They released him from hospital on a Tuesday. He wore the clothes he’d tried to hang himself in, and the duty nurse watched him carefully as he signed himself out. There was a small bottle of Paxil in the front pocket of his shirt; it rattled slightly when he formed the looping ‘J’ in ‘Jarvis.’

“Not the best,” the doctor had confided when he gave Dan the Paxil, “but it’s the cheapest.” There were enough pills for two weeks, after which he was supposed to get a prescription from his new doctor on the mainland.

Dan had a feeling that his new doctor would probably not be the best, either, but perhaps he’d be the cheapest.

It was raining that Tuesday, cold spring rain that flooded Main Street and turned the sidewalk in front of Jarvis Video into a small grey river. Islands of mud and bits of trash floated in the water, swept away by irregular currents into the gutter and down into Wilby’s sewer system. Like all things, the garbage would eventually find its way to sea.

Dan splashed along the sidewalk-cum-river, his feet freezing inside his (not-cheap) loafers. He couldn’t remember if he’d been wearing socks that night at the old French house, or if he’d lost them at the hospital. His loafers felt too big without socks, almost as though they belonged to another man. His feet slipped inside, squishy and cold with rainwater.

He heard the wet spatter of tires in the street behind him, and politely moved out of the way to let the car glide by. The passing car didn’t slow or drift closer to the dividing line, and so it sprayed Dan with a light shower of gutter water as it sped by.

Like the constant rattle of pills in his front pocket, he tried not to take it personally.

All the little shops and businesses along Main Street were closed. Odd for a Tuesday, but then it wasn’t summer yet. Too early for the tourists, and few locals would be out in weather like this unless they absolutely had to be somewhere.

He closed his eyes, tilting his head up to the sky. The rain sloughed down his face, plastering his hair to his forehead. He felt fuzzy from the medication they’d given him. Those little yellow pills shook and rattled like the rain pounding against his skull. Dan paused in front of Iggy’s Diner, and squinted the reflection in the big plate glass window. It looked like he was standing inside Iggy’s, too, safe and warm cocooned inside the diner. The rain couldn’t touch him there. What did the guy in the window have to be so sad about?

The glass was cool under Dan’s fingertips, and the man inside Iggy’s smiled.

Bright lights reflected against the window, and Dan blinked, unable to see for the few seconds it took for his eyes to adjust to the sudden glare. This time lights didn’t bounce off the glass and grow small again as the car made the curve and continued down the hill toward the ferry docks. No, this car pulled into an empty space right in front of Iggy’s, and the blinding headlights became two small orbs that bracketed Dan’s reflection, haloing the man in the diner’s window.

“Hey there.”

Although the driver kept his voice pitched low, Dan had no trouble recognizing his voice. The low tones resonated above the steady drum of the rain and the swish-swish-swish of the windshield wipers working frantically against the deluge.

“Hi, Duck.”

“They said you wouldn’t be out until tomorrow morning.”

Dan shrugged, and so did the man in the window. Duck was just a dark shape reflected in the glass.

“You want to come in out of the rain?”

Dan thought about it. Thought about turning around and walking towards that low-pitched voice. About being safe and dry and warm, like the guy in the diner.

“I didn’t know you were going to pick me up.”

“Yeah,” Duck said, yelling a little louder now so Dan could hear him clearly over the rain. “Get in, okay?”

He checked the window. The guy the diner window didn’t seem to think it was a bad idea, so Dan nodded and moved around to the passenger side of Duck’s beat-up old pickup truck.

The door was heavy; he had to try the handle a couple of times before it gave way and he could get the door open. The bench seat inside was ripped and stained with paint, and the whole cab smelled faintly of turpentine and cigarette smoke. But it was dry, at least.

The driver’s side door opened and Duck slid in behind the wheel, slamming the door shut and immediately cracking his window. Rain leaked inside, speckling the sleeve of Duck’s slicker. His face was wet and slightly pink from the cold, and the rain had turned his long eyelashes into thick dark spikes. Droplets of rain on his face made it look like he’d been crying, but his eyes were dry and clear.

“I’m sorry I was late. They told me the wrong time.”

“It’s okay.” Dan said. “Felt good to get out and walk.”

“I’ll bet.”

The truck’s engine was still running. It formed a low, sputtering rumble that revved up and dropped off and always seemed to be on the verge of stalling out. Dan listened to it, counting off the beats, and watched as Duck’s hands tightened and loosened on the wheel in time to the dying engine. “You okay to come home with me tonight?” Duck asked.

That fuzzy feeling from the medication made it hard to answer. It felt like he had cotton batting stuck in behind his eyeballs. He heard Duck ask the question, saw the way his knuckles had gone white as he gripped the wheel, but Dan felt like he was staring back at Duck through a long tunnel. There was something in the way Duck said ‘home’ that made Dan think the question was important, but he couldn’t figure out why.

“Where else would I go?”

Duck jerked his head around to stare at Dan. It looked like that answer wasn’t quite what he’d expected. Dan fumbled for his seatbelt. Took him a few tries, but he finally got the ends to click together. The belt was too tight on his hips—the last person to sit here had clearly been a little smaller and slimmer than Dan—but Dan didn’t think his cottony brain was up to figuring out how to make it looser. He’d just have to bear it.

When he finally finished fussing with the belt, he looked up at Duck, who was still staring at him, looking wet and cold and slightly worried.

“Just drive, okay?”

Duck put his truck into reverse, and drove.

***

The sky was the colour of wet granite, and the road ahead gleamed black and smooth. Dan watched the tar disappear beneath the wheels of Duck’s truck for a while, white lines flashing and then vanishing under the wheels of the pickup, but the sky and the road never changed.

The cottony feeling gave way to drowsiness, and the warmth of the truck and the security of Duck’s presence made Dan think it might be safe to fall asleep. He hadn’t slept very well in hospital. They’d had him on a suicide watch, and there’d been bed checks once an hour.

“I thought you might want to go back to the mainland,” Duck said, cutting through Dan’s drowsiness. “I thought you’d want to leave Wilby.”

“Hmmm?” Dan murmured, forcing his eyes open. “Why? What have I got on the mainland?”

Duck shrugged, or at least, Dan thought he did. Tough to tell. Tough to stay awake. “You’ve probably got friends. Someone you could call. Your parents-”

“Val told them.” It should hurt to say it, but he felt too relaxed. The musty warmth radiating out of the truck’s old heater felt good. He’d gotten cold in the rain. “My dad thought I was a screw-up anyway. And they’re still out west. Not much they could do for me, even if they wanted to help.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Dan said. And this time he did close his eyes and surrender to the sweet exhaustion that settled over him. He smiled, and hoped this ride in Dan’s truck, warm and safe and sheltered, would last a long, long time. He wondered if this was how astronauts felt: hurtling through a strange landscape, locked safely inside a little capsule and watching stars go by.

“How far to your place?”

“It’s pretty far,” Duck said. Dan heard the sound of a lighter click open, and then the rich, slightly damp scent of burning tobacco filled the truck’s interior. “I’m up on the northern tip of Wilby. Not too many houses out that way.”

Dan tried to picture the place Duck meant. Northern tip? Wilby Island looked like an upside-down human heart, at least on the maps he’d seen. Most of the people lived at the bottom of the island, where the land divided into three stubby peninsulas that extended from the shoreline like ventricles. The ferries docked at one, and the bars and businesses that served the tourists were clustered around one another, and the seasonal homes—small cottages and RV hookup sites—took up most of the third. Islanders who lived on Wilby year-round kept close to the river, where the winters were a bit milder than out on the shoreline.

The northern tip of the island—more of a peninsula, really, that looked like a long, thick aorta—was open to the sea, unprotected by islands or the shelter of the mainland, and Dan hadn’t known that anyone had a house up that way. He’d never been that far up-island; he and Val hadn’t bothered to do a lot of exploring when they’d first moved to Wilby.

“You like living so far away from town?” he thought to ask.

“It’s okay,” Duck said quietly. “I like the privacy.”

“Hey, I’m not...not putting you out, or anything, am I? Because I could-” He didn’t know how to finish that sentence. What he’d told Duck was true: he didn’t have anything or anyone to go to. His home on Peachtree Lane had been emptied out and put up for sale. And when he thought about going back to that drab motel room at the Wilby Inn he could almost feel the rough abrasion of the noose tightening around his neck.

It was probably better that he not be alone right now.

“You won’t be a bother,” Duck said quickly, and he sounded as if he meant it. “I’d be glad of the company.”

“I thought you liked the privacy.”

Duck flicked the windshield wipers up a speed or two, and they were louder now, as loud as the rain. Duck’s face was closed, composed, his eyes fixed on the road, but Dan didn’t have any trouble hearing the sincerity in his voice. “Not if the company’s good.”

Dan flushed at the compliment, and ducked his head. Duck didn’t sound like a stranger at all. Duck had known. Duck had seen. And Duck had tried to stop him. Had stopped him.

Dan brushed at his cheek.

Unfamiliar bits of the island flashed by in a wet haze of vibrant green forest and rich brown earth. Wilby reminded him of Vancouver Island, especially in the rain. That was why he and Val had chosen Wilby, aside from a desire to lose themselves in the rhythm of small-town life. After two years in Toronto and a summer in Halifax, they’d been eager for a taste of home, even if it was only an approximation of the grey and rainy west coast of British Columbia.

“You from Wilby originally?” Dan asked after a few moments of silence. Strange, to think how much he didn’t know about Duck. Duck had only come into the video store a few times, and he wasn’t the sort to talk much about himself. Dan only knew a handful of facts about him: Duck was the town’s local handyman. He drove an ancient Chevy. He smoked Chesterfields, he was gay, and he liked country music. And kissing.

That wasn’t a piece of information Dan had gleaned from personal experience, of course. They’d never done anything together at the Watch. But Dan had seen Duck go off into the trees with Jim Peterson a couple of times, and once with a mainlander. Duck had seemed more interested in the kissing than anything else.

“Yeah. I left for a while. Came back when it didn’t work out.”

Oh. Should he ask what “it” was? Or did Duck mean it in more general terms, “it” shorthand for “life”?

