Rock N Soul by Lauren Sattersby Page B

about him. “I probably knew at some point. I’ve forgotten. Enlighten me.”
    He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I tell everybody that I’m from Cincinnati.”
    Which was a huge opening, so huge that I almost refused to take it on principle. But I was curious, and I’d just promised to try to stop being an ass. “But you’re not?”
    “Yeah, I am,” he said. “Or I’m from there as much as anywhere else.”
    More awkward silence. This hadn’t been in the biography. Really there wasn’t much about Chris’s early life in there—most of the stories started at the time when he and Eric met. Which I hadn’t realized was weird until now. “So . . . military?”
    “Missionary,” he said. He stared off down the street and let his eyes focus somewhere far away. “I don’t talk about that much. It made reporters ask a lot of questions about religion and shit I didn’t feel like answering. So I started just saying Cincinnati and moving on with the interview.”
    I wondered why he was suddenly being so open, with me of all people. About things that he didn’t advertise. “So . . . can I ask about it?”
    He looked at me out of the corners of his eyes. “I guess so, if you care. You’re the exception to the rule right now.”
    I couldn’t help but ask. “Why’s that?”
    “Because without you I don’t have anybody to talk to.” He shrugged, still staring off down the street. “And I figure I should try to keep you interested in talking back.”
    “Okay, fair enough.” I turned down another, less trendy street and kept walking. “So. Missionary. Like in the Congo and shit?”
    “No, more boring than that,” he said. “At least then I would have had awesome stories to tell. Nope. We were church planters.”
    I raised an eyebrow. “Church planters.”
    “Yeah,” he said, rubbing his neck and staring at the ground as we walked. “We went to places in the United States that didn’t have enough churches, started one, and stayed just long enough to get it established before moving on to somewhere else.”
    I chuckled. “I didn’t know there were any places in the United States that didn’t have enough churches.”
    “Well, ‘enough’ is relative,” Chris pointed out. “Dad thought that any town with fewer than one church per hundred residents was woefully lacking in religion.”
    “Okay,” I said. “So why did you pick Cincinnati, then?”
    “It’s where I was born. That much is true. And it’s where we ended up when Dad died. Mom had family there. We buried him there.”
    “What happened to your dad?” I paused and thought about what I’d said. “I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.”
    “Heart attack,” he said, his voice kind of short and clipped. “He was hanging up some pictures of Jesus in the new church, and then that was it.”
    I didn’t say anything at first to give him the chance to keep talking if he wanted to. Then I turned to look over at him. “That’s terrible. How old were you?”
    “Fourteen.” He bit his bottom lip, then shrugged. “And I wasn’t . . . sad. I was just relieved that we could stop moving around and I could have friends and girlfriends and not have every moment of my life dominated by talk about church and God and Jesus.”
    I kept silent. This didn’t seem like a topic I could contribute anything meaningful to.
    After a moment, he continued. “I didn’t feel sad for a long time. And then I started feeling like a monster for not feeling sad.” He shrugged. “So I was angry instead. Furious. At everything. And I picked up a guitar and started trying to make sense of my life through music.”
    There was a long pause again, and after a bit I felt the need to fill the silence. “Did that work?”
    “Sort of. I mean . . . I was never a very good songwriter. I wrote a few that were pretty decent, but I wasn’t ever ready to play them for anybody. Especially since they were so, you know, personal. About my dad and about my life and