As the two Subarus convoyed back from climbing at Smith Rock, Vincent and Mathew began to feel the ache of muscles never before used. Fortunately, they were young and would throw off those aches and pains quickly. They arrived in Goldendale just after the returning mountain climbers, who were still shaking out and stowing their gear. The Smith Rock contingent bailed out of their transports — JT and Ahmed Mathew out of the Tribeca and Vince out of the Forester driven by Annie. The kids helped the adults unload the gear and stored it in Jim's farmhouse.
After an hour the kids took off for Turing House where they crashed in the family room with their fellows and filled each other in on their expeditions. Jerry and Lucas looked on from their kitchen, and Jerry saw what he always saw at this point in the summer visits: kids had bonded after difficult challenges, more like good friends now than strangers.
Sam's fathers were particularly pleased with the changes they saw in Jamie and Vince. Jamie was wearing a tighter T-shirt and shorts — a butterfly out of chrysalis — and she and Markie looked a little like sisters. The visitors shared with each other stories of glaciers and mountain sunrises and of sheer walls of rock.
Jerry and Lucas also saw that Ray's eyes were turned to Jeff, who sat with his eyes closed on the floor at the edge of the room with his back against a wall. Lucas thought that Ray could do much worse in the mentor department. As Lucas turned his gaze on Jeff, the man opened his eyes, and Lucas indicated with his head that he wanted to talk with Jeff in the kitchen. Jeff sighed as if he knew what Lucas wanted to say, smiled at Ray, and rose to walk to the kitchen.
"I wanted to thank you for staying around and helping with the kids. You aren't getting to trouble for hanging around as long as you have?"
"Am I wearing out my welcome?" Jeff asked with a smile.
Luke smiled back. "Not at all. I think of you as family."
"I kind of feel like family. I'll be heading back soon, but I'm enjoying getting to know everyone, and I'll hang around a bit." He didn't tell Lucas that he was possessed of a sense that his work here wasn't complete yet.
"What are you going to do about Ray when you leave?" Lucas asked.
"I'm not sure what you mean."
"He obviously looks up to you. Of all the kids he's the hardest nut to crack. Anyway, will you try to keep in touch with him … assuming you want to?"
"I'll figure something out. I guess that's what gay adults should do."
Lucas smiled faintly and said, "Accepting even some responsibility for others has been my most difficult undertaking, but I know how the people who took responsibility for me changed my life. You've been a real surprise, Jeff. Don't keep in touch with Ray if you can't make it a long-term commitment."
Jeff frowned slightly and sighed.
#
After the kids had debriefed each other on their climbing experiences, they all wanted to rest a bit before dinner. Annie and North pulled Marshall aside as the others went to lie down. "You have a minute?" Annie asked her son.
Marshall could see the concern in his mother's face. He hugged her and said, "Sure."
Seated in Lucas's office, Annie began to speak, but Marshall interrupted her. "I've never been so angry in my life. That's why I said what I said. I hated what you did, but I didn't hate you. I'm sorry."
Annie wasn't prone to crying, but tears coursed down her cheeks. "Being your mother is the best thing in my life … and the hardest." Looking at North, she continued, "Sometimes we miss the mark, but we try our best for you."
"What made you change your minds?"
North said, "Your cousin Sam. That boy loves you, and so does JT. You, JT, and Sam are special."
"Look, I know I'm not an adult, but you've taught me how to make choices and keep promises. That's why I was so angry. I had promised Armin."
His mother reached out to touch his arm. "I know. That was a very adult thing to do. We love you, and we'd hate to think we'd changed the way you feel about us."
Marshall smiled, thinking how lucky he was. "Sam said I could borrow Uncle Lucas and Jerry, but I think you're better for me."
Annie wiped her face. "By the way, we invited Adam and Eve to come out here after our visitors leave and three other people as well. I work with the man married to the woman in the triad. I think you'll enjoy talking with them."
"They're married?"