Dan started to ask the question, but it got jumbled together in his head with the image of Duck kissing Jim Peterson too deeply, his hands resting lightly on Jim’s shoulders, eyes closed, a blissful expression on his face as he met Jim’s mouth. When Jim had pulled away to whisper something in Duck’s ear, Duck had broken into a wide, beatific smile, and he’d dropped an affectionate kiss on the tip of Jim’s nose as they’d headed off into the bush. Dan had felt irrationally jealous at the time.

That had been a week before the raid, and before the implosion of his marriage and the decision to kill himself. In the midst of...everything, he’d forgotten that spark of jealousy, and the soft glow of Duck’s smile in the dark.

Duck cut the wheel left and guided the car down a narrow road clogged by vegetation on both sides. The truck’s headlights picked out the white limbs of trees, and the branches looked almost ghostly as they whipped by. Duck must have sensed Dan tense up: he reached over and rested his hand on Dan’s shoulder for a second, and then stretched his arm along the seatback. Dan could feel the warmth of Duck’s arm all through his shoulders, a delicious point of heat against his chilly skin.

“It’s not far,” Duck promised.

The road under the tires turned rough and uneven, and ahead the endless tunnel of white-lit trees came to an abrupt end as the road fed out into a vast open area. In the distance there was only inky blackness, and a few stout, solitary pines silhouetted against the gloomy sky.

“You live right on the peninsula?”

Duck lit another cigarette. “Yeah. Land was cheap back when my grandfather bought the place. Too much salt in the soil. Too many rocks. My grandfather bought up sixty acres, and the farming of it nearly ruined him. Became a fisherman after that.” Duck paused. “I think it must have been a very hard life. He wasn’t a happy man.”

The truck rumbled to a stop. Dan squinted in the weak headlights, trying to see through the rain and the fog rolling in from the ocean.

Duck’s home was little more than a blurry outline in the gloom, a compact little cottage crouched low on a hill above the shoreline. The small house was framed by a rocky beach and the wild darkness of the ocean beyond. He couldn’t make out many details in the gloom, but Dan thought that the house might have been white, with a sturdy wood porch and a low-pitched roof. All of the windows were dark and shuttered.

“C’mon,” Duck invited, opening his door to a gust of wet and rain. “Let’s get you settled.”

***

Dan dripped in the entranceway, his shoes so muddy and wet that he didn’t dare step off the braided entrance rug onto the smooth wooden floor. Duck pushed past him without any hesitation, already toeing off his shoes and reaching into the hallway closet. He handed Dan a worn beach towel with a faded pink-and-yellow hibiscus print.

“Dry off. Don’t want you to catch cold,” he said, his voice level, friendly, maybe even teasing, although Dan didn’t know him well enough to be sure. “You want some coffee? Or tea?”

Dan nodded, not really sure which option he’d agreed to. He did want something to do with his hands. Soaking wet and dripping in Duck’s hallway, he was painfully aware of the fact that he had no luggage, not even an overnight bag. What he hadn’t left for Val to throw out or sell was back in his room at the Wilby Inn.

After toweling his hair and removing his shoes and soaked jacket, Dan followed Duck into the kitchen, which was both smaller and much tidier than he’d expected. The dark brown shelves and orange wallpaper belonged to another generation, but the kitchen was uncluttered and the countertops were very clean. They lacked the clutter that Dan was used to seeing in other homes. No canisters of flour or sugar crowded the counter; there were no appliances, no toaster or blender or coffee maker, no container for the large utensils that wouldn’t fit in a drawer. Very neat, very tidy. And oddly soulless. It looked as if Duck didn’t use his kitchen much at all. Duck moved easily in the small space, gathering ground beans and thick china mugs and setting up a little stovetop percolator that also seemed to belong to a much older generation.

“I’ll get this started and find you some dry clothes, okay?”

Dan stood awkwardly in the doorway and tried not to feel so uncomfortable. He shivered slightly as Duck turned and looked at him with a familiar expression of concern, and he spoke as much to distract Duck as he did to cover his own nervousness. He swallowed, and the movement pulled painfully at his throat.

“It’s nice,” he croaked, waving around at the kitchen. His hand brushed against a stack of mail piled on a wobbly table beneath the telephone, and Dan watched in mute horror as the stack of letters teetered dangerously. The neat pile of bills, receipts and what looked like personal correspondence fluttered to the floor in a little snowstorm of white envelopes, and Dan blushed furiously.

“Oh,” he said, brainlessly, and bent to start scooping up the mail. But somehow his fingers tangled the long phone cord, and he nearly pulled the whole telephone down off the wall. Christ, why was he always so clumsy?

Duck knelt next to him and helped Dan untangle himself from the cord. His hands, gentle and patient, brushed Dan’s lightly as he unwrapped the phone cord from around Dan’s fingers.

“You okay?”

Duck was so close that Dan could feel the heat radiating from his body. They were crouched next to each other, and Dan could smell the humid warmth of the rainwater on Duck’s skin, feel the faint movement of Duck’s breath on his cheek. Dan spread his hands out on the floor until he found his balance.

“It’s the antidepressants. They make me a little—” he looped his finger in the air.

“It’s okay,” Duck told him quietly. He’d shifted into a rather dignified squat, managing to make it look like it was a completely natural position, as though he spent a lot of time on his kitchen floor.

The thought made Dan blush, and he looked up to find Duck smiling at him. It was a soft, gentle smile, and there was no mockery behind it. Duck just looked a little amused, that was all, like he wanted to share the joke. Dan gave him a shaky smile in return, and tried to get up, but Duck waved him off.

“There’s no rush.” He looked at Dan a moment longer, and nodded. “Take it easy,” he advised, then stood to pick up the mail and shuffle it back into a neat pile, which he set back on the kitchen table. He finished preparing their coffee without another word.

Dan stared hard at the worn kitchen floor and blinked away the faint sting of embarrassment.

He changed into a baggy white t-shirt and a pair of flannel pajama pants that Duck found for him. When he came out of the bathroom, thick and muzzy-headed and slightly drowsy again, now that he was warm and dry, Duck was making up the sofabed in the living room.

There was only a single lamp burning in the small living room. Dan spotted a TV on a shelf the corner, an old black-and-white Panasonic with rabbit-ear antennae and an ancient top-loading VCR beneath that. Wood was stacked between the TV and an enormous brick fireplace, and the rest of the room was taken up with the fold-out sofa, the coffee table, and another shelf that held speakers and a record player. Despite the clutter of the furniture, this room too was oddly impersonal. As though Duck had filled it with the essentials, but hadn’t injected any of his own personality into spaces where he lived.

“It’s not much,” Duck admitted, following Dan’s examination of the room. “I keep meaning to fix it up.”

“It’s fine,” Dan said quickly. “Thanks for letting me stay.”

Duck shrugged, and tossed Dan a pillow. “I’ll let you settle in, okay? If you need anything, my room’s at the end of the hall.”

With a last, searching look, Duck rose and went to his room.

Dan blinked. He hadn’t expected Duck to touch him, exactly, but he’d assumed Duck had brought him over to...

Oh.

He lay back on the fold-out couch, which was soft and well-sprung and not nearly as lumpy as he probably deserved.

He’d spend a couple of days with Duck, give the pills a chance to start working, and then—and then he’d get on with his life. Go back to the motel. Head to the mainland, probably. He couldn’t impose on Duck forever. He had to stat getting his life back together. He had to move on.

***

Something was tickling his nose. Dan batted at it, but as soon as he moved his hand the whatever-it-was returned, making his face twitch. Reluctantly he opened his eyes. And yelped.

“Christ!” He scrambled up and out of bed, trying to force his sleep-fuzzy brain to recognize what it was he was seeing. Heart still pounding, Dan blinked, and the matted orange bundle on his bed twitched and mewled.

A cat. It was a cat, or at least he thought it was. Its loud purring sounded more like a chainsaw, louder and more machine-like than any noise an animal could make. The…creature meowed again and settled immediately into the warm space left by Dan’s body like it had every right to be there.

Definitely a cat.

Dan rubbed at his eyes, willing his heartbeat to return to normal. He’d been startled, that was all: the cat had been sitting too close to his face, and he hadn’t been able process what it was at first. Now that he had a closer look, he could see that the cat’s face was badly scarred—it looked more like a junkyard dog than a housecat. A deep, long-healed gash extended from the cat’s left ear to its chin, bisecting its face in a jagged diagonal scar. The cat was missing the tip of its right ear and its left eye: the empty socket was a grey mass of scar tissue. And it looked like the cat had also lost the tip of its tail.

Dan heard the screen door open and the thump of Duck’s workboots in hallway. The cat leapt off the bed and loped off down the hall, the loose skin of its belly swaying from side to side as it ran to mew hello to Duck. Soon Duck himself appeared in the entrance to the living room. He was wearing an old, paint-stained t-shirt and overalls, and carried the big cat close to his chest.

“That has got to be the ugliest animal I’ve ever seen,” Dan said, scrubbing at his face. “He scared me.”

“She,” Duck corrected, scratching the cat’s ear. The animal pushed up into Duck’s touch, her eyes closed in blissful contentment, and Dan turned away from the sight of Duck’s long fingers stroking through the cat’s fur.

“What happened to her?”

Duck shook his head, crossing the room to tug the curtains open. Sunlight flooded the living room, and the cat propped herself up to peer over Duck’s shoulder at Dan, her remaining eye conveying a uniquely feline combination of distrust and boredom. The damage to her face looked much worse in the direct sunlight.

“Dog, maybe. She was already pretty scarred-up when I found her,” Duck said quietly. “I was over on the mainland for a job at one of the big houses, one of those places where they like handymen to use the service entrance. I’d just started to unload my tools in the alley when I heard this noise coming from a pile of trash off to the side. Sounded like a baby crying. When I looked I saw her lying there. Broken leg, broken tail, starving. I took her to the vet right away.”

He shook his head. “She probably belonged to some of the summer people. They pick out a puppy or a kitten from a cardboard box down at the ferry dock on the mainland. A last minute adoption. But three months go by and the kitten’s not so cute anymore or the puppy grew up, so they decide they don’t want their pet anymore. And they just leave them.” Duck paused and shook his head. “They must figure an islander will take them in. But there’re too many unwanted animals, and we don’t have Animal Control on Wilby—no budget for it—so the pets starve to death, or get sick. Most of the year-round residents put out poison in the fall. It’s a mercy, really.”

