Kristian's Cross

Billy wakes to a midnight phone call—his ex-girlfriend is calling to tell him his estranged father is in her club, wailing out a twelve-bar blues. When Billy goes downtown and sees his father on a low, dim stage for the first time, it all comes rushing back—childhood pressures to learn music, to play in bands with his brother, Kristian…

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To reach for the stars.

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Billy got off easy back then—Kristian had the talent. Kristian was the family star. Kristian got pushed the hardest. Until the day the boys’ father went too far and Kristian drove drunk, rolled his car, and killed his two bandmates at a place the town has memorialized as ‘Kristian’s Cross.’

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Now, Kristian lives on the streets, unable to reconcile the tragedy. For him and for Billy, seeing their father for the first time after years apart is more about reconnecting with the music the family used to play than about reconnecting with each other. They find moments of joy in the music, but when Kristian ends up in the hospital after a violent fight in the street camp where he and a friend live in a tent, Billy and his father are forced into a blistering standoff.

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Billy, oddly envious of his brother’s choice to live on the streets, must find a way to let the past go, if he wants to save his family now.

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