"For a long time. Of course, state-sanctioned marriage of more than two people is impossible now, and if they had to define themselves, they'd say they were bisexual … or omnisexual." The last comment was delivered with a warm smile.
Marshall returned the smile. "Thanks. That's so cool of you." He kissed them both. "I'll go help with dinner," and he ran out to the kitchen, leaving his parents to sigh at a bullet dodged.
#
After dinner, Jamie and JT met in the studio barn to rehearse their Outlier parts. Marshall and Sam had suggested that the two of them work out some bass riffs against the drums while the rest of The Outliers worked at Turing House using acoustic guitars. When Jamie and JT had the fretless bass out and plugged in and JT had adjusted the drum kit, he sat on the throne and counted, "One, two, three, four …" He began the insistent beat he would play behind "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," and Jamie tried out the bass lines. Marshall had given her sheet music with suggested lines. She found the bass easier than she had thought. She could hear the melody and rhythm guitar parts in her mind while she felt JT's beat and began to use her right index finger to pluck the strings. From time to time, JT stopped and reminded Jamie that he wanted her to have fun and not feel chained to a few rehearsed lines.
"You could approach the melodic line and support it without imitating it."
"Are we going to rehearse all together again before the festival?"
"Sure, probably tomorrow night. During the day, I know Uncle Lucas wants to take each of you to Stonehenge."
After an hour of practice, JT stopped them and climbed from his seat behind the drum kit to sit at Jamie's feet. She put the bass in its stand and sat facing him on the floor. They reviewed the sheet music, and Jamie told him that she felt very comfortable playing around his drumming.
She realized that she was having fun — really enjoying herself. Since she had turned five years old, she had been more or less constantly explaining herself and justifying her place in the world, often to people who thought her perverse. She had arrived in Goldendale weary, and she wasn't sure when, but at some time she had been able to stop thinking about how the people here saw her. Looking down from the mountaintop had changed her outlook, and now she was just a girl sitting with a boy in a barn talking about and playing music.
JT looked over at her, and they both stopped talking and laughing. She wanted to let him know how much she was enjoying being here with him and leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. The boy was both startled and pleased. Jamie, who thought she had frightened him, began to apologize when JT put his hand to her cheek and kissed her lightly on the mouth. When their lips parted, they went from awkwardness to confusion and to laughter in thirty seconds. Without discussion they both thought the kiss sisterly.
Blushing, Jamie tried to apologize. "Oh, JT, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you."
JT looked at her squarely. "What's embarrassing about being kissed by a pretty girl?"
Jamie wasn't used to anyone other than her father saying she was pretty and joked, "Well, for one thing, there's the age difference."
They both laughed. JT knew why she was concerned. "Nothing wrong with liking slightly younger men."
JT stood and helped her up. After putting the instruments away and turning out the lights, they walked back to Turing House to see what the others had been up to. Halfway to the house, JT took Jamie's hand in his.
While the drummer and the bassist had been rehearsing in the barn, the other Outliers had changed the playlist for the festival — not that two songs was much of a playlist. Marshall had calmed down a bit over Armin's death and asked Sam to think of a song to replace "He Was a Friend of Mine." After a few suggestions, Sam had offered "Modern Boys" by The London Suede's Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler. Marshall understood that the song had special meaning for Sam — the lyrics speaking to his greatest fear. The cousins gave the others lyric sheets and played the song through a few times. Then they practiced. The song wasn't very challenging musically, nor was it bluesy.
After singing it through twice, Ray asked, "Is this the kind of thing they'll be expecting?"
Marshall laughed. "No, probably not, but we're not doing this in order to be asked back. If they ask us back, fine. If they don't, so be it."
Ahmed Mathew added a question. "What should we wear?"
"Whatever you want as long as it's legal. But, I think my dad is working on something for us," Sam answered.
Ray was frowning. "You know this stuff is pretty gay. You sure we're not going to be lynched?"