Dan realized he was holding his breath. He’d never heard Duck talk so much before. He still spoke in that slow, steady voice, but Dan could hear…something, rumbling beneath the surface. Anger at the careless mainlanders. Frustration. And pity for all those animals. Dan shook his head. People were such fools.

“Anyway,” Duck continued, seemingly embarrassed. He wasn’t looking at Dan, but out the window, out at the ocean. The cat’s grating purr was loud in the small room. “I’m glad I found her. She’s been good company.” He rubbed at the animal’s remaining ear affectionately, and the cat seemed to sigh. “You like cats?”

Dan hugged his knees to his chest. “Never really had one. My parents didn’t like pets.”

His parents had been the sort to make their handymen use the service entrance, too, but he didn’t tell Duck that. “And Val was allergic. I always thought it would be nice, though, to have an animal around. When I was a kid I really wanted a dog.”

He wondered if he was talking too much, or if he was boring Duck. But Duck was watching his face intently, as if memorizing each word, and Dan flushed slightly. He wasn’t used to being the focus of anyone’s attention. Not like that.

He coughed to cover his awkwardness. “What’s her name?”

“Didn’t see a need to give her one, since it’s just been the two of us.” Duck rested his cheek against the cat’s head for a moment, and then set her down on the floor. She found a patch of sunlight on the rug by the window and immediately began to wash herself. “Call her Cat, if you like.”

“You mean, like in Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”

Duck smiled ruefully. “Didn’t see that one. I thought you liked cowboy movies.”

Dan shrugged. “Yeah, well, I like all kinds of movies. You really haven’t seen it?” Duck shook his head, and Dan felt brave enough to add, shyly, “We can watch it sometime, maybe.” He steeled himself for some kind of softly-worded rejection, but Duck’s smile was wide and sincere, as sunny as the light that streamed in through the big plate-glass window.

It wasn’t the smile Dan remembered from the dark nights out at the Watch, but it left him breathless anyway.

“Sounds good,” Duck said, simply. “You ready for some breakfast?”

Dan smiled back. “Sure.”

“Bacon and eggs okay?” Duck asked, already halfway to the kitchen. The cat paused in the middle of her washing to give Dan one final long, assessing look with her remaining green eye, and then padded off after Duck.

He tried not to feel bad that the cat didn’t seem to want to stay with him in the living room. He shouldn’t have called her ugly, poor thing.

Dan sighed. He still couldn’t seem to get anything right.

***

Duck gave him a quick tour after breakfast. The house, which had seemed so dim and threatening last night, was actually quite cozy and inviting in the sunlight. Duck’s grandfather might have been a lousy farmer, but it looked like he’d been a pretty fair carpenter. The little house by the sea was small but well-designed. The kitchen and the living room were clean and bright, and there were large plate-glass windows set into each wall that offered stunning views of the sea. The rainy gloom of last night had lifted, and the wide blue ocean sparkled in the sunlight. Whitecaps mirrored the seagulls circling above, small points of white in a world otherwise cast in shades of blue. The sky was clear and cloudless, and it promised to be a warm and perfect May day.

Dan turned away from the large window in the kitchen and followed Duck down the hall. There were no pictures on any of the walls, although occasionally Dan noted faded patches and small round holes in the plaster where family portraits had once hung. Dan had just worked up the nerve to ask about the lack of artwork or family photographs when Duck paused in front of a door at the end of the hall.

“My room,” he said, almost shyly, and opened the door.

Like all the other rooms, this space was small, bright, and uncluttered by any kind of personal memento. The light yellow walls enhanced the natural sunlight streaming in through the enormous window, and the plain wooden furnishings—dresser, wardrobe, bed—all looked to be hand-carved from blonde pine. It was a small, neat space, and it was clear that Duck was the only one to occupy the double bed, which was neatly made up with a cheerful blue and green block quilt. Dan wondered if Jim Peterson had ever stayed a night here, at Duck’s house. In Duck’s bed. He didn’t think so, but then he didn’t know Duck all that well.

“My grandfather lived here until he died,” Duck told him, as if he sensed Dan needed some kind of explanation. “He didn’t approve of my parents’ marriage. I was pretty surprised that he left the house and the land to me. But I guess…I guess there was no one else.”

“Why didn’t he approve?”

Duck squinted, or maybe the sunlight in the room was too bright. There were deep lines around his eyes. Fishermen and farmers had those lines: men got them from doing hard labour out of doors and squinting into the sun all day. What had Duck been, before he’d become Wilby Island’s handyman?

“She was Acadian. French-Canadian Catholic, didn’t speak a word of English. My grandfather threw a fit when Dad brought her home.”

His face softened, and the lines around his eyes seemed to melt away. “She used to sing to me in French. I don’t really remember her. Just the songs. I don’t even know what the words mean.” Duck seemed to shake himself. He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “You want to see the beach?”

***

Too many rocks, Dan thought as he slipped and skidded for the thousandth time on the uneven path down to the shore. His loafers just weren’t meant to handle this kind of terrain. Particularly without socks.

The beach itself was pretty in a wild, rugged sort of way. Small, lonely pines clung to the land, which slowly gave way to sandy beaches sloping down toward the water. The dwarf pines sported sparse, prickly green-brown branches. Like the thick sea grass, the trees were survivors of constant wind and erosion.

The sun had burned off any trace of fog from the rainy night before, but Dan suddenly wanted to see Duck’s beach under a thick veil of white mist. It was pleasant enough in the early summer, but Dan had a feeling that, like the Watch, Duck’s beach would be at its best in chilly autumn, silent winter, or cool, clean spring.

They walked the length of the beach and then turned back. Duck moved ahead a little because, Dan suspected, he was polite and didn’t want to make Dan feel even more ridiculous as he slipped on the rocks and skidded on the sand. As they crested the hill leading back up to the house, Dan spied a ramshackle little shelter huddled in a grove of the tenacious pines.

“What’s that?” He pointed to the small, squat little structure. It looked someone had built the shack out of old pine boards and trimmed it with driftwood.

Duck didn’t even look at what Dan was pointing at. He kept his head down, eyes fixed on the trail back up to the house. “My workshop.”

“Oh,” Dan said, flushing a little. “Where you keep your tools?” He winced as he said it: that sounded like a bad line in a porno flick. But Duck didn’t seem to mind; he just shrugged, and turned to look at Dan. “Hey, listen, I’d appreciate it if you’d stay out of there, okay?” For a moment Duck looked as if he was going to say something more, but he turned and resumed his easy hike up the path.

Dan felt a cold, sick feeling twist through his belly. Duck didn’t trust him. And while part of him was happy that Duck thought he’d be around long enough to require ground rules, it still hurt that Duck didn’t trust him around his expensive carpentry tools. He drifted up the path after Duck, and kept his eyes fixed on the rocky ground, determined not to slip again.

When they finally reached the top of the hill Duck turned and looked back at Dan. “You want to walk some more? There’s a wild orchard in the back forty, and—”

“I’m kind of tired,” Dan said, hoping Duck wouldn’t press. And of course he didn’t—Duck wasn’t that kind of person.

“Sure,” Duck said, simply, and led the way back to the house.

***

They went into town later that afternoon to get the rest of Dan’s things from the motel, and to pick up his car. Dan kept his head down as they drove through Wilby’s main streets, slouching low in his seat. Once Duck parked his truck in the motel lot, Dan turned to him and said, “I’ll just be a couple of minutes, okay?”

Duck squinted at him a little, and then dug in his pocket for his package of Chesterfields. “I thought we’d grab lunch at Iggy’s. Sandra’s been asking about you.”

Sandra, Dan thought, trying to put a face to the name. Pretty blonde woman with a teenager daughter. Friendly. Brought him a cup of coffee that last day, tried to show him that not everyone in Wilby wanted him to rot in hell. It hadn’t worked, of course: he’d seen the looks on everyone’s faces at the diner. He knew how people really felt.

He was gripping the handle of his door too hard. The sharp pain in his fingers finally penetrated, and he deliberately relaxed his grip. “Maybe later,” Dan said quietly, looking around to make sure the parking lot was still clear. “If you want to go, don’t worry about me. I can find my way back up to the house.”

“You sure?” Duck said, blowing smoke out from his nose. “Might be good to get out, talk to some people.”

Dan winced at the thought of walking into Iggy’s beside Duck, the ding of the bell above the door drawing everyone’s attention. All of the diner’s patrons would turn to stare at them, like he and Duck were an exhibit at the zoo. The Lesser Spotted Homos.

He shuddered, and shook his head. “I think…I think I still need a couple of days.”

Duck nodded slowly, seriously. “Okay.” He finished his cigarette and said, “I’ll wait here while you get your stuff, and we’ll head over to the old French place to get your car.”

“Sounds good,” Dan agreed, and slipped out of the truck. He crossed the lot quickly and had his old motel room key ready before he got to the door. He was in and out in a matter of minutes. There wasn’t much to pack, anyway: he’d only had time to grab a couple of pairs of pants, boxers, his shaving kit and a fresh shirt when Val had kicked him out, and those had been in the small gym bag at the bottom of the motel room closet since last Wednesday.

He found his wallet and his watch, which were still on the little bedside table, exactly where he’d left them. The maid had already been in to change the linens, and there was nothing else in here that belonged to him.

Dan paused at the doorway and looked back one last time, checking to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything in the bathroom or the closet. But there wasn’t anything to leave behind, really; with the removal of his few personal items, he’d effectively wiped all traces of his existence from the small hotel room. No one who stayed in this room would ever know that he’d passed a night here, thinking about how he was going to end his life, or sat with Duck on the bed and talked about hobbies and listened to a song on the radio. It was as though he’d never existed at all.

He clicked off the light, condemning the dreary motel room to darkness.

***

The next few days passed in a fog. He lost track when Thursday bled into Friday, and when the weekend passed. The pills made him feel as though he was fumbling around in a dark room. Everything—his body, his mind—was numb, and he spent most of the time dozing on the foldout couch in the living room. The heavy curtains blocked the bright sunshine and the rich sea air, and so time itself didn’t even seem to exist in Duck’s small, dark living room.

