by KG MacGregor
Their walk ended in a corner office in the admin wing with an impressive view of the courthouse dome. To one side was a sitting area right out of Southern Living.
“Please have a seat.” Justine steered her toward the floral sofa and offered a choice of flavored coffee pods. “I don’t usually get involved with patient care, seeing as how my job is administrative, but Carly and JT insisted I step in and help bring you up to speed. Just don’t take my word on anything when it comes to medical questions. My BA in English lit only gets us so far.”
As Justine prepared her coffee, Britt scanned a row of framed photos on the credenza, including a snapshot of Justine and another woman with short graying hair and a smile that warned not to take anything she said too seriously. “Is that your wife?”
“That’s her, Carly Griffin. Officially we both try to use Griffin-Hall now that we’re married. Now there’s a story for you. Some other time though. You wanna hear about your daddy.” She collected papers from her desk and perched a pair of designer reading glasses on her slender nose. “I made some notes this morning when Dr. Dhawan was here so I’d remember what all he said. Vernon has what’s called a brain aneurysm. They told you that, right?”
“They mentioned it as a possibility. Either that or a stroke.” The first call had come shortly after six o’clock last evening, nine p.m. in Kentucky.
“An aneurysm is when a weak spot in the wall of a blood vessel gives way and makes a bubble. They’re extremely dangerous if they rupture, but this one didn’t, thank the Lord. I’m telling you, he was so blessed to have a houseful of people there with him. And we got that prayer circle going right away.”
Britt shrugged off the spiritual platitudes. Her father had been saved by trained medical professionals, not some celestial puppeteer interceding on his behalf. But it was no skin off her back if Justine wanted to believe otherwise. People were entitled to their religious and spiritual beliefs, as long as they didn’t push them on her.
“To fix it, they have to open an area of the skull and put a clip in there that basically seals it off. Like a tiny clothespin. It sounds complicated but it’s actually pretty routine these days. Dr. Dhawan wants to keep him for a few more days for a full assessment.”
“What does that mean, medically speaking?”
“Again, you’ll need to speak to the doctor for specifics, but the way he explained it to me was there might be some confusion at first, problems with his speech and motor skills, but that all should come back over time. We’ve got a residential rehab center too if he needs a little extra help.” She joined Britt on the sofa. “I can’t really tell you much more than that. I’m already way out of my lane.”
“I appreciate it. This is very helpful. Did the doctor happen to say how long a recovery might take?”
“No, but poking around in somebody’s brain is major surgery. In my experience it takes most patients at least six to eight weeks to get over that. Best case scenario is he could manage on his own in two to four weeks…as long as he’s got somebody on call to drive him to his doctor’s appointments and whatnot. Does that help?”
“Yes, thank you.”
This couldn’t have come at a worse time for Britt. Even two weeks could take her out of the running for a job she wanted very badly and needed very much. She’d aced her second interview and was expecting a callback any day.
“You won’t have to handle all this on your own, Britt. Vernon has a million friends who’ll be happy to pitch in with whatever he needs.”
“Is there anything I can do for him now? Should I be lining up a physical therapist or a home health aide or something?”
“Oh no, the medical team takes care of all that.” Justine clasped her hand warmly and smiled. “The rest of us though, we’re here to take care of you. See, Vernon’s been telling Carly and Ninah all about you, said he couldn’t wait for you to meet his”—she deepened her voice and smiled—“lesbian friends. Since he can’t do that, we’re gonna have to introduce ourselves.”
Britt laughed softly and shook her head. “I take it he told you…”
“That he’s extremely proud of his lesbian daughter? He did.”
Even at thirty-six years old, she felt like a little girl when she thought of how her father’s love and support had saved her at the most critical juncture of her life. “I’m the one who’s proud. I’ve got the greatest dad there is.”
“He’s a keeper, all right.” Justine shook out the contents of a manila envelope, her dad’s wallet and a set of keys. “I have it on good authority he’s gonna sleep all day, so you might as well go on home and get some rest yourself. We’ll look after him, I promise. But then I want you to come on down to our house for supper. Say, six thirty-ish. Nothing fancy, just whatever Carly throws on the grill. Like I said, we’re the third house on the right. A big rainbow windsock on the porch. You can’t miss it. Oh, and shoes are optional.”
“That’s so kind of you, but I don’t want to—”
“N-n-nnh.” She shook her finger. “Not taking no for an answer. Now go look in on your daddy and get on home.”
The last thing Britt wanted right now was a social obligation, but she owed it to her father to be nice to his friends.
She returned to ICU just in time to see a young woman exit and hurry to the stairwell at the end of the hall. She was a slight figure with short dark hair, dressed neatly in slacks and a fitted shirt. Probably one of her father’s “slew” of friends.
Britt was comforted to know there were so many people who cared about her dad. Not that she was surprised. He was a genuinely nice guy with a fierce loyalty to his hometown.
Finding him asleep, she headed back to her car, encouraged by Justine’s optimism but still exhausted and emotionally stressed. Since last fall, she’d lost nearly everything that mattered to her. But at least she hadn’t lost her dad.
