Everything considered, the next month went pretty well for Danny, if not quite as exciting as his first weeks home, and the experience of the Redlite Ranch faded quickly in his mind up against the new realities of home and jobs.

Over the course of that month, he got pretty well up to speed on running Spearfish Lake Appliance again. Oh, there were a few things, especially on the paperwork side, that he’d be a long time figuring out, quarterly tax reports and the like, but that wasn’t a primary problem at this point. Over the same period, he spent a couple days a week on the switching runs, usually with Chris and Dave. He started to remember how he did some of those things, too, although it would be a long time before he was a brakeman as good as Dave was, better than he’d ever been in the past.

Along in the middle of the month, he’d helped when Josh and Phil took the dogs in the dog truck to the airport in Minneapolis. At one time there had been a discussion of a charter flight, but that proved to be on the expensive side, so now the dogs were all crated in shipping containers. There were eighteen in all – sixteen to start with and two spares, just in case something happened before the race started, along with a sled and considerable other gear. At that, a lot of stuff had already been shipped to Shelly at the beginning of the month, especially the food that was to be airlifted to the various backcountry checkpoints, and Danny had been a part of that mad day of packing food bags.

When Josh and Phil left, the dog sled racing season pretty well came to an end. There was one more major race they wanted to get to, the weekend afterward; Tiffany didn’t feel up to running it, but Candice was obviously up for it, so Tiffany drove the truck while Candice did the UP-200. Candice did well, another top-ten finish and Rookie of the Year.

Danny was in on the secret, since it had begun to develop as he drove the pickup on the way back from the Beargrease. There was little question in anyone’s mind that Candice had been bitten by the Iditarod bug – the problem was to get it past her husband, since that really was a pretty big one for him to swallow. But, they decided to throw it at John in phases. The first phase was actually pretty low-key, using Tiffany’s pregnancy as an excuse. Candice would fly to Alaska the week before the race, to help Josh and Phil get ready for the start, and, at least ostensibly, to learn her way around in case she had to do race support in a future year. After the race started, she would stay with Shelly while Josh flew home; she’d be there if Brandy was coming up, and could do the Nome end of the support if she didn’t.

They had gotten back to Spearfish Lake from the Beargrease late, but John came out to Josh and Tiffany’s to pick her and Danny up, after they unloaded the dogs. Tiffany was doing fine, other than still having some troubles with morning sickness. John was overjoyed to see his wife again, and was pleased to find out what had happened and how well she had finished. "Well, what next?" he laughed. "The Iditarod?"

"Yep," she said smugly, taking the opportunity of establishing it right at the beginning. He may have thought it was a tease, but soon found out about the upcoming support trip, and no, he really didn’t have much trouble with it, considering the circumstances with Tiffany and all. Little did he know what lay in his future, and his wife was planning on coming back from Alaska with a real serious Iditarod bug . . . Danny thought that was going to be interesting to watch over the next few months.

Candice was in the air on the last Saturday of February heading for Anchorage on what would have been a dream trip, even in support. At odd moments, Frenchy’s husband came to mind when Danny thought of John. Was there really that much difference? Well, dogs and racing instead of other men, sure, but it did give him some interesting thoughts . . .

Mostly Danny’s mind was on other things. The night before that Saturday, Bud and Jane got home late with the motor home. They unloaded a lot of their own stuff, and drove it over to Gil and Carrie’s house the next morning. Bud and Jane had spent a lot of time going over how to run the thing, what went where, and other care and feeding, and most of the afternoon Danny helped with packing and loading. The folks weren’t likely to leave before Monday, but it was easy to see that they were both anxious to start and at the same time just a little reluctant to take the big step. At least a new junior reporter had come on at the Record-Herald, so Carrie couldn’t use being shorthanded at the paper as a last-minute excuse to put the trip off again.

It was a little over a month since Jeremy had been born, and Carrie’s grandmothering instincts were kicking in bad. In fact, Danny suspected that Jennifer and Blake would be just as happy to see her gone for a while, for the sake of peace and quiet, which is why they had invited everybody over for a "going-away dinner" on Saturday night. A little to everyone’s surprise, Tara blew in at the last minute, looking pretty butch but not particularly Goth. Danny knew that she had been at a portrait sitting down in Camden and had been invited, but thought there would be little chance of her making it.