Dan had trouble finding a reason to get up. He didn’t even feel sad anymore. Just numb. Numb and tired. Always tired.

Duck didn’t say much about any of it. He reminded Dan to take his medication—one yellow pill in the morning, every morning—and he drove Dan to the mainland ferry twice a week so that Dan could get to Port Saxon and meet with his psychiatrist.

The sessions with his psychiatrist didn’t help him much. They talked about how he slept all the time, about how the pills made him feel disconnected and fuzzy, and that he hadn’t had an erection in forty-eight days. The psychiatrist—Dr. Fredericks, who wanted Dan to call him “Bill”—said that everything was normal. That he needed to give it time. That he’d feel better soon.

Dan had trouble believing him, but he took the pills anyway.

One day in July, Dan woke at dawn and listened to the sounds of Duck packing his lunch in the kitchen. The soft tink of cutlery and the muffled sound of the fridge door opening and closing were quiet but persistent, forcing him up and out of bed. Dan padded down the hall and into the kitchen, shivering in his t-shirt and boxers.

“Morning.” Duck’s greeting was steady, unsurprised. He sounded like Dan was always up and around at seven in the morning.

Dan yawned and sank into a chair at the worn kitchen table. He rested his chin on his hands and studied the pile of mail stacked near him on the table. Mostly bills, it looked like, and he flushed hotly. He hadn’t even asked if he should chip in for rent. And how long had he been here, exactly? At least a month. He didn’t even know what day it was.

There were a few other envelopes on the table, most of them addressed to “MacDonald Enterprises Inc”—cheques, he figured, for Duck’s odd jobs and the carpentry and painting he did around the island. There was a thick letter in an oversized envelope, and it seemed to stand out from all the others. The letter was addressed to “Walter MacDonald.” The envelope had no return address, and no stamp. Canada Post wouldn’t have delivered a letter like that. Someone had to have put it in Duck’s mailbox by hand.

Duck put a cup of coffee in front of Dan and sat across from him with his own mug, wrapping his long scarred fingers around the cup.

“This is odd, isn’t it?” Dan said, touching the thick, creamy envelope.

Duck’s eyes flicked toward the letter briefly, and then he took a sip of his coffee. “Not odd, no. They come about once a week.”

Dan traced the looping ‘W’ in Walter and the curve of the ‘M’ in MacDonald. Whoever had written Duck’s name had pressed hard into the thick paper: he could feel the indentations of the pen strokes. It was almost like reading Duck’s name spelled out in Braille. “What do they say?”

“You can read it, if you like,” Duck offered. He gulped down the rest of his coffee and stood. “I might be late tonight. Got a big job.”

Duck seemed to hesitate for a moment, as if waiting for some response, and Dan tore his attention away from the mysterious envelope long enough to look up at him. “Oh, that’s okay. I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” Duck said. “See you tonight,” He touched Dan’s shoulder briefly as he left the kitchen, and Dan felt the warmth of his hand linger long after the rumble of Duck’s ancient truck faded off down the road.

He eyed the envelope once more, wondering at the powerful sense of dread he felt when he looked at it. It was just a piece of folded paper and some glue, with Duck’s name—his real name, the one he was born with—printed neatly on the front. Nothing to be scared of.

Dan tore the envelope open. The letter inside was exactly three lines long.

My Dear Walter,

going to be a ccold wynter. have you ever hunted?? blood steems in the cold.

cincerly

He re-read the words again and again, his heart pounding. It wasn’t a threat, not exactly. He read the letter again, but the words refused to make sense.

“We’re not even doing anything wrong,” he said to the silent, empty kitchen.

***

He started to wake up early in the morning so he could talk to Duck a little before Duck went to work. Sometimes he’d even be up before Duck; on those mornings he’d start the coffee and make a quick breakfast of toast and eggs, or cut up some of the fruit Duck bought at the market every Saturday. He’d stand at the counter, chopping or slicing or waiting for the water to boil, and he’d look up to see the sun rising over the ocean, just a faint line of orange in the pinkish-blue sky.

Duck always smiled on those mornings when Dan was awake before him. He ate the breakfast Dan had made, and sipped at the coffee slowly, and talked quietly about whatever job he’d been hired to do that day. And through it all he wore that soft, secret smile, his eyes meeting Dan’s shyly over the rim of his coffee mug. He never said much, but it seemed like Duck was really happy Dan was there. Like he wanted him to stay.

“Hey, you want to do something today?” Duck asked him one morning. His posture was relaxed, his voice neutral, but Dan could feel how much Duck cared about his answer.

“Do something?” Dan repeated, stalling a little. “Like what?” The coffee churned like acid in his belly. Don’t ask me to go to town with you,, he silently begged. He couldn’t face the cold, judgmental faces of the people in town.

But Duck only said, “Got a pair of swim trunks?”

Dan blinked in surprise. “Swim trunks?”

“Yeah,” Duck smiled and scratched the back of his head, blushing a little beneath his summer tan. “Or shorts. Swim trunks’d be better, but you can make do with a pair of cutoffs.”

“What do you want to do?”

Dan gulped the rest of his coffee and stood. “I think it’s time you learned how to clam.”

***

It was a hot, sunny, perfect summer’s day, and Dan stood motionless on the shore. The sun and the wind and the saltwater spray was almost overwhelming, and he squinted in the bright light, watching as Cat prowled in the dunes behind them, stalking gulls. Occasionally Dan heard the squawk and a commotion of wings as a lucky seagull made its escape.

“She thinks she’s a dog.” Duck grinned and shook his head at Cat, who was already stalking her next unsuspecting victim

Duck wore a pair of navy swim trunks and a loose plaid button-down shirt, wrinkled and stained with paint. His bare chest showed between the gaps of the buttons, and Dan found the sight of Duck’s tanned skin nearly as distracting as the bright sun and the warm ocean wind. Sparse golden hair gleamed just above the open ‘v’ of Duck’s shirt collar, and Dan couldn’t help wondering how Duck would taste: salty, probably, from the ocean spray. Maybe even sweet.

Duck set down his clamming equipment—a long, pronged pole with tines at the end, a bucket buoyed by an inner tube lashed around it—and slipped his worn flip-flops off. He wriggled his toes in the sand and smiled at Dan. “You should take your shoes off. It feels good.” He wiggled his toes again for emphasis.

Dan toed off his loafers and pulled off his socks, and stuck them inside his shoes. The sand was hot against his bare feet, soft and grainy as it slid between his toes. He dug in a little, enjoying the warm sand around his feet his feet and the heat of the sun on his shoulders. It really was a beautiful day.

He looked up to find Duck smiling at him and squinting, slightly, in the bright light.

“So, the first thing we do is look for the air holes,” Duck said, clapping his hands together. “You’ve really never done this before?

Dan shook his head. “Not a lot of clams where I grew up.”

That wasn’t exactly a lie. There were plenty of clam harvesting sites near Victoria, but his parents would never have let him dig for his dinner. And it wasn’t something that had interested Val.

The thought pained him and he focused on the present, on Duck and the sea and the labour that they were here to perform. “You’ve done this a lot?”

Duck nodded. “Yeah. I spent a couple of summers in New England. I couldn’t afford a place to live, so I camped on the beach and survived on fish and clams. I sold what I couldn’t eat to tourists for beer money. It took me a long time to get a taste for quahogs again, but I can eat them now. And they’re good when they’re fresh.”

He paused and seemed to check Dan for some kind of reaction, but Dan didn’t know what kind of expression he should adopt. Fascination? Horror at the idea of Duck living homeless on a beach in the United States, surviving off clams and scrounging for tourists’ dollars? He’d seen clammers—rough, leathery men selling seafood out of plastic buckets from the backs of their beaten-up trucks—at the ferry terminal near his parents’ summer home back in British Columbia. Clammers had always made his mother nervous; she’d scrambled to lock the car doors whenever one of them approached them in the lineup for the mainland ferry.

“You must’ve been pretty broke,” Dan finally said. He thought he sounded incredibly awkward, but Duck didn’t seem bothered by the statement.

“It wasn’t too bad. I’ve been in worse places,” he said quietly, and then handed Dan one of the pronged sticks. “Let’s try it out, okay?”

Dan nodded, and together they set off down the beach. They stuck close to the water’s edge. Duck walked beside him, moving smoothly in the wet sand, and Dan tried to keep up. He’d spent too much time on the couch in the last few weeks. But Duck didn’t try to rush him, or ask him to hurry up. He kept an even pace next to Dan, and every few steps his arm would brush up against Dan’s. Dan kept his head down, eyes locked on the sand.

After a few minutes of walking, Dan turned and looked behind them. Their footsteps trailed behind them, two long lines of tracks stretching back together along the shore.

“How long were you in New England?” Dan asked, but Duck interrupted his question, holding up his hand and crouched low in the sand. He gestured for Dan to do the same.

“Look,” Duck said, pointing at two faint dots in the sand. “Air holes. Hand me your pole, okay?”

Dan did as he asked, and Duck stood, jabbing the pole into the sand in carefully controlled thrusts, each one shallow and precise.

“What are you doing?”

“Loosening up the pack sand,” Duck explained. He flipped the pole around so that the rake end was pointing down. “It’ll be easier when the tide comes in. Then we can just scoop them up with the rake.”

He demonstrated, pulling the rake through the loose sand until he unearthed a glistening clam, black and smooth and wet.

Duck held it out for Dan. “See? Easy-peasy. Let’s find you one.”

***

By noon the sun was bright and hot overhead, and the heat, which had felt like such a luxury at first, was now almost unbearable. Duck had stripped to the waist and tucked his shirt into the back pocket of his shorts, leaving his chest bare.

The sight of Duck’s naked torso made it tough for Dan to concentrate. He kept forgetting what he was doing, caught up watching the play of muscles in Duck’s back as he worked with the clam rake. Duck’s back was tanned to a light toffee brown, darker around his neck and arms. A farmer’s tan, Dan’s mother would have sniffed.

Duck had very little body hair, which was its own sort of novelty. Golden hair grew in light, irregular patches on his chest and arms, and was almost impossible to make out in the bright sunlight: it showed up in glints of coppery yellow on his chest, or as a dark tuft of sweat-moist hair in his armpits. Dan was fascinated: he couldn’t help staring, and more than once Duck said something—an instruction on how to use the rake, a piece of advice or encouragement—and Dan would blush furiously. “Pardon?”

