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  “You invited me.”

  “You were always the exception.”

  I smiled, comforted, as he’d meant for me to be. I continued to hold his hand while I waited for him to go on.

  “They say rooms hold an echo of whatever they’ve seen. I never believed it, but in here, it’s true. I’ve lived in this house for eight years, and this room has seen nothing at all. It’s silent. And empty.”

  “It won’t always be that way.”

  “I want to believe that, but it’s hard.”

  “You need to have hope.”

  His laugh was dry and spoke more of heartache than humor. “I’ve never needed it in the past. I can only think of one other time in my life when I’ve wanted something so desperately and yet had no idea how to get it.”

  “And what happened then?”

  He squeezed my hand. “You pulled your head out of your ass and came after me.”

  I smiled at the memory. “But this is different, isn’t it?”

  “It is, and I hate it. I hate the uncertainty. I wish somebody would just tell me, ‘yes, you’re going to get a child,’ or ‘no, it’s never going to happen.’ Then, either way, I could plan. Even if it meant waiting another year, or three years, or five. At least I’d know. But the uncertainty of forcing myself to hold on to a dream that may never come true is driving me mad.”

  I nodded, wishing more than anything that I had an answer for him. I understood his pain, even if I didn’t feel it as acutely as he did. I put my arms around him, although he was stiff against me. He had to resist, because accepting comfort would be admitting how much pain he was in. “Remember what you did when you were waiting for me to figure things out?”

  “I ran.”

  “Yes.” I rubbed my hand up his back and kissed the side of his head. “Let’s run this time too.”

  He turned to face me. My eyes had finally adjusted to the dimness of the room, and I could just make out his cheekbones and his soft, full lips. “Are you serious?”

  “We never did take a honeymoon.”

  “What if something comes up while we’re gone?”

  “Thomas knows how to reach us. If he calls, we’ll be on the first plane home.” I pulled him toward me again. I kissed his cheek and his jaw until finally, he relaxed and went limp in my arms, melting against my body.

  “Where should we go?”

  “I have never seen your home in Hawaii.”

  “I have a private snorkeling pond.”

  “We can do more than snorkel in it, right?”

  He laughed. “Indeed. I was about to tell you not to bother packing a swimsuit.”

  I thought about being with him in the warm water. About kissing him while we were both salty from the sea. About adding our own heat to the pool. “Let’s leave right now.”

  “I can have us on a plane in less than twelve hours, but first….” He sighed and tilted his head up to me. “Make me think about something else for a while.”

  “How do you feel about neckties?”

  He laughed as his lips found mine. “I’m one hundred percent in favor.”

  FOR the next eight months, we lived much as he had lived before we’d become a couple, traveling more often than not. We spent time in Hawaii and the Hamptons and took trips to Okinawa and Prague. We dropped in to Colorado three different times to see our friends. We also spent a month touring Italy. We started in Rome. It was my first time there, but Cole hated it for some reason I didn’t quite understand, so we quickly moved on to Florence and Sienna. I fell in love with Tuscany and discovered Cole spoke Italian nearly as well as he spoke French. We rarely mentioned the adoption, although Cole lamented being so often away from my father. He began to talk of giving him a yearly stipend in order to allow him to quit his job. I argued that my father would never accept such a thing. “Besides,” I told Cole, “it’s rude to even offer.”

  “Let me get this straight, sugar. You approved of me offering to pay for Angelo’s college, did you not?”

  “Yes, but that’s different.”

  “How?”

  “Because….” It was, wasn’t it? And yet, I couldn’t think of a reason. It made sense for him to offer to pay for Angelo’s schooling, even if Angelo hadn’t yet accepted the offer. So why shouldn’t he offer to help my father retire in style?

