Zelda and Justin were coming up the hill from the river as he stepped from the porch. Justin dared his granny to race him and she tried for only a second to keep up with him before she stopped, laughing, hands on her knees. Then Justin ran into Asher’s leg and caught hold of it, out of breath.

“I’ll see you in a couple days, buddy,” Asher said.

“I want to go back out to the lake, with you.”

“No, now, Justin,” Lydia said, trying to steady her voice, “you’ve got school.”

“Not till Monday.”

Asher put his hand on the boy’s back. “I’ll bring him back tomorrow evening. Let him go with me for tonight.”

“You’ve given up your family because of this,” Lydia said. She took hold of Justin’s shoulder and he pulled away from her. “No judge in this state will even let you have joint custody after the stunt you just pulled.”

Asher thought of the way he had lost control of his temper, the way he had yelled and cried. Folks in the audience recoiling. And the girl, filming every bit of it.

“Just go, Asher,” Zelda said, finally drawing near. “For now.”

He drove away. At the curve in the road at the bottom of the hill he stopped his Jeep and looked back. There was the home he was leaving. But already gone inside were the people he had known and loved so well.

14

14

For a time Lydia agreed to let Asher take Justin every other weekend and one night a week. Asher cooked him grilled cheeses and fried baloney sandwiches. As long as it was warm enough they swam in the green, still waters of Cheatham Lake. There was an abundance of treasures for Justin’s nature collection on the lake’s shore: tiny white mollusk shells, cardinal flowers he dried between the pages of book, a small gray trilobite. Often Asher sat on the bank and watched Justin’s determined reverence as he studied leaves or rocks, wondering what this divorce would do to his little boy.

Then he received the notice by registered mail: Lydia had gone to court with the video of him in church.