“I said, you want to take a break?” Duck repeated patiently. He was watching Dan curiously. If Duck asked, Dan figured he could just blame the drugs. That way he wouldn’t have to explain how fascinating the white scar over Duck’s left pectoral was, or confess that he’d been wondering if Duck’s skin would really taste as warm and salty as he suspected it would.

“Dan?” Duck asked again, softly, and when Dan met his eyes (how long had he been staring at Duck’s narrow, muscled chest?) Duck just smiled. He seemed to know exactly what Dan had been thinking.

“C’mon, let’s have a drink. S’hot.”

They’d dragged a big Coleman cooler down to the beach with them. It was sweating in the heat, beads of condensation forming on the cracked plastic sides, and the sight of the little droplets of water made Dan realize how thirsty he was. Both of their buckets were half-full of clams, and they’d been working steadily for over two hours in the increasing heat.

Dan knocked the lid of the cooler aside and plunged his hand into the melted icewater, digging around for two of the water bottles Duck had put there that morning. Any other man would have packed the Coleman full of beer. But Duck didn’t drink, of course, and Dan was fine with water. He’d never really cared for beer, anyway.

They dropped down beside one another on the beach and cracked open their waters, drinking deeply and looking out at the waves. A peaceful silence hummed between them, and Dan marveled at the way he didn’t feel pressured to talk to Duck. No need for idle conversation, for talk of the weather or their plans for the weekend. No need to talk at all, really. Duck seemed content with silence.

Or not, as it turned out.

“You should know something about me,” Duck said softly. Dan had to strain to hear him over the waves. “I’ve never lived with anyone before.”

“Oh!” Dan said, because he didn’t know what else to say. His reaction embarrassed him: that was the shocked, maidenly ‘oh!’ of his aunt Susanna, the one who taped Wheel of Fortune every night, and lived with six cats. “I—why not?”

Duck pulled out a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his shorts and lit one. Dan was beginning to suspect that Duck didn’t really even like smoking; it probably just bought him some extra time to think.

“Just never worked out with anyone. But I wanted you to know, in case I…in case I did something wrong.”

Oh.

At least this time Dan didn’t say it out loud. He took a nervous sip of water. “So you’ve never been in love with anyone?”

Duck didn’t say anything. And didn’t say anything. And didn’t say anything. When Dan finally found the courage to look at his face, he found Duck staring out at the sea.

“Not in the way I wanted. Not in the…” Duck paused, and seemed to struggle to find the words he wanted. “Not in the right way,” Duck finally said, and shrugged.

It was a better answer than Dan had hoped for. Dan set his bottle of water aside and slid a little closer to Duck, telling himself that he could be brave, for once, and take a real risk. You’re not going to screw this up, he promised himself. He put his hand over Duck’s.

Duck didn’t pull away. His hand was warm under Dan’s, hard and steady. Dan closed his eyes and sucked in a deep, calming breath, and squeezed a little.

When Duck squeezed back he finally relaxed, and together they watched the sea.

***

They filled both of their buckets full of clams (“That’s about six bushels—not bad at all,” Duck said approvingly) and returned to the house just as the sun was setting. Dan’s arms and back were sore from the hard work digging in the hot sand, and his cheeks and nose were already showing the first painful blush of sunburn, but he felt loose and relaxed. Happy. Almost like he was drunk. And maybe he was, partly. Drunk on sun, on the rich salt air. Drunk on Duck.

Something had shifted between them, down there on the beach. They’d crossed some invisible line, and now Dan felt…lighter, somehow. Like he’d set down a heavy burden. Duck seemed to feel it, too: he was shyly playful, crowding Dan up against the kitchen counter and nudging him aside with his hip when he reached to get something from the cupboard.

Dan didn’t quite know how to return the horseplay—he’d never had any siblings, and he and Val hadn’t really had that kind of relationship. But the new openness between he and Duck made him feel more confident, and so he bumped Duck back, earning himself one of Duck’s breathtaking smiles and an affectionate hair-tousling. His scalp felt electric under Duck’s gentle fingertips, and he stood still for a full ten seconds after Duck released him, eyes closed, trying to remember the precise way Duck’s fingers had felt rubbing against his scalp.

He hadn’t quite recovered his equilibrium when Duck asked, “So, I guess you know as much about cleaning clams as you did about catching them, eh?” When Dan looked up, Duck was still smiling at him, and blushing a little under his summer tan.

“Uh, yeah.” Dan rubbed at the back of his neck, watching as Duck selected one of the clams from the bucket.

“There’s two ways to do it,” Duck explained, pulling open a draw with his free hand and removing a small paring knife. “You can cut a clam open, but it’s hard work and you usually end up destroying it.” He demonstrated, working the knife into the clamshell and slicing through the flesh of the creature inside. A thin grey trickle of fluid oozed out of the damaged shell, and when Duck finally pried the pieces of the shell apart, Dan saw that the clam inside was little more than a mutilated lump.

“See? You wouldn’t want to eat that. It won’t bake or boil properly now.” Duck set the dead clam aside and reached back into the bucket.

“The second way is better. You take the clam and put it in some fresh saltwater.” He did so, dropping the clam into its own little bowl of seawater. “If you’re careful and patient, the clam’ll open up on its own. No cutting. Just have to be gentle, and give it some time.”

Duck was looking at him now, not at the clam, and Dan felt the back of his neck heat.

“Huh,” he said, and glanced away. The clam in the bowl didn’t look ready to open up yet, but Dan trusted Duck. Duck knew how to handle things.

They left the rest of the clams in the bucket filled with seawater, and Dan went to take a cold shower. The water felt good on his hot, tight skin, and after he finished he asked Duck for some aloe to put on his sunburn. He was tempted to ask Duck to help him spread it across his back and shoulders, but…well, that was too transparent, wasn’t it? And what if he was wrong, and Duck didn’t feel like that about him? He’d look like an idiot. In the end, he did it himself.

By the time he was finished the rest of the clams had opened, and Dan and Duck worked together to wash and clean them. Once Duck explained the necessary steps of rinsing and then scrubbing the cleaning went quickly, and as soon as they’d scrubbed the clams free of sand and grit and prepared them for baking. They also wrapped up some potatoes up in tinfoil, and threw some ears of corn into a paper sack to take down to the beach.

The sun was setting over the ocean in a blaze of orange and pink light. Dan stood looking at it for a moment, shielding his eyes against the glare. A long pathway of flickering gold stretched across the ocean from the horizon to the shore, and the sky itself was a dusky rose-pink that shaded up into turquoise, which was quickly swallowed by the darker hues of night.

“Hell of a show, isn’t it?” Duck said, puffing on one of his ever-present cigarettes. The smell didn’t even bother Dan anymore.

“It is,” he agreed. “I hope word doesn’t get out. The last thing Wilby needs is more tourists.”

Duck smiled at him. “Yeah. Carol French’d probably try to sell tickets, huh?”

He felt his own smile fade a little, but Duck didn’t seem to notice, focused as he was on gathering driftwood for a fire.

Dan shrugged off the momentary sense of shame and panic inspired by the notion of Carol French selling tickets to their private strip of beach, and went to look for some wood.

***

“Well,” Duck said, licking the last of the clam juice from his long, lean fingers. “That was some meal.”

“Pretty good,” Dan agreed, distracted by the sight of Duck sucking on his fingers. He blinked once, shaking his head a little, and wondered if Duck was being deliberately provocative, or if he was just a naturally sensual person. A little of both, Dan decided, and threw another small piece of driftwood on the fire while Duck put their plates and utensils in the big bowl they’d used to hold the clams. It had been a good meal: the clams had baked slowly on hot rocks Duck arranged around their little fire, and the baked potatoes and fresh corn on the cob Duck had picked up at the market on Saturday were delicious. He’d forgotten how good a simple meal could be.

Just as he was scraping the corncob husks into the fire, he felt something buried in the sand roll under his bare foot. He knelt down and dug around in the sand until he touched something round and slightly cold. The flickering firelight didn’t reveal much: it looked like he’d found some kind of rock that was about the diameter of a toonie. It caught the light in an odd way, holding and reflecting the glow from the fire. The rock shone a pale green when he held it up to the flickering light.

“Any idea what this is?” he asked, and handed it over to Duck. Duck took the rock, squinted, and smiled.

“Beach glass,” he said, handing it back to Dan. “Never seen it before?”

Dan shook his head.

Duck smiled at him. “I thought you were an islander, too.”

“Well, we don’t have rocks like that out on the west coast,” Dan replied, and Duck laughed.

“It’s not really a rock. It’s just some old garbage—a piece of a beer bottle or a canning jar that’s been smashed up and rolled smooth by the ocean. The stones turn up on the shore here sometimes.” He held the murky piece of green glass up to the fire. “I think this one was a Heineken bottle, once.”

Duck handed the stone back to Dan, and their fingers brushed. He felt a nervous little zing of—something—shoot between them at the contact. The bit of glass was very warm from Duck’s hand.

“I used to collect the glass whenever I found it,” Duck said, stretching out on the dry log they’d been using as a bench. “I kind of liked the thought of it, y’know? Nature taking our trash and spitting it back out as something beautiful. Makes me think…”

He trailed off, and looked a little embarrassed.

“It makes you think what?” Dan prompted

Duck was staring at his own hands, which Dan thought were strong and capable-looking in the wavering orange light of the fire. “Makes me think that, if a beer bottle can come out as something pretty, then maybe there’s hope for us all.”

Dan smiled, touched. He slipped the beach glass into his pocket, and resolved to look for more tomorrow.

“That’s nice. I’d like to think that when we die we get transformed into something new. Something better. Beats the other theories I’ve heard.”

“Huh,” Duck said. “That’s…you’ve heard a lot of theories?”

“Some.” Dan cleared his throat. “I never really believed in it. Heaven, I mean. And dying—” He cut himself off, frowning. He didn’t want to talk about this. He wasn’t even sure why he’d brought it up. Duck couldn’t possibly want to hear this stuff.

