“He looks like a bear standing in attack mode,” Vicky once said, but it felt weird to agree with her—bear tends to trigger a different response among gays, and my feelings about the Reverend are complicated enough. My mom is obviously in love with him; she’d spend every waking moment volunteering at his church if she didn’t have the hospital to think about.

“Oh no,” Mom curses to herself as she spots the Reverend. “I gotta get going, but…oh…” Mom opens her front-facing camera to give herself a once-over, but her slumped shoulders tell me she hates her reflection. She can’t wear any excessive makeup or scents in the NICU, so my mom is painfully limited in ways she can gussy herself up for the Reverend.

As she frantically brushes her long, frizzing hair, I distract myself from my embarrassment with Ario’s texts: So proud of u! This takes so much guts! Hope ur ok!

The only guts I have at the moment are my intestines, tangled like a ball of rubber bands as the Reverend enters the diner. God, please don’t let him spot us. He weaves through Sue’s as a politician would: grinning wickedly, shaking hands, and cracking inside jokes with every customer—many of whom are donning John Deere or MAGA hats. So much red and green, it looks like Christmas. All of them flush to be blessed with the Reverend’s attention as he greets them:

“I put in a word for your sister at Ben Sherman’s.”

“Have they fixed your transmission yet?”

“Let me see what I can do.”

“You slipped out of my service eight minutes early last week. Hope everything’s okay.”

“Don’t let him put too much hot sauce on it; pepper’s not good for him, trust me.”

It lasts for minutes. Person by person, Reverend Packard swoops through the crowd of diners—he’s their preacher, their therapist, their mechanic, their doctor. If you’ve got a problem, he’s on the case… And if you’ve got personal business, he’s up to his nose in it. If I ever came out—when, Major, when—it won’t be a conversation just between my mom and me. The Reverend will have his say.

Mom and I already paid our bill, but we remain in the booth, knowing we must wait our turn to be anointed by the Reverend. When our time comes, he looms like the Angel of Death for a moment and then plunks down beside my mom, kissing her cheek (“Marcia!”). I half-expect him to insist we stay and eat with him. Mom would totally blow off her shift if the Reverend asked her to, so I blurt, “Ah, Mom, you don’t want to be late.”

“Don’t be rude,” she snaps, instinctively leaping to the Reverend’s defense, even though nobody asked her to take sides.

“Mr. Major,” the Reverend says, booping my nose as if I were a puppy. “I’m not staying. I’ve got my own table. Ooh, I hope you’re not drinking coffee? Too much, and you’ll never get that growth spurt.”