Nothing to Reveal

"People understand secrets. What they can't fathom is that some of us are standing at the window with nothing behind the glass."

The kitchen was warm.

Not just temperature-warm, though the stove had been on long enough to take the edge off the morning chill. Warm in the way occupied kitchens were warm — full of movement and purpose, the particular energy of a family preparing for the day ahead. Steam rose from the cast-iron pan where Mum was flipping pancakes with the practiced timing of someone who'd performed this ritual hundreds of times. The smell of vanilla and browning butter filled the air, rich and familiar, the particular scent of Sunday mornings in this house for as long as I could remember.

Millie had migrated from my bed to her spot near the sliding door, still drowsy but alert enough to track movement with her eyes. Her tail gave a single thump against the floor when she saw me, then settled back into stillness. The morning light caught the white blaze down her face, and I felt the familiar warmth of her presence — uncomplicated, reliable, asking nothing except proximity.

"Smells absolutely delicious, Mum," I said, meaning it.

She glanced up from the stove, smiled, and returned her attention to the pan. "Five minutes. Set yourself down — I'll bring them over when they're ready."

I took my usual spot at the kitchen table, the chair that faced the window and looked out over the back garden. The fire pit was visible from here — just the dark circle of it against the green winter grass, no trace of Friday night's flames. Mum and Dad had stayed out there for hours after Charles and I had delivered the marshmallows. I'd watched them through the sliding door, their silhouettes barely distinguishable in the dark, and felt something complicated move through my chest.

They'd been married for twenty-five years. Had raised six children together, navigated the thousand small crises and quiet triumphs that constituted a life shared. Whatever strain the situation with Paul was putting on them — and it was putting strain on them, I could see it in the careful way they moved around each other, the silences that lasted a beat too long — they were still here. Still choosing each other's company on cold Friday nights.

I wondered what that felt like. The long accumulation of partnership, the weight of shared history, the particular comfort of someone who'd seen every version of you and stayed anyway.

The thought sat with me for a moment, neither welcome nor unwelcome. Just present. A question I didn't have an answer to and wasn't sure I ever would.

The laptop on the counter chimed.

"That'll be Lisa," Mum said, her voice brightening in the particular way it did when any of her distant children made contact. "Right on time. Jerome, can you —"

"I've got it."

I crossed to the counter and tilted the screen toward me. The familiar Skype interface glowed back, Lisa's contact information displayed with the little green dot that meant she was online and waiting. I clicked to answer.

Her face filled the screen almost immediately, warm and animated, the particular brightness she carried with her wherever she went. Behind her, I could see the kitchen of her Salt Lake City apartment — the neutral tiles, the hanging pots, Will moving around near the stove with a spatula. The image had that slightly compressed quality of international video calls, the pixels struggling to keep up with movement, but her smile came through clearly enough.

"Good morning!" Lisa's voice emerged from the laptop speakers, slightly tinny but unmistakably her. "Or should I say good evening? I can never keep the time zones straight."

"It's morning here," I said. "You're the ones doing everything backwards."

"Excuse me, we're doing everything correctly. You're the ones living in the future." She leaned closer to the camera, her expression shifting to scrutiny. "You look nice. Is that a new tie?"

I glanced down at the navy fabric, then back at the screen. "No. I've had it for ages."

"Hm." The sound carried a weight of implication I didn't want to examine. "Well, it suits you. Very put-together."

"Thanks."

Before she could probe further, Mum appeared at my shoulder, her face arranging itself into the particular joy she reserved for long-distance contact with her children. "Lisa, sweetheart, it's so wonderful to see your face!"

The conversation shifted, Lisa launching into a detailed account of her week while Mum made the appropriate sounds of engagement. I stepped back, ceding the screen, and found a spot near the counter where I could half-listen without being directly involved.

Will waved from the background of their kitchen, his face appearing briefly over Lisa's shoulder before he returned to whatever he was cooking. Their domestic rhythms were visible even through the compressed video — the easy way they moved around each other, the unconscious coordination of two people who'd built a life together. They'd been married for three years now, and the early awkwardness of their relationship had smoothed into something comfortable and settled.

