Chapter 15

Basically, I would be meeting with strangers. Or it seemed that way to me. When I was sixteen Clive had been twenty-four and in the navy for his second tour of duty. Since that time I’d received maybe one e-mail a year from him telling me about his own family, a wife and kids. When Clive left the navy, he’d become a doctor and now lived in a large house in the hoity-toity part of Northfield. I’d never met his wife, Julia, or their two kids.

Garret, according to Emily, was on his second wife. He didn’t have any children, but he did have a drug habit. Or so she’d told me with her little nose wrinkled in disdain. Garret hadn’t kept in touch with me at all. Then again, I guess I hadn’t kept in touch with him.

I frankly thought the whole thing might be a bad idea. Neither of my brothers had ever been particularly chummy with me, and they’d both acted as though my homosexuality was contagious. I could almost picture Clive keeping his kids at least ten feet away from me.