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

The kitchen table has been cleared of the take-out boxes and soy sauce packets, napkins, chopsticks, all the paraphernalia of dinner last night. A few crushed beer cans top an overflowing trashcan, set in front of the back door as a blatant reminder for whoever heads that way to take the garbage out with them. On the counter by the sink, still sitting on a bed of newsprint, is Caitlin’s pumpkin, lit only with the light from the window behind it. Shadows inside the hollowed-out gourd seem to move as I walk by, making the chiseled leer appear to widen, the carved eyes follow my steps. It doesn’t know me—the thought comes unbidden to my mind, drawn from some primal well deep inside. Something I read years ago comes back, one of the reasons for dressing up in costumes for Halloween, to confuse the spirits of the dead still wandering the earth. I’m dressed in Dan’s clothes right now, it won’t know who I am, it can’t get me, I’m safe.


Chapter 153