The Parable of the Mustard Seed Read online

  He levered himself out of bed, and padded to the bathroom for a piss. Then, yawning, he made his way into the kitchen. Cricket, who slept on a canvas bed in the hallway, joined him. He opened the back door for her, and followed her down into the yard. She headed straight for the rain tree to do her business, and John took a scoop of dry food from the tub under the stairs and tipped it into her dish.

  Cricket raced back and began to eat, her tail waving so much that her entire backside wiggled.

  “Settle down, idiot,” John told her fondly, and she wriggled even harder.

  John climbed the back stairs to the kitchen and pulled the eggs out of the fridge. He dug around for some cheese and mushrooms and tomatoes, and figured he could make a decent enough omelette out of those.

  He cracked a couple of eggs into a bowl and whisked them with a fork.

  Caleb trailed out from his bedroom a moment later, yawning. He put John’s phone on the kitchen bench. “It keeps dinging.”

  John peered at the screen. It was full of missed calls and text message alerts from Ma and David and Mary. He sighed. “I’m not going to look until after breakfast.”

  Caleb showed him a sleepy smile. “That’s a good plan.”

  He came and stood behind John, and slipped his arms around John’s waist. He rested his cheek on John’s shoulder, and swayed with him as he worked.

  “Don’t fall asleep on me,” John warned, but there was no heat in his words.

  Caleb murmured something into his shoulder, and continued to cling until Cricket made her way back upstairs again. Then Caleb crouched down on the floor and fussed over his girl. Cricket lay on her back and wriggled, back legs bicycling in the air as Caleb rubbed her belly.

  John’s heart ached for how much he loved this: just a warm, safe moment when Caleb was sleep-rumpled and happy, and Cricket’s tail thumped on the kitchen floor. Screw the big moments; the fireworks and the end credits. John wanted a lifetime made up of tiny moments like these, but even as he existed in one he was already afraid of when it would end, when Caleb’s mood would turn, and when he’d lose himself once more to the storm building in his head.

  “You want to get the coffee on while I cook?” John asked

  Caleb threw him a sleepy smile and nodded. Then, to Cricket’s displeasure, he rose to his feet, washed his hands, and put the pods in the coffee maker. “Are we going to visit your mum today?”

  John grabbed two plates out of the cabinet. He used the spatula to cut the omelette into two in the pan, and then juggled it onto the plates. “Yeah, that’s the plan. You okay with that?”

  Caleb shrugged. “You’re babysitting me, John. I go where you go.”

  John winced.

  Caleb laughed, his eyes suddenly bright. “Did I put you off? I did, didn’t I? I just gave you some creepy cheap porn vibes with the whole babysitter thing! I’m twenty-three, John, remember? Definitely not a kid.”

  John raised his eyebrows. “All I’m getting from this is that you know that babysitter porn is a thing.”

  “I can know it’s a thing without it being my thing.” Caleb was still smiling, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

  “Hmm.” John hoped he wasn’t pushing him. “What’s your thing?”

  “Oh, I’m pretty specific,” Caleb said. His eyes shone. “You’re my thing, John. Just you.”

  John’s heart skipped a beat and warmth burst through him.

  Caleb’s flush deepened. “And now I made it all sappy.”

  “I like sappy,” John said. He set the spatula down. “Get over here.”

  Caleb hesitated, so John closed the distance between them. He reached for Caleb’s hand and drew him into an embrace. Pressed a kiss to the top of his head.

  “I like sappy, and I love you, Caleb Fletcher.”

  Caleb lifted himself up onto his toes and kissed John softly on the mouth. “I love you too, John Faimu.”

  Coffee, omelettes, and the man he loved.

  John couldn’t think of a better way to start the morning.

  Dry frangipani leaves crunched under John’s shoes as he walked up Ma’s cracked concrete path, reminding him that it had been too long since he’d been around to mow the lawn and help keep the place tidy. He and David had a roster going, but John couldn’t remember the last time he’d done it, which meant that David was doing more than his fair share. John sighed. It felt as though David was doing more than his fair share lately when it came to family stuff.

