Chapter Twelve

Just as he'd told Elijah he would be, Alex is careful to stay quiet in the morning, though he's not sure how late Elijah will actually sleep when neither of them is used to whatever the hell they're doing now. He takes a quick shower and gets dressed in the bathroom before he gives Elijah one last glance and slips out of the bedroom. In the kitchen, he considers leaving notes or instructions or something, but realizes Elijah's perfectly capable of making coffee and grabbing whatever else he might want before he goes. After another few minutes, Alex finishes up his own quick breakfast and then packs up for the office, going in earlier than usual with the hope that he can leave early, too.

The sooner he can wrap up his day, the sooner he and Elijah can get back to the Poe collection.

Whether what they find there will make Elijah feel better or worse is anyone's guess.

But the day goes by faster than Alex might have expected after he receives a good morning text from Elijah and they enjoy a flirtatious back and forth from there. He daydreams through a meeting Steven was too optimistic about scheduling, nobody on the team prepared to accomplish anything of substance during a holiday week, and then there"s some kind of impromptu potluck in the office break room when everyone orders too much food for lunch. There's a little more work to do at the office in the afternoon, but plenty Alex can finish at home, so he says goodbye to everyone when it seems professionally acceptable to do so, and he hurries to his car.

He didn't figure Elijah would still be hanging out at his house, but somehow Alex is disappointed that the familiar truck isn't parked along the curb.

The disappointment is gone twenty minutes later, when Elijah calls.

"Good timing," Alex says, in lieu of a hello. "Just got back from the office."

"Still have some work to do now?"

"Some, yeah. But you can come over whenever," he tells Elijah, such an easy thing to say even as his cheeks grow warm. "I mean, if we're still on for tonight."

"Yeah, we are, but is it okay if I just grab dinner for us on the way? I think I'd rather have something quick so we can get started a little earlier."

Alex hums. "You want to get through the rest of the stuff tonight."

"I just—" Elijah sighs. "After last night, I'm not sure I'm gonna want to stop reading once we start. Unless you'd rather—"

"No, no," Alex interrupts. "A quick dinner is fine, and reading through everything tonight is fine. I ate a lot at lunch though, so pick whatever you want."

"What if whatever I want isn't something you actually like?"

"I'm pretty confident you can figure out what I like," Alex says, his voice lower than he expects it to be when he quietly ribs Elijah.

In response, he's treated to a few moments of relative silence, and Alex wonders whether Elijah is trying to decide how much he can push, even if Alex thinks the limit is further away than either of them has imagined. In the end, it's easy to hear Elijah's smile, and the sound only settles Alex that much more.

"We're talking about dinner."

"Okay."

"Okay," Elijah echoes, his next breath loud but steady. "Raw onions are a no, grilled onions are fine. Ranch for dipping if there's anything to be dipped. Hold the lettuce on most things, but you'll eat a salad if I go that route. Anything involving a form of bread with some cheese is a safe choice. Add avocado or guac anytime it's offered with anything. Mushrooms are good as long as they're not huge and slimy. If I get fries, I should also get some for you or you'll just steal some to pay me back for when I did that to you at the bar. Pesto or any cream sauce over red. Burritos over tacos. White over wheat, but sourdough is usually better. Pizza is always okay, even though you already have it every other week with Elena. Sushi is a tricky one, and I'm not gonna guess either way, but other than that, how'd I do?"

"Shut up," Alex growls. "You already know."

"Maybe. So, I'll see you later?"

"Yeah. And you can plan to stay again if you want, unless Nora can't—or you'd rather—"

Elijah's abrupt laugh interrupts Alex. "You can shut up, too. I'll definitely plan to stay again."

He arrives a couple of hours later with a duffel bag and dinner, and they allow themselves a minute to kiss each other senseless before they catch their breaths and focus on the rest, Alex grabbing the soda Elijah's requested before joining him at the dining room table. They'd probably eat at the coffee table and get started on the next handful of letters and cards, but Alex thinks they're both a little paranoid about possibly spilling on anything in the book, so they sit down with their burritos, chips, and guacamole, and they relax for however long they take to finish without making their stomachs hurt in the process.

When they settle next to each other on the couch, they open the box and Alex reaches for the batch of things they'd read the night before, setting that pile aside so they can focus on the rest. There's a lot, and he doesn't know whether they'll make it through everything—it will probably depend on whether Elijah needs some breaks in between—but they're absolutely ready to try.

