Even though this is the first time he’s gone since Ricky and David John were arrested, this church has been part of his life, and Jessup does have faith: he believes in God and Jesus and salvation. When he clasps hands with his brothers in the locker room, bows his head and prays, when he asks for protection for Jewel, for some relief for his mother, he believes. He believes in God’s love and grace. He has to.
The entire congregation rises to their feet as one, singing out the praises of God. Despite his long absence, he settles into the rhythm: standing, singing, sitting, praying.
That familiarity, however, means that even though it feels like a homecoming, he’s bored at times, his thoughts turning to Deanne and the way it feels to be with her, or to how happy his mother looks here, in this moment, with her family in church together—Ricky a permanent absence, always a shadow, but lessened now—but mostly, despite himself, he’s happy. He’s sitting with his family, a smile on his mom’s face, David John’s hand on her thigh, and next to him, Jewel sitting on the pew now, holding his hand, leaning against him.
He tries to ignore the fact that Brandon Rogers is on his other side.
Jessup puts his arm around Jewel. He remembers how when he was eleven, the age she is now, he’d lift her sleeping body from the car and carry her into the house, lay her gently in her bed, close the curtains and the door so that she could nap.
He’d do anything for her. He isn’t a parent, but he understands it, understands how David John gave himself to the moment in the alley, the knife wiped clean of prints and shoved into that black kid’s hand, understands how his mother works two jobs, catches an hour of sleep in her car between cleaning houses and standing at the register at Target.
He steals a glance over at David John. The man is shining with hope. Every one of his letters to Jessup talked about faith as refuge. Jessup has faith, but that’s not the same as what David John has. David John has surety. Jessup’s eleventh-grade social studies teacher, a Mormon, said there were all kinds of studies showing that religious people, specifically people who go to religious services, are happier. Jessup believes it.