Chapter 1

Charley’s turn:

After a week in my prospective new hometown, I was no closer to a decision on whether to settle there or not. I was born, raised and had lived all of my twenty-four years near more than ten million others in the LA area, where the weather was reasonably sunny and warm. There probably weren’t a hundred thousand people on the whole Olympic peninsula, let alone the corner of it I was thinking of moving to, and the sun was elusive, the temperature rarely clearing fifty-five degrees. In mid-June.

On the other hand, there was basically no traffic, the air smelled great, my eyes didn’t burn and everything was within walking distance. Walking! Not only were things within walking distance, but I felt safe traveling by foot. The number of people who walked to the grocery store or downtown to the restaurants boggled my mind. Back home, you were taking your life in your hands trying to get around without a car — too many people and entire cities designed solely around motorized transport.

As for the residents, the area was certainly whiter than anywhere I’d ever lived, far less ethnically diverse, and I’d mourn that if I moved. On a more personally relevant note, though, the Pride events of the last week had been very well attended for such a small town, and I didn’t see any show of hate toward us, even among those who disagreed with us.

Would I ever be happy living somewhere so alien to my experiences? I didn’t know, but I was sure that I needed to escape my current environment. My estrangement from my parents meant that Southern California could no longer be home.

After a nice, though vegetarian, breakfast at my B&B, I decided to visit the houses I’d be looking at before the realtor took me around to them the next day. I’ll admit, my heart sang when I just walked out the door and took off on foot.

The first house itself seemed fine from the outside, one and half gabled stories with dormers marking the upstairs bedrooms, and the neighborhood seemed well kept up. The neighbors themselves were out and about, but disinclined to strike up a conversation. A definite maybe, then.

The second house was a cute Craftsman style, two stories with the second much smaller than the first, low-pitched hips and shingles for siding. The garden shed visible in the backyard would be a great place to lock up a bike. Judging by the other houses in the neighborhood, it looked as though the owners of the big Victorian down the block had probably subdivided the land and sold it off for individual homes at some point twenty or thirty years previously. One of the neighbors was out and about here as well, but she saw me looking around and came over to talk.

“Good morning. Are you thinking of looking at Bob and Martha’s place?” she asked.

I nodded. “Uh huh, I’m considering moving here and this is one of the places on my list,” I said. Then realized that I was being rude and said, “Forgive me, I’m Charley Black. I’m looking to get away from Southern California, and your little corner of the world comes highly recommended.” I caught her questioning look and gave a little laugh. “Sorry, officially I’m Charlotte, but I never liked the name, so my brother and I settled on Charley when I was eight or nine.”

She smiled and nodded, showing I’d interpreted her look correctly. “Hi, Charley. I’m Terri Lewis. I’ve only ever visited the LA area a couple of times, so I can’t really relate. I can tell you we get a lot of refugees from there, and from the San Francisco area, though they’re mostly older people looking for a quieter place to retire.”

“I can understand that,” I said. “It’s all a bit of a culture shock to me. I spent a couple of weeks in Paris once, and this seems every bit as alien. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, just very, very different.”

She laughed, then asked if I had time for some tea. I wasn’t on a schedule, so I agreed. She led me around back, where she knocked on the door of a little studio in the backyard. When the door opened, she introduced me to her husband, Bill, and we all went in to enjoy a cup of their favorite Darjeeling.

“So, Charley, any particular reason you’re looking to get away from SoCal?” Bill asked.

I decided that honesty was the best policy here, since I was thinking of living next door to them. “It’s a family thing,” I said. “My family has always been very close and loving, and we’ve done a lot of things in California over the years. Uh ... It’s safe to say I was completely blindsided by my parents’ reaction when I told them that I’d finally accepted that I’m gay. They’d always been fairly conservative, but nothing very extreme. Unfortunately, their reaction to my coming out was extreme — if they kept a family bible they could write me out of, they would have. Instead, they basically disowned me, cutting off all contact. My brother supported my decision, but when he tried to go to bat for me, he almost got the same treatment. He probably would have except that his daughter, and my parents’ only grandchild, had just been born.”

“All those places and memories remind you of better times now, don’t they,” Terri said.

I nodded and said, “It hurts too much to stay. My boss is fine with me telecommuting, but I need to find somewhere without those memories, preferably somewhere that I can be me and not hide in a closet.”

Terri came around the table and gave me a hug, while Bill took my hand and gave it a comforting squeeze.

“I don’t know about the memories, but you should be able to be you around here,” Terri said. “I teach at the high school, and we have at least two gay couples and a couple more lesbian ones, not to mention the ones who haven’t paired up. We’ve also had a couple of kids who are transgender over the last few years. It’s been several years since anyone gave any grief to our LGBT students, and you know how kids can be.”

“Wow. I’ve been here for a week and attended the Pride rally, but I had no idea the community was quite that welcoming.”

“It’s not that we don’t occasionally get some idiot who tries to make trouble,” Bill said. “It’s just that they don’t get any traction. Mostly they’re laughed down.

“So, what do you do that you can work from home full time? I’m thinking it has to be computer related.”

I nodded. “I’m a software engineer and architect. Actually, along with that, I manage the software department for the company I work for. We do software for civil engineers, trying to make their lives easier.”

He looked at me and tilted his head. “Excuse me for saying this, but you look kind of young to be managing a whole department.”

“Fair enough. I am kind of young for the role, but Steve thinks I’m doing a good job, so I’m his pick to run the department. I’m twenty-four, but I’ve been working for him since he recruited me out of college five years ago. I took over the department a couple of years ago when the previous manager left for a bigger company.”

“You can color me impressed,” Terri said. “You graduated at nineteen?”

I blushed a bit at that. I’m not great at blowing my own horn, but I am proud of what I’ve done. “I did, it’s maybe not as impressive as it sounds. I skipped fifth grade, so I graduated from high school at 16.”

“Which college did you go to?”

“Caltech. They gave me a full ride and it was local, so it was an easy choice.”

“Wow! Our new neighbor’s a genius,” he said.

I laughed a little and said, “I don’t know about that. Besides, I haven’t said I’d buy the house yet.”

“Well, I, for one, hope you do,” Terri said. “It’s refreshing to hear someone who is so open about things. Don’t get me wrong, I like Bob and Martha fine, but they’re pretty withdrawn, so we didn’t talk much. It’d be great to have a neighbor who was interesting and who didn’t hide in the house all the time.”

We drank tea and chatted for a couple of hours. By the time I left, I knew exactly where I wanted to live. Neighbors like these would fill at least part of a huge hole in my life. The five years that followed did nothing to change my mind — I’d found my little slice of heaven.

I was just getting ready to go back to work after lunch on a Wednesday in early July when my cellphone rang. Caller ID showed it was my next door neighbor, Bill Lewis.