"Hey," Alex says, twisting toward Elijah to kiss him for just a moment. "Whatever we find out, we're okay, but if you need time to be not okay, just tell me. You can be alone, or I can be with you, and you can be quiet, or we can talk about it. I—just tell me. I want you to tell me."

There's a crease between Elijah's brows, and Alex reaches up to smooth it as Elijah sighs. "I don't want to be alone. And if I—I don't want you to let me be alone. Not tonight."

"Okay," Alex promises.

They get started then, having left off on such a hopeful note after Annie's pregnancy announcement, but bracing themselves for whatever happened between then and the vague childhood memory Elijah has of San Diego. Everything remains somewhat spread apart, the written communication more of an indulgence than a necessity for them, though there's a flurry of activity when baby Laura Rose Thornton, Elijah's mother, is born. There's a birth announcement and a couple of pictures and a card in which Peter writes to Edgar that Laura is "today and always, your granddaughter, too."

Elijah shakes his head, then picks up another small card.

Oh, Peter, however brave you've always told me I am, I often think I'm a little crazy too, but I've seen the way you've bloomed while surrounded by the love of our family, and I only want more. I always seem to want more. So, when you talk of other men like us, people who understand and might even welcome us to meet with them outside your home, of course I want to know them. I have never pushed you, and I never would, but if you're ready, so am I. ~Edgar

"They wanted friends," Elijah whispers. "They finally felt like they had family, so they wanted friends."

"Makes sense, doesn't it?"

"After being so isolated in those first several years, yeah. Do you think they were actually living together yet?"

Alex looks down at the letter he's just picked up. "Nope."

Edgar, darling, I'm writing now because we aren't talking the way we should. The way we usually do. We fought last night, and you went back to your house and left me feeling so alone in mine. I would say it's times like these that I wish you had already moved in with me, except that I've felt that way for years and I don't understand why you're still not here with me. At home.

(I do know. It's because I haven't told you how much I need you to stay.)

So, please, before we talk more about meeting with others. Before we talk about the places we might be welcomed, bars at which we might be able to sit close together. Before we talk about finding these small pockets of comfort in a world that feels suffocating more than a place that might allow us to breathe freely. Before we do anything of the sort, please stay and be mine every night and every morning and whatever waking moments we have in between. My neighbors have turned their heads for long enough, careful not to concern themselves with your visits, and I'm certain they'll continue to keep their eyes averted if you're here every day. So again, please. Stay.

Forever.

It would be so good.

Stay.

Elijah rubs his hands against his thighs, shaking. "All of this is ‘so good,' really—other than the fact that they fought, obviously—but it feels like it's—I don't know. I can't tell whether it's better or worse that we already know they were never comfortably out."

"I think it's probably better," Alex says. "It hurts, but at least we're braced for it."

There are some birthday and holiday cards from James, Annie, and little Laura, and a couple of pictures, too, Peter and Edgar still standing apart, almost painfully so. Lost in the sight of them for a moment, it takes Alex another breath or two to realize that they're posed in front of a home just a few streets away from where they're sitting now, at least one chapter of this tender family story unfolding in the same place he first met Elijah. He isn't sure why he hadn"t considered it before, or asked Elijah where his mom had grown up, but when his heart kicks at his chest and he shakes his head as though it might help, Elijah seems to understand.

Of course he does.

"Yeah, Peter and Edgar visited my grandpa's house."

"They were right there." Alex shakes his head one more time before they move on. Letters and cards suggest Edgar did move in with Peter sometime after the invitation to do so, and there's ongoing mention of meetings with others in the area, Alex torn about whether he wants to know any more about the danger that might have put them in. But then they stumble upon it all, their state's history of arrests and riots and raids and demonstrations, so much hate in response to so much love, and violence an unsurprising consequence of all that hurt.

They look at each other, Elijah clearing his throat first. "They didn't get involved, though. These things were happening around them, but they were still so careful."

"Beginning to risk an occasional dinner at someone else's home, but nothing more. At least not yet."

"Not yet," Elijah echoes, nervous as he catches his breath. "You don't think my grandparents cut them off, do you? If maybe they started to participate more? If they began to take bigger risks?"

Alex reaches over to squeeze Elijah's hand, then gets up to make some hot cocoa for them, continuing the conversation from the kitchen. "Why would they do that, though? Especially after being supportive since way before it was clear there was a larger gay community starting to make some noise."

