Two years ago, Chris and his boyfriend left the city to settle in a small town at the US-Canada border. Eager to start a new life, Chris bought the Frontier Café, but a year later, his boyfriend dumped him, leaving Chris the only openly gay man in town. Nowadays he's resigned to a life of romantic solitude.<br><br>Hank spent the last years traveling through the country for his job as a water plant engineer. Deeply closeted, he's careful about the men he meets. Like the rivers he studies, he runs fast through the land.<br><br>In town only for a few weeks, Hank is intent on getting the job done and returning home out west to take care of his father. But Chris’s warm manner and decadent desserts are no match for Hank’s defense mechanisms. For the first time in his life, he finds himself wanting to go with the flow.

No River Wide Enough

We were quiet for a while and I thought of how little I knew about father/son relationships. I’d made my way alone in this world, an orphan for so long, I couldn’t truly understand how complex and central Hank’s rapport to his old man was. There was something I needed to clarify. “He seems in pretty decent shape,” I said. “He couldn’t live alone?” I hoped I wasn’t stepping into a snake pit by bringing another sensitive subject up.


“No, he could. Yeah. Problem is, he won’t. Every time he’s been on his own since my mother left him, he’s done nothing but sabotage his life. He had this great little place out by the park, nice community and all, and he just—he drinks too much. Doesn’t cook for himself. Doesn’t pay his bills. So he finds a woman to seduce and he usually gets his way, too.”


“He’s a good-looking man. Sort of charming in a rough way.”


Chapter 68