But Duck knocked his shoulder, just a quick nudge, and gave Dan a small, encouraging smile. “Go on,” he said.

“There was nothing,” Dan said quickly. “No bright light, no chorus of angels.”

“You weren’t really dead,” Duck pointed out. “Not for long, anyway.”

Dan just shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Maybe heaven’s not really meant for people like us.” He smiled, trying to make a joke out of it, but right away he knew he’d said something wrong. Duck’s body grew stiff and he pulled away from Dan. All of the warmth and little tendrils of connection he’d sensed building between them all day were obliterated by Duck’s sudden, tense anger. He’d never even seen Duck get upset, Dan realized. Not once.

“And what the hell does that mean?”

Dan’s mouth dropped open. “Mean?”

“Yeah. What do you mean, ‘people like us’? Queers?”

“I don’t—”

Duck stood abruptly and snatched up the large bowl holding their dinner dishes, which rattled together sharply. “You hate yourself that much, huh? You think ‘people like us’ don’t deserve heaven? You think God doesn’t want us?”

“I never said…” Dan was having trouble following what Duck was saying. It felt like his brain was stuck in the wrong gear; he wanted to try to address this terrible anger building up in Duck, but instead he could only hear the faint, whirr, whirr noise of his own thoughts stuck in neutral. “I just told you that I don’t really believe in any of that stuff!”

“Well, it sure sounds like you believe something or someone has the right to judge us,” Duck said. His voice was tight and hard. “You tried to kill yourself because of it.”

“No!” His own baffled anger had pitched his voice too high; he sounded like an indignant child. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t because of that,” he said quickly. He had to make Duck understand this crucial point. “It was Val. I’d promised Val it would never happen again.”

This seemed to catch Duck by surprise. He did an obvious double-take, the anger slowly draining out of him and replaced by uncertainty. “What do you mean, ‘again’?”

Dan felt shaky. Too shaky, suddenly, to have this conversation. “I broke a promise. If I’m ashamed of anything, it’s because of that. Because being...what I am…makes me into someone I don’t like.” He looked at Duck, golden in the light of their driftwood fire.

“And what’s that?”

“A liar. And a coward.” He hung his head and watched the play of firelight on the sand. “You know anything about me? I mean, what I did before we moved to Wilby?”

Duck shook his head. It still surprised Dan to find out that his secrets weren’t common knowledge in a small place like Wilby Island. Victoria was a hundred times bigger, and it seemed like everyone there had known his secrets.

“I—” he swallowed, hard. “I was on faculty at the university in Victoria. Canadian history. I liked my job, my students, my research. Val and I were…well, not happy, but as happy as you could expect, I guess. I’d had a hard time in graduate school. Emotional problems.”

He wondered if he should pause and explain what that meant, explain the crushing depression that had descended so swiftly and suddenly halfway through his thesis. But Duck just nodded at him to continue.

Dan pushed on. “But I made it through and finished my doctorate, and I’d been lucky enough to find a tenure-track job. Things were going well. And then Greg Pierce enrolled in my seminar on Confederation.”

A flash of memory, of Greg, big and bluff and handsome, standing behind Dan’s desk, his jeans half-unzipped.

We both know you want this. Why are you fighting it?.

He remembered how dry his throat felt, and how quickly his heart had thumped in his chest. He’d…he’d wanted Greg to keep going. He’d wanted to watch as Greg finished unzipping his jeans, and slipped his hands inside to pull out his—

“No!” Dan had shouted, jumping to his feet and knocking over the faux-Tiffany lamp behind his desk chair. The bulb inside the glass shade had burst with a sharp “pop” that sounded a bit like an exploding balloon, and the shade itself lay in pieces on the floor. Greg had stepped back, but he hadn’t look shocked or upset; instead, he’d just looked at Dan steadily, and put his hands on his hips.

“C’mon,” Greg had said, sliding his hands down until he cupped his erection. “I’ve see the way you look at me in class. All those eyes on you, and it’s me you look at. You want me, Dr. Jarvis.”

Dan had been too shocked to speak. Was it true? Did he want Greg? Did he want another man? He’d known that he had—feelings, almost since childhood, but he’d never thought…

“No,” he’d shaken his head, terrified. Everything had happened so fast. He’d known it wasn’t right. He’d known. Greg was a student. They were in his office. Another student could walk in any second. And he wasn’t…he didn’t…

“No,” Dan had said again, much more firmly. “You’re wrong, Greg.”

Greg pursed his lips, frowning. A strand of blond hair had flopped over his eye, and he brushed it away impatiently. “I don’t think so,” he’d said. “You’ll come around. Your type always does.” He’d casually zipped up his jeans and straightened his t-shirt, and gone to the door.

“See you after the Christmas break, Dr. Jarvis,” he’d said, and left.

Dan had collapsed into his desk chair and contemplated the shattered ruins of his lamp. Shards of green and blue glass littered the carpet, and he’d thought about getting up to find a broom and a dustpan. But instead he’d sat in his empty office for a very, very long time, looking at the broken glass.

Duck coughed politely, and Dan blinked, coming back to himself a little. He laced his fingers together and stared down at them, not sure what questions Duck would ask.

“So, the kid came on to you, and you said you weren’t interested,” Duck surmised. “But it didn’t end there, did it?”

“No,” Dan said slowly.

He and Val had spent the holidays with her family in Vancouver, and on the ferry back across to Victoria he’d stood on the outside viewing deck and let the wind tear at him for a while. He’d known that his problems with Greg Pierce wouldn’t end with the confrontation in his office. But worse than a repeat of the incident were the unsettling ideas Greg had forced Dan to consider. He’d spent most of the winter break trying to figure out if it was true.

Was he gay?

After three weeks of contemplation, he still hadn’t known for sure.

The new term in January had started off poorly. Dan continued teaching his small Confederation seminar, and Greg continued to flirt with him. It seemed like Greg was suddenly everywhere: in the library, in the cafeteria, wandering around the graduate offices after everyone else had gone home. He pestered Dan with inconsequential questions about papers and pressed him for obvious details about Canadian history, and the whole time he’d leered at Dan, licking his lips and making suggestive comments. Once, when Dan was searching for a book in the university library, Greg had stolen up behind him and slipped his hands into Dan’s pockets. His breath had been warm on the back of Dan’s neck.

“C’mon, Dr. Jarvis. All you have to do is say ‘yes’.”

Dan had whirled around, dropping an armful of books. Greg had startled him badly, and he’d abandoned his books and papers, fleeing the library before anyone saw the two of them together and thought…well, and thought that the nice, unassuming Dr. Jarvis from the history department was sleeping with a student. A male student.

He’d driven around and around north Victoria for two hours before he’d been calm enough to go home and have dinner with Val.

The situation continued to deteriorate. Greg was a lazy and combative student who rarely handed in any essays or completed any of the assigned reading, and by the end of the semester Greg was failing Dan’s seminar, and most of his other classes as well. Still, Greg had come to speak with Dan in his office (and Dan knew enough by now to only see Greg Pierce during the day when there were other faculty around, and to keep his door wide open) and he’d asked Dan to write him a reference letter.

“I think you owe me,” Greg had said. “For being such a cocktease all winter.”

“I’m not—I didn’t—” Dan had flushed red and stared down at his desk. “I’m sorry if you think I’ve led you on in some way, but Greg, I’m really not—

“Sure you are,” Greg’d said dismissively. “Just say it already. Get it over with. Close your door and let me blow you.”

“Greg!” Dan had stood and, by some small miracle, managed not to knock over the new lamp he’d bought to replace the one he’d broken five months earlier. “I think it’s time that you left my office. I won’t be recommending you for any graduate work. You’re a poor student, Greg, and you’re just not cut out for grad school.”

Greg had nodded as if to agree, but his eyes were hard and his face was mottled with red. “Fine,” he’d said sharply. “If that’s the way you want it. Write me the reference letter, or I’ll tell everyone that you’ve been fucking me since Christmas.”

“But it’s not true!” Dan had sputtered. “And no one will—”

“What?” Greg had said. “No one will believe that you’re queer? Or that you’d fuck a student? C’mon. Grow up, Dr. Jarvis. People’ll believe it. I’ll make them believe it.”

Dan hadn’t believed Greg. At least, not at the time. He’d been absolutely certain that no one in the department, or on the Board of Regents, would take Greg’s word over his. He’d hoped that Greg would cool off and forget it. He’d hoped that something would happen, some miracle would arrive, and everything would return to normal. He’d had a safe, ordinary life. He had a comfortable marriage, a nice home, and a job he liked. Dan didn’t think that anyone could really take it all away from him. And certainly not because of something that had never actually happened.

“I just didn’t know what to do,” Dan said softly, hoping that Duck would understand. “Greg had no proof, of course, but even the hint of an allegation like that…”

“I get it,” Duck said quietly. “They fire you?”

Dan shook his head. “No. At least not right away.”

Greg had taken his story to anyone who would listen: the department dean, the head of the student union, the director of the Board of Regents. For the most part, he was ignored.

“UVic is liberal school, and the dean was supportive. I think the Regents were more concerned about the professional misconduct than the fact that I’d supposedly been with another man,” Dan explained to Duck. “But the rumours persisted. And Greg just wouldn’t let it go. He sent Val a letter. A letter, if you can believe it. A play-by-play of everything we’d supposedly done together.” Dan smiled ruefully. “He might not have been much of a student, but Greg did have a good imagination.”

He could still picture Val’s face after she’d read the letter. Her eyes had glittered dangerously, and two bright spots of anger had appeared on her pale cheeks. She’d never even asked him if it was true.

That was the first time Val had thrown him out of the house.

Dan had gone to a tourist motel down by the harbour—rather like the one in Wilby, actually, apart from the fact that the ocean was on a different side—and he’d spent days there, wondering if Val would ever let him come home.

“I still don’t know why she didn’t trust me,” Dan said, still shocked by how much the memory of that period hurt.

“Think she knew?” Duck asked. “Oh, maybe she didn’t think you’d been with that kid. Greg,” Duck said softly. “But maybe she could tell that you were…”

“I don’t know.” Dan shook his head and stared into the fire. “But she finally called, and made me promise that I’d never lie to her again. It was the shame of it, she said. The secrecy. The pitying looks from the other faculty wives. That was the part she couldn’t stand. So she made me promise.”