JT and Jamie wandered in to hear Marshall say, "The festival organizer knows who we are; he knows who our parents are, and he certainly knows we have a lot of gay people in our families. He never put any restrictions on what we could play. I think he's just trying to have some music that kids will like." He nodded toward the girls. "We might be the next big boy-band, except we have Jamie and Markie."
The visitors all had consternation on their faces. "Jeeze. Lighten up, would you? No one has to do the gig if it makes him or her uncomfortable. The idea is to have fun, not to make a statement, but if we put ourselves in people's faces, maybe they'll see we're nothing to fear."
"Do your parents know the playlist?" Markie asked.
Marshall took this one. "No, and they don't have approval rights," he said with a smile.
JT asked, "Could Jamie and I work with you all for an hour on the new song? I know it's late, but tomorrow is our last chance, and we'll be at the monument and museum most of the day."
Amid mild groans and some eye-rolling, everyone agreed, and The Outliers trooped back out to the barn.
#
Saturday morning after breakfast, Lucas and Jerry began another ritual for the visitors. Jerry would take all but one of the visitors to the museum at Maryhill to let them wander, look at Rodin's work, and ask any questions they might have. Lucas would take one of them to Stonehenge to impart a gift. After talking with each visitor, Lucas would take him or her to the museum and pick up another of the visitors, repeating the process until the morning was done and all the visitors had been offered a secret gift. One of the requirements laid down in the discussions at Stonehenge was that they couldn't talk about their secrets with anyone, not even the other visitors. Every gift Lucas had bestowed on these summer visitors was an experiment in their futures. Some had worked out brilliantly in the past, others less so.
Lucas had decided to start with Ray first. Jeff and he had talked about Ray's experience on the mountain, and Lucas had observed Ray's dealings with the other kids and been told about his invitations to sex that had been numerous though not coercive. Jeff had observed that Ray showed two faces: one was bluff and confidence, a face he presented to other kids and most adults; the second was uncertainty about himself and others, a face he had shown to Jeff in their tent on the mountain. The second face was what intrigued Lucas, who understood the boy better than anyone of the other visitors to Goldendale. Of all the kids he had invited over the years, Ray, bright as he was, was the one about whom he had the most doubts. He wondered about the imagined audience Ray performed for and what the boy thought that audience's expectations of him were. But, Lucas understood how difficult predicting the outcome of a life is, and he knew the low odds most adults would have given him when he was fourteen.
As Jerry took the others to the museum, Lucas walked with Ray under a concrete lintel and into the Stonehenge circle. The sun was still low in the east, and the trilithons, acting as sundials, cast broad shadows to the west. The air was cool and dry, and only a slight breeze came through the gorge from the east. The museum, four miles to the west of the monument, was just opening and already had visitors, but even later in the morning Stonehenge would remain uncrowded. Few people from Portland or the Tri-cities made the long trip beyond the Maryhill Museum, but residents of Hood River and The Dalles came occasionally, usually when they had visitors. Lucas walked to the altar stone with its bronze plaque, the gravel crunching quietly beneath his shoes, and eventually Ray wandered over to read the dedication:
To the memory of the soldiers and sailors of Klickitat County who gave their lives in defense of their country … in the hope that others inspired by the example of their valor and their heroism may share in that love of liberty and burn with that fire of patriotism which death alone can quench.
Alone, looking out over the Columbia River with another state on its far bank, the two managed an uncomfortable silence for only a short while.
In the silence, Lucas again considered the exact moment when his own life of performing had ended, when he realized that he was beyond the reach of the audience for which he had been performing — the consumers of his flesh. That moment wasn't when he had his talk with Samuel Marshall after the wild ride to Stonehenge. Samuel Marshall had only primed the pump. That moment was the one in which, after his HIV diagnosis, his brother had stopped the bleeding from the cut on his hand with his own bare hand. North's gesture had ended his performances.
"Why am I here?"
Lucas laughed at the unintended philosophical inquiry. "Have you enjoyed the trip?"
