A few days later a letter arrived at the church addressed to him with the word Personal written on the envelope. When he opened it and unfolded the paper, there were four lines in green crayon:
Dear Daniel, today we went to the Golden Gate Park and had a fun time. I liked you. I hope you come back to see me again.
Love, Wyatt
A year later, Daniel married Taggert’s daughter and when Taggert died, took his place as head of Ekklesia.
••••
Daniel stroked Wyatt’s forehead and said, “I’ve kept everything he ever sent me. Every drawing, every photo, every letter. Even the one where he told me about his— that he was gay.”
Gwen said, “It took you weeks to answer him.”
He frowned at her. “What did you expect? It was the last thing in the world I wanted to hear.”
“He thought you hated him.”
“I know,” Daniel said. “He told me. I told him I could never hate him.”
••••
“I could never hate you, Wyatt.” He had stared ahead as he spoke, at the turbid water on a cold, foggy August afternoon at Ocean Beach. Wyatt sat beside him on a blanket spread across the sand, his tension as palpable as an electric current, a cigarette burning between his long, slender fingers. “But I do wish you wouldn’t smoke.”
Wyatt made a noise, half-laugh, half-groan, and crushed the cigarette into the gray sand.
“Come on, Dad, at least it’s not pot.” Then he looked at his father. “I thought you’d be mad because, you know, your religion.”
Daniel chose his words carefully. “I accept your decision, but that doesn’t mean I approve.”
Wyatt’s eyes flared. “I didn’t decide anything. It’s who I am.”
“And I’m who I am,” Daniel replied. “If you want me to respect who you are, you have to respect who I am.”
“That mean we never talk about it again?” Wyatt said sullenly.
“There’s nothing we can’t talk about, even the hard stuff, but that doesn’t mean we won’t disagree. That’s what adults do.”
Wyatt stared out at the ocean, thoughtfully. “Okay, Dad,” he said, at last. “I guess I can live with that.”
••••
“We think there are different kinds of love,” Daniel had once preached to his congregation, “and some are greater than others, but that’s not true for Christians. For Christians, there is only one kind of love because there is only one God and John tells us God is love. Now, it’s true that we have different obligations to the different people we love and some of those obligations are greater than others, but the love, that’s the same. Don’t forget that because once you go down the road of, oh I don’t love this person as much as that person, it’s not that much of a jump to start treating people you say you love differently, some better and some worse. When that happens, you’ve stopped loving.”
••••
Four times a year, his congregants knew Daniel went on a silent retreat at a Jesuit order house outside of San Francisco. He arrived on Friday and spent the first night and the following morning at the retreat house, but then he drove to San Francisco where he remained until Monday with Gwen and Wyatt. Wyatt grew from a cheerful child into a mostly cheerful teen who got C’s in math and science and A’s in English and art, played point guard on his high school basketball team, had been busted by his mother for smoking pot, was proud of his driver’s license, and wrote monthly letters to Daniel that Daniel kept in a locked desk drawer in his office at the church. The love Daniel felt for his son was as unfiltered and uncomplicated as if it had traveled like a beam of light directly from God into Daniel’s heart.
But then came the terrible call from Gwen. “Wyatt’s sick,” she said. “It’s AIDS.”
“You let him have sex with another man!”
“I didn’t let him do anything. He’s eighteen, Daniel. He made his own decision. It was a mistake, but kids make mistakes. Like we did when you got me pregnant.”
“You can’t possibly compare that with what he did. Oh my God. Wyatt,” he had sobbed. “My boy.”
••••
“You should go back to the apartment, get some sleep,” Gwen was saying. “You have an early flight.”
“I can’t go without saying good-bye to him.”
Slowly, insistently, Gwen said, “He’s going to recover from this, Daniel. There will be other times.”
“This kind of pneumonia, though, isn’t a sign that he’ll get worse?”
“Not necessarily.”
“I wish I could believe you.”
Gwen started to reply but before she could, Wyatt’s eyes flew open, confused and unfocused. He looked at his mother and then at Daniel, peering at him as if seeing him for the first time. Then he smiled and said, “Dad, you’re here.”
Daniel answered, “Where else would I be?”
TWO
The vehicle blocking the driveway as I backed out of my garage was so conspicuously nondescript it could only be a plainclothes cop car. I rolled down the window, cut the engine, and waited. A short-haired woman in a pantsuit the same dull, dark gray as her car got out of the driver’s seat, followed a moment later by a buff young guy in a suit almost indistinguishable from hers. She approached my window. He stood a step behind her. The sunglasses hiding his eyes were a kid’s idea of intimidation.
“Henry Rios,” she not quite questioned.
“Who’s asking?”
“Doris Whitcombe. Special agent, FBI. My partner, John Colby.”
I glanced at him. “Trainee?” When neither responded, I asked, “What do you want?”
“The man who owns this house, Larry Ross, was involved in drug smuggling. We have reason to believe there are still drugs on the premises. We’d like to look around.”
Doris Whitcombe looked less like a cop than a high school science teacher— the sensible haircut; utilitarian clothes; plain, intelligent face; unthreatening voice. The feds didn’t go in for the stormtrooper bluster of LAPD, but behind their blankness was the same implied threat of menace.
“Larry Ross died six months ago. The drugs he allegedly smuggled were over-the-counter medications from Mexico to relieve the suffering of men infected with HIV. That’s not a violation of any federal statute I’m aware of.”
She