  Despite my feelings on the matter, midway through the year, my father made a liar out of me and happily left his job of twenty-two years. He had a decent chunk of money in his 401(k), but it was Cole’s “travel fund” that really sealed the deal, and soon my father was traveling with us about half the time. He seemed to sense that the adoption was a delicate subject. He never asked about our progress, which was good since we had nothing to report. Anytime we returned to Phoenix, we’d spend a few weeks avoiding the closed door at the end of the hall. At some point, Cole would break down and go inside. He’d spend an afternoon or an evening sitting in the window seat, staring at the empty walls.

  We were always gone again within a week.

  “What will happen if we do get to adopt?” I asked him once, as we waited to board our plane. “We won’t be able to rush off at the drop of a hat.”

  “All the more reason to do it now, then, don’t you think?”

  There was some truth in that, but it wasn’t the real reason he couldn’t bear to stay at home. That room haunted him. It held so much potential, and yet at the moment, it was hauntingly empty.

  We decided to spend Thanksgiving in Hawaii because my father had never been there. Even the smallest turkey was too big for the three of us, so we had fresh seafood instead. We cooked the entire meal on the grill and ate on the balcony overlooking the ocean. It was a day that bordered on ideal, but I knew we were all thinking the same thing: would it be like this forever, the three of us pretending it was all we needed?

  “What’s the plan for Christmas?” my dad asked that night. He was watching football. Cole was curled up in a corner of the couch reading. I was halfway watching the game while working on my laptop.

  “I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” Cole said. “Where would you like to go?”

  My father shrugged. There was something odd about him, though. I had a feeling he wasn’t really concerned about where we spent Christmas. I suspected he had an ulterior motive. “Anywhere is fine.”

  “Germany is fabulous in December.”

  “Really?” I didn’t know much about Germany, but it hadn’t ever hit me as a tourist hot spot.

  Cole smiled at me, doing his best not to laugh at my American ignorance. “Really, love. Their Christmas markets are amazing. We could spend a week in Berlin and then go to Munich in time for Christmas?”

  “Sounds good,” my dad said.

  Cole looked back down at his book, apparently assuming the conversation was over. It wasn’t though. I knew by the expression on my dad’s face that he was about to come to his point.

  “Are you going to invite your mother?”

  Cole didn’t glance up from his book, but he went completely, painfully still. “Why bother? She won’t come.”

  “How do you know if you don’t ask her?”

  “Because she never comes.”

  “Can it hurt to call?”

  “Dad—” I said, but Cole finally met my father’s eyes.

  “She’ll say yes, but then she won’t show up. It’s a waste of time.”

  “So you don’t want to call her?”

  I wondered if he noticed the way Cole flinched at the question. It was subtle, but it was there. “Not particularly, no.”

  My dad bounced the remote on his knee, considering. “Do you mind if I call her?”

  “You’ve never even met her.”

  “I know. And I think it’s time I did.”

  Cole blinked at him as if debating how much to argue. In the end, he closed his book and stood up. He went into the bedroom and came out with a slip of paper. He dropped it unceremoniously in my father’s lap. It might have been the closest t
hing to anger I’d ever seen him display toward my father. “Whatever you like, honey,” he said, then went back into the bedroom and closed the door.

  I put my laptop aside and leaned forward on the couch to face my father. “Why are you pushing this?”

  He didn’t answer right away. He pursed his lips and turned the remote over and over in his hand as he considered it. “We’re family, Jon. I think it’s time we stopped avoiding her.”

  “We aren’t avoiding her. She’s the one who didn’t come to the wedding. She’s the one who didn’t have time to see him when we were in town for his birthday two years ago. She’s the one—”

  My father held up his hand to stop me. “I know, Jon. The thing is, there are two sides to every story.”

  I stood up from my seat and pointed down the hallway toward Cole. “Are you saying this is his fault?”

  “I’m not saying it’s anyone’s fault. I’m just saying….” He sighed and rubbed his forehead with his fingers. “Sometimes things are harder than they seem.”

  “Nothing about this is complicated. She’s too busy to bother with her own son.”

