Prologue
They tell themselves—it’s not like we don’t remember our father’s death—because they do. They remember the blood. Everywhere. On their clothes, shirts. The vomit on the floor. Not knowing whose it was. Blood ran down their noses. Seeped through their shirts onto their brand new sneakers. One of them was five, or at least they like to pretend someone was five. So young and innocent they couldn’t have been capable of doing something as heinous as this. Killing one’s own father. They imagine that they had just got home from school, maybe soccer practice? Their lunch pails, empty and ready to be cleaned, were on the kitchen counter. Their mother was in the bathroom, getting out of the shower. Ready to head off to work at the hospital.
Wren was down the hall, playing with her barbie dolls. Laughing to herself as she made the Ken and Barbie dolls kiss each other. Wearing a purple dress with ruffles. A matching sweater, only one button in the middle. Hair in pigtails because that was how she liked it. Sterling was out back, hitting a tennis ball against the wall with his new racket he got for this tenth birthday. That’s what he would do until the day he moved out of the house. Hit the ball against the garage door, angry, quiet, and alone. And Davis was just walking in the door, laughing to himself as he watched a video on his phone.
The five of them were great. A happy family on a quiet street, in a little town north of San Francisco. When they traveled the world people would ask where we were from and to save ourselves further explanation they would say San Francisco. San Fran for short. Easier than explaining that we lived two hours north in a little beach town called Bodega Bay. A tiny blip on the map of California. Barely noticeable to the scanning eye.
If you visit the town now, it’s changed as most places in California have. Especially Northern California. With the deep pockets of tech execs who flood the outskirts of the city looking for a rural escape. The once open fields are now being bulldozed and built on. Mom and Pop shops are being replaced with Whole Foods and Ace Hardware. They always had mixed feelings about their town and childhood. The way time had so effortlessly replaced what they remembered with what is now true. Or at least what now stands in its place.
You see as much as they want to tell themselves things won’t change, they do. And as much as they want to tell themselves they won’t change, they will. It’s inevitable, the way people change their perception of the past. Remembering it one way, and then time passes and it’s morphed into something new. Whose side are they supposed to take as truth? At one point in their lives, they were all brimming with honesty. With love and grace. And then, overtime they were sprinkled with moments of shame, doubt, and white lies.
Does God love them? Are they still God’s children? Will there always be room in his heart for those of us who sin?
They—Davis, Sterling and Wren—have a lot of time these days to think and they’re pretty sure that old man up there, he holds his grudges, and he has one out for each of them. For their family, for what they did.
