When Michael Knapp brings his lover Dan Biggs home to meet his parents, he doesn't expect things to go smoothly. His mother's been trying to marry him off for years, and sometimes he isn't even sure his father knows he exists. He has always felt like the shadow son, competing with his terminally stupid older brother and smart-mouthed little sister for his parents' attention. Coming out to them over dinner seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally get noticed.<br><br>But an unexpected phone call interrupts his announcement -- Aunt Evie, the family matriarch, is dead. With Dan in tow, Michael follows his family to Sugar Creek, where he spent his summers growing up, to prepare for the funeral.<br><br>Amid an overabundance of memories and relatives, Michael's world begins to slip. His dysfunctional family, Evie's death, and an old friend's confession all threaten to smother him. Worse, in his grief and confusion he seems determined to inadvertently push everyone away, including his lover. Can he and Dan move beyond his family and his past to a new life together, before Michael's insecurities tear them apart?

It's All Relative

No, I’m not ready to forgive yet. But not Dan—myself.


The boxes I’ve filled are still by the door to the back room. One by one I carry them through the kitchen and down the hall, out onto the front porch where other boxes have been stacked into pyramids waiting to be hauled away. Oversized bags full of old clothes and bedding hem in the piles like sandbags to hold back a rising tide, and kids crawl over everything, scavengers digging for treasure in all this trash. Most of them are my cousins but a few I’m not so sure about—Sugar Creek is small enough that the news of Aunt Evie’s passing has spread like wildfire, and some of the children going through the boxes of books and toys are definitely no relation to us. I have half a mind to shoo them away, but I suspect they’ll just run out of reach, hover around like gulls until I disappear inside, then circle back again for more. The only thing that keeps me quiet is the thought that Evie would have let them stay.


Chapter 86