  “That’s what you assume, but do you know it’s true?”

  “What other explanation is there?”

  “I don’t know, Jon, but I think it’s time we stopped making assumptions.”

  “Cole’s right. It’s a waste of time.”

  “Have you ever wondered what our relationship would be like if your mother hadn’t died?”

  The question brought me up short. “What does Mom have to do with this?”

  “We barely spoke after you came out—”

  “Because you couldn’t handle it!”

  “At first, yes. But that didn’t last long.”

  I fell heavily back onto the couch. “What are you saying, Dad?”

  “I’m saying that I got over you being gay a lot sooner than you probably think. But I didn’t know what to say to you. I didn’t know how to make things right.”

  “You couldn’t just say, ‘I’m sorry’?”

  “Sometimes that’s harder than we like to admit.”

  I looked down at my hands. I’d always known it was my mother’s death that had brought us together, but I’d never considered how different things might have been otherwise. I nodded. “Okay. So what are you going to say to her?”

  “I’m not sure yet. All I know is that it can’t hurt to try. Maybe she’s a heartless bitch like you imagine. But maybe….” He shrugged and turned back to the football game. “Maybe she’ll surprise us.”

  I was skeptical, but I kept my doubts to myself. Predictably, Cole didn’t want to talk about the possibilities, and I didn’t push him. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Even worse, I wasn’t sure what to hope for. I understood my father’s desire to bring Cole’s mom into the fold, but I worried it would only cause Cole more pain.

  We were still in Hawaii a week later when one morning my dad proudly announced, “Grace says she’ll be here.”

  It was early. I’d managed to climb out of bed and wander into the kitchen in search of coffee, but I wasn’t ready to play games yet. “Who?”

  “Cole’s mother.”

  Cole’s mother. Grace. I hadn’t even known her name. “You talked to her?”

  “No, Jon. I used my crystal ball.”

  I ignored his barb. “What did she say?”

  “I had to talk her into it.”

  “She was too busy?”

  “No, actually. She said she didn’t have any plans, but she didn’t want to intrude.”

  That surprised me. It wasn’t at all what I’d expected to hear. My father, on the other hand, appeared downright smug. I refused to give him a chance to gloat. Instead, I poured a cup of coffee for myself and went to tell Cole the news. I wasn’t sure how he’d take it. He might be relieved, or happy. He might be apprehensive.

  I found him just getting up, but however he felt about my announcement, he wasn’t about to betray his emotions. Not even to me.

  “Good Lord, it doesn’t matter what she told George,” he said as he threw off the covers and pushed himself out of bed. He kept his back to me and crossed the room to pick his watch up off the dresser. He spent a long time fiddling with it in order to avoid facing me. “She won’t actually show up. I don’t know why you even bothered telling me.”

  “Because if I hadn’t, and she did come, you’d have been furious.”

  “Fair enough, love.” He sighed dramatically. “Well, I suppose now I have to pretend to believe her and make something she’ll like for Christmas dinner.”

  “Don’t do anything on her account.”

  “I never do.”

  Chapter Three

  Date: December 21

  From: Cole

  To: Jared

  Merry Christmas, sweets. How are things in Colorado? I hope it’s white and bright and merry. I hope Santa brings you everything you ask for, and I hope Matt finally lets you put his handcuffs to good use.

  Phew! Give me a minute to think on that mental image a bit more….

  Stimulating, to say the least.

  Now, I suppose it’s my turn. I know I’ve barely written over the last year, but there hasn’t been much to say. We’ve been traveling a lot. We’re in Berlin now, although we leave for Munich tomorrow. My mother is supposed to meet us there. I’m sure she won’t show—she never does—but George swears she’s coming. Honestly, it’s hard for me to care too much. I had one wish for Christmas, and it won’t come true. Jon and I still aren’t fathers. The truth is, I’m terribly, terribly depressed, so much so that I probably shouldn’t even be writing this email. I shouldn’t be sharing my lack of holiday cheer. Jon and I continue to wait for word from Thomas. The longer we wait, the more helpless I feel.

