“Julian, I’m going to tell you a story,” Ashton said, “about a rider and a preacher. The rider bet his only horse that the preacher could not recite the Lord’s Prayer without his thoughts wandering. The bet was gladly accepted, and the holy man began to mouth the familiar words. Halfway through, he stopped and said, ‘Did you mean the saddle also?’”

“That is not a story about a rider and a preacher,” Julian said. “It’s a story about how to lose a horse.”

“Ashton, why aren’t you eating my Kjøttkaker?” Julian’s mother said.

“Oh, he doesn’t like it, Mom,” Julian said. “He told me when you were in the kitchen. He doesn’t care for your Norwegian cooking.”

“Julian!”

“Ignore him, Mrs. C,” Ashton said. “I love your meatballs. You know he’s just trying to get a rise out of you.”

“Consider me risen. Why do you do that, son?”

“Do what, Mom, joke around?”

“Mrs. C,” Ashton said with a mouth full of Kjøttkaker, “the other day your son told me I was like a brother he never had.”

“Julian!” yelled his mother and five brothers.

“Jules, remember to look both ways before you go fuck yourself,” said his brother Harlan.

“Funny, I was about to say the same thing to Ashton,” Julian said. Ashton laughed and laughed.

Julian’s mother made Ashton’s favorite for dessert: lefse—rolled up sweet flatbread sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon.

“Ashton, did Julian ever tell you the story of how he stumped a mystic when he was thirteen?” Joanne Cruz said. “Eat, eat, while I tell you. A pillar of the church was visiting our parish, a revered Augustinian monk, a man of prodigious theological output. He gave a lecture and then invited some questions. And your skinny friend, his voice still unbroken, stepped up to

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PROLOGUE The Two of Them

PROLOGUE

The Two of Them