  The squeaky gate had alerted Sepela to their arrival and she had the front door open by the time they reached the steps to the porch.

  “John,” she said with a tired smile that made John think she hadn’t slept a wink last night. “And Caleb. Come inside. I just took some Anzac biscuits out of the oven.”

  She led them through.

  There was already a man in the kitchen—in his twenties, wheat-blond hair, jeans and a T-shirt—and it took John a moment to place him out of context.

  “Hi,” the guy said, transferring his Anzac biscuits from his right hand to his left so that he could shake hands. “John, right? I’ve heard a lot about you. Good things only, I promise! I’m Ian Crisp, the youth pastor at Woodridge Uniting.”

  John felt Caleb freeze beside him.

  John shook Ian’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You too.” Ian looked expectantly at Caleb.

  “This is Caleb,” John said, and then, hoping it wasn’t a mistake, hoping that Pastor Ian wouldn’t flinch and confirm everything Caleb thought he knew about men of God: “My boyfriend.”

  Ian’s smile didn’t even waver as he stuck his hand out toward Caleb. “Nice to meet you, Caleb.”

  Caleb mumbled something, and shook Pastor Ian’s hand.

  “I take it you’re here because Ma called you about Jess,” John said.

  Pastor Ian nodded. “Yeah, I’ve had a chat with Jessie this morning. She’s very upset and, I think, embarrassed.” John’s expression must have showed what he thought about Jess’s embarrassment, because Pastor Ian gave him a wry smile. “I like to think we’re in similar lines of work, John. We’re both hoping to steer kids onto better paths, and sometimes they make it harder for themselves than they should.”

  Well, he’d got that right, John supposed.

  “But Jess has agreed to keep coming back to youth group,” Pastor Ian said, “so I think that’s a good start. The kids there are good kids, and I think they’ll be a good influence moving forward.”

  “I hope so,” John said, wary that any moment the conversation might turn to faith, and prayer, and trusting in God and what those things meant to Caleb. “Thanks for coming, but don’t let us keep you.”

  Pastor Ian seemed a little bemused as Sepela swept him toward the front door.

  “You okay?” John asked Caleb.

  Caleb nodded, but didn’t met John’s gaze.

  John pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and guided Caleb to it. Put gentle pressure on his shoulder, urging him to sit. “Want an Anzac biscuit?”

  Caleb shook his head, his gaze blank.

  John could hear Ma and Pastor Ian talking in low voices at the front door.

  “Sorry.” John knelt down beside Caleb’s chair. “I didn’t realise he’d be here. I should have guessed he was on Ma’s list of people to call.”

  Caleb glanced at him. “It’s okay.” He swallowed, his throat bobbing, and slid his hand up underneath his shirt. Closed it over something. Then he caught John’s questioning look and reached out and took his hand. Placed it over his chest.

  John closed his eyes as he felt the familiar shape of his dad’s boar’s tusk necklace underneath the fabric. For strength, Tama had told John, and he thought, now: for the strong.

  “I have to go talk to Jess,” he said. “Are you okay here?”

  Caleb nodded, releasing John’s hand. “I’m okay, John. Really.”

  John used the edge of the table to pull himself into a standing position. “If you need me, I’ll be
just down the hallway.”

  He couldn’t hear Pastor Ian anymore, and he glanced toward the front door as he swept into the hallway. The front screen was closed and Sepela was walking back to him. She squeezed his arm in silent thanks as she met him in the doorway of the kitchen, and she smiled.

  “Your boyfriend?” she asked in an undertone.

  “Don’t tease him, Ma. Just fatten him up with Anzac biscuits or something while I talk to Jess, okay?”

  Sepela’s smile grew, and John headed for Jess’s room.

  Jess’s room had been a shared room when John was a little kid: a bunk bed for him and Mary, and a trundle bed for David. By the time Mary was a teenager, John and David had been relegated to a sleep-out on the back porch. John and David’s dreams of moving back into a real room once Mary went to university had been dashed by Jess’s unexpected arrival. Still, they’d all managed. And as much as John loved having his own place these days, there was a part of him that would always miss living in his siblings’ pockets.