"Yeah — especially the mountain."
"Who's the most interesting person you've met?"
The boy hesitated but a moment. "Jeff, I think."
"He's a pretty good guy."
"He's also a very hot guy but I guess a little out of my league."
"Maybe he thinks he's a bit old for you."
Ray smiled a coy smile at Lucas, holding the older man's eyes. He found no judgment in Lucas, only inquiry in the gaze. He knew Lucas was famous, at least to a lot of geeks, and he glanced away toward the river.
His eyes were pulled back to Lucas when the older man spoke, "This is where I was figuratively born. Sam's namesake, a famous poet named Samuel Marshall, performed a sort-of-Caesarian here: he pulled my head out of my ass. He could do that because he took me seriously. I don't think many people take you seriously, but I do. That's why you're here, Sam said to me. That's why you're here, I say to you."
Ray couldn't think of any response, so he just waited.
Lucas held off a few beats before continuing, "With you, I've never been less certain that I'm making a good decision, but I've made the decision."
Being alone with someone as assured as Lucas unnerved Ray. "This is kind of scary, Dr. Jansen."
Lucas was unable to decide whether or not the boy's statement was facetious. "Do you know what the theory of cosmic inflation is?"
"I think so. Some guy at MIT thought that the universe expanded suddenly just after the Big Bang, right?"
At least Portland schools aren't hopelessly backward. "Alan Guth. I've done some mathematics on hyperinflation in the very universe with him. When Samuel Marshall pulled my head out of my ass here — at Stonehenge – what seems like a long time ago, my world suffered inflation. I suddenly found the horizon around me more distant than I could ever before have imagined. He produced that inflation when he buried deep the concept that I was responsible only for myself. When I asked him just before he died why he had tried, he told me that I interested him but that he thought his effort was a lot better than a crap shoot, however he had no idea whether or not it would pay off."
"Okay. So you're going to perform surgery on me?"
"Fuck, no. I'm no Sam Marshall. I'm going to give you the chance to prepare yourself in case you move beyond trying to lay every male in your path."
"So, is this like a twelve-step program for promiscuous boys, because I think I'm likely to relapse?"
Lucas came close to the boy and struck him very lightly with his fist on the chest. "There will be no strings on my gift. There may have been a few worthwhile people who only think about getting laid. However, I think of responsibility as caring about the people you fuck as much as you care about your own needs."
"Some guys just want to get off."
"I suspect that most guys near your age both want to get off and also want more. When I was younger than you, a fair number of adults had sex with me, and if they had considered what that did to me, I think many of them wouldn't have. Others, however, just wanted to 'get off'."
Although the conversation wasn't quite the lecture he might have expected from an adult, it made Ray uncomfortable. Thinking about how his actions affected others was a pain. "You said you'd made a decision about me. What kind of decision are you talking about?"
"Before I tell you there are two conditions: first, you can't discuss what we talk about here with anyone else, and if you accept my gift, you must have no criminal convictions except for traffic violations or non-violent civil actions. The conditions are unqualified. If you can't agree to them, we're finished now, and I'll take you back to the museum and wish you well."
"I can live with them." Lucas waited until the boy finally said, "I agree. I promise."
Lucas nodded. "I'll fund any kind of program you want to do to prepare yourself for your future."
"I don't understand what that means."
"If you want to go to college or university and graduate school; if you want to go into apprenticeship for art or a trade; if you want to volunteer to help others, I'll pay for any and all of the expenses — the full ride."
Ray felt a little weak and sat on the gravel inside the circle as his head buzzed. Lucas dropped to sit in front of him and waited.
Recovering a bit, Ray asked, "What's the catch, and where does the money come from?"
"No catch. I told you the paths Jerry and I will help you with. If you have some other idea, we'll talk about it. As for the money, I'm just a caretaker of it for a while. I wouldn't tell you I would do this if I couldn't."
"Look, Dr. J, I don't want to get married. I don't want a life that imitates breeders, and I don't want to be a poster boy for how normal gay people are supposed to be."