I watched them without quite meaning to, cataloguing the small details the way I catalogued everything. The way Will's hand brushed Lisa's shoulder as he passed. The way she leaned slightly toward him even while focused on the screen. The invisible threads of connection that wove between them, visible only in their effects.

This is what it's supposed to look like.

The thought arrived with its familiar weight. The template everyone seemed to be following, the path worn smooth by generations of footsteps before mine. Meet someone. Feel something. Build something together. The progression was so obvious, so universally assumed, that deviating from it felt less like a choice and more like a malfunction.

Charles materialised in the kitchen doorway, drawn by the sound of the video call or possibly just the smell of pancakes. He'd found his other sock — both feet now matching — but his shirt remained spectacularly untucked, and his hair had achieved new heights of architectural improbability.

"Is that Lisa?" He crowded toward the laptop, inserting himself into the frame with the subtlety of a freight train. "Lisa! Tell Will his fantasy football picks are garbage!"

"Charles." Mum's voice carried the particular edge of maternal warning. "Manners."

"What? It's true. He picked three players who are injured. Three!"

Lisa laughed, the sound slightly delayed through the connection. "Will says you're just jealous because his team is actually winning."

"His team is winning because he got lucky. Luck isn't skill."

"Luck is preparation meeting opportunity," Will's voice called from somewhere off-screen. "I prepared by doing research. You prepared by picking players with funny names."

"Jermaine Wigglesworth is a legitimate strategic choice!"

The banter continued, flowing with the easy rhythm of family who'd known each other long enough to take liberties. I let it wash over me, contributing the occasional comment when directly addressed but mostly just existing at the edge of the conversation. This was a skill I'd developed over years of being the quiet one in a loud family — the ability to be present without being central, to participate without demanding attention.

Eli appeared in the frame behind Lisa, leaning into view with the studied casualness of someone who wanted to seem like he wasn't trying to be on camera. He'd put on weight since the last call — not much, just enough to soften the sharp angles of his face.

He caught my eye and raised his eyebrows in a gesture I interpreted as brotherly acknowledgment.

"Looking exceptionally sharp there, brother," he said, his voice pitched to carry over Lisa and Mum's conversation. "Did Mum finally give in and start charging professional rates for ironing services?"

"No, I actually learnt to do it myself." I kept my voice level, refusing to rise to the bait. "Unlike some people I could mention."

"Oh, please." Eli made a dismissive sound, his face creasing with amusement. "You only bothered to iron it so carefully because you're hoping whatsername from the singles ward shows up to church again."

The heat returned to my face.

It came faster than I could stop it — a flush spreading from my cheeks down to my neck, visible enough that I could see Charles's expression sharpen with interest from across the kitchen. The teasing had found its target with the precision of someone who'd spent decades learning exactly where to aim.

Whatsername.

He meant Megan. Had to mean Megan — there was no one else it could be, no other young woman I'd interacted with publicly enough to generate the kind of observation that turned into family speculation. Someone had noticed something. Mentioned it to someone else. The information had travelled through the family network the way it always did, accumulating weight and implication with each transmission until it arrived here, weaponised into a joke.

"I don't —" The words caught in my throat. I could feel everyone's attention shifting toward me — Mum's curious glance, Charles's delighted grin, Lisa's knowing smile from the laptop screen. "That's not —"

"Jerome's got a girlfriend?" Charles's voice scaled upward with theatrical excitement. "Since when? Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"She's not my girlfriend."

"But there is a she." Eli's grin was audible even through the tinny speakers. "That's progress. That's more than we've gotten out of you in years."

"There's no —"

"Gentlemen." Mum's voice cut through with practiced authority, the wooden spoon now raised like a warning. "This is not a Relief Society planning meeting, and it's certainly not the kind of post-baptism luncheon where Sister Langford 'accidentally' seats the young single adults at the same table and pretends it was the Spirit's doing."

"Duly noted," Eli said, but I could still hear the laughter bubbling beneath his voice.

