The car ride home is quiet. The engine hums beneath your feet, the highway stretching long and endless beyond the windshield. Your father’s grip on the steering wheel is firm, satisfied. Your mother stares out the window, her hands folded too tightly in her lap.

And you—

You are still.

Something lingers in your mind. Something you heard, something you don’t fully understand but feel pressing against the walls of your mind. The preacher’s voice echoes in your head, words heavy with something vast and unshakable.

Sin.

Salvation.

The fear of what happens if you don’t get it right.

Your fingers twist in your lap.

Your father turns to you. “Good service today, huh?” He smiles, but you do not smile back. You do not know why, only that something about it all felt—wrong. Or maybe not wrong, but something else. Something bigger than you. Something you do not have words for yet.

When the car pulls into the driveway, your father exhales, like he has done something good. Something right. “We’ll go again next week,” he says, turning off the ignition.

Your mother doesn’t respond, simply unclicks her belt and steps out, heels clicking against the pavement.

You climb out last. The house looms ahead, the door waiting.

I see the way you hesitate on the threshold, the way your face is pinched in thought. There is something unsettled in your expression, something shifting inside you that I cannot name.

I do not know what you heard today, what wound itself around your small heart and left you this way.

And I wonder—who is this really for?

To help you? To save you?

Or to make someone else feel lighter when they finally walk away?