Chapter Two
Eight teens constituted the entire membership of Leland High School’s Gay-Straight Alliance. Three girls, three boys, and two who considered themselves genderqueer.
Ninah Faust had served as faculty sponsor since the club’s inception. She knew for a fact she wasn’t the only LGBT person on the faculty, just the only one willing to publicly claim it as a central plank of her identity. Moving in with Teri Kaufman the year after she’d gotten tenure had been a defiant statement of pride. Practically everyone in town knew Teri, since her high school glory days had brought Leland a state basketball championship. Teri, now her ex, worked in the radiology department at Grace Hospital.
Today was the GSA’s last official meeting of the school year, led by club president Thaddeus Martin, one of Ninah’s favorite students. He read from his notes, “It’s been suggested we change our name to Gay Alliance since we don’t have any straight members.”
The idea drew swift opposition from multiple members.
“Only three of us are gay, Thaddeus. If we’re going to change our name, I vote we call ourselves the Queer Alliance.”
“Not everybody likes being called queer.”
“I hate that we have to use labels at all,” said Abby McFarland, whose jagged hair was tinted pink to honor her mom’s battle with breast cancer. “We should call ourselves the Human Alliance.”
Thaddeus continued with his subdued leadership style, allowing the others to conduct the spirited debate. A soft-spoken African-American, he doggedly fought discrimination on multiple fronts, which earned him a mountain of respect from Ninah.
“Miss Faust, what do you think about us changing our name?” Thaddeus asked.
All eyes turned toward her at the back of the classroom, where she sat on a table swinging her feet. “Gay-Straight Alliance has national name recognition, even a court case where the school board tried to stop the club from using the word gay in its name.”
Leland’s club had generated its own controversy when it was founded four years ago. A group of parents, led by a caucus of area ministers, protested against school facilities being us
ed to advance the dreaded homosexual agenda. Ninah’s friend Carly called them the Local Vocals.
“I prefer queer, but I think we should hold off with a name change for now,” said Jordan Smith, whose preferred pronouns were they, them and their. “If queer catches on, the prominent groups will start changing their names. That’s when we should do it.”
An insightful remark for a sixteen-year-old, Ninah had to admit. Armed with their smartphones and social media accounts, today’s kids were much more issue-savvy than she’d been at their age.
“Okay, let’s table that one for now,” Thaddeus said. “Other new business…Pride Night at Leland Field. It’s scheduled for August fourteenth when the Longdogs play the Paducah Dukes. That’s the Wednesday before school starts back.” He yielded the floor to Trina Jones of the planning committee.
Last year’s Pride Night, their first, had been both heartbreaking and exhilarating. With no clue what to expect, the kids had planned a couple of low-key activities to promote visibility—handing out purple PRIDE bracelets as fans entered the stadium, and then sitting together in the bleachers behind a banner with their GSA chapter name.
“Are there more wristbands, Miss Faust?”
“Are you kidding me?” She hoisted herself off the table and opened a storage cabinet to reveal four cardboard boxes. “We ordered in bulk, remember? We still have about four thousand of these babies left.”
“We should hand them out again.”
Abby grumbled, “Why? Nobody keeps them.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jordan said. “We need to hand them out anyway. You never know when somebody’s going to stick one in their pocket to take home because they’re thinking about it, or they just found out their cousin’s gay. One little wristband can be a big deal for somebody.”
Ninah was impressed by the show of sensitivity. While she took seriously her role as advisor, she usually stopped short of steering them toward specific words or actions so as not to give anyone reason to complain that she was leading them into depravity. It was crucial they learn to navigate their own constituencies—family, friends, church—as individuals.
“Miss Faust, will you get your friends to come again?”
She grinned. “The better question is could I stop them if I tried.”
As proud as she’d been of her small group of students last year, there was no mistaking the uneasiness their presence had stirred at the game. They received very little joy from the crowd when they were introduced during warmups as the night’s honorees. In fact, random voices shouted the occasional slur or taunt, enough that Ninah began to worry there could even be a physical confrontation before the night was over. Then suddenly a stream of familiar faces arrived and unfurled a rainbow flag—about twenty of her LGBT friends brought together on the spur of the moment by text and social media. What better message for anxious kids than to know they were encircled in a protective cocoon of adults who’d once walked in their shoes?
Trina cleared her throat to bring the club back to their Pride Night agenda. Their March car wash had raised three hundred dollars, which they were donating to the Leland Public Library to help fund the purchase of queer books for children and young adults. They hoped to present a ceremonial check during the game.
Ninah’s phone buzzed against the table and she excused herself to the hallway. “Hey, Carly. I was gonna call you. I sneaked off this morning during my planning period and saw Vernon. He was out of it, but the nurse said he was doing great.”
“That’s what I was calling to tell you. Justine said the surgery went fine, that they’ll probably move him out of ICU after supper.”
“What a relief.” She’d never been so frightened as last night at their kickoff party. Vernon was about to make his toast to the season when suddenly he clutched his head with both hands and crumpled to the floor in agony. She and Carly had soothed him until the ambulance arrived.
