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“Emmett. He’s seven. He pointed you out one evening when I took him for ice cream. He said you encouraged him to think outside in a box.”

Clark cackled. “Kids. Gotta love ’em. How’s he doing?”

“Okay. He’s back home.”

“He misses you.” A statement, not a question.

“The feeling is mutual. I think he misses Wood Hollow in general.”

“It’s a special place. You know, I’ve never lived anywhere else. My kids and Rose worry about me getting lost on my walks, but I could hike around the whole damn lake blindfolded,” he huffed, reaching for the rooftop piece. “In my day, we’d climb all over the forest in summertime and camp under the stars at night. I remember the year I turned fifteen and…”

Clark launched into a funny story involving a torn tent, a hungry bear, and an unattended open cooler. His delivery was sharp, witty, and descriptive. The bear hadn’t just been hungry, it had been ravenous and vicious with it. The cooler had been packed with turkey sandwiches with fresh bread from Henderson’s Bakery in Elmwood. The damn bear ate every crumb, including the wax paper they’d been wrapped in.

We worked on our respective projects while he spun more tales from his youth.

Did I know that Clark had met his wife in high school? Beautiful Rose Robertson, the mayor’s daughter. Did I know he’d almost lost her to Dick Jennings, captain of the football team and town asshole? Dick the Prick. Her parents had tried to sway her to marry sensibly.

“Dick’s family had money, and everyone knew I was gonna be a cop. Love won in the end.”

“That’s nice,” I commented.

“Did you know Reg met his wife in high school, too?”

“Uh…no, I didn’t,” I admitted, pushing my finished birdhouse to the middle of the table. I wasn’t sure I wanted information about Reg’s ex from his father. That kind of personal info exceeded the boundaries of casual hookups.

But Clark didn’t know the rules and seemingly thought Reg and I were a serious item. That alone was cause for alarm.

“Jessica was a good girl, nice family…sort of like Rose, but not quite. I knew she wasn’t the one.”

“I don’t think we should be discussing⁠—”

“Rose knew first. Mother’s intuition. I wanted to believe he was happy. Hell, he had it all—a pretty wife, two beautiful kids, a nice house, and a steady living. Then—boom, it was kaput overnight. She waltzed out, and Reg wasn’t bothered in the slightest. If anything, he was relieved.”

“Clark, your son’s business is his⁠—”

“We still don’t know what happened. Reg came out soon after. Told me he liked women and men. That’s not why they divorced. I’m sure of it. But I’ll tell you what…I couldn’t get my head around the idea of the bisexual stuff.” He squinted as he fitted the chimney on the roof. “I think I said some bad things. Did you know that Reg waited till I’d retired to tell folks in town? Not everyone knows. I think he does that on purpose. He didn’t want to embarrass me. Terrible, isn’t it?”

“Which part? That he’s bi or that he feels the need to protect you?” The second option pissed me off.

I should have changed the subject, but coming out was a hot topic for me. Failing memory or not, I was bummed on Reg’s behalf that his dad had basically confessed to being a jerk. Not that I hadn’t caught on.

Clark met my gaze. “I don’t care that he’s bi.”

“But you did?” Asshole.

“At first. Yes. I was angry. It felt like he’d duped us, lied to us to keep a dirty secret that would shame his mother and his children, and me.”

“Christ, that’s really awful,” I huffed through a clenched jaw.

“Once the words are out, there’s no getting them back. I sat with my thoughts for a while, mulled over Reg’s confession and my reaction. I’m a stubborn man, but I’m not a fool. I love my son. And they say you can love the sinner and hate the sin, right?” He shoved a piece of sandpaper at me before I could argue. “But where’s the sin? The more I thought about it, the harder it was to be logical about being angry. We were conditioned to be suspicious of queer activity in my day. That was what we called it too—‘queer activity.’ There were no rainbow flags on Main Street here in the seventies and eighties. Or nineties. That came later. We didn’t like it. Most of us old-timers had grown up thinking it was a symbol of perversion. But maybe that was the story we’d been fed. Truth is…it’s not my business. Rose says love is love, and she’s right.”

“Does Reg know you feel that way now?”

The old man shrugged. “Don’t know. What do you think of this? Not bad, eh?”

I gave a thumbs-up at the completed birdhouse and opened my mouth to return to the previous topic, but Clark had moved on.

He meandered around the garage, commenting on my tools and the state of the yellowing melamine storage cabinets. The tools were satisfactory, the cabinets were disgusting…and could he see the deck? Clark bet his pension check that it was in a state of horrid disrepair or as he put it, “pure shit.”