  You told me a few months ago that the last thing you and Matt would ever want is a child. You said dealing with the dog was as much as you could handle. I understand that. I really do. I know the two of you are happy simply to have each other. Your lives are already complete, and I envy you for it. Is it selfish of me to want more? I love Jonathan with all my heart, and I adore George, but I can’t help feeling that there’s something I’m missing. Something profound. I have so much to give, Jared. Not only money or things, but love. I have so much love in my heart, and not enough people to share it with.

  It’s cheesy, I know. Even I roll my eyes a bit when I read back over those words, but it doesn’t change the truth of them.

  A few months ago we were in Lucca, Italy. Have you been? It’s delightful, not crowded like Florence or Venice or Rome. Inside the old city walls, it still feels quaint and charming. Beautiful young people stroll along the streets. The women are all casually exotic. The men wear skinny jeans and shoes without socks and ragged American T-shirts with silk scarves around their necks. Jonathan teased that he’d finally found the one place in the world where everybody dressed like me.

  But I’m rambling.

  The old battlements still surround the city, and on top of them is a lovely path. There are trees and parks and picnic benches and even a cafe or two. It was a bright, warm morning, and Jon had gone out for a jog. I was walking alone on the ramparts when I saw a child. I think she was two or three. She was gathering chestnuts with a man who I assume was her grandfather. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen chestnuts when they fall from the tree, but they’re in a spiky green shell. The man would hit them with his stick to break them open, then he’d point and say, “There it is! Get it, get it!” And she’d run and grab it and drop it into the sack he held, and then she’d yell, “Encore! Encore!” It was so picturesque, like something out of a movie. So perfect, and all I could think was, that should be George. George deserves a grandchild. And yet, I still haven’t succeeded in giving him one.

  I have to change the subject, or I’ll start to cry again.

  I talked to Angelo a few days ago. He rarely calls, but when he does, he always manages to surprise me. He hopes to work with foster kids. Did yo
u know that? Teenagers specifically. Not as a foster parent, but he’s considering joining the Big Brother program as a mentor. I told him it was a wonderful idea. After all, he can relate to those kids in a way most of us can’t. I also convinced him to let me pay for him to go back to school. He doesn’t have lofty goals. He just wants to take a class or two at a time, to expand his horizons a bit. I think it’s commendable, and I’m thrilled to be able to help. He was reluctant to take the money at first. He kept saying it was too expensive. Well, it’s only money, for heaven’s sake. What good is it if I can’t spend it on people? Then he spent an hour fretting about how he’d pay me back, trying to convince me to accept monthly payments. There are no words for how little I care about being repaid. I finally made him a deal. I told him that if I’m ever down to my last hundred dollars, I’ll come to him and he’ll be obligated to give me everything he owns. But I told him that until that happens, we’re even. End of story.

  Oh. And I made him promise to babysit when we come to Coda, just to make him squirm. I swear, I could hear the panic in his voice.

  Of course, that brings me back to the adoption. It’s too depressing to think about.

  Take care, sweets. May your holiday season be better than mine.

  COLE, my father, and I arrived in Munich on December 22. A flurry of activity ensued. Cole insisted we have a tree, never mind that Christmas was only three days away. We spent hours in the markets. They were amazing, as Cole had promised. He spent the first day searching for gifts and decorations for our tree, but my father and I were more interested in the food. There were toasted candied almonds and gingerbread and stollen and hot mulled wine with brandy that warmed us from the inside out. Halfway through the first day, my fingers were frozen and sticky and my mind comfortably muddled from the alcohol. My father’s cheeks and nose were bright red, and he began to weave a bit as he strolled between the stalls. Cole rolled his eyes indulgently and sent us back to the condo.

  “Besides,” he said, “I can’t buy gifts for you when you’re standing right next to me.”