“It was something Waldo said about the old movie I was watching when they came to the door. I don’t remember what, exactly, but he made me laugh, so I let them see the place. I watched them as they looked around, whispering and giggling, and I thought, Peg, they’re just boys. No horns or tails. And I remembered what Father Toby said. Welcome the strangers. So, I rented to them.”

“How did Bill Ryan come to own the building?”

“After he got his real estate business going strong, I told him I couldn’t keep up with the property taxes that kept rising and rising and asked him to sell the place for me. He offered to buy it and let me stay in the apartment rent-free for the rest of my life. Wrote it into our contract.”

“That was generous of him.”

Her eyes misted and it was a moment before she spoke. “Bill Ryan had his troubles, but he was a good man.”

“What kind of troubles, Peg?” I ventured.

“Waldo told me Bill’s family threw him out for being gay when he was only eighteen. Gave him a bit of money and told him to get lost.” She glanced at the flag on the opposite wall. “What kind of people throw away their child?”

“Unfortunately, that’s not an unusual story.”

She gave me a sharp, shrewd look. “That doesn’t make it right. I don’t think Bill ever got over it.”

“I don’t imagine he did,” I said, thinking about all the other refugees from disapproving families wandering around the neighborhood. “What else can you tell me about him?”

She smiled. “Well, Waldo would come downstairs to watch old movies with me and make me laugh with his comments but Bill, he made sure the rent was paid and the plumbing worked.”

“He was responsible.”

“Very,” she said. “Bill was a regular man, not like the other gays flitting from boy to boy like butterflies going from flower to flower. He was what we used to call the marrying kind. I know he was happy when he found Nick.”

“When was that?”

“It was after Waldo moved out,” she said. “After Bill took this old dump and made it beautiful.”

“The restoration was Bill’s idea?”

She nodded. “Back in the fifties, my husband covered the house with vinyl siding and painted it gray to save on the upkeep. When Bill bought the place from me, he took down the siding and went to work putting it back the way it was when it was first built. Spent a fortune. Why? I asked him. It’s just somewhere to live.”

“What did he say?”