Chapter 9
WILLY SAT in the office of the store, finishing up his day’s work, and then closed the application and locked the computer. He dreaded going home.
“Willy,” Mr. Webster said as he came in and sat down in the other chair. “I think you and I might need to talk.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There are rumors going through town about the sheriff and, well… I’ve seen the two of you together.”
Willy tried to stifle the gasp, but he failed.
“That’s what I thought.”
“I-I…,” Willy stammered and grew quiet.
“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” Mr. Webster said, and leaned forward. “I’m not going to fire you or anything like that.” He ran his fingers nervously over his partially bald head. “There’s going to be grief headed his way, and you know it.”
“Yeah, I do.” Willy was well aware of the shitstorm that was about to hit.
“Is that because you’re afraid for Reggie, or for yourself?” Mr. Webster’s gaze fell on Willy’s shaking hands. “You’re still young and have your whole life ahead of you. But the one you have will depend on the choices you make and the kind of person you decide you want to be. I already know you’re conscientious and a hard worker….”
Mr. Webster nodded. “Of course you don’t. I’ve lived in this town most of my life. I left to go to pharmacy school, and I intended to head out to the big city, open my own place, maybe start a chain like CVS. Then my mom got ill and my dad said he needed help, so I put that on hold and returned. I never left again. I stayed and took care of my parents. Eventually I got married and had kids, like everyone expected me to.” He sighed softly. “I sometimes wonder how my life would have been different if I hadn’t come back.”
“So I should…?” Willy trailed off, unsure what he wanted to ask.
“I had big plans, but there came a point where I had to ask myself what I truly wanted. It sounds like an easy question, but it isn’t.” Mr. Webster clapped him on the knee and pulled back his hand. “I’ve known your dad for a long time. I bet you didn’t know that he and I went to high school together and were friends of a sort. Your dad was a very different person then. Wild, crazy, and the center of fun. But he changed as he grew older, like we all did. After your brother died, he changed again, and not for the better, in my opinion. He’s all about controlling everything and everyone he can so he doesn’t have to repeat the pain and loss he went through when Isaac died.”
“I know that. I can remember those times.” God, he longed for them so much. He wanted his dad back. But his dad had died along with Isaac, and all he had was a father now.
“Your dad wants to choose the kind of person you’ll be, but he doesn’t have that right unless you give it to him. Am I making any sense at all?” Mr. Webster asked.
“I think so.”
“Deciding what you want seems like such an easy thing to do. You picture it, say what you want, and then go get it. But it doesn’t work that way. Sometimes you have to fight for it, and sometimes what you really want isn’t what you thought at the beginning. See, I thought I wanted a chain of stores and to become rich, the head of an empire. But I came back here, helped my family, met my wife, and she changed my life. She showed me that what I truly wanted, soul-deep, was a life with her. I started working here, bought the place from the previous owner, eventually remodeled and changed the name, and now it’s part of my life.”
“I think I understand,” Willy said with a smile.
“I doubt it. Because it took me years to understand, fully. I didn’t sit down to make any grand decision. I went with the wind and my heart. All that was at stake for me was my old dream. One path opened up to me, and I took it. The other path closed, eventually. And that’s fine. My parents and friends supported me.”
Willy nodded. “I need to decide who I want to be and what my own path will look like.”
“Yes. But your path is going to change the paths of a lot of other people. It will affect your brother and sister, your mom and dad, yourself, as well as that of a certain sheriff who can’t seem to take his eyes off you whenever the two of you are in the same room.” Mr. Webster smiled at him, and Willy’s burden became a little lighter.
“What do I do?” Willy asked.
Mr. Webster shook his head. “I don’t know. That isn’t for me to say. This is one of those times when you have to make your own choices. Your father runs your family like he’s some kind of king. He makes the rules, and the rest of you follow along. If you let him, your dad will make all the decisions for you for the rest of your life.”
“Tell me about it,” Willy groused.
“My dad used to say that there comes a time in everyone’s life, man or woman, where you have to choose the kind of life you want. I think this may be one of those times for you.” Mr. Webster patted his knee once again. “Just make sure that whatever you do, it’s the right thing for you.”
Willy nodded. “But what if…?” He closed his eyes, knowing no decision would come without a cost. He knew how his father was going to react, and when he got home, he was going to have to face the music. Mr. Webster was correct: Willy was going to have to make decisions, and how he did that was going to decide the man he was going to be. “Thank you.”
“It’s no problem. I had the same talk with my son last year. He had the chance to go to school out east, but he was afraid to move that far away. That kind of change can be hard for people. Robin and his mother were always very close, and after the cancer scare from a few years ago, it was very difficult for him. But he decided to go and is doing very well at Yale. He loves it now, and I doubt he’ll ever come back here to live again. And that’s okay. He needs to find his own way, just like you do.”
