17. Robin
ROBIN
My parents' house still felt like home. Not in the way my apartment did, with its gaming setup and derby gear scattered across every available surface.
This was a different kind of home. The kind built from years of routine and familiarity.
The kind where I knew exactly which floorboard creaked in the hallway and where my mom kept the good snacks.
Being an only child meant I'd spent most of my life as the center of my parents' world, and even now, well into adulthood, they still fussed over me like I was twelve.
The second I walked through the door, the smell of pot roast hit me. Mom was pulling a pan of rolls from the oven while Dad stood at the kitchen island pretending to help and actually stealing carrots from the serving dish.
"You're late," Mom said.
"I’m three minutes early."
"Well, it feels later than that."
I laughed and bent to kiss her cheek before stealing a roll for myself.
"See, David? You’re a bad influence on her. You two won’t even let me get dinner on the table before you start picking at it."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Dinner itself was easy, just like all the meals we'd had hundreds of times before. Dad asked about work, which really meant he wanted to talk accounting. Most people would probably find that boring, but I found it oddly relaxing.
"Tax season isn't even close," mom said as she passed the potatoes. "How is there still so much to talk about?"
"It’s not just a tax season job, Susan."
Mom rolled her eyes. Listening to two accountants discuss bookkeeping was apparently her personal version of purgatory.
The conversation drifted naturally from work to town gossip to updates about people we'd known forever. It was comfortable enough that I almost forgot about the thing sitting between us. The problem with me was that I wasn't very good at pretending something didn't exist.
Eventually I set down my fork.
"So. Ascension."
Mom immediately sighed. Dad took a very deliberate sip of water. That alone told me everything.
Mom closed her eyes briefly. "We were having such a nice dinner."
"We're still having a nice dinner," my dad said.
"No, we're not. Not if we are about to talk about Ascension,” I said.
Dad rubbed a hand over his face. "Then why did you bring it up, sweetheart?"
“Because we need to talk about it. I cannot believe after everything you two are going there.”
“Honey, it’s not what you think. After I retired, I was so… Well, I was so bored. I miss talking to people every day. I just thought we could find a little community. My friend said that it had changed… and so we thought we would go and see for ourselves.”
I shook my head. They could not be this dumb or think it wouldn’t bother me.
My dad cleared his throat. “I had my reservations about it as well, but it really is different now. The new pastor has modernized it. The old teachings of Pastor Young aren’t there anymore.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because we knew how you would react.”
My brow furrowed as I pushed the food on my plate around. How I would react? Of course, I would react badly.
“Honey,” my mom reached across the table and took my hand. “I really am just looking for a community. I need something now that I’m no longer in the office every day.”
I ran my hand through my hair before taking a drink of water. This is not how I saw this conversation going.
"What? You both keep acting like if nobody says the word, all the harm that place did disappears."
"It doesn't disappear," Mom said patiently.
"Then let's talk about it. What is this new and improved church doing to help heal some of the damage they caused?"
The patience on her face deepened into the expression mothers develop when they're trying very hard not to strangle their adult children. "I know you're upset."
"I'm not upset."
Mom raised an eyebrow. "You're right. Furious. My mistake."
I gave a small shrug of agreement.
"Robin, we've had this conversation."
"No, you've had this conversation. I mostly yell."
"Also true," Dad said with his mouth twitching into a small smile.
Mom did not smile. "I know what happened to Lila was terrible."
The words irritated me. My parents weren't bad people. They weren't hateful or cruel. They were actually pretty great, but that's what made this so frustrating.
"Then why are you going there?"
Mom exchanged a glance with Dad. It was one of those looks married people share that contained an entire conversation I wasn't invited to.
Finally she sighed. "Because I need something for myself. Can you please try to understand that? It is not how it used to be."
I scoffed… out loud. It wasn't my most mature moment.
"You mean because they added a coffee bar?"
Mom's lips twitched despite herself. "Robin."
"What? Did they add fairy lights too?"
"They did, actually," Dad said, not taking this seriously.
I dropped my fork. Mom tried to maintain her serious expression for approximately three seconds before giving up entirely.
"That's not the point," Mom said.
"It kind of is," I responded back.
"No."
"Mom."
"Robin."
I groaned and leaned back in my chair.
