Page 34 of His Elder

"About a dozen." Eli's gaze was fixed somewhere over Kempton's shoulder, at the middle distance, at nothing.

"And how many copies of the Book of Mormon placed?"

"None."

Kempton made a small, theatrical sigh, as if Eli's failure was a personal wound. "None. And why do you suppose that is?"

"People weren't interested."

"Or perhaps your approach lacks conviction, Elder." Kempton's voice dripped with condescension, each word a small, precise cut. "Perhaps they sense your own doubts. Faith is a principle of action, but it is also apalpable energy. If you do not radiate it, you cannot expect others to feel it. You cannot share what you do not possess."

I stood beside Kempton, a silent, unwilling accomplice. My jaw was so tight my teeth ached. I watched Eli take the verbal blows. He didn't flinch. He didn't argue. He just stood there, absorbing the sanctimonious lecture, his face a mask of calm, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. But I saw the tension in his shoulders, the slight tightening of his jaw, the way his gaze went even more distant, retreating inward to some fortified place Kempton couldn't reach. He was enduring, just like he endured everything—his parents' divorce, his mother's desperate faith, the mission he never wanted. He endured because he had no other choice.

At the eleven o'clock meeting, it was worse.

"I observed your last interaction, Elder Vance," Kempton began, not even waiting for a report. "From across the street. Your body language was… passive. Slumped. You let the contact lead the conversation. You must take control. You are the one with the moral authority. You are the representative of the Lord. Act like it."

My own lie from the district meeting echoed in my head.He uses it as an icebreaker.I had defended him once, instinctively, without even understanding why. Now, standing here in the cold wind, watching Kempton strip away Eli's dignity pieceby piece, I felt that same impulse surge again, a hot, protective wave that burned away the fog of obedience.

Kempton didn't see a person standing before him. He saw a set of statistics, a failure on a spreadsheet, a weak link in the chain. He didn't see the young man who cried in the dark over his broken family, who carried his mother's pain like a stone in his chest. He didn't see the person who had looked at my deepest, most shameful secret and called itunbroken.

"He was engaging with someone who was upset," I said, the words tumbling out before I could stop them, before I could weigh the consequences. "He was listening. Sometimes that's more important than speaking."

Kempton turned his head slowly, his eyes narrowing, a predator sensing defiance. It was the first time I had ever contradicted a leader. The first time I had ever stepped out of line. The air crackled with the weight of my transgression.

"Empathy is a tool, Elder Price. Not the goal," Kempton said, his tone a clear warning, a hand raised to strike. "Our goal is to bring souls unto Christ through baptism and covenant. A sympathetic ear is useless if it does not lead to a commitment. Sentiment without conversion is just… sentiment." He turned back to Eli, dismissing me. "You are a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Elder Vance. Not a public counsellor. Not a friend. Remember that."

The rest of the day crawled by under a grey sky that mirrored my mood, the colour leached from the world. Kempton drove us relentlessly, a shepherd with a cattle prod. We skipped our normal lunch break, subsisting on granola bars he produced from his bag with a disapproving comment about properplanning and preparation. He criticized Eli for not being similarly prepared, for not having snacks, for not anticipating Kempton's punishing schedule. By the time we trudged back to the metro station in the evening, every muscle in my body ached with a tension that had nothing to do with walking and everything to do with swallowing my anger for eight straight hours.

Kempton left us at the door to our apartment with a final, pious pronouncement.

"A productive day, Elder Price. You have a great deal of potential." He gave Eli a long, evaluative stare, the kind a man gives a horse he's considering putting down. "Elder Vance. Ponder on what we discussed today. Pray for the spirit of the work to fill you. Your eternal salvation may depend on it."

He turned and walked away, his back rigid, his pace measured and deliberate, his mission accomplished.

The silence that descended once the door clicked shut was heavier than any I had ever experienced. It was not the comfortable silence of companionship. It was the silence of a tomb.

