All That Really Matters by Nicole Deese (new books to read TXT) 📕

“Yes, but—”

“Good. That’s what matters—that you’re taken care of until something better comes your way.” Which I certainly hoped I could be a part of in some capacity.

Val’s frown melted into a smile. “I think I’m gonna pour a big mug of coffee so that you can tell me everything I’ve missed.”

“Only if you agree to do the same with me.”

“Deal,” she said, pouring her vanilla creamer into a steaming mug. “But, Molly?”

“What?” I made my way to the kitchen, taking Val’s suggestion of coffee to heart. Whatever was waiting for me in my email inbox, private messages, and comment notifications could wait. This morning was about my best friend.

“Let’s agree to never not talk to each other again,” Val said. “That was brutal.”

“You might live to regret those words after I fill you in with the longest catch-up session in history.”

She shook her head, tears glistening in her eyes again. “I promise, I could never regret you.”

“Same here.”

34

Silas

For twenty-one years, I’d been the older of two brothers in the Whittaker family. It was a role custom fit for me from the first day I walked through their front door as an emergency placement, carrying a trash bag over my shoulder with every earthly possession I owned. Four-year-old Jake’s affinity for Tonka trucks and sliced apples that he chomped like a horse won me over within minutes, and I wore my new big-brother label with pride. The invisible name badge paved a clear and definitive path to other titles I’d collected over the years: Silas the Caretaker, Silas the Teacher, Silas the Protector. At six years my junior, Jake had accepted my authority and brotherly advice without hesitation or pushback. To him, our birth order was as concrete as our parents’ signature on my adoption decree.

And yet the blood in my veins knew otherwise. Remembered otherwise.

That I’d once been the younger, the weaker, the needier of two brothers. That I’d once had someone I looked up to more than any person in the world.

Molly McKenzie

Are you there? What’s happening?

I pulled into the warehouse lot and located the rusty blue truck Pastor Peter had described before I parked and sent her a reply.

Silas

Just pulled up

Molly McKenzie

?????

Silas

Is there a sentence for me to decipher in all that?

Molly McKenzie

Yes! It reads as follows: Yay! I’m so happy for you! And a little nervous, too! So I’m sending you prayers and kisses!

My chest expanded with the same intoxicating sensation I’d begun to identify with all things Molly.

Silas

Thank you

Though I could just have easily texted I love you. In fact, it was becoming increasingly more difficult not to text that to her. Or to say it whenever she was near. But I didn’t want to pressure her. Nor did I want to assume she felt the same way about me.

Molly McKenzie

Call me later ❤

Silas

Of course

And then before I sent it off, I scrolled through a keyboard entirely unfamiliar to me and found the same matching symbol to punctuate the end of my text.

After all, Molly had been the tipping point in this endeavor. The final prodding I’d needed to make the call to my brother’s sponsor. To read the entire box of letters my mom had ferreted away with a hope I hadn’t held until recently. To see my brother face-to-face for the first time since I saw him hauled away in handcuffs.

My brother’s life was a revolving door of addiction, incarceration, and probation. A cycle he described in horrifying detail throughout the forty-two letters he wrote like an autobiography. And while I’d been cynical at best, unwilling to take him at his word, Peter had confirmed it all on the phone to me: the prison ministry Carlos had attended for two years, the halfway house he lived in now, the job he’d held for nearly three months without incident.

The echo of my pulse pounded in my jaw as I exited my car and walked through the lot with a heightened awareness of my surroundings. A dark memory of a parking lot not unlike this one called me a fool as I stepped past a row of empty delivery trucks and handcarts, all lined up at the front of an open storage warehouse. The place was nearly deserted, save for a driver who tipped his chin to me as he climbed into the cab of his semi and pulled off.

The instant the cloud of exhaust cleared from the opening, I saw him. Mi hermano. Only not as I remembered him at all. This version of Carlos wasn’t wearing a buzz cut to his scalp like I’d seen during his arraignment. And his state-issued jumpsuit had been swapped for a blue vest with the words May I Help You? stitched on the back. But it was the tune he whistled that struck the loudest chord of surrealism—a melody Devon played often at the house during D&D nights. The arresting lyrics spoke of a Miracle Worker and His transformative power to bring the lost home.

“I was just as lost as your brother, and you didn’t turn me away.” Molly’s words circled in my head as I listened to the chorus, my throat as tight as the pressure in my chest. Because I had turned Carlos away. With every letter I refused to open. With every collect call I refused to answer.

I’d withheld the same grace and hope I’d been shown without reservation. The same grace and hope I fought to offer every resident who entered The Bridge—the very program my brother’s poor choices had inspired without him ever knowing it.

“Carlos,” I called out with a strength not entirely my own, walking toward him with caution.

He tensed, turned, his mouth still shaped in a soundless whistle. The moment he registered my presence, he was in motion, his face lit by a sequence of emotions I’d never seen him wear—not rage or anger or resentment, but joy, peace, and maybe even . . . love.

At the sight of his focused, sober eyes, I could no longer swallow down the