I blink in surprise and turn to see my dad with wide eyes, clearly uncomfortable. He shifts in the recliner and sets the remote control down. “Son… your mom is thoroughly embarrassed by this.”
I hold up a palm. “Okay, not going to do this.” I turn to my mother. “Just talk to me, okay?”
Her lips flatten a bit, but she lifts her chin, cutting a look over to my father in a silent demand that he intervene.
Daddy sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. “Nancy… just talk to the boy.”
Mama harrumphs, gives my dad a deadly glare, and turns to me. “You’ve caused quite a stir.”
“Seems that way,” I say lightly.
“You could have told us.”
“I know.” I fold my hands, keep my voice even. “I should have told you sooner.”
Dad’s attention flicks from me to his wife, and then to the TV screen. He doesn’t say a word.
“It’s shameful what you’re doing, Samuel,” my mother says, her voice grave with pain.
“I disagree,” I say, meeting her look.
Mama’s mouth tightens again. “You’ve been writing… indecent material. Parading it around in Raleigh for strangers. Your picture all over the internet. The ladies from church are beside themselves because you write dirty books. Smut.”
“The ladies from church are beside themselves when the organist chooses the wrong prelude,” I say before I can stop. Daddy’s eyebrow goes up and I blow out a breath. “Look. They’re not… dirty books. They’re about love. About people trying to be brave, to be honest, to do right by each other even when it’s hard. Sometimes they kiss. Sometimes more than that. It’s part of the story, but it’s never cheap.”
Mom clicks her tongue like she’s turning a radio knob to a station she prefers. “A good Christian man doesn’t peddle lust.”
“A good Christian man loves people,” I say quietly. “I was raised to believe that. My stories are about that love. They don’t make anybody worse. Sometimes they make somebody feel less alone.”
She looks genuinely baffled. “You’re trying to tell me you’re helping people by writing about”—she waves a hand—“bedroom things.”
“I’m telling you that I write about human things,” I say. “The bedroom happens to be one of them.”
Mama crosses her arms and huffs her frustration.
I look to my dad, who has been very silent. “And what do you think?”
He scratches his jaw. “I always thought you’d do something… more… normal. Like bartend at Chesty’s or work at the hardware store with Floyd. I thought you’d maybe use your hands. Not sit in a room makin’ things up.”
“I am using my hands,” I say as I mime myself typing, and the corner of his mouth betrays the fighting grin he’s holding on to. I soften my voice. “I’m also using myimagination to build—just from the inside out.”
Both my parents remain silent. “I’m not asking you to read what I write. That’s for certain. But I’m not giving up this career because it makes you uncomfortable. I don’t want this to come between us, so I’m asking for you to find a way to live with it.”
Mama’s eyes shine too bright. She looks down at her Bible, then back up. “People are talking.”
“They always will.” I gesture toward the window, past the pines, toward the shape of town behind them. “You know this place better than I do, Mama. Here, religion isn’t just on Sundays. It’s wallpaper. It’s the smell in your clothes when you come home from the potluck. It’s in the way folks bless a sneeze and a marriage with the same hand. I love that about here. I love Whynot. But sometimes the rules get loved more than the people.”
My father looks down at his lap.
“You sayin’ we don’t love you?” Mama’s voice sounds slightly panicked.
I shake my head. “I’m saying you’re loving a version of me that doesn’t exist, and it’s hurting the one that does.”
Silence stretches long enough to fold laundry in. Dad clears his throat. “You’ll be… doing more of these… signings?”
“Looks like it.” I aim for gentle. “There might be TVstuff. Interviews.”
He nods in understanding. Maybe guarded acceptance?
