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Bethany looked over at her father. She covered her phone and spoke in a whisper, “Do you think they would’ve gone to your place?”
Kinnick shrugged. “I don’t know why they would.”
“Sister Bethany?” the pastor was saying. “Are you there?”
She put the phone back to her ear. “Yes. I’m here.”
“Can I ask—how is your father’s friend? The one who was shot up here.”
“He’s going to be fine,” she said. “We just saw him.”
“Oh, good. I’m relieved. We don’t need that kind of trouble. The young man who accidentally shot him feels terrible about it.”
Yeah, probably not as terrible as Chuck feels, Bethany thought.
Then the pastor cleared his throat. “And, well... there’s somethingelse that I—that we—well— Um...” He seemed hesitant about what he was going to say next, and Bethany heard the woman’s voice in the background again.
“Go on, David, tell her.”
“Iamtelling her, Darlene,” Pastor Gallen said, the first indication of weariness in his voice. “I wanted to apologize to you personally, Bethany. My son is going through a difficult time, as a lot of young people are these days, bombarded with conflicting information, with a culture that worships permissiveness and debauchery, images that confuse and titillate, that go against God’s will, and make a mockery of His plans for us, as revealed not only in Genesis and Leviticus and Romans and elsewhere, but also, Jeremiah, 28:11, and I just wanted to say—”
There was a rustling, and she could hear Darlene trying to grab the phone from him. “Darlene, would you—”
“If you’re not going to tell her—”
“Iamtelling her!”
“Give me the phone, David. Please.” Then it was Darlene’s voice in her ear: “Sister Bethany, what my husband is trying to say is that David Jr. is gay.”
“We don’tknowthat!” Pastor Gallen said in the background.
“Of course we do!” she said to him. “We’ve known it since he was six!” And back into the phone: “He’s never had any interest in girls. And lately, he’s been talking about this young man at school, who, we recently found out, is gay, and we overheard Davy say he has feelings for this boy—”
“Darlene!” the pastor said again.
“David. Please.” Her voice softened and now she was talking to her husband. “You know it’s true. Remember the images we found on his computer? And why else does an almost twenty-year-old boy, when pressured by his father to find a girlfriend, choose a thirteen-year-old girl that he’s only met twice, someone he can’t even date for two years.”
“Oh,” Bethany said. “I see.” She suddenly felt an ache for Leah, wholikely would have fallen for a gay boy atsomepoint in her life, so many straight girls did. But, usually, this kind of thing happened a few years later, at seventeen, or at twenty, at theater camp, or in college. To have her first love be gay? At thirteen? This was going to sting. Oh, poor Leah.
Darlene seemed exhausted. She said to Bethany: “David asked him to come home this week. Yesterday, I found out why. So, I told Davy why his father had summoned him.”
“I didn’tsummonhim, Darlene—” the pastor said. “I just wanted—”
“He wants to send Davy to conversion therapy,” Darlene said. “He wants to do it quickly and quietly, before anyone in the church finds out.”
“Darlene, I want to offer him the opportunity to talk to someone, that’s all,” Pastor Gallen said in the background.
“So,” Darlene said to Bethany, “I guess you can see why Davy didn’t come home last night.”
The pastor said, “Please, Darlene. This is hard enough.”
Bethany thought she should probably let the Gallens work through this by themselves. “Listen, Darlene, I have a pretty good idea where they are. We’ll look for them there and I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”
“Thank you,” Darlene said.
Bethany wanted to say something else, to tell them to go easy on their son, or to have an open mind, but the words failed her, and she hung up in the middle of Darlene saying, “God Bless you, Beth—”
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