The women all said a bunch of womanly things about Jeremy, how cute he was, how he had his father’s eyes, while the men stood out in the kitchen, rolled their eyes and sipped at some of Blake’s excellent wine while he finished putting the dinner together.

The dinner was nothing less than excellent, of course; it was the only way Blake knew how to operate. There was some joking about the fact that Brandy had been eating dinner mostly with Danny and the folks or with Blake and Jennifer after Phil and Josh headed for Alaska. Now that the folks were leaving, Danny invited her to continue the practice. "After all," he said, "I may not be as good a cook as Blake, but at least I’m ahead of you in something."

"That’s it, rub it in," Brandy laughed. "Unlike Blake, I’m a specialist, and not good at everything."

All in all, it was a good dinner, with quite a bit of discussion of the things the folks planned to do; they were looking forward to it as something of a retirement test case, and everyone hoped it would go well.

After a while, Blake cleared away the dinner and served coffee. "With that out of the way," Jennifer said as she held Jeremy to her breast so he could work on his own dinner, "we have an announcement to make, and it’s not as happy as it might be."

"Something with Jeremy?" Carrie asked, alarmed.

"No, he’s fine," Jennifer smiled. "This is part of the reason I urged Tara to be here tonight, since I think we want the benefit of her insight. As you know, Blake and I have sources where we sometimes find out things before they go public. We want to warn you what is happening so it won’t come as a surprise and you can be prepared for any questions you might get."

"We’ve learned," Blake took over, "that sometime in the next couple of weeks, one of the trash tabloids, the National Tribune, will be running a story that I’m gay."

"But . . . " Brandy started, then stopped as Jennifer picked up again.

"As long as it stays in the Trib, it shouldn’t be any big deal," she explained. "Basically, you and we can handle it with a comment to the effect of ‘Come on, it was in the Trib, you’re going to believe that?’ However, if for some reason it gets beyond that, there are ramifications."

"Mostly," Blake added, "those ramifications come from the fact that I was gay when I started to work for Jennifer, and even when we planned our move here."

"You what?" Carrie said, wide-eyed.

"I’ve never told anyone but Blake and Mike about this," Jennifer explained. "But back in 1983, I received some very scary and obviously serious threats, serious in that I knew the sources and could believe that they were true. It was obvious that I needed a bodyguard. I was not the only woman in Hollywood in that position, and I don’t think you’d be surprised to hear that there are women, sometimes well-known women, who have been raped by their bodyguards. Or worse. That scared me, too, but for a number of reasons, I didn’t feel I could talk to anyone about it, especially to you, Mom and Dad. Things were just a little precarious. All of a sudden, it came to me that I’d worked with Blake when he did security on a fair tour earlier in the year, and I knew he was seriously gay from that. I thought it was a cute way around the problem." She let out a sigh, and continued. "Quite obviously, back in 1983, neither of us had any idea of what we were in for, but I think it safe to say that we’re both very satisfied with it."

"Phil and I knew about that part of it," Brandy nodded. "From when we met the two of you out in LA in ’86, that time. But you asked us to keep it quiet, and we did."

"You were still gay when you moved back here, Blake?" Tara asked.

"At the time I moved here, I considered myself bisexual," Blake explained. "I admit with a little bit of shame that I considered myself bisexual until relatively recently, until one day I realized that the word implies multiple partners. I only have one, it’s been that way for many years, and I have no desire to change. Tara, I’ve found it hard to give up labels like "gay" and "bi," since I once took them with serious pride. But that was long ago and far away, and I guess I have to admit that I’m a straight anymore. For the rest of you, I doubt that you’ll understand, but I’m sure Tara understands that it isn’t the easiest admission to make."

"Very much so," Tara smiled and shook her head. "I had a hard enough time admitting to ‘lesbian.’ I mean, I haven’t come very far out of the closet about that yet, not around here, anyway."

"If it’s any solace," Jennifer said, "when you told Brandy and me last spring, I was prepared to bring Blake in to help give you perspective, but the way you sprang it on us didn’t give me the chance. I was not going to blow him out of the closet without his foreknowledge. As it turned out, it was all right. But if you wondered why Brandy and I rallied to your side so easily, it was because we knew more about the issue than we could tell you at the time."

