1 Chapter 1

1

Decaying leaves crunched beneath Calvin Schumacher’s heels, and not for the first time, he wished he’d worn different shoes. Every step rattled through the cemetery. He kept his gaze forward, locked on the back of the minister, but he just knew everybody was looking in his direction. They did more than look. They whispered. No amount of unraked foliage could mask that.

“Who’s that?”

“Ted’s son.”

“Ted had a kid?”

“I think he lives in New York. An artist or something.”

“Ted never said he had a kid.”

“Didn’t you know? He’s gay.”

“Oh. That makes sense then.”

Did it? Calvin wanted to whirl around and demand what his sexuality had to do with anything, especially on the day he was burying his father. But it would be a waste of energy. Nobody would change their mind. They’d made them up decades ago.

The processional came to a stop beside the open grave. Its gaping maw made his stomach churn, and he shoved his hands in his coat pockets, pretending he was cold so he could press them into his abdomen. It wasn’t that far from the truth. The brisk October air cut across the Illinois landscape, the naked trees doing little to shield the earth from the impending chill. He’d forgotten how being so close to the lake dropped everything from firmament to flesh by another twenty degrees.

Calvin stood slightly apart from the rest of the mourners as the minister began to speak. He wasn’t surprised at how many people had shown up for the service, though the fact that many of them continued on to the cemetery seemed unusual. Ted Schumacher had been gregarious in life, loud-mouthed and opinionated about everything from the encroachment of modern technology on the job market to how the lettuce at Kroger’s never lasted for more than a day. People flocked to him. How the man didn’t piss someone off every other time he opened his mouth was a mystery, but Calvin was the first to admit that maybe his own prejudices colored his perceptions.

Maybe Ted had mellowed in his old age.

He sucked his lips in between his teeth to keep from smiling. Yeah. Ted mellowing. About as likely as Calvin developing a taste for pussy.

As the minister droned on, Calvin’s mind wandered. To his flight in three days, to the colors of the sunset bleeding across the horizon, to the angles of the bare branches as they scratched across the sky. He itched to paint it, but the vivid hues demanded oils. It would never dry in time to take it home. The best he could do was come back tomorrow with a camera and work from photographs.

He frowned. He hadn’t brought a camera. Who took pictures at a funeral?

A hand clamped down on his shoulder, startling him from his reverie. When he glanced over, he met the rheumy gaze of Eli Norris, his father’s neighbor and best poker buddy. The man pressed his thin lips together and nodded, as if they shared some kind of secret.

Calvin’s stomach heaved again. Oh God. Eli thought they were bonding over grief.

He stared at the plain coffin waiting to be lowered into the hole in the ground. A great son he was. Sure, he’d come out for his father’s funeral, but did he really miss him? They hadn’t spoken in nearly ten years. By mutual agreement. The only reason he’d flown to Chicago, and then driven out to the suburbs to attend a service at a church where he’d once spent three hours in a closet making out with the only other gay guy he knew, was because he didn’t want people he didn’t even know to think he was an uncaring bastard.

God was going to strike him down for being a hypocrite.

Ted would have loved that.

Calvin held back from shrugging off the unwanted touch while the minister wrapped up. He didn’t want to make a scene. He just wanted to get this over with, say his goodbyes, and drive like a madman back to his hotel room at O’Hare.

A gunshot drowned out the final amens.

A few women screamed. Eli’s hand jerked away as if burned. Out of the corner of his eye, Calvin saw a man he didn’t recognize or remember crumple to the ground.

Another gunshot made the crowd scatter.

Everyone except Calvin.

His head snapped in the direction of the shots.

The setting sun cast long shadows over the end of the graveyard. There was nowhere for someone to hide in the trees. His gaze skipped right over them to land instead on a tall mausoleum, its walls coated in lichens. Metal glinted from its roof, and Calvin scanned upward.

He froze.

Nobody else paid attention to the man lying flat on the rooftop. Nobody else saw his sad, dark eyes. Nobody else saw him bow his head for a brief second before slithering out of view.