"Would being like Annie and North be so bad? No strings, though. You can conduct your life any way you see fit as long as you abide by the conditions." Lucas thought Ray didn't believe him.
"Why me? What do you think I did to deserve this?"
"Do you think that Sam Marshall thought I deserved his — whatever he gave me? Hell, no. Helping me wasn't a sure thing, and I'm now taking a chance with you."
"Fuck. Do you know what this means to me?"
"I think I might. We'll see.
"I have a couple of other meetings, Ray, so if you're okay, I'll get you back to the museum. Remember your promise."
Ray wondered if the man he saw before him was a genius or a fool, but he decided that the small man wasn't a fool. "Kids at SMYRC told me you were weird; they didn't lie. How'd you end up with a straight son?" The last was an honest question.
"We fell in love with a three-year-old; he didn't have a label." Thinking of the violence that had almost touched him, Lucas mused, "Anyway, my son's friends tell me we've moved into the post-gay age. Maybe."
#
Sam was dragging Markie around the lower level of the museum by her hand, bubbling over the Rodin collection. Jerry was tickled that his son was sharing his enthusiasm with the girl. After walking around the sculptures for a bit, the couple took the stairs up to the entrance level and saw Ray coming back from the meeting with OD. Sam thought Ray seemed perplexed — or maybe distracted. The swagger was, at least temporarily, gone. OD had had that effect on people more than occasionally.
OD walked in a few moments later, searching for Jamie. Sam pointed to the next room, and Lucas disappeared in that direction. Jamie came out, walking with JT, Lucas, and Jerry. JT and Jerry walked the other two to the main door and watched them walk out together. As he turned back to the interior, JT caught Sam's eye and gave him a sly smile. Sam sighed, thinking of his life with his fathers and his extended family. Sometimes his good fortune overwhelmed him.
Lucas had none of the doubts with Jamie that he'd had about Ray. Equanimity seemed to be part of her fabric. Equanimity and Lucas were strangers, and he thought about what a difference having a stable and loving home at an early age made. He knew that after a struggle, her parents had been unstinting in their support. He admired her quiet determination and wished at her age that he had been as clear about what he wanted as she was now about what she needed.
The shadows of the trilithons had shortened. As far as he could tell, the girl had only one face to show him. She walked with him to the altar stone and read the inscription. She surprised him when she said softly, "Patriotic bullshit."
He smiled broadly at her, something he rarely did at anyone but family. "I liked you from the moment I met you. Have you enjoyed your stay here?"
"Idyllic. I'll take a lot back with me."
"Who's the most interesting person you've met here?"
Without hesitation, she told him, "JT." Then she blushed and added, "Of course, Vee has become almost a sister."
"He's remarkable, isn't he? Sometimes he gets lost in the heat that his cousins generate."
"He's …" She cast about for a proper description.
Lucas laughed at her loss for words, and he took her off the hook. "Your wardrobe's changed since you arrived."
"Out here, I don't feel as if I'm supposed to end up as a poster child for gender reassignment. JT told me I was pretty, and I feel pretty. If I can climb a mountain, I can do anything."
"What do you see yourself doing in a few years or a few decades?"
"I'd like to play cello," and then added slyly, "or maybe bass in a rock-and-roll band. I don't see why I couldn't do both."
"Sam says you play the bass remarkably well for someone who's new to it."
"Playing with everyone here has been a real blast."
"How do you become a professional cellist?" Lucas knew the process, but wondered what Jamie's take on it was.
"If I want to be a major-league soloist, I'll have to train at a good conservatory — assuming I have the talent. I'd be happy to be able to make a living playing in a good orchestra, though, so any school with a good music department would do. Curtis and Juilliard aren't cheap."
"Whose playing to you admire?" He expected her to name some modern player like Yo Yo Ma or Maria Kliegel.
"Janos Starker. I have to begin with restraint."
