Chapter 1

1

“Well, now. Isn’t that a sight to behold?”

I leaned against the side of the garage doorway. Charlie sat, as he usually did in the mornings, smack dab in the middle just inside the opening like every other oldster in the world. His ratty brown coat helped ward off the early morning chill.

The cold during the night was slowly dissipating in the morning sunshine. Our little town stood close enough to the snow line that even a beautiful day in August wouldn’t reach the scorching temperatures of California’s central valley. As the summer turned into fall, we could expect cooler days. Still, we were a ways away from winter blowing in and stopping us in our tracks. For the next few months or so, our summer weather promised to be constant and entirely bearable.

Charlie and I were stationed at our morning posts and watched as the village baker unloaded huge bags of flour. He stacked them on a dolly as we supervised from across the way.

The muscles in his arms and back bulged and glistened in the cool of the morning. His t-shirt, gloves, and jeans got whiter as a thin layer of flour clouded around him.

Both Charlie and I sighed as he finished and waved the driver on his way. We sighed again as he toed the dolly and rolled it back between the buildings, probably to the employee entrance.

Just before he vanished, he stopped. He turned. He looked our way. He waved in our direction.

On its own, my hand raised and waved back.

Then he and the dolly disappeared.

My hand dropped to eye level. I examined it.

I was thirty-two years old living with an elderly companion named Charlie, who was easily my grandpa’s age. Where had my adolescent shyness come from?

My hand had actually waved back at him. He had waved at me.

I was hard. My heart beat raced. Drops of sweat dotted my forehead. I felt sixteen again. I gulped. I had to get myself under control.

I glanced at Charlie. He was looking across the street, a smile on his face.

We sat in silence a minute until I felt Charlie’s eyes on me. The scent of the nearby pines wafted our way.

I hoped I could sidestep it, but I couldn’t deflect Charlie’s scrutiny.

“Don’t you start with me.” I looked his way over my shoulder. I gestured with my coffee cup. “I’m not comfortable making the first move. And don’t you dare remind me I’ve been saying that for a year or so now. We don’t even know if he’s gay.”

I could feel Charlie busting to say that the baker, probably the Rick of Rick’s Rack, had made the first move and that he’d been testing the waters to see if I was gay. Charlie wanted to remind me if I cared so much, then I should go ask one of our neighbors at the café or at the general store if the baker had a wife or a boyfriend. They’d be happy to tell me all about him.

No matter what Charlie said, I wasn’t about to ask other people around town and actually find out. I was okay as I was. My social calendar amounted to me and Charlie sitting around watching television almost every night, occasionally going camping in the Sierra Nevada mountains, but essentially keeping ourselves to ourselves. I was happy—no, content—with the way things were.

Five years ago, fed up with the hustle and bustle of the urban hive and having thrown out my boyfriend, Charlie and I had packed up everything we owned and had driven East out of San Francisco until we found somewhere we could tolerate. As had I, Charlie cut ties with everyone he knew in the city.

Sidetrack, California, The Track to the natives, had looked one step away from a ghost town at the time. The three-block downtown strip surrounding a tiny town square stood as still as the Old West Main Streets before a gunfight. The former shops with mostly boarded up windows and dusty brick facades stood with stoic faces around a tiny town square

The Track was one of those places where travelers stopped, scratched their heads, and muttered, “Where the hell am I?” Only GPS or a good sense of direction got them back toward I-5 to Los Angeles or up to Redding.

To us, Sidetrack had immediately looked like home.

Charlie had been ill at the time. No surprise since he was eleven and a half in dog years.

I am amazed when I think about the drive out with him looking like he wouldn’t make it.

Nowadays, I can still hear him laughing at me, “Dog years! I wasn’t anywhere near eleven or twelve then, youngster. Besides, was you counting them in large or small breed years? You coulda given me a hella lot more years to go if you compared me to a chow.”

Well, let’s just say Charlie wasn’t a chow at the time. Moving out of the city and finding us a better home wasn’t a choice. It was a necessity.