“Yeah, but your son isn’t gay and you didn’t throw him out of the house because of it.” Willy stared at the floor.
“Robin isn’t gay, but he did surprise his mother and me when he brought home his latest girlfriend. She’s from India, and it was a bit of a shock. It didn’t take long for Cheryl and me to get over it. Though I understand that Prima’s parents still haven’t come around to the fact that she’s in love with a non-Indian boy.” Mr. Webster chuckled a little. “We have met them, and I think that went a long way to smoothing things over for them.” He shrugged. “Parents don’t always like what their children want. But you can’t live your life for your father any more than Prima could live her life for hers. It took guts on her part to stand up to them.”
Willy nodded slowly. “Thanks.” It was going to take all the courage he possessed in every fiber of his being to be able to deal with his father. “I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. Sometimes it’s easy to think you’re all alone.”
“You aren’t.” Mr. Webster smiled and left the office.
Willy turned back to make sure everything had been put away before leaving as well. He didn’t want to go home and thought about wandering down to the police station to see if Reggie was there. But then he figured it was best if he didn’t give his father much more ammunition, at least right now.
WILLY STOOD outside the house an hour later, once again very much alone. He knew his father was inside and his mother was most likely in the kitchen, but while she might be understanding or even sympathetic, but she wasn’t going to take his side against his father. He wished Reggie was with him. Without thinking, he turned in the direction of the sheriff’s station and smiled. Maybe he was here. Willy didn’t need Reggie standing next to him in order to be able to channel his strength.
Willy marched up the walk and went inside. Immediately the scent of his mother’s pot roast, potatoes, and carrots wrapped around his senses. The warmth dissipated as his father stepped in front of him.
“What have you to say for yourself?”
“About what?” Willy crossed his own arms in front of his chest, mirroring what he’d seen Reggie do, drawing himself to his full height.
“You need to be more careful when you pick your friends. And I expect you to stay away from him. I’ve already had a talk with a number of council members, and—”
“What? You expect to browbeat them into breaking the law?” Willy felt as though Reggie were standing right behind him. “Maybe you should bring your attitudes out of the Stone Age and into the twenty-first century. Reggie is a good sheriff, and you’re going to find a number of business owners in this town who like him. The council and you will get feedback if you don’t back off this witch hunt. You are free to believe what you wish, as is every man and woman in this town, including me.” He did his best to stop his knees from knocking.
“I will not have that kind of—”
Willy cut him off. “What? Logic in your house? Maybe a little compassion and feeling?” He spoke fast, emotions rising. “What happened to my dad? He’s gone and has been since Isaac was killed. All I have left is a father, a person I don’t like very much. He’s strict, stuffy, no fun, and certainly not someone I want to be around. I want my dad back.” Willy lowered his arms as his father slowly rocked back and forth. “I want the man who used to take me fishing and went camping with us. The one who used to read us stories… ones that didn’t always come from the Bible. I want the dad who used to take us out for ice cream on the nights that Mom went to Ladies Aid, and we weren’t supposed to tell her.” God, he remembered having fun with him. “I miss the Saturdays when you, me, and Isaac used to go hiking up in the mountains. You’d work on your sermon sometimes, preaching to the trees at the top of your voice. Isaac and I would giggle as the words echoed back, occasionally sounding dirty.” He sighed and shrugged. “Do you remember teaching Isaac how to drive? Taking us into the mountains and letting me drive the car when I wasn’t supposed to?”
“Isaac is dead,” his father said flatly. “And he isn’t coming back.”
“Yes. Isaac is gone. But the rest of us aren’t, though sometimes you act like everything good died along with him. It didn’t. The rest of us are still here.” Willy reached out, taking one of his dad’s hands. “I just want my dad back,” he whispered, then released his hand and walked past his stunned father and on into the kitchen, where his mother stared at him in near shock.
“That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about,” his father said, coming in behind him.
“But Willy is right,” his mother said. “We’ve been living in a daze of grief for years, and you’ve become unbearable.” She slammed the spoon she’d been using on the counter. “I don’t want to live like this anymore. I want to be happy again, and I don’t know how.” She leaned over the sink, and his father reached up to her shoulders. She turned, and he held her. That was the last Willy saw as he quietly left the kitchen to go upstairs to his room. Closing the door, he leaned against it and nearly slid to a seated position as he thought of what he’d just done.
“Willy?” Ezekiel asked from the other side of the door, nearly in tears. Willy got to his feet, opened the door, and lifted him into his arms. “Why is Mama crying?”
“Because she’s sad. But it’s okay, I think.”