"Maybe it got to be too much once they had my mom to protect, too."

"Okay, yeah, I guess I see your point, but as of now, they're still including them in family celebrations, and your mom's little scribbled name is on their cards."

"Yeah, but she was still young and just barely reaching an age where she'd remember more details about them—she would've been seven, then turning eight throughout this stretch. And she certainly wouldn't have known enough to clock that they were different before that, especially if the whole family was calling him Uncle Edgar, the same way I heard about him later," Elijah points out. "So maybe my great grandfather and Uncle Edgar started feeling free to get more involved with the community around them, and my grandparents got scared about how it might affect the family as my mom got older."

"What about your grandpa's birthday party in San Diego?" Alex asks, stirring the packets of chocolate powder into the milk he's just heated in the microwave. Nothing about it is fancy, but it'll do for tonight, and he tosses the spoon into the sink when he's done, Elijah still piecing the story together.

"Maybe a late attempt to mend fences before my great grandfather died?"

Alex returns with the two mugs, and they sit far enough away from everything to be confident that they won't spill on anything that matters, but Alex only takes a quick sip before he tips his head toward Elijah.

"I don't think you're necessarily wrong about anything, and I guess we'll find out soon enough, but you knew your grandparents pretty well. Do you really think it's a decision they would have made?"

Elijah eyes him carefully. "You're a father. Would you cut off any of your family to protect your kid?"

And yeah, he absolutely would, though he doesn't bother to say that out loud because he can tell Elijah knew the answer before he asked the question. Alex turns to set his mug down on an end table, Elijah doing the same on his side a minute later, and they look through another half dozen smaller things before they get the beginning of their answer, so close to what Elijah was guessing, and somehow not at all what they expected.

My dear sweet Peter, you are the love of my life and I have never been as sorry for that as I am now. All these years I've sought a way for us to fight for a place in this world, and I stupidly thought we might have found such a small, safe way we could do exactly that. I was wrong.

I will document every error here because I deserve no less.

Helping our community organize and strengthen through passed messages and clandestine meetings brought me back to those days in your office and all the nights we spent pressed up against old warehouse walls. All the years when we'd had nothing but each other felt like they'd led us to a time when we could help others have so much more. Honestly, I think you felt it too, but I'll take all the blame for us both. I should've known one day I'd push too far.

Spending time with your family has meant the world to me, too. The way James has never once hated me when it would've been so easy for him to do just that. Annie, sweeping into his life and then tumbling into ours, her laughter brighter than a thousand suns. And then beautiful Laura. My little rose petal. I've always loved her like she was my own, and then I watched the confusion in her eyes and hurt I couldn't chase away when you were gone, and I will never forgive myself for that.

It was supposed to be so easy, a favor done under the midday sun. Lunch with Laura, and the promise of ice cream after. Maybe even a walk in the park. A little girl out with her grandfather and uncle, just as she had been plenty of times before, but this time, unlike all those others, her grandfather slipped away to speak to the owner of a bar only minutes away. Her grandfather, then unable to return to their table.

I knew in my heart something was wrong before you could even be considered late. There was a chill in the air and a tightening in my chest, and I smiled for her because there was nothing else to do, but I knew. My darling, I knew.

It's been a few days now, and while it's been a reality for far too many of our friends, I still can't believe you were arrested in a raid, however small. I can't believe it was only your ability to trade decades of goodwill, an unimaginable amount of money, and the career you loved so much that has allowed you to be close to me now.

Why are you close to me now?

I know why, because it is the same reason I can't leave you, but there is something I can do. There's something we can do. We can apologize to your family and thank them for all they've done for us, and then we can move away. We should move away. We can live our lives as we have chosen, but we should do it alone. Maybe we can find others somewhere new, but it should always be people who are taking the same risks for all the same reasons. Our loved ones should never have to suffer because we made the choice to be selfish.

Please, Peter.

I love you too much to know how to do this any other way.

Yours, Edgar

Alex doesn't know how Elijah made it through the entire letter without breaking in two, but Alex watches him crumple now and is gentle when he pulls the letter from Elijah's hand. There's nothing to say, not right now, so he only pulls Elijah into him and wraps them up together while they absorb this latest chapter.

Maybe the most important one.