The fire hissed and popped. It was eating away at the driest wood now, sending ash and clean white smoke drifting up into the starry sky. He heard Duck’s unspoken question as clearly and loudly as the snap and crackle of the fire: So why did you lie to her later?

He’d asked himself that question a thousand times. Why had he lied to Val? Why hadn’t he told her about his trips down to the Watch? Why had he kept everything from her, when all she’d ever asked was that he let her make the choice to stay or to go?

“I don’t know why I never told her,” Dan said quietly. “I’d been able to ignore that part of myself for so long. But once we came here…I don’t know. I didn’t go looking for it.” He expected Duck to snort, or express some kind of disbelief. But he kept silent, so Dan continued.

“I just liked to take walks at night. It helped clear my head after being in the store all day. And one day I ended up down at the Watch, and a man came up to me. Men had been coming up to me for years, but that day…that day it was different. I’m not sure why.”

“So what happened?” Duck prompted, and Dan flushed and looked back at the fire.

“He kissed me. And I let him.”

He risked a glance at Duck, who simply smoked and nodded thoughtfully. “And you found out you liked it.”

“Yeah,” Dan said shakily. “I did.”

“But you didn’t tell your wife.”

“No.” His fingers were starting to hurt, and Dan pulled his hands apart, curling them over his knees until they stopped feeling so numb. “No, I never did. I went back to the Watch a couple of times. It was never a regular thing. Just…something I did, sometimes.”

Duck wasn’t looking at him anymore. He was staring into the fire, a blank look on his face, and Dan wondered who—or what—he was thinking about. Or maybe Duck was just trying to figure out how he could tell Dan that he’d done a truly unforgiveable thing. It was no less than he deserved, really. If Duck rejected him now, or decided that he wasn’t worth the risk…well, that was a suitable punishment for liars and cowards, wasn’t it? He really did deserve to rot in hell for what he’d done to Val.

Duck finally seemed to come out of his trance. He rested his forearms on his knees and leaned over, stubbing his cigarette out into the sand and pocketing the butt. “So is it the lie you regret, or are you just sorry you got caught?”

The question surprised Dan. He sat back a little, and realized that he’d been leaning toward Duck all this time, as if readying himself to reach out and catch the words. He cleared his throat. “The lie. I wish I’d been honest with her. And with myself.”

That seemed to be good enough for Duck. He nodded and got up, and picked up the pile of dinner dishes. “You really should tell your therapist about all this stuff. I bet he’d be able to help you better if he knew.”

Duck braced the big serving bowl filled with their dishes on his hip, and reached out with his left hand to help Dan up off the log. Dan took his warm, rough, calloused hand, and levered himself up. Duck didn’t let go right away, and they stood there for a moment, fingers intertwined, the fire warm against their legs.

“I think I’m starting to make a little progress anyway,” Dan said.

***

It was better, after that. Duck still took Dan to the ferry on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Dan still sat in Dr. Fredericks’ office and tried to find ways not to talk about all the things he didn’t want to talk about. But he took Duck’s advice, and soon he was telling his psychiatrist about the depression that had clawed at him in grad school, about Greg Pierce and the scandal that had chased him off Vancouver Island and all the way across Canada to sleepy little Wilby Island

They talked about Val, and his visits to the Watch.

They talked about Duck, but Dan didn’t quite know how to explain about the friendship they’d struck up, or the way Duck seemed to be content with that friendship. He felt strange and nervous talking about Duck with Dr. Fredericks, and explaining how kind and gentle and patient Duck had been. Saying those things in Dr. Fredericks’ messy, cluttered office felt almost like cheating. Like Duck was his secret. Like he shouldn’t be sharing him with anyone. Not even Dr. Fredericks.

But that was ridiculous. Duck wasn’t anyone’s secret; everyone knew he and Dan were living together. Even Dr. Fredericks knew. He’d heard it from Sylvia Morris’ son Tom, who owned the hardware store on Wilby Island. But Dr. Fredericks was the only person who knew that Dan wasn’t sleeping with Duck, but that was because Dan had told him that he hadn’t been interested in sex since the raid at the Watch, two months ago. He hadn’t been able to get an erection since then, and couldn’t seem to find any reason to be interested in sex.

Of course, that was changing too.

He thought about Duck all the time. In the mornings when Duck came in to say goodbye, it was all Dan could do not to drag Duck down to the sofa bed and kiss him senseless. He kept thinking about how Duck’s mouth would feel against his own. Warm, and soft, and maybe a little scratchy from Duck’s stubble.

He thought about how Duck’s hot tongue would feel against his own, about Duck touching his face (those hands, those beautiful, long-fingered hands stroking his cheeks) and holding Dan still as he deepened the kiss. About slowly undressing Duck, revealing tanned skin and that nearly-hairless chest, supple and muscled. About tasting Duck’s warm skin, and teasing out the traces of salt and sweat and the smoke of cigarettes.

He thought about Duck’s kiss, and Duck smiling at him, and Duck undressing him. He thought about it and touched himself, in the shower, when he went swimming, on the sofa-bed after Duck had left for the day.

He’d never really liked masturbating. It was too lonely, usually over too quickly, and it always made him feel vaguely guilty. The only other time he felt that strange combination of shame and guilt was when he flicked on a lamp and the filament inside the bulb snapped, burning out the light. He always felt as though he could have saved the unlucky bulb if he’d been more patient, or turned the lamp on more slowly. Masturbation was a little like that for Dan Jarvis. It felt like the unexpected, unnecessary waste of something he needed.

But jerking off in the shower and thinking about Duck was a good sign, even though it wasn’t quite what he wanted. It was good that his body was becoming interested in pleasure again. Getting hard again at the thought of Duck’s hands on his skin was a good thing.

He tried to remember that when Dr. Fredericks finally asked the inevitable question.

They’d been talking about Duck, about how Duck had promised to teach Dan how to flyfish that coming weekend. Dan had known that Dr. Fredericks would ask him about his relationship with Duck. So far he’d managed to avoid the question, and just explained that Duck was a friend he was staying with.

“Do you have feelings for him?” Dr. Fredericks asked, looking a little worried about what Dan might say.

“I might have, yeah,” Dan said slowly. He was a little stunned at how easy it was to say. He’d been so scared of saying it aloud, or even in his own head, for such a long time. Because what did it mean to be in love with a man, instead of just having sex with one?

“What do you think about that?”

Dr. Fredericks smoothed out his mustache and tugged a little on his soft brown beard. The gesture annoyed Dan, but Dr. Fredericks was an okay guy, otherwise. He said, “I think it’s good you have someone in your life, Dan. Duck has been very supportive of you.”

Dan nodded, and looked down at his hands, which were folded stiffly in his lap. His knuckles were white, and he forced himself to relax. “Do you think I should…do you think it would be okay for me to kiss him?”

Dr. Fredericks blinked, and he stroked his mustache again. Dan couldn’t decide if it was a nervous tic, or if it was something like Duck’s smoking—something to do when he needed a little time to think.

“That’s up to you and Duck,” Dr. Fredericks said finally. “If you’re asking for my permission—”

“I’m not,” Dan promised quickly. “It’s just…you know more about me than anyone, pretty much. Except Duck.” He spared a moment to worry about that. Had he told his psychiatrist too much? “And I’d appreciate your opinion on this, that’s all. Think it’d be okay?”

“Do you think Duck wants you to kiss him?” Dr. Fredericks asked gently. He was about Dan’s father’s age, and it was pretty clear that he wasn’t really used to giving dating advice to a gay man, but he didn’t look like he thought Dan was a pervert or a deviant. He just looked like he was worried about Dan, and maybe a little amused by the whole thing.

Dr. Fredericks’ seeming acceptance of the idea allowed Dan to relax, at least a little. He unfolded his hands and wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. “I think he does,” Dan said, hoping he was right. “I know he’s lonely, and I know that he likes me.”

That was before you tried to kill yourself, said the pill-bottle voice, but Dan ignored it. Duck still liked him. If the last two months had proven anything, it proved that Duck did like him. They were friends. Whatever else happened, he knew Duck cared about him.

And that was more than Dan could say about anyone else he’d ever slept with.

“Dan, you do need to protect yourself,” Dr. Fredericks said. He sat up and looked at Dan, and might have even put a sympathetic hand on Dan’s knee, if he hadn’t been a native Nova Scotian and thus incapable of such a thing.

Dan swallowed, and wondered desperately if there was anything he could possibly say that would prevent Dr. Fredericks from lecturing him on the importance of safe sex.

“You’re at a very vulnerable point in your recovery. I think the medication is working, and you’re starting to feel better. Your sense of optimism has returned. You’re starting to reengage with life and with the people around you. Sexual curiosity and desire are natural components of that recovery. But Dan, if Duck rejects you, or if things go badly, you need to think about how you’d handle it.” Dr. Fredericks frowned. “He can’t be your reason for living, Dan. No one person can be another person’s whole world. That’s not the way it works.”

He’d never seen Dr. Fredericks be so serious. The psychiatrist usually spent half their sessions looking like he was trying to stay awake. “I know that,” Dan said softly. “I know.”

Dr. Fredericks nodded, and looked relieved. “Okay. Well. You’re an adult, Dan, and so is Duck. And from what you’ve told me, he’s very sensible person. Just…be careful,” he said, tugging on his beard one last time. “I think our time’s up for the week.”

***

Dan thought about Dr. Fredericks’ advice as he waited for the ferry back to Wilby Island. Port Saxon didn’t have a lot to offer in the way of distraction, and so he simply found a bench close to the ferry dock and watched the clouds pass over the sea, scattering strange shadows across the surface of the ocean. He could see Wilby in the distance, just a hazy green smudge on the horizon.

He can’t be your reason for living, Dan.

He knew that. He did. But there was no reason why Duck couldn’t be the one to help him want to start living again, was there? Everyone needed someone. John Donne had it right: no man was an island. Not Dan, and certainly not Duck.

He smiled, thinking how appropriate it was that Duck lived on a peninsula, connected to the rest of Wilby but isolated from it, too. Maybe Duck needed him just as much as Dan needed Duck.