“Where’s Daddy?” He sniffled.
“With Mommy.”
Ezekiel rested his head on Willy’s shoulder. “Are we gonna have dinner?”
“Yes. Just stay here for a little while, and then we’ll go down for dinner.” Willy needed to give them time to talk. His mother speaking up, at least in front of any of the kids, was something he could barely remember. Willy held Ezekiel a few minutes and then carried him down the stairs.
Willy almost didn’t know how to act as his dad and mom brought the food to the table. He set Ezekiel at his place and called Ruthie to dinner. Neither of them seemed to understand quite how to act either. They looked back and forth between their mom and dad as the two of them talked to each other at dinner.
“What did you do today, Mom?” Willy asked.
“I worked with some of the new moms. They asked to meet with me. I love being around all the babies.” His mom smiled, and like that, some of the tension that seemed to have hung over their lives lessened. Even his father’s eyes seemed a little brighter than they had been for years.
Willy had no illusions that things were going to change for him that easily. But who knew? Maybe his mother would influence his father.
“You and I still need to talk,” his father said after a while, as his mother filled plates and they were passed around. Of course, Willy shouldn’t have expected that he’d deflected his father away from what he wanted, at least not permanently.
“I think we’ve talked about enough for tonight,” his mother said. “Unless William has something he wishes to talk to you about, let it go.” She continued dishing up, but the pronouncement was clear. His father met her gaze, but she didn’t back down. “I’m tired of mourning. Isaac is gone. It was an accident, and we need to start living again, all of it… for the sake of the kids. And if you aren’t going to do that, then I’ll figure out a way to do it on my own.” She plopped a plate in front of his father, and Willy realized just how big a kettle of worms he’d opened.
“Rachel,” his father said with more real emotion and tenderness than Willy had heard from him in a long time.
“I mean it, Gabriel. This has gone on long enough. The cold, the just existing—we deserve more than that. The kids need to be in a house that’s alive and happy. It hasn’t been, not in a long time. And I want something more.”
Willy ate and let his parents talk. “It’s okay,” Willy told Ezekiel when he tugged on his sleeve.
Ezekiel clearly wasn’t so sure. “Daddy will be mad,” he said. “He scares me.”
Willy put an arm around him and caught the shock on his father’s face.
Ezekiel ate slowly, alternating his gaze between their mother and father. Willy ate as well, while Ruthie shoveled her food into her mouth and then asked to be excused, exiting the room before she got an answer.
“The kids don’t even know how to understand the two of us talking. You’ve made pronouncements and set rules, and I’ve said nothing, but that’s over. I can’t keep living like this.”
“Rachel, I….” His father seemed to have been rocked deeply. It wasn’t often that Willy saw him speechless, but he seemed to be now.
“Willy is old enough to decide who he wants his friends to be. He doesn’t need your interference and self-righteous preaching.” She stood, pushing her chair back. “Gabriel, you don’t know everything, and Willy is capable of building his own life and making his own decisions and mistakes. Lord knows you made plenty of them in your day.” She turned to Ezekiel and gently patted his arm. “Go ahead and eat, honey. Everything is okay.” Then she left the room, and Willy stared at his father, whose mouth hung open.
“You know, Dad, I guess now isn’t really the time to tell you I’m gay, but I’m going to anyway.” Willy went back to eating as his father slumped in his chair.
“Is that a joke? Because it certainly isn’t funny,” his father growled.
“No, Dad. It’s not a joke. I’m as gay as Jamie Fullerton, and I’m tired of hiding who I am from you and everyone else. I’ve been afraid of you for years, but I’m not going to live that way anymore. I am who I am, and I have someone in my life who I care about, though I came this close to walking away from him because of you.” Willy set down his fork. “I told you I wanted my dad back. If I still had him, I could have talked to him and told him about the hard time I was having for the last few years, but my father…. Him I can’t talk to. He’s exactly what Mom said, a self-righteous pain in the ass.” Willy pushed back his chair. “I always thought that as soon as you found out, you’d kick me out of the family. But I don’t care anymore. I want to be happy, just like Mom, and I can’t do that here… with you.” Willy left the room, heading for the stairs.
“Where are you going?”
“Upstairs to pack my things. I have no idea where I’m going to go, but I won’t live the life you want just to try to make you happy.” Willy took the first steps upward and felt a hell of a lot better with each step he took. He had to make his own way.
His father didn’t yell or come after him, but he didn’t call out to stop Willy either.
Willy went to his room and pulled his old suitcase out from under the bed. He quickly packed it, then grabbed his laptop and slipped it into his backpack. It took him ten minutes to pack what was important to him. He sat on the edge of the bed, wondering what he was going to do. Then he picked up the phone.