We moved through the motions of our evening routine like spectres, like men underwater. Eli put a pot of water on to boil for pasta, his movements slow and mechanical. I set the table with two plates, two forks, two cups, arranging them with obsessive precision, as if the correct placement of silverware could impose order on the chaos inside me. Neither of us spoke. The air was thick with the residue of Kempton's judgment, with the unspoken truth of our shared secret, with the sheer exhaustion of it all—the performance, the pretence, the crushing weight of trying to be someone we were not.

We ate our pasta and tomato sauce without a word. I could hear the scrape of his fork against his plate, the sound of my own breathing, the hum of the refrigerator, the distant wail of a siren on the street below. I kept my eyes on my food, tracingthe patterns the sauce made against the white ceramic, the red swirls like bloodstains. To look at him felt like it would break something fragile that had formed between us in the dark of my bedroom days earlier, something precious and terrifying. His confession, my confession—it was a bridge built of glass, and Kempton had spent the entire day hurling stones at it, trying to shatter it before we could cross.

After dinner, we sat at the small kitchen table for our companion planning session. ThePreach My Gospelmanual lay open between us, its pristine pages a testament to a faith I no longer felt so certain of. We were supposed to plan our lessons for the Moreno family, map out our tracting area for the next day, set goals, review our progress. The ritual of the work.

I stared at the map of the L'Eixample district, the neat grid of streets blurring before my eyes until it was just lines and shapes, meaningless. My mind was not on the work. It was on the image of Eli standing on the street corner at eleven o'clock, his shoulders hunched against the wind and Kempton's scorn, taking the weight of it without complaint. It was on the quiet dignity with which he had endured the humiliation. He hadn't fought back. He hadn't defended himself. He had simply weathered the storm, a solitary lighthouse against a sanctimonious sea, battered but still standing.

A profound and unfamiliar feeling washed over me, warm and fierce. It wasn't pity. Pity was condescending, a feeling you had for someone beneath you. This was different. It was a fierce, bright angeron his behalf, a protective rage I had no right to feel and no idea how to express. It was a deep, aching recognition. Kempton and the Church, they asked us to be perfect, to sand away every rough edge, every inconvenient truth, until we were smooth and identical and interchangeable. Eli, in his quiet, stubborn refusal to pretend, to perform, to prostrate himself before their judgment, wassomething more honest. Something braver than I had ever been.

I looked up from the map. Eli wasn't looking at the book. He was staring at the wall, his jaw set, his eyes distant and glassy. The mask was back, the cool, detached cynicism he wore like armour, like a shield against the world. But for the first time, I saw the weariness beneath it, the cracks in the facade. I saw the profound loneliness of his position—a non-believer in a believer's uniform, surrounded by people who would judge him, ostracize him, send him home in disgrace if they knew who he really was. Whowereally were.

He looked defeated. Not by Kempton's words—words could only wound if you believed them—but by the sheer, unending effort of being himself in a world that demanded he be someone else. The same effort that was tearing me apart from the inside out, cell by cell, prayer by prayer.

My hand, resting on the table beside my planner, moved.

It was not a conscious decision. I didn't think,I will reach for him.I didn't weigh the consequences or consult the rulebook or offer a silent prayer for guidance. It was an impulse, a magnetic pull I made no effort to resist, a need more fundamental than thought. I reached across the small space that separated us—six inches, an ocean, a universe—and laid my hand over his where it rested, still and cool, on the tabletop beside his own untouched planner.

He flinched, just a fraction, a barely perceptible tremor that ran through him like a current. His gaze dropped from the wall to our hands, and I watched his eyes widen, just slightly, as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.

My palm covered the back of his hand completely. His skin was cool, almost cold, as if all the warmth had been leached out of him over the course of the day. My fingers curled slightly, instinctively, around the edge of his hand,my thumb resting against the delicate bones of his knuckles. The contact was electric, a live wire. A violation of a dozen written and unwritten rules.Avoid all contact that could be misinterpreted. Maintain professional boundaries at all times. You are companions, not friends.But this felt like neither of those things. It was not professional. It was not a misinterpretation. It was a simple, declarative statement in a language we could not speak aloud, a language older than scripture.I see you. I am here. You are not alone. You are not wrong.