Because that had been the missing piece, the answer to their biggest questions. After all those small steps forward, however quietly brave they might have been, Peter and Edgar had to have had a reason for ending up where they did, away from the family with a once open secret locked up tight again. And it was Edgar who pulled them back into the darkness after wanting the world to see them for so damn long.

Alex has to admit he hadn't seen that one coming.

There's still more to read, of course, and Alex thinks they'll get back to that soon, but Elijah's breath is still ragged, and as much as Elijah has promised to be patient with Alex upstairs, Alex will be at least as patient here. The hot cocoa becomes cold, but they barely move.

When Elijah finally does, Alex starts to untangle them. "Talk, read, or sleep?"

Anything else seems close to impossible.

"Would you have done the same thing? Would you have wanted to leave everything behind?"

Alex thinks about it for a second, then he nods. "I'm not sure it's a whole lot different from what you asked me before, about whether I'd cut off my family to protect my kid. Edgar just did it the other way around—suggesting that they cut themselves off—but the motivation was essentially the same."

"Protecting my mom," Elijah huffs.

"And in this case, it was definitely to protect your grandparents too, but yeah. He'd already begun to cut himself off when he wrote the letter."

"What do you mean?"

Alex shrugs. "Edgar had called them ‘our family' before, but in that letter—"

"He used ‘your family' instead."

"I don't think he ever stopped loving them, but I'm sure he wished he could."

Elijah groans. "And somehow we all ended up together almost 30 years later, assuming my memory's legit."

"I'm gonna guess it is," Alex says. "I don't think this broke them up, I just think it was the reason everything changed."

"Only one way to find out."

They turn back to the box, and while there's no direct response to Edgar's plea, they do find a note written by Peter after he's broken the news to James, telling his son that they've decided to move to San Diego, and that it will be better for everyone if they keep some distance between them for a while, the world unsafe for people like them, and maybe for anyone who dares to love them anyway.

Tear stains on the paper make Alex certain James reread the note more than was probably good for him.

But James must have agreed, or maybe Annie convinced him it was okay to let them go, or maybe Edgar and Peter just refused to leave it up for debate at all, because it becomes clear when they've left, setting up a whole new life for themselves without family close enough to help them rebuild.

"This picture, the one that caught our eye before," Alex says, holding it up now as they marvel again at whatever secret is being shared between the two men. "It's from after they moved, so your grandpa probably didn't take it."

"Guess they did find new friends," Elijah mumbles.

Alex looks at him carefully. "You're upset about that."

"I—maybe? I don't know if that's the right word."

"Do you want time to think of a better one?" Alex asks.

"It's just messy. All of it." Elijah shakes his head and takes a deep breath. "I get why they had to hide in those early days, and I get why they were so careful as they let more people in. I get that they thought they had to take all those same steps backward after my great grandfather was arrested. It scared the shit out of them, having my mom that close when it happened, and knowing it could be even worse the next time would have been terrifying. But I hate it. I hate it because it wasn't just the two of them anymore. They had a family, and whatever else we read now, we already know it was never the same again after they left."

"The whole world was kind of a mess those days," Alex says, though he doesn't even know what point he's trying to make.

"Sure, and other people stood up and fought and weren't lucky enough to have anyone to support them through it. My great grandfather and Uncle Edgar ran away from their support. They could've had it all."

"They could have, but maybe that wasn't such an easy thing to believe back then. I'm not sure it's easy to believe now."

Elijah absentmindedly rubs a hand over his stubbled jaw. "We have to believe it. What else is there?"

Alex doesn't answer, mostly because he doesn't have one, but he aches anyway. "We've already agreed, at least a couple of times now, that the quiet ones weren't cowards—just victims. You haven't changed your mind about that, have you?"

"No, but now we know that their decision to be quiet made my grandparents and my mom victims, too."

"And you."

Elijah's eyes flare with something both indignant and weary. "Me?"

"You lost out on being part of their story, too. And that hurts you."

The flare dies when Elijah blinks and looks away for nearly a minute.

"Okay, so now what?"

Alex nods toward the coffee table. "Now we read the rest of it, and you try to remember what you told me before—that there aren't any good guys or bad guys here. Everybody made the decisions they thought were right at the time. I married Cassidy, and Peter and Edgar ran away, and your grandpa never told you about them, and you sold me some books at a garage sale one morning, and maybe some of that was a mistake and maybe some of it wasn't. The problem with anybody's story is that you don't often know the end at the beginning."

