“Well, the thing is, I think gay men put a greater emphasis on, I don’t know, sartorial matters.”

“It’s how I dress.”

“You are a bit rumpled, and you know, if you ever decide to update your wardrobe, I’d be happy to assist you. But for now, as a rabidly heterosexual female, I have decided to regard your lack of fashion sense as endearing. I’d love to talk about this more, but I have to get going. I’ve got a bunch of stuff to do at the office before I leave on this stupid retreat. Give me a kiss, you disheveled beast.”

I did as I was told. And she got in the car, backed down the narrow driveway, and disappeared down Crandall.

Chapter 7

7

Sometimes, I blame my father.

He worried about everything, and I imagine he still does. We don’t talk all that much since my mother died more than a decade ago, and he lives up in the mountains now, renting out a few lakeside cabins to fishermen, and presumably he moved up there because there would be less to worry about.

His obsessive nitpicking and general sense of impending doom were his gift to me, and from all accounts they are what led my mother to leave the family home for nearly six months when I was in my early teens.

We were the only family I knew of that had fire extinguishers on every floor, an escape route in case of fire taped to the back of bedroom doors. Dad had to be the one, every night, to make sure the doors were locked. You always ran cold water in the shower first, then added hot, to ensure against scalding. You put away as much money as you could every week because for sure you’d be fired the next.

We never had a fire. We never got burned in the shower. Dad was never laid off. He’d be the first to tell you his strategy has paid off.

And now I am the worrier. There is no stuff too small to sweat. My obsession with personal safety issues and protecting the members of my family has been a problem for a while, and has even backfired rather spectacularly. You might have heard about that.

It was the memories of my father that persuaded me to listen to Sarah and pay a visit to Harley, my smartass doctor, in a bid to get a handle on this aspect of my personality. But the thing was, the more I tried not to worry about things, the more things there were, landing on my doorstep, to worry about.