There are crowds of congregants in the parking lot, in front of the barn, milling near the entrance to the social hall. Mostly men, some wives, but all of them look concerned. There’s a small group of Cortaca police officers standing at the exit of the parking lot, blocking off the driveway. They look menacing, out of place with their body armor and M16s. The congregants are dressed for church, winter coats covering a mix of suits and jeans with button-downs, women in dresses, here and there a few younger kids running around, oblivious to the concerns of their parents.
A group of somber men come over when they see Jessup’s family. David John stops, kisses his wife, puts Jewel down on the ground, and joins the men. Jessup’s mom takes Jewel’s hand and heads toward Earl’s house, shaking off a few women, but there are three who remain unshaken, who go with her; Jessup recognizes Wyatt’s mom and Kaylee’s mom, but he’s not sure who the third woman is. His mom has a life at church that he doesn’t know about, he realizes.
The men talking with David John are familiar, but Jessup can’t honestly say he knows them. Those four years without church mean that even if he knew them before, he doesn’t know them now. The whole group is serious, angry, full of bluster to shore up David John’s unsteadiness. Leaning in toward each other. He hears Brody’s name, other mumbles. To Jessup, it looks a lot like a football huddle, everybody following David John, listening to him speak. But the thing is, Jessup thinks, David John is no quarterback.
Which is uncharitable.
He wants to pull his stepfather aside, to hug him, to tell him he loves him, to say that he’s proud of David John. Is that odd, telling this man who, by all rights except biological, can claim to be Jessup’s father, that he’s proud of him? Fathers tell their sons that they are proud of them, not the other way around, and yet Jessup doesn’t have another word for it. That feeling, pride, comes over him so strongly that he can feel tears threatening to overwhelm him. He wants to say to David John that, no matter what else he has done or failed to do in his life, in that one single moment barely ten minutes ago, his actions were redemptive; when Jessup jumped off that truck, screaming Jewel’s name, what he saw was a man who’d thrown his body over his daughter, who’d heard gunshots and gotten his family to the ground, whose first thought was to protect his family at all costs, to put himself in harm’s way to keep his family safe. For David John, it was an easy and instinctual trade: his life for his daughter’s. And Jessup knows that it’s not the first time that David John has had the impulse: back in that alley, more than four years ago, with Ricky, David John was trying to protect his son, willing to do anything, including planting a knife, anything, anything to try to make things better for Jessup’s brother.
And it makes Jessup feel like everything he’s ever done has been made worthless because he hasn’t told David John about this pride, how proud he is of how David John acts as a father, how glad he has been to have this man in his life, how much better he has made their lives in so many ways, and he wants to beg forgiveness for every single time he’s called him “David John” instead of “Dad,” every single time he’s referred to him as his stepfather, because every single time has been a betrayal.