The thing was, they genuinely believed what they were saying. They weren't trying to dismiss what had happened to Lila. They weren't pretending the church hadn't caused harm. They simply believed it had changed enough to deserve another chance.
I didn't.
And neither side seemed likely to move.
The realization settled heavily between us. It was the same disagreement we'd been circling for weeks. Eventually Dad glanced at Mom. Apparently deciding a tactical retreat was in order.
"Speaking of things that are less likely to cause a family argument..."
I narrowed my eyes immediately. "What now?"
Mom brightened. "Thanksgiving. I’ve decided I'm not cooking."
I blinked. Then blinked again. "What?"
Dad looked delighted. "She finally admitted defeat."
"I did no such thing, but with Aunt Marie going to Illinois to spend it with her kids, and Grandma spending it in Florida, it was just going to be us. So I thought instead of cooking, we could go out for dinner."
I took a moment letting that sink in. We’d done the same thing for Thanksgiving since I was a kid.
"This year we're going out?"
I stared. My mother loved hosting Thanksgiving. The woman treated holiday meals like a competitive sport.
"I thought it might be nice. It’s so much work, and if it’s just us, I thought maybe I could relax a bit.”
"Good for you," I said. " That sounds good to me."
Some of the tension left her shoulders.
"Next Thursday. Same time?" I asked.
Dad nodded. "We made reservations already."
The idea of my mother voluntarily allowing someone else to cook Thanksgiving dinner was so shocking that I almost forgot about Ascension entirely.
Then my phone buzzed beside my plate. The screen lit up. Micah. A smile appeared before I could stop it.
Micah: Busy later?
I typed back quickly.
Robin: Nope. What's up?
I could feel the gaze of my parents. I glanced up to find identical expressions on both their faces.
"Who is that?" Mom asked.
She was trying to remain casual, but I knew her look.
"No one."
Dad snorted. Mom looked delighted.
"Robin."
"It's a person," I said as I took my phone off the table.
"Oh, it's definitely a person," Dad said with a wag of his eyebrows.
I could feel my face warming.
"It's nothing."
Neither of them believed me. I wasn’t ready to tell them about Micah. Everything had been so good, and it was still so new. I wasn’t ready to let anyone in and make things more complicated. Not yet.
Tucked my phone back into my pocket and ignored their questions for the rest of dinner. Mom still managed to get in three more before I escaped.
By the time I left my parents' house, it was already after nine on a weeknight. For normal people, that probably wasn't a big deal. For Micah, who woke up at five thirty in the morning to spend his days surrounded by middle schoolers and somehow remained cheerful about it, that was past bedtime.
I sat in my car for a moment before pulling out of the driveway, glancing down at my phone again.
Micah: Dress warm.
That had been his entire response after I'd asked what he was up to. No explanation. No clues. Just a mysterious instruction and a promise to pick me up in twenty minutes. The man was annoyingly committed to surprises.
By the time I got back to my apartment, I found myself moving faster than I normally would. I changed into comfortable clothes, pulled on my favorite oversized hoodie.
Dinner with my parents had left me feeling restless.
I loved them. God, I loved them. They'd spent my entire life supporting me, cheering me on, and showing up whenever I needed them.
That was what made the church issue so frustrating.
If they had been terrible people, it would have been easy.
Instead, they were good people making a choice I couldn't understand.
The conversation had left me carrying around a sense of frustration that I couldn't quite shake.
Then Micah texted. And somehow it had loosened immediately.
A knock sounded at my door a few minutes later.
I opened it to find Micah standing in the hallway, hands shoved into the pockets of a dark jacket, blond hair slightly windblown from the cold. He smiled the moment he saw me, and something warm settled low in my chest.
There should probably be laws against smiles like that. "You look cozy."
"You were specific."
"I had reasons."
"Good reasons?"
"You’ll see."
My eyes narrowed on him, but all he did was smile.
A few minutes later we were in his car heading out of town. The streets of Briar Glenn gradually gave way to dark stretches of road lined with bare trees and harvested fields. The town lights faded behind us while music played softly through the speakers.
At some point, our hands found each other. Neither of us made a big deal about it. We simply laced our fingers together across the center console as naturally as breathing. I found myself smiling as I stared out the window.
"So, any chance of you telling me where we are going?"