Lucas smiled in satisfaction. "Jerry and I will help you so that you can go to a good school." Jamie wasn't sure she heard right, but Lucas nodded to confirm what he had said.
After a period of disbelief, tears, and the longest hug Lucas had ever endured even after hearing the conditions, Jamie was already charting her course to New York. Lucas's and Jerry's gift would support a decent instrument and preparatory work with good teachers in Portland if she could find one willing to take her. The Oregon Symphony had a number of fine players who had heard her play, but she hadn't pursued lessons with any of them because of the cost. On the drive back to the Maryhill Museum, a world of possibilities opened before her.
#
Vincent had tried to talk with Ray about what his meeting with Lucas at Stonehenge was all about but got no answer except that they had talked about the future. Vincent didn't think he'd have much to say about the future because he thought it useless to think about what was improbable and impossible to think of the unimaginable. He hadn't had many encounters with Lucas during his stay, but he did enjoy spending time with the boys, and he had tried to make himself useful by cooking whenever he could. As he drove with Lucas to their meeting, he thought of the two events during his time in Goldendale that had impressed him deeply. He considered himself athletic, but few others did, and he rarely had the opportunity to do what he had at Smith Rock. Streaking in from the barn had been the most fun he'd ever had, and being naked with JT and Mathew in an other-than-sexual context was liberating. He admired the straight cousins for their lack of fear about hanging out with gay kids; here he felt like just a kid, not a gay kid.
On the short drive with Vincent to Stonehenge, Lucas flashed back to the day so long ago in the house that Samuel Marshall and his partner, Eric, rented near the campus of Reed College. Marshall had just died and had angered Lucas by dumping a lot of money on him. He knew that for Sam Marshall, the money came without strings or any expectation that Lucas would use it in any particular way. Sam Marshall seemed content to let Lucas set his own course; to him, the young Lucas's life was an experiment that was likely to succeed. On Lucas's last walk beside Marshall in his wheelchair, when Lucas had asked if the old man might be ill, Marshall had left him with: "Everything is as it should be."
Lucas glanced at Vincent in the passenger seat and hoped that these kids understood that he wasn't trying to place any burden on them. He was reticent by nature and found the process of bestowing gifts a bit uncomfortable but not enough to stop him from doing so. Sam Marshall had taught him about responsibility, and making these gifts was as it should be.
Two other cars were parked near the monument when Vincent and Lucas pulled into the lot. After wandering inside the circle and reading the plaque on the altar stone, Lucas led Vincent south out of the circle and toward the edge of the bluff overlooking the river. The sun was almost overhead now or as overhead as its course took it in the late summer.
"How have you enjoyed your stay out here in the wilderness?"
"It's been nothing like I expected. Rock climbing with JT, Annie, and North was unbelievable. I've never had another guy tell me I look good, and when those guys shouted at me from across the river, it felt really good."
"Who's the most interesting person you've met here?"
"I'd say Jim. I haven't spent that much time with him, but I know that all of you were somehow formed by his care. He spent an hour with me the day after I got here. He's … I don't know … sad and content at the same time. We talked about my brother. I hope I can feel the same contentment someday."
"That's the best description of Jim I've heard recently." Lucas had just developed a deeper fondness for this kid. "Where do you see yourself in ten years?"
"I don't think much about the future." That sounded eerily familiar to Lucas.
"Okay. If you could be doing anything you wanted, what would it be?"
"I'd be cooking in a restaurant in Lombardy."
"You'd better be learning Italian, then."
"Right, sure. The closest I'll get to Italy is a jar of Prego spaghetti sauce."
"Planning for the future is hard when you can't see very far ahead, isn't it? I think I know just how you feel. Maybe Jerry and I can move the horizon out a bit."
#
The last discussion would be with the youngest visitor. The younger ones were always a bit difficult because they generally had no idea what they wanted to do with their lives other than get through adolescence in one piece. Ahmed Mathew proved the most surprising of all of them. He took Lucas's hand as they walked into the deserted circle, and Lucas felt much as he did when he held Sam's hand. "So, have you enjoyed your stay with us?"