“His daughter Britt flew all night from San Diego and got there this morning. She’s coming over to our house for supper at six thirty. That’s why I’m calling, so you can join us. Justine says she’s really nice.”
“Sure, sure.” She’d been hoping to meet Britt Iverson someday, the elusive lesbian daughter whose brief visits were usually last-minute affairs that precluded Vernon introducing her to his friends. He’d talked about her for years, how she’d made a great life for herself in San Diego with a longtime partner, a successful marketing company and scores of friends. “How long do you think she’ll be in town?”
“I guess it all depends on how Vernon progresses. Probably a couple of weeks at least.”
“Thanks for thinking of me. I’ll be there, six thirty.”
Carly and Justine didn’t know she had a special reason for wanting to meet Britt. Vernon had confided in her last week that his daughter was going through a difficult time. She and her partner had split up last fall, he said, and he worried she was having some problems with her company as well. He’d invited her for a visit and wanted Ninah to talk up Leland’s lively lesbian community in hopes Britt might warm to the idea of returning to Kentucky. He had his eye on a new business venture, and with her company struggling, he hoped she might join him. Whatever he had in the works might be on hold now that he had a health scare to reckon with, but perhaps he could resurrect it once he got it behind him.
She returned to her classroom in time to watch Thaddeus pass the mantle to Abby, who’d been elected to serve as president next school year. As her first order of business, Abby yielded the floor to her.
“I always get emotional this time of year,” Ninah said, fluttering her hands around her face as if to dry her tears. “And it seems like every year I say the same thing, that this year’s class was my best ever. Honestly, that’s how it feels. I’m so proud of every last one of you. You’re an inspiration to me.”
“Because you’re an inspiration to us,” Thaddeus said.
To Ninah, that’s what teaching was all about. She reminded them to stay in touch through the summer on their Facebook group and to reach out if they needed someone to talk to. “That’s the great thing about coming out—you’re now part of this giant family we’ve made for ourselves. Trust me, there are millions of us, and we’re always here for each other.”
After heartfelt hugs with each of them, she snagged Thaddeus to help carry a few boxes of books and supplies to her car. Summers gave her time to sift through what had worked in her classroom and what hadn’t. In eleven short weeks, she’d hit the reset button and start over.
“I hope Abby has as much fun leading the club as I did,” Thaddeus said as he hoisted a crate into her Subaru hatchback. “There’s a campus LGBT group at Berea, but Ike says I ought to stick to academics my freshman year. I think he’s afraid I’ll get distracted like he did. What do you think?”
“I think he’s looking after his little brother.” Ike Martin had lasted only a year at Morehead State before dropping out to focus on songwriting. His day job at The Bean coffee house paid the bills while he toiled in pursuit of his big break. “Everyone’s college experience is different. I don’t think it’s a bad idea to concentrate on your classes when you first get there, but I think you’ll eventually find time for both.”
As he talked excitedly of his college plans, a dark gray Dodge slowed to a crawl past the high school parking lot, not forty feet from where they stood. Ninah briefly got a look at the two men inside, who were staring them down. Both white, late teens or early twenties. They weren’t at all shy about their politics, since the rear bumper was plastered with Trump stickers and Confederate flags. And a paper license plate that implied the vehicle was new, or at least new to Kentucky.
Thaddeus noticed them too and watched through narrowed eyes.
Ninah had little doubt about their intentions, probably triggered by seeing a white woman with a black youth. They meant to intimidate. While she wasn’t particularly worried for her own safety, she couldn’t afford to take chances where Thaddeus was concerned.
“How about riding along to my house and giving me a hand to carry this stuff inside? I can run you home after that.”
“Sure, no problem.”
If Leland had a white supremacist community, it was operating under the radar. The only sign of the Alt-Right had been a modest rally last fall to protest the town council’s decision to remove a Jefferson Davis plaque from the courthouse. According to the Gazette, most of the demonstrators were from out of state, recruited over social media. Locals had largely ignored them, thanks to street barriers erected by the Leland Police Department that sent traffic on a two-block detour around downtown.
So who were these guys? It was possible they’d come to Leland for work. The boot factory was taking on dozens of new hires after winning a US Army contract. She’d rather think that than worry they were here to lay the groundwork for another Alt-Right rally, possibly larger and better organized. Leland was divided over lots of political and social issues, but there was broad consensus among locals that they didn’t want trouble in town.
Chapter Three
Britt liked many things about her father’s contemporary new home, but what she appreciated most was having the whole basement to herself. There was a nice-sized bedroom, an adjoining bath, and a den that opened onto a private patio beneath the main floor deck. If she had to stay a while, it wasn’t a bad place to be.
Standing before the bathroom mirror, she piled her long, straight hair into a messy bun in the back and pinned it, taking care to leave a few loose strands for a casual look that was appropriate for a cookout.
She had her father’s Nordic features—blond, blue-eyed—and a lean build that had suited the androgynous persona she’d adopted as a rebellious teen. After moving to San Diego for college, she’d fallen under the influence of hip, fashion-conscious friends who modeled a more feminine style that she’d gradually come to appreciate in herself.