"It was a huge relief," Tara said. "I mean, I barely could get it out, and I figured there wasn’t much chance I would make it out of Spearfish Lake alive. I was really, really scared."

"But, I hope you learned that your family really, really loves you, in spite of everything," Carrie said. "I often wondered why you were so anxious to distance yourself from us, but that never really seriously crossed my mind."

"In any case," Blake told her, "you were an inspiration to us when this came up. After your example, and after Danny’s coming clean about what he did while he was a Nevada resident, we realized we couldn’t just ride this thing out and ignore it, at least among the family. We have to face up to facts."

Gil nodded his head. "It comes as something of a surprise, but answers a few questions I’ve always had, too. No big deal, though. Blake, your love and care for Jennifer have always been the strongest thing you’ve shown me, no matter how good you are at other things, too. What you may have been doesn’t matter up against what you are."

"Thanks, Gil," Blake nodded. "I’m glad you understand. Anyway, to the details. Basically, we’re just going to ride this out and hope it stays in the Trib. We are not going to make any public announcement confirming or denying anything, including the mere existence of that scandal rag. If it gets past that, you are all free to say what you want, but I suggest that you respond that it was news to you, if it was true it must have been long in the past, and refer the question to me."

"If it gets past that," Jennifer said very seriously, taking Blake by the hand as she held Jeremy with the other, "I intend to take the Tammy Wynette defense. In other words, I will stand by my man."

"I’m proud of you for being so honest," Gil said. "That takes guts."

"Thanks, Dad," Jennifer nodded. "We really appreciate your support. We decided that the inner family needs to know first, but in the next couple days, we will be telling the band members basically what we’ve told you. We’re going to have Randy and Nicole and Lex and Shovelhead over for dinner the first of the week, and we’re probably going to call Myleigh while they’re here. We’ve already decided we’re going to have to bring it to Garth and Michelle one on one to protect Tara."

"No," Tara said flatly.

"No?"

"Blake, if you have the guts to come out of the closet, I can’t stay in it," she replied firmly. "We will tell Garth and Michelle, even if it involves us all going down to Milwaukee. I’d rather have them know it and hate me for it than to cover it up any longer like I had to last month. What Marsha did to Danny was despicable, and I will not walk in her shoes any longer."

"Are you sure, Tara?" Carrie asked.

"Mom, I don’t exactly plan to take out an ad in the Record-Herald to announce it, but I will not deny it any longer, even in Spearfish Lake, and I’d be just as happy if that’s the tack everyone takes." She laughed, shot an evil smile at Blake, and continued, "I mean, somebody around here has got to maintain some gay pride."

*   *   *

All in all, Danny’s first weeks back in Spearfish Lake had gone pretty well. The pain of discovering Marsha and Sheena was starting to fade into the background a little; it was still there, but it wasn’t a constant agony anymore. His adventure – and he realized that was what it had been – at the Redlite Ranch was starting to fade, too, drifting off into a dreamlike past in the face of the realities of coming back home, renewing old friendships and making a couple of new ones. He was busy, too; working at the store was dull but he was picking up things he would need to know. The time on the railroad gave him enough activity of a different sort to not make it too dull, even though he knew that the long, slow trips on the rock trains would be dull indeed when they finally started running. The sum total was that he was busy enough, and was with friends and family enough, that he just didn’t have the time or inclination to brood very often, even though he recognized it lurking not far below the surface.

But things changed considerably after the taillights of the motor home disappeared down the street a couple days after the dinner at Jennifer and Blake’s. Most importantly, he didn’t have his folks around; the house was quiet and empty when he got home from a quiet and often empty store, and that cut his human contact to an alarming degree.

He’d known that it was going to seem lonely after they were gone, and it was. Josh was in Alaska, of course, and Candice was with him. He didn’t feel close enough with Tiffany to go see her for the sake of seeing someone, but he did call a couple of times, just to see if perhaps she needed help with anything, but she really didn’t. John and his boys were still doing the morning dog feedings when Tiffany didn’t feel up to it, and Tiffany and a high school kid did them in the evenings.