  He knocked on Jess’s door, and waited a beat before opening it.

  Jess’s room was a mess, with books and clothes strewn all over the floor. Jess was sitting cross-legged on her bed, wearing a pair of bulky headphones Mary had got her for last Christmas, and a scowl. She was writing in a spiral notebook.

  “Hey,” John said, and gestured for her to take the headphones off.

  Jess rolled her eyes and tugged the headphones down around her neck. He nodded at the notebook. “Homework?”

  Jess shrugged and tossed the notebook aside. “Some stupid thing for youth group. What do you want, John?”

  “I wanted to apologise,” John said, and that caught her attention like he knew it would. “I know I’ve been spending more time lately with Caleb than with you, and I’m sorry if you feel like I’ve been ignoring you.”

  She narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

  “I’m worried about you,” John said. “I’m worried about the people you’re hanging around, and the choices that you’re making. I hate that every time we see each other lately, all we do is fight.”

  Jess’s bottom lip wobbled, and she pressed her mouth into a thin, stubborn line. She looked away and shrugged.

  “I miss you, Jess,” John said.

  For a moment he thought that Jess was going to ignore him, but then she reached out and picked up her notebook. “I’m writing a thing,” she said. “For youth group. About the parable of the mustard seed. Do you remember it?”

  “Yeah,” John said. “That’s the one about how the big tree grows from this tiny, tiny seed, right?”

  Jess nodded. When she spoke, her voice was small. “And it’s about faith, or the church, or something, I think. But Pastor Ian said you have to think about what you’re putting out into the world, and I think I’ve been planting the wrong seeds. Ever since Tama—” Her voice cracked. “Ever since Tama died I’ve just been planting angry seeds that are getting bigger and bigger, and I don’t know how to stop them.”

  Tears slid down her cheeks, and she scowled and wiped her face.

  John closed the distance between them and sat on her bed. He put an arm around her shoulder, his chest aching for her. “Just talk to us, Jess. Please, just talk to us.”

  Jess held herself stiffly for a moment, and then she abruptly turned into John’s embrace and wept, her sobs shaking her body.

  She wasn’t the only one who cried.

  “Are you okay?” Caleb asked an hour later as they drove back toward the Gold Coast. He was balancing a container of Anzac biscuits on his knees, because Sepela never let someone leave her house without food.

  “Isn’t it supposed to be me asking you that?”

  Caleb rolled his eyes, but he smiled.

  “I’m good though,” John said. “I think maybe this was a turning point. I hope it was, at least.”

  “It was a breakthrough,” Caleb said. “That’s what Dr. Harper would call it.”

  “Yeah, maybe it is.”

  John hoped that Jess’s would prove more permanent than many of Caleb’s, although the second he had the thought he admonished himself for its unfairness. It wasn’t that Caleb’s breakthroughs were meaningless, just that for every wall Caleb crashed through there was another one right in front of it. Caleb was strong, and he’d never stopped fighting. John had loved that about him from the moment they met.

  Caleb peeled the lid of the container off, and withdrew a biscuit. “Want one?”

  “Not right now.” John tapped the steering wheel. “You know what we should do?”

  “What?”

  “Instead of just going back to your place, we should go and get Cricket and take her to the beach.”

  Caleb’s smile broadened. “Let’s do it.”

  John returned his smile, feeling more relaxed than he had in a long time. He wasn’t naïve enough to think that good intentions and a bit of a cry meant that all of Jessie’s problems were behind her, but he hoped that at least now Jess knew he was on her team and she wouldn’t fight him every step of the way. John decided he was allowed to feel optimistic about that, just like he was allowed to feel optimistic with Caleb’s progress lately. He was going to remember to celebrate the small victories, and taking Cricket to the beach seemed like a good way to do it.

