those words sting—you turned against me. “So it all worked out, I reckon.”

“A priest,” Asher says.

“You didn’t see that one coming, did you?” Luke laughs.

“No, can’t say that I did.”

“I was told I was no good all my life,” Luke says. His strength is magnificent to Asher in this moment. “You all wanted me to be somebody I wasn’t.”

“If I could change it I would—”

“But no matter how low I got, there was always this little fire burning in me,” he says. “Sometimes it would be real small, but it stayed lit. I knew I was a child of God and nobody ever could put it out.”

Asher moves to take his brother’s hand but just as he does, Luke stands, dusts the sand from the back of his pants.

“I’ve missed you, Asher,” he says. “Every day. But I just don’t know.” Luke can’t seem to look at him. “I wish I could just forget it all, but I can’t. Not yet.”

“I want to make it right, Luke.”

“I don’t know, Asher. I know I’m supposed to be full of grace and all that. I preach that stuff all the time. But I’m not sure it’s possible after all these years. And I don’t know if you’ve changed as much as you think you have.”

“All I can do is try,” Asher says.