Lisa mouthed something in my direction — sorry or ignore him, I couldn't quite tell — and then Mum was steering the conversation elsewhere, asking about Will's work and Lisa's calling and the hundred small details that constituted their life on the other side of the world.

I retreated to the far side of the kitchen, putting distance between myself and the laptop screen. My face was still warm, my chest tight with something I couldn't name.

Hoping whatsername shows up.

The assumption embedded in those words — the casual certainty that of course there was someone, of course I was interested, of course this was how my internal life operated. It was the same assumption everyone made. The same template everyone tried to fit me into, adjusting the edges when I didn't quite match, convinced that the shape underneath must conform even if the surface resisted.

I thought about Megan at the basketball game. The way she'd said I'll see you Sunday with that slight lift in her voice, and how I'd deflected with vague agreement because I didn't know what else to do.

She was kind. That was the thing I kept coming back to. Genuinely kind, in a way that made my inability to reciprocate feel like a failure of character rather than simply the way I was built. She deserved someone who would light up when she appeared, whose heart would skip at the sound of her voice, who would lie awake at night thinking about the next time they'd see her.

I wasn't that person. I didn't know how to become that person. And the gap between what I should feel and what I actually felt had become so familiar that I'd almost stopped noticing it — almost, but not quite.

The flush was fading from my cheeks now, the physiological response subsiding even as the thoughts it had triggered continued to churn. Charles had lost interest and was now attempting to steal pancakes directly from the pan, which Mum was defending with increasingly stern warnings. The Skype call continued its meandering course through family updates and affectionate complaints.

I stood by the window, looking out at the garden without really seeing it, and let the conversation wash over me.

Why isn't there someone?

The question had been following me for months now. Years, maybe, if I was honest about when it had first started to surface. At first I'd assumed it was timing — the right person hadn't appeared yet, or I was too focused on studies to notice. Then I'd wondered if it was standards — maybe I was being too selective, looking for something that didn't exist. Then, more recently, I'd started to wonder if the problem wasn't external at all.

What if this was just how I worked?

What if the machinery that drove everyone else — the wanting, the pursuing, the elaborate internal theatre of attraction and longing — simply wasn't installed in me? What if I was standing at a window that everyone else could see through, but for me remained stubbornly opaque?

The thought should have been more distressing than it was. I'd spent enough time in Young Men's classes and priesthood meetings to know what was expected. Marriage. Family. The whole trajectory laid out like a road map, each milestone marked and measured against the progress of everyone around you. By twenty-one, most of the guys I'd grown up with were either married, engaged, or actively courting someone they intended to marry. The ones who weren't were either on missions or assumed to be working toward that goal.

I was none of those things. Hadn't served a mission, wasn't pursuing anyone, wasn't even sure I wanted to pursue anyone. Just existing in the gap between expectation and reality, hoping no one looked too closely at the shape I wasn't filling.

"Jerome?"

I turned. Mum had stepped away from the stove, the pancakes apparently finished, and was regarding me with the focused attention she brought to anything that concerned her children.

"You were somewhere else," she said. Not accusatory. Just observing.

"Sorry. Just thinking."

"About anything in particular?"

The question hung between us. I could see the shape of what she was really asking — the parental probe disguised as casual inquiry, seeking information about my inner life without directly demanding it. She'd always been skilled at this. Gathering intelligence through indirection, assembling a picture from fragments and silences.

"Not really," I said. "Just... Sunday thoughts."

She held my gaze for a moment longer, something moving behind her eyes that I couldn't quite read. Then she nodded and gestured toward the table.

"Pancakes are ready. Come eat before they get cold."

Breakfast passed in the usual Sunday chaos.

Dad appeared from wherever he'd been — his study, probably, reviewing notes for whatever meetings awaited him after church — and claimed his seat at the head of the table with the quiet authority he brought to everything. The Skype call continued in the background, Lisa and Will's voices providing a kind of ambient commentary while we ate. Charles managed to consume four pancakes in the time it took the rest of us to finish two, a feat that seemed to defy the basic physics of human digestion.