  They stopped in at the house long enough to collect Cricket and change into T-shirts and boardshorts. John threw a couple of cans of soft drink and bottles of water into an insulated bag, and then they headed out again.

  It was a perfect day at the beach, barefoot in the sand with Cricket splashing happily in the shallows. Sunlight and salt, and fish and chips for lunch, eaten sitting in the shade of a wind-twisted pine tree on the foreshore. Cricket crunched on a pinecone between chips.

  After they ate, Caleb leaned up against John’s side. They twined their fingers together, and watched the sea. It was a blustery day out on the water; the wind whipped up white caps on the waves. Distant windsurfers darted across the surface of the ocean, bright sails dipping and pitching on the troughs. Children with buckets and spades dug in the sand. Sharp-eyed seagulls swooped over the picnic tables.

  “I wish every day could be like this,” Caleb murmured. Medallions of sunlight danced over him as the branches of the tree above them shifted in the wind. Light caught in his eyelashes and made them glow.

  Cricket, still damp from her last dash in the shallows, rolled over to bake her belly in the sun.

  “Same,” John said. “I just have to win the lotto so I never need to go to work again.”

  “That’s your retirement plan, huh?” Caleb’s eyes danced.

  “Pretty much.” John ate a chip. “That, or getting a sugar daddy.”

  Caleb snorted with laughter.

  When John had picked through the last of the chips and given the rejects to Cricket, he binned the greasy paper and then they walked along the foreshore for a while. Cricket tugged eagerly at her leash, and Caleb had to pull her back a few times to remind her of her manners.

  They found an ice cream truck, bought an ice cream cone each, and then turned and walked back toward John’s car. The ice creams melted quickly in the heat of the day, and John raced to finish his before it dripped down his wrist. Caleb gave up halfway through and gave his to Cricket.

  On the drive back to the hinterland, Cricket fell asleep, and John suspected Caleb wouldn’t be too far behind her.

  Caleb took a nap after they got home, and John fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV. He missed a text from Darren, but answered it as soon as he woke up, assuring him that Caleb was fine. Familiar guilt bit at him, unsettling his feeling of lazy contentment, and John tried to ignore it. He didn’t like sneaking around behind Darren’s back, but at the same time Caleb was an adult and he’d made it clear that he wanted this.

  Caleb was in the kitchen when John finally pried himself off the coach.

  “I’m making toasted sandwiches for dinner,” he said when John found him.

  “Sou
nds like a good plan.”

  John liked the way they moved comfortably around one another. It was as though their friendship had expanded to include small touches and smiles, and the occasional kiss, and it felt like a natural extension of everything that had come before. There was no awkwardness in it, no abrupt re-evaluation of their relationship—it was just more. The friendship, the love, the trust, those were still the cornerstones of everything else they were building here.

  They ate, and then Caleb went and showered. John loaded the dishwasher and started it up, and then headed to his room to put his phone on charge. He heard Cricket’s claws clicking softly on the polished floorboards of the hallway as she took herself off to bed in Caleb’s room and, a little later, the faint rattle of the pipes as the shower was turned off.

  And then—

  “John?”

  John’s breath caught as he looked up to see Caleb standing in the doorway. He was wearing a towel wrapped around his hips, and water still beaded his chest.

  “John?” Caleb said again. “Will you make love to me, please?”

  And John couldn’t even imagine refusing him.

  Chapter Twelve

  “It’s wrong,” Caleb said, his gaze fixed on the table. “It’s against God, and you get…you get p-punished.”

  “Punished?” Brian asked. “Son, nobody should ever get punished for kissing another boy. What happened to you was wrong, and you didn’t do anything to deserve it, do you understand?”

  Caleb hunched over, his eyes squeezed shut and tears sliding down the sharp angles of his too-thin face. “No. It’s wrong, and God sees you!”

  John’s chest ached. “Caleb, it’s not wrong, mate.”

  “No.” Caleb shook his head, growing more frantic. “No, it is wrong! And God will strike down anyone who does it! Th-that’s what happened to Simon!”