The boy smiled as the two of them stood before the altar stone. "I didn't think families like yours existed. I was jealous until I realized that you have made the family, not inherited it. I'm going to try to make something like this when I get a little older."
"You told me that your older brother is not very helpful."
"That's an understatement. I think he'd just as soon see me dead, but unless my parents die, he won't act. I'm sorry about that, because he could be a good friend."
"Who's the most interesting person you've met here?"
"You'll think this is silly, but Vi. I don't have much to do with my grandparents; they're in the old country. She's what I imagine my grandmother would be."
"She's a hell of a horsewoman, and you can see a lot of her in Jason and Jon and in JT and the others. In four months after I arrived here years ago, I went from having no family to having an extended one instantaneously. I was blessed."
"But, you're some kind of genius."
Lucas frowned. "Jim and Vi are geniuses. Tom was. Look what they put together out here. I guess I have a very narrow talent, but without them, my brothers, Jerry, and Sam Marshall, I'd be long dead and wouldn't have been able to spend some time getting to know you."
"I don't think you give yourself enough credit. My father says we are all gifts from God, even a gay son."
"I think we're the inevitable outcomes of one of many universes."
"My father says genius and wisdom are different."
"Your father sounds like a thoughtful man."
"I love him, and he, for all my faults, loves me."
"I hope you don't think being gay is a fault, Mathew."
"No, I don't think gifts from God are faulty."
After the discussion about the conditions and the gift, Mathew said, "I'll keep the conditions, but I don't need the gift. My father is a scholar, and he will see to my needs. Please use the money for someone else."
"You are a remarkable young man, Mathew. If you change your mind, you call me, all right?"
"Yes, I promise."
"Okay. Back to the others and Rodin. I know you have a rehearsal tonight."
#
"Can you believe that kid?"
In their bedroom, Lucas had related his talk with Ahmed Mathew to Jerry. As the kids rehearsed for the performance tomorrow, he and Jerry were in their bedroom at Turing House. They were naked in bed, and Lucas's head was resting on his husband's chest, which he was idly stroking.
Jerry had felt protective of Lucas almost from their first meeting as young adolescents. When he had learned the story of Lucas's life, he knew that if he committed to a life with Lucas, he would be committing to a life with a deeply wounded person. He had never regretted making the commitment. From adolescence to young adulthood, he had been amazed at Lucas's talent and his ability to concentrate and to exclude every distraction, including Jerry.
Jerry had had no idea about Lucas's fortune when he followed him to Stanford. He'd had no clue what Sam Marshall was going to leave Lucas after their meetings with the poet on those two brief occasions when he and Lucas had visited him, once in Goldendale and once in Portland. By the time they were in Pasadena, Jerry knew about the money.
Jerry had seen Lucas cry twice, once when the old poet had died and once after Tom had been killed on the highway. Jerry's own family had always supported and loved their son and eventually, by extension, loved Lucas. The Goldendale family, however, had adopted him from the start of his relationship with Lucas. In the beginning, North, Jon, and Jason had made sure he understood what he was getting into with their smaller brother.
The marriage didn't originate in a romantic proposal. One day, Lucas had said to Jerry, "I suppose we should get married."
Jerry had replied with a good-natured laugh, "I love you, too, and yes, I accept."
Lucas's proposal came out of their discussions about adopting and the family they wanted to start. The young Sam had been the catalyst in a remarkable change in Lucas. Although Sam thought his OD was difficult to reach, Jerry saw how having Sam in their lives had opened Lucas up.
Jerry replied to Lucas's question, "Mathew is something. This whole group is interesting."
Lifting his head and biting Jerry's right nipple lightly, Lucas said, "I'm glad, you know."
Jerry asked, "Mmmmm. Glad about what?"
"That Annie kicked me in the ass that night at the club — to make me go after you."
"I love you, too."