I ate without really tasting, my attention divided between the conversation and the thoughts still churning beneath the surface. The maple syrup was sweet. The pancakes were good. These were facts I registered without fully experiencing them, my body going through the motions while my mind remained elsewhere.

You only bothered to iron it so carefully because you're hoping whatsername shows up.

The words kept circling back, a loop I couldn't quite escape. Not because they were true — they weren't, not in the way Eli had meant them — but because of what they revealed about how everyone saw me. What they assumed. What they expected.

They thought I was shy. That's what it came down to. Jerome, the quiet one. Jerome, who preferred animals to people. Jerome, who needed to be drawn out of his shell, encouraged, matched with suitable young women by well-meaning ward members who saw his solitude as a problem to be solved.

None of them considered the possibility that the solitude wasn't loneliness. That the absence of pursuit wasn't hesitation but something else entirely — something I didn't have words for, something that existed in a space between the categories everyone else seemed to find so obvious.

Wednesday night surfaced in my memory. Megan by the wall, holding out the cordial with her careful smile. The young women's voices I'd overheard during the second half, their casual judgment landing like stones.

You can't seriously consider a guy who hasn't served. Like, what's he even doing here if he's not going to actually commit?

And then, later — the bathroom. Nate's face in the mirror, the panic in his eyes. Ryan's violent shove, his flight through the doors. The weight of a secret I'd promised to keep, settling into my chest alongside all the other things I couldn't say.

I thought about Luke.

I hadn't meant to — the association just surfaced, the way thoughts did when you weren't guarding against them. My half-brother, somewhere in Tasmania with a man named Jamie, living a life that my parents couldn't look at directly. The Christmas visits that had grown shorter and then stopped altogether. The text messages that said nothing because I didn't know how to say anything that mattered.

Luke had known who he was. That was the difference. He'd had something to hide, something to protect, something real and definable that the world would judge him for. His silence had been strategic — a survival mechanism in an environment that couldn't accept what he actually was.

My silence was different. I wasn't hiding anything. I just didn't have anything to reveal.

"Jerome."

I looked up. Mum was watching me again, her fork suspended halfway to her mouth.

"You haven't touched your second pancake."

"I'm not that hungry."

"You're always hungry." She said it matter-of-factly, the observation of someone who'd been feeding me for twenty-one years. "What's going on?"

"Nothing. Just... thinking about the week ahead."

It was a deflection, and she probably knew it was a deflection, but she let it pass. That was her way — pressing gently, then withdrawing when resistance appeared, trusting that I'd share what I needed to share when I was ready.

The problem was that I was never ready. The things I needed to share didn't have shapes I could put into words. They existed as absence rather than presence — the space where something was supposed to be but wasn't.

Dad checked his watch and pushed back from the table. "We should start getting ready to leave. Service starts in forty-five minutes."

The announcement triggered the familiar cascade of Sunday morning logistics. Dishes were cleared, Mum and Dad moving around each other in the choreography of decades of partnership. Charles bolted from the table toward his room, presumably to address whatever remaining deficiencies existed in his appearance. The Skype call wound down with promises to talk again next week, Lisa's face shrinking to a small window before disappearing entirely.

I carried my plate to the sink and stood there for a moment, looking out the window at the back garden. The grey winter light had strengthened slightly, the sun finding gaps in the cloud cover, casting pale shadows across the grass. Everything looked familiar and strange at the same time — the landscape I'd grown up in, seen a thousand times, but somehow different when viewed through the particular lens of this morning's thoughts.

"You okay?"

Dad's voice, quiet, close. He'd appeared beside me without my noticing — a skill he'd developed over years of ecclesiastical work, the ability to be present without announcing himself.

"Yeah," I said. "Just... you know. Sunday."

He nodded, not pushing. That was his way too — the patience he brought to everything, the willingness to let silences exist without filling them. We stood there for a moment, side by side at the sink, watching the light shift across the garden.

"It's a good tie," he said eventually. "The navy suits you."

"Thanks."

He clapped my shoulder once — brief, solid, the physical vocabulary of fathers and sons — and moved away to collect his things. I stayed at the window for another few seconds, then turned and headed toward my room.