They rode the rest of the way in silence, the radio playing country songs low between them. Asher was struck by what a perfect summer day lay out before them. The trees were a lush, dark green and the river shone alongside the road. Cumberland Valley was about the prettiest place he’d ever seen. Everything looked new to him.

At the house Zelda said for him to go on in. “We’ll go down here to the riverbank and skip us some rocks.”

Lydia sat on the couch, tucked in as close to the arm as she could get, her legs and arms crossed. “You just destroyed everything we’ve worked for our whole lives. Building a congregation. A church that mattered.”

“I can’t go on doing it, Lydia. I’ve told you.”

“You could’ve just walked away. But you had to ruin it for me, too. How am I supposed to show my face in there?”

“I had to stand up for what I believed in.”

Only now did she look up at him and her face was crumbling with sorrow. “I’m so afraid, Asher. The way you acted in there. I don’t know you at all.”

She rose from the couch, left him standing there in the living room, and disappeared down the hallway. He stood there and took in everything he had known over the last dozen years. This room. The scent of it (cinnamon), the way the light slanted through the picture window in a perfect rectangle this time of day in summertime. The three little dogwoods he could see from the picture window, the glint of river beyond them, and farther still, the ridge. The clicking of the old mantle clock’s pendulum. The remotes lined up on the coffee table. The recliner with the worn patches on its arms.

Lydia came back with two black garbage bags weighed down with clothes. She sat them down by the front door and fumbled for the knob, opening it wide. He could see how powerful she felt in this moment. “This is what you’ve wanted all this time,” she said. “Go.”

He had not realized it, but some part of him had always thought that she might change, that she might see his way of thinking and try to come round to it. He knew now that wasn’t going to happen. He could see this on her face, but also in the set of her shoulders, by the tense of the muscle in her arm as she held on to the doorknob, her eyes hard on him. “Go on,” she said.

“Don’t keep my boy away from me,” he said, knowing she would try.

“We’re going to be laughingstocks now.”

“That church doesn’t make up this whole place,” he said, “this whole country.”

“Go on.” She swiped her hand through the air, pointing to the door.