When his snobbish future in-laws travel all the way from Boston to visit, wise-cracking Southerner Wiley Cantrell learns gay marriage is not without its disadvantages. He’s preoccupied by concerns over the health of his special needs son Noah, a meth baby who was not expected to live yet is now on the cusp of puberty, and the antics of Wiley's outrageous would-be mother-in-law and severely conservative father-in-law strain his relationship with Jackson Ledbetter, a pediatric nurse who poses problems of his own. As their respective families meet and greet, each just as meddlesome and inflexible as the other, North meets South and the fireworks and cultural misunderstandings are plenty.<br><br>Then a tornado blows through the small Mississippi town where Wiley's mother lives, wrecking his mother's house and leaving their lives in disarray. And Jackson's secret drug addiction comes to light, devastating Wiley and Noah. With so many stones in the road, Wiley and Jackson find their dream of becoming a real family falling apart. Though Wiley relies on humor to cope, he'll need something more to keep his happily ever after from slipping away.

Stones in the Road

Mama asked me what was wrong, why I couldn’t sit down properly, why I did nothing but lay on my bed in a state of pain and befuddled bewilderment, and I had told her what Father Michael did, even though I had promised him I wouldn’t breathe a word of it. I was twelve, didn’t have the proper vocabulary, so I had told her that Father Michael had “made love” to me. That’s how I thought of it at the time, that we’d “made love.” It would not have occurred to me to think I had been raped or ill-used, or that Father Michael had not acted out of the love he professed for me. He’d done it, not once, not twice, but three times—the last just minutes before we packed up and left the hotel room. My poor little anus had been on fire the whole way from Jackson to New Albany, but I had tried not to squirm around in my seat because it made Father Michael mad.


Chapter 102