their heads alongside everything else. Before long, he’d established a backyard sanctuary that was frequented by a variety of birds and insects, as well as the occasional skunk and fox.
The house, too, had been in a questionable state when he moved in, but it soon sported new doors and windows and a new roof. Dilapidated hardwood floors walked on by the house’s original inhabitants a hundred years earlier were soon refinished, while the fireplace, sealed for decades but now newly refurbished, took pride of place in the living room where he now stood.
Dan stroked the lid of a decorative box perched on the mantel, sliding it open to a trove of snapshots. His cousin Leyla at ten, tomboy bangs and a grin, lay on top. She’d been like a sister to him. Next came Aunt Marge, his substitute mother, jolly and robust like the good wife from a fairy tale. From her he’d learned love and compassion. Dan’s real mother, Christine, had died when he was four. Her image lay further down. He knew where to find it if he wanted to. Those were the older photos. There were newer additions, many recent: shots of Dan and Nick together, of Ked right before he left for university, and of Ked’s mother, Kendra, a Syrian-born immigrant who had crossed Dan’s romantic horizon briefly, though neither had been contemplating parenthood at the time.
Some of the pictures were pleasant reminders, others bittersweet. His long-time friend Domingo, who’d died of a recurring cancer, smiled up alongside Dan’s best friend, Donny, and Donny’s own bit of domestic bliss, the charming Prabin. They were his Found Family, though sometimes they felt more like a Lost and Found, these disparate bits and pieces of his life. Dan wasn’t given to sentiment, but all of them held meaning. His wedding photos would one day find a place alongside the others.
There were no photographs of his father. Stuart Sharp had been a brutal man given to harsh words, black moods, and, when his son displeased him, a quick swing of the hand. The latter hadn’t happened often, if only because Dan learned early to stay out of his way, but on at least one occasion the drunken Stuart had slammed his son into a doorframe, giving Dan a lasting scar on his temple, a lightning bolt that was a permanent reminder of his father. Dan didn’t need photos for that.
In truth, he felt he’d long since made peace with his father’s memory, coming to understand him as a frustrated and bitter man constrained by a lifetime of crushing labour in the mines, with few joys outside. He’d had little to give to others once his wife died and left him to raise a son who felt more fear for his father than any other emotion he could readily name.
It had been a hard life in a city of rock. Sudbury: the nickel capital of the world. A rough place for rough people. Dan remembered a classmate, Pelka, whose father had drunk battery acid in a failed attempt to kill himself, and a shy, fatherless boy named Rex whom Dan had claimed hopefully as his best friend for a single semester before Rex and his itinerant mother moved on again for parts unknown. Another girl, Shirley, always had a boy’s haircut and wore blue jeans. She came to school looking alternately frightened and angry. No one spoke about these things. Dan had made the best of things while he lived there, knowing nothing else, then put it behind him when he moved away and somehow, inexplicably, wound up a father in the largest city in the country at age twenty-four. Over time, parenthood had proved the dividing line between the largely deserted shores of his past and the well-populated shores of his present.
An additional marker was reached when Kedrick left for university, a day Dan had long known was coming but still felt strangely unprepared for when it arrived. Ked’s upcoming graduation would be the first time they’d seen each other in more than six months. And soon Dan himself would be facing yet another landmark: marriage to Nick. He hoped it suited them both.
From upstairs came the sound of heartily shouted song lyrics under the shower’s stream. It was like having a teenager in the house again, Dan thought. After nearly two years, the ups had well outnumbered the downs of their relationship. Even their sex life had turned numerous corners, and it was still alive and well. A good sign for two men verging on middle age.
They slept together when Nick wasn’t on the late shift and ate meals together when he was. Now all Dan had to do was make sure he didn’t get fat and lazy. Nights spent in front of the fire with Nick seemed filled with all the bliss in the world. All that he needed, anyway.
Weekends, Dan felt no desire to stray from the idylls of his backyard, lounging beside the moss-covered wall beneath the locust tree and imagining the long-vanished snapping of goldfish foraging for food in the empty pond. Was there anything better?
The thump-thump-thump of footsteps announced Nick’s arrival as he came downstairs wrapped in a towel, sleek and glistening from the shower and suitably hirsute. Without a regular trim, his chest would sport a full-frontal rug. He kissed Dan on the top of his head, then disappeared into the kitchen, humming to himself before returning with a tray of drinks like an exceptionally polished waiter, minus the tux.
“Lounging again, your majesty? May I offer you a cranberry cordial?”
Dan took up a glass, admiring Nick’s torso. It made life easy when your partner had a certain physical appeal, but Dan was sure he’d still be in love with this man when he was eighty, should they both live so long.
“I could do with an appetizer,” he said with a wink. “Something hot and spicy.”
“All in good time, sire,” Nick said. “Supper’s in ten minutes. Let’s not ruin your appetite.”
With a quick bow he ran back upstairs to dress, leaving Dan to ponder his luck at having snagged the perfect partner. Nick had come to Canada from Macedonia as a teenager. In his twenties he’d picked up a wife briefly before deciding it wasn’t a life he was suited to. Before they could fight over the much-loved son their union had produced, the child died, precipitating a decade of alcoholic abuse on Nick’s part.
By then Nick had grown accustomed to Canada’s rights and freedoms, including the right to determine one’s own sexual behaviour, and came out. As if to make up for the ease of choice, however, the following year he entered a rock-solid bastion of homophobia — the police department. It had been hard at times, and it meant keeping his private life private, but he’d survived. Then came Dan.
Nick returned now, fully dressed. Dan let him in on the day’s news. Crisis one: he was being evicted from his office space. Crisis two: they needed to find another caterer for the wedding. Nick shrugged off both of these.
“If we start looking now, we can find you something suitable at a good rate in the next couple of months.”
Dan was inclined to be gloomy. “Have you looked at rental rates lately? I could end up in some godforsaken neighbourhood on the far end of town trying to match the price I pay now.”
“Then I’ll provide you with a police escort every morning. As for the other …” He glanced over Dan’s shoulder toward the kitchen. “Maybe I can put the menu together myself.”
“I suspect you’ll be too busy on the day in question to be producing a gourmet meal. In the meantime, I’ve come into a bit of unexpected revenue, so perhaps we can afford a little more than I thought.”
“Lucky day at the races?”
“In a manner of speaking. I got a new case. That’s assuming I want it.”
Nick cocked his head. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“Because it came with a very heavy cash retainer in a brown envelope. Ten thousand dollars heavy, to be precise.”
Nick whistled. “You think it’s gangster money?”
“Close.