"So, we just keep reading."

"We just keep reading."

The written birthday and holiday greetings seem to stop after that, though it becomes clear that James never fully let go, visiting them each year on his birthday. Alex looks down at the paper he holds.

Edgar, my love, I know we put up such a fight about these visits from James each year, but I'm so glad he uses his birthday as a reason to force our hand, asking for something from us on the one day we can't help but agree to give it. These days are always a chance to remember what we had and what could someday be again, if only the world dares to turn upside down. He still doesn't understand why we had to leave, but he continues to respect our wishes. He has always and will forever.

Laura hasn't asked about us in a while, and Annie no longer cries. But James. Oh, James. I hope he never stops spending his birthday at our side, and I know how selfish I am for taking it away from anyone else, but it's all we have. It might be all we ever have.

Peter

Elijah just nods, and they move on, even though there's not much more to see. Newspaper clippings about progress made by, and plenty of harm done to, the gay community. A couple of pictures. Small notes. Collected bits of what seems to have been an increasingly lonely life, even the new friends they'd made seemingly kept at a safe distance, whatever risk Peter and Edgar had thought they were willing to take when they moved to San Diego quieting over the years and leaving them at home with only each other more often than not.

Always in each other's arms because they had nowhere else to go.

Alex hadn't expected them to find wedding bands in the box, but they're in there too, identically simple, and saved in an envelope with vows written to each other for a wedding nobody else would attend. One that wasn't yet legal but must have served as a secret act of resistance, as though their whole lives hadn't already been so much of that. Maybe it was pointless, or maybe nothing like that ever could be, and Alex just wants to cry.

But the first decade passes, then another, and it's clear from the handwriting alone that Peter is so much older now, each shaky word on the page leaving something raw to rattle in Alex's chest. Elijah had said Edgar was a lot younger, and maybe that's obvious too, a little more energy in everything he has to say. And just a little bit of the fight he'd left behind a while ago. They breeze past the births of Elijah's brother and sister, then through the year Alex was born, and then they pass Elijah's birthday too, one celebrated in a note from Edgar, and maybe just enough to finally change his mind.

Peter, we should go see them. All of them.

I know I'm the one who did this, the one who took you away from your family, and I will carry all the blame for that for the rest of my life, and likely for so many years after you're gone. But there are three of them now, three great grandchildren you should be able to hold, and while I wouldn't have been surprised to find that James and Annie don't want us anywhere near, James has never stopped inviting you home. Inviting us home, really, though why he continues to love me, I will never understand.

So, please, let's go see them, so your youngest great grandchild can rest in your arms. If only for an afternoon, let's be a family again. Let's remember something good. We deserve something good.

Edgar

"He held me when I was a baby?" Elijah whispers, tears clinging to his jaw until their stubbornness loses out to gravity and they fall into his lap.

"Here," Alex rasps, holding up a picture they must have missed on their first quick run through the box.

An elderly man, maybe around 80, with Elijah's same curls, even if they're thin and gray, and Elijah's same broad shoulders, even if they're curved forward now, both age and the innate desire to protect a baby curling his entire body around a much smaller one. The baby is looking up at him with blue eyes, a gummy smile, and the kind of peace little ones can offer better than anyone else on the planet.

"Oh my god."

Alex leaves him with the picture for a few minutes, breaking his earlier promise just long enough for Elijah to have this moment alone, and taking their mugs back into the kitchen to wash them far more thoroughly than is probably necessary. But then he returns to sit close to Elijah again, and he holds his hand while he sorts through the last handful of things left in the box, and Elijah clings to the picture.

"There's not much after that."

Elijah's voice is barely there. "Don't need anything else right now. I want—can we go to bed? We don't—it doesn't have to be anything else, just—I want to sleep. I'm so tired and I just want to sleep."

"Of course," Alex says, careful when he lets Elijah go, and maybe even more so when he picks up the piles and puts everything back in order, the lid back on the box when he's done.

After that, he locks up and turns off the lights while Elijah grabs his duffel bag, and then they head upstairs together, most of the comfortable desire between them replaced by emotional exhaustion tonight. Alex lets Elijah duck into the bathroom first and he uses the time to get changed, Elijah doing the same when they trade places. And once they're in bed together, Alex only leans in for a single kiss, almost too innocently, before Elijah closes his eyes.

Anything else Alex might have said will have to wait, pushed aside by years and years of grief.