“Don’t let this turn you mean.”

Caleb shook his head. “What’s happened to you, Asher Sharp?” He left Asher’s office door wide open.

“What are you thinking, Asher?” Lydia said after she took her first drink of coffee. “You want to lose your church?”

“What are you thinking?”

She snorted. “What are you talking about?”

“I know you’ve been taking Justin to a therapist. Why would you do that, then tell him to not tell me?”

“I thought it would help things,” she said, her face suddenly red. “If he wasn’t so wrought up all the time.”

“Justin’s not the problem,” Asher said, keeping his words small and even. “This world is. Nobody can just let a person be.”

Lydia fell silent.

“I want to talk to this therapist,” he said, thinking of the pills doctors gave to boys like Justin. He would not have the shine rubbed out of his son.

“It’s not normal, to be so tenderhearted,” she said, standing now, the sun shining so brightly through the kitchen window behind her that her face was lost to him. “How can a person get through their day when they worry about every little thing in the world? He can’t walk across the yard without worrying about hurting an ant, Asher! He’s got to quit feeling so much.”

“Why should he?” Asher thundered.

Lydia dashed the last of her coffee out into the sink and washed the mug with her back to him.

“I know you think you’re protecting him,” he said. “But I want him left alone.”

As they drove to Nashville Lydia flicked on the radio and tuned the knob to a gospel station out of the eastern mountains. They listened only for an excruciating moment to a preacher screaming about how the Christian flag would be banned next before Asher snapped it off. Lydia sighed and pulled a CD mix of gospel songs from the console and slid it into the player.

Justin nudged white earbuds into his ears.

“What do you listen to on there all the time?” she asked, turning in her seat.

“My Morning Jacket, mostly.”

“What’s that?”

Justin tugged at the white cord, popping out one of the earbuds. “Just a band,” he said.

“What kind of band?”

“My favorite band. Jim James is the lead singer and he—”

“They better not be cussing and going on,” she said, eyeing him.

“They’re not like that,” Asher said.

“Why do you like them?” Now she spoke toward the wind­shield.

“I just like the way they sound. Listening to them makes me feel the way you feel when you’re at church.”

To Asher’s surprise she laughed. “I doubt that,” she said.

Justin put the earbuds back in and turned his music up, leaning his head back on the seat.