Free Conviction by Kelly Loy Gilbert

top of my head.
    “What’d I
just
tell you? I should’ve known not to trust you, you worthless bully. Can’t you see how little he is? Wouldn’t you be scared if you were him?
God
damn
, you ought to be skinned alive. I should’ve known.”
    He rubbed his hand on my back and rocked me back and forth, kissed me on the nose and on the forehead. He bobbed up and down and ducked his head next to my ear.
    “Hey, little man,” he crooned, turning away from the look on Trey’s face, “Shhh. Shhh. You’re okay, buddy, Dad’s got you, Dad loves you, it’s
okay.”
    And—when he got to this part in his story, he sat up straighter—I stopped crying and went quiet and stared up at him, tears pooling in my eyes so they looked huge, and that was the
first time he ever saw me smile. And that was it, he told me: that was the moment he knew he believed in God and the moment he realized God had spoken to him and the moment he knew everything was
going to be different from now on. God had given him this son out of nowhere, the way he’d chosen the Virgin Mary. This new son had been sent to him to love him and be his own. This new son
was God reaching down from heaven and nudging past the years of sin and past the unbelief and right into his lonely, guilty heart.
    When my dad turned around, Trey was sitting on the bed still; he’d hugged his knees against his chest and wrapped his arms around them. His eyes were hollow. He didn’t move when my
dad turned to him.
    “Here,” my dad said impulsively to Trey. “Trey, here. Sometimes babies just cry. It happens. You were like that, too. Always scared me to death. Here.” He pushed
Trey’s knees down flat and positioned me back in his lap before Trey had time to say anything, and in that moment, he told God:
I forgive Trey for saying he wanted to live with Elaine
instead of me, and I forgive him for trying to run away from me, too.
“See? He wants you to play with him.”
    But Trey still had that same unseeing look in his eyes. My dad tried again. “We’ll have a good time together, huh? All three of us. We can—” He stopped, trying to think
what you could do with three people that you couldn’t with two. “We can play keep-away with him. We can have a tiebreaker if we ever vote on anything. He’s lucky, you know that?
Every little boy should have an older brother.”
    But Trey still didn’t answer. There was a feeling like a knife twisting in my dad’s stomach. Maybe he’d been wrong, and maybe he was hoping for too much. Maybe some things you
couldn’t fix.
    But didn’t this baby mean he was forgiven? That he got another chance? That God loved him after all, and believed in him, and that maybe he could be different too? So he settled down next
to Trey on the bed.
    “Trey,” he said, nervous. “Look. Maybe—look. I didn’t mean to yell at you, all right? I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry. I know you were trying to be nice to
him. And I know you do things you shouldn’t, but maybe I’m too hard on you sometimes. You know I love you. I blew my life savings in court so I could keep you. If I didn’t have
you, I’d be lonely as hell. I’d have nothing. I wanted a son my whole life.”
    Trey turned his face toward the wall. My dad felt his heart sink, start to slip back into that swamp of guilt. Jesus, Trey was the size of this new baby once—Trey seemed so little
sometimes still—and what kind of man was so hard on someone that much smaller? He fought away the memory of beating Trey with his belt after Trey had tried to run away, and his stomach
turned. Of course Trey hated him. Of course he’d tried to leave.
    “Trey, I want it to be different,” my dad said desperately. “I really mean it. I want things to be different. I want us to have fun together, and I want you to be happy when
I’m around, and I want you to trust me. I want you to come to me when you’re upset or you have a problem.”
    His hands were shaking. “Listen—I