Danny had been going to most of the basketball games to support Brandy, and he saw John and the boys at several of them, but John was getting deeply into tax season now and couldn’t be real sociable beyond that, which Danny could understand perfectly. Brandy did come over to the house a few times for dinner, which Danny cooked, but that was a once-in-a-while thing since she was very wrapped up with teaching and basketball season, and mostly lived on sandwiches and TV dinners. The varsity basketball team wound up 14-6, which was pretty reasonable, if not exactly the Magnificent Seven, especially after an 0-20 season last year. Nobody, not even Brandy, had thought this team was going to Jones Arena in the state final eight, but they managed a share of the league title and stood a good shot at the regional championships. Danny just did his best to support her where he could and otherwise stay out of her way.

Jennifer and Blake were also aware that it was a lonely time for Danny, and they had him out to the house on several occasions, as well – but Danny was reluctant to intrude on them very much, for several reasons. While Jennifer was still warm and familial, there were several things that kept him a little distant, not the least of which was Jeremy. Danny recognized that this was a very special and touching time in their lives and he didn’t want his problems to intrude on them too much. Besides, the obvious closeness she had with Blake, along with Jeremy’s presence, touched Danny with more than a little envy. Even letting the fame and money go – and despite everything, it was still intimidating – what they had between the three of them was something that touched his heart deeply, and it hurt to not have something comparable.

The loneliness didn’t ease up a whole lot a couple days after the first weekend in March, when Josh returned from Alaska. Tiffany met him at the airport; Danny figured on seeing Josh out at the café for breakfast the next morning, to give an account of all of the adventures in Alaska – but he was nowhere to be seen for a couple days. Finally, Josh dropped by the store later in the week, full of stories – but along in the discussion admitted that it had been one of the more terrible experiences of his life. "I felt like such a shit leaving Tiffany here by herself," he admitted. "Danny, she and I have been friends going on fifteen years; we lived out of each other’s pockets most of that time, we’ve been married six years, and I’ve never missed her more than I did this time." He told Danny that he’d have to think long and hard before leaving her to go to Alaska to get Phil on the trail again – it would be even harder next year, with a new baby in the household. While Josh may have been an old friend, and his best one, Josh’s attention was turning more than ever to his wife; even the dogs and the railroad were in distinctly second place. Danny could do little but look on with envy and silently thank Marsha for driving Amy away from his old friend.

It wasn’t all lonely and boring and depressing, of course; interesting things did happen. The Saturday after the Iditarod started, Danny and John and his kids sat in the stands behind the coach’s bench down at Moffatt Eastern High School, for the regional finals. It was a see-saw battle from the opening buzzer, the quickness and ball-handling of the young Marlin squad against a bunch of bigger, more experienced but less finessed team from Blair. It was a battle royal down the to the last second, when a lucky Blair rebound under the net at the buzzer gave the opponents a one-point victory. The Marlins would not be going to Jones Arena this year – but the prospects for next year were excellent.

Once Danny’s heart rate – and everyone else’s in the gym – got back under control, Danny got down on the floor, and gave Brandy a big hug and offered his condolences. "I really have mixed emotions about it," she whispered in his ear. "I hate like hell to lose, but I can still make it to Nome. Can you take me to the airport tomorrow?" Sure enough, Brandy was in the air early the next morning, heading for the ice-covered shores of the Bering Sea – a little different spring break than the Caribbean frolic most people thought of for Spring Break.

Thousands of miles away, the Iditarod was progressing. Like a lot of people in Spearfish Lake, Danny followed the progress of the race on the Internet, both getting current standings off the race headquarters website and reading the stories online in the Anchorage Daily News. Phil was having a hell of a race – he had an even better team than the previous year, and had made all his rookie mistakes the year before as well. By Wednesday morning he was running eighth out of White Mountain, the next to the last checkpoint. A top-ten finish seemed assured, level with the best that Josh and Tiffany – actually Tiffany – had ever done. It wasn’t until afternoon that it was in the bag, and for the second time, Phil ran his team under the finish arch on Front Street in Nome. Presumably Brandy and Candice were watching, but there was no actual word.

Not ten minutes after the status change on the Iditarod Headquarters website, the phone in the store rang. It proved to be Blake. "You heard?" he asked.

"Eighth," Danny replied. "Nothing to sneeze at."

"Right," Blake grinned. "Finish party out here tonight at six, be there or be square. We’ll have a buffet and break out some wine."

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