Years have gone by since the death of Noah his special needs son, and Wiley Cantrell realizes it’s time to move on. He and his husband Jackson try to adopt little Tony Gorzola, a deaf boy with HIV who is emotionally traumatized.<br><br>Difficulties quickly set in. Tony is a sweet boy but very damaged by abuse and neglect. And Tony’s mother, in prison, is unwilling to relinquish her parental rights. No sooner do they get the go ahead to foster Tony when another child they had considered becomes available -- the daughter Jackson always wanted.<br><br>With two children on their hands, life is complicated -- wonderfully so. But just as things begin to settle down, Tony, his immune system compromised, falls ill with pneumonia ... and Wiley and Jackson find their little family faced with crisis once again.

Go Tell It on the Mountains

I had been taken with him. Of course I had been. Like every child we’d met, I would have adopted him on the spot and taken him home. I did not care about the HIV, the accident, the fire, his scar tissue, the skin grafts he would need and continue to need, his mother the convicted drug dealer. I did not care that he had a problem with continence, that he would wet the bed or shit his pants at the most inappropriate times. I just wanted to take him in my arms and do some loving on him and show him that everything was going to be fine.


“You’re the only couple who’s ever asked to see him,” Heather said. “I don’t think he knows how to process it. He’s scared.”


Chapter 4