Page 55 of His Elder

My stomach clenched.Full responsibility.Did that mean—

"However," President Dalton continued, "Elder Price is clearly struggling with some very difficult feelings. Same-sex attraction is a heavy trial, and he's been trying desperately to overcome it through faithful service. Through obedience."

I saw where this was going. The narrative forming.

"What I need to understand," President Dalton said, leaning forward slightly, "is the context of these encounters. How they began. Elder Price has told me his version, but I need to hear yours."

His version.Like there were multiple truths we could choose from.

I thought about Samuel in the hallway, broken and weeping. I thought about the question they must have asked him—the same question they always asked.Did your companion pressure you? Take advantage of your vulnerability?

I thought about what Samuel must have said. Because if he'd blamed me—if he'd taken the easy out—President Dalton wouldn't be sitting here with this careful, neutral expression. He'd be angry. Disgusted. Ready to condemn me outright.

But he wasn't. Which meant Samuel had told the truth. Had refused to throw me under the bus even when it would have saved him.

The idiot. The beautiful, self-destructive idiot.

"Elder Vance?" President Dalton prompted. "I need you to walk me through how this relationship developed."

I looked at the painting of Christ on the wall. His face twisted in agony, alone in the garden while his apostles slept. Suffering for sins he didn't commit. Taking the blame so others could be saved.

The calculus was simple.

One of us could survive this. One of us had a stake president father and a future at BYU and a family waiting at home who still believed in him. One of us had spent eighteen months being the golden boy, the faithful elder, the missionary who baptized six investigators in his first area.

And one of us had a father who'd abandoned his mother and a mission record full of companion complaints and nothing waiting at home but a part-time job and a mother who'd lose her fragile grip on the Church if her son came home a failure.

Samuel had tried to save me by telling the truth. By refusing to blame me even when it was the smart play.

Now it was my turn.

"I initiated it," I said.

President Dalton's eyebrows rose slightly. "You initiated the sexual contact?"

"Yes. All of it."

He picked up his pen, made a note. "Can you tell me how it began?"

The lies came easier than I'd expected. Maybe because they were wrapped around kernels of truth.

"Elder Price was struggling," I said. "With his testimony, with the mission. With—with his attractions. He was vulnerable. And I took advantage of that."

"Took advantage," President Dalton repeated carefully. "Can you be morespecific?"

"He came to my bed one night. He was upset about a teaching appointment that hadn't gone well. We'd taught the plan of salvation to an investigator, and—and it had triggered something for him. Made him question whether he'd ever have that. The eternal family."

President Dalton nodded. This he understood. The gay missionary wrestling with his exclusion from God's plan.

"I should have sent him back to his own bed," I continued. "Should have suggested we pray together, or study the scriptures. But I didn't. I—I touched his hand. Then his face. I kissed him."

"And did Elder Price reciprocate?"

"Eventually. But I pushed. I kept pushing." I paused, let my voice drop. "I told him the Church was wrong about him. That being attracted to men wasn't something he needed to overcome. That he should stop hating himself and just—just give in."

It was close enough to the truth to be believable. Ihadtold Samuel those things. But not as manipulation. Astruth. As a lifeline thrown to a drowning man.

President Dalton's pen scratched across the paper. "And the subsequent encounters? The sexual acts Elder Price described—did you initiate those as well?"