The thought surprised him. It was obvious that Duck was lonely, and had been for a long time. One person couldn’t be another person’s whole world, yes, but one person could help remind another that the world still existed, couldn’t they? That’s what love was, or at least Dan had always thought so, before he’d gotten married and moved to Wilby and found the Watch. He’d come to believe that love was just something that happened to other people, in the way that sex just happened to him.

Love was making a connection with someone, and building a world together. He’d remember Dr. Fredericks’ advice, and try to keep in mind that Duck really couldn’t be his whole world. But it felt like a good place to start.

The Wilby ferry was lumbering towards the dock, and Dan stood, stretching out his legs. The wind blowing off the ocean was cool, and he sucked in a deep breath, enjoying the rush of salty sea air as it washed over his skin.

He’d make a start with Duck, and see if their two little islands could make a world together.

***

He was quiet that night, although Duck didn’t comment on it. They made dinner together—spaghetti and meatballs, because neither of them felt like trying anything more complicated—and sat out on the beach for a while, watching the stars wink on.

“How’d it go today?” Duck asked. He was trying hard to sound casual, but by now Dan knew Duck well enough to be able to tell when he was covering up anxiety or nervousness. He’d never asked about Dan’s therapy sessions before. In fact, he didn’t ask Dan many personal questions at all. He usually seemed prepared to wait until Dan was ready to tell him whatever needed telling.

“It was fine,” Dan said. “We talked, and he gave me a lot to think about. He, uh, asked about you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” Dan said, looking up at the sky. Venus was a bright point on the horizon. He could pick out the Big Dipper, too, and Polaris. “He asked me if I had feelings for you.”

It was very quiet on the beach, and grew quieter still when Duck didn’t respond. Dan counted to ten in his head, and then looked up to see Duck watching him intently, his face dimly lit by the weak early-evening starlight.

“What did you tell him?” Duck asked softly. Dan tried to slow his racing heart.

“The truth,” Dan said. “That I thought I was falling for you.”

Duck was calm, very calm. Dan wondered where he’d learned to be so calm.

“And what did your doctor have to say about that?” Duck’s voice was utterly neutral, and he almost managed to convince Dan that the answer didn’t matter to him. But Dan could see the way his hand shook when Duck took a quick drag of his cigarette.

“He thinks I might not know how to protect myself, if you don’t feel the same way.”

Duck nodded, as though he’d expected the answer. “That’s a worry,” he said. “I don’t want to do anything that might make you…” he trailed off, uncertain. “That might upset you.”

They sat quietly for another moment or two before Dan could figure out what to say.

“You won’t hurt me,” he said. “I know you won’t. I trust you, Duck.” He reached out in the dark, and found Duck’s warm, calloused hand. Duck closed his fingers around Dan’s.

“I’m worried I’ll let you down,” Duck said, quietly. “I told you, I’ve never been with anyone before. Not… not like that. Not as a long-term thing. And I’ve got a temper.”

Dan shivered a little. He hadn’t known that about Duck. There was a lot he didn’t know, actually. But here, under the stars, as he thought about how readily Duck had opened his life and his heart to him, and how easily their lives had slotted together, he was certain that it didn’t really matter what Duck’s secrets were.

“I trust you,” he said again and, feeling bold, pressed a quick kiss to the corner of Duck’s mouth. The fragile skin there tasted like smoke.

Duck turned to look at him, his expression caught somewhere between astonishment and…relief?

Duck carefully finished off his cigarette, and then stubbed it out in the sand. He carefully put the butt in his pocket—he’d never leave it behind, not on his own beach—and then got to his feet. Each movement was so careful and so deliberate that Dan would have sworn Duck was drunk, if he didn’t know better.

Duck didn’t look at Dan until he was on his feet, and then he extended his hand and helped Dan to stand. They stood there a moment, almost nose-to-nose, so close that Dan could smell Duck’s sweat and aftershave and the rich tobacco of his Chesterfields, and just as Dan leaned forward to press a hesitant kiss to Duck’s lips, Duck stepped back.

“Let’s sleep on this, okay?” he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Because if we go to bed together tonight…if I take you to bed tonight, I’m not going to be able to let you go.” He looked away from Dan, out at the water. “It’s gotta be your choice. Think about it some more. If you still want me in the morning—” Duck closed his eyes and inhaled sharply, as though the thought of Dan wanting him, or not wanting him, was too much to bear. “I’m not going anywhere, Dan. If you still want me tomorrow, come find me.”

Dan grabbed for his hand. “I’ll still want you,” he said quickly, heatedly. He didn’t understand this delay. What was Duck playing at?

His frustration evaporated at the sight of Duck’s smile, which was brighter than any of the stars.

“Then it’ll keep for another few hours,” he said, cupping Dan’s jaw tenderly. “I just don’t want to rush it. This is worth doing right, don’t you think?”

Dan thought about the times he’d rushed through it with other men. He’d always been so fast, so eager to come, and then even more eager to slink off. Duck was right. This…this thing between them was real. A quick grope in the dark, or a hurried blowjob under the cover of night, just wasn’t enough. It would keep wait until sunrise. He could wait until he could see Duck’s face clearly before they went any further with one another.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

***

That was the longest night of Dan Jarvis’ life, apart from the night he’d decided to kill himself.

He lay down on the sofa bed where he’d slept through so many summer days, and discovered that he couldn’t sleep a wink. He lay awake for countless hours, watching the shadows shift over the cracked plaster ceiling. He listened to the sound of Cat prowling around in the dark, chasing imaginary insects or stalking bits of string. And he thought about Duck.

Desire became like a second heartbeat. He listened to it pound in his bloodstream, pulsing through him like a river that had just burst its dam. Duck Duck Duck it went, on and on, as the night deepened and his body grew hot and flushed with want.

Images of what might happen between them in the morning flashed through his mind like fever dreams: he saw Duck spread out beneath him, felt himself push into Duck’s tight heat. Saw Duck take him into his mouth. And he saw himself, wild with desire, writhing against Duck as Duck pressed into him.

The dreams tormented him with their wild sweetness, and kept him awake for hours. But he must have dozed at some point, because the loud click of the refrigerator’s compressor startled him awake at about 3am. The wisest and most accursed hour of the night,
Dan’s mother had called it. He’d been dreaming of Duck’s touch, of his mouth. All he could think about was Duck, asleep on the other side of the house. Or of Duck lying awake, just as sleepless as Dan himself.

Dawn finally came just after five-thirty, filling the living room with grey, silvery light that slowly warmed to a soft pink glow. Dan watched light creep in around the heavy drapes, and he stood at the window watching the sun rise over the ocean.

Once the lazy orb had finally cleared the horizon, he padded down the hallway and knocked softly on Duck’s door.

He could just make out the dim shape of Duck asleep in the bed. Duck wasn’t wearing a shirt, and the green-and-blue quilt was tucked low around his hips. His skin looked golden in the newborn light, as though he were bathed in honey. He would probably taste sweet, Dan thought. Just like in his dreams.

Duck mumbled something and rolled over, offering up the long line of his back. A small blond patch of hair on Duck’s lower back caught the light, and Dan found it impossible not to allow his eyes to drift down to where Duck’s buttocks swelled. Dan blushed, but didn’t look away. He’d passed the night without questioning his need for Duck. The only question his restless mind had asked was when? And so he wasn’t afraid. He wanted this. And he knew that it was okay to look at Duck like this and to want. That it would be okay to cross the room and kneel down beside him. To lick at Duck’s chest, to trace the soft swell of his buttocks, to drop kisses down his spine and mouth the jut of his hipbone. Duck had said it would be okay. Everything would be okay. As long as he didn’t rush it, or push too hard.

Duck mumbled again, as if agreeing with Dan’s unspoken conclusions. He shifted restlessly, and stuffed a pillow between his thighs. The quilt slid off his body and pooled onto the floor. He was fully exposed now, and Dan couldn’t stop looking at the perfect flex of Duck’s ass and all of that warm, beautiful bare skin. It almost hurt to look at him.

That was the word for it, he decided. This first rush of sensation hurt. He’d been numb for so long, and now all the blood was rushing back to his extremities. It made his hands tingle and his head throb. Everything ached: his throat, his dick, his jaw. It was exactly like warming up too soon after being outside in the cold for a long, long time.

Dan must have made some kind of strangled sound, because Duck rolled over and opened his eyes. He blinked up at Dan for a moment, but he didn’t try to cover himself. He just folded his hands over his belly, and calmly looked back at Dan.

For a crazy second Dan thought that Duck was afraid to make any sudden movements, as though he thought Dan would bound away into the forest if he so much as raised an eyebrow to ask why Dan had been looking at him. But Dan was tired of running, and he was tired of Duck treating him like he was Duck’s responsibility to protect, or to put right.

He knelt by Duck on the scarred wood flooring and tilted his head in question. Duck nodded slowly, and Dan put a shaking hand over Duck’s. He stroked the back of Duck’s knuckles with his thumb.

“Morning,” Duck said. His eyes were clear, and free of any lingering trace of dreams. They looked startlingly blue-green in the light, like the colour of the Atlantic when the clouds parted and the sun hit the water just right.

“Morning.” Dan lifted his other hand to touch Duck’s face. He cupped his cheek, stubble rasping under his palm, and Duck’s eyes drifted closed.

“Feels good.”

Dan smiled. “Yeah,” he agreed.

“You decide on anything?”

“Yeah,” Dan said again, and lowered his mouth to Duck’s.

It wasn’t like diving into the ocean. He’d thought it would be, because that’s the way it had always felt when he kissed a man. Scary, and dangerous, and stupid and breathless and wrong. But as he kissed Duck’s warm, dry lips, he found that those feelings were entirely absent. Where was the sensation of helplessness, the undeniable, unshakeable belief that Duck was a force he couldn’t struggle against? He’d thought he’d have to surrender himself to Duck like a tired swimmer giving himself up to the currents of the ocean.

But Duck wasn’t the ocean, and he wasn’t like the other men Dan had been with before. He wasn’t rough, or demanding. He didn’t try to take anything, didn’t try to overwhelm Dan or drown him or make him choke on his own need. With Duck, everything was a question.

He felt it in Duck’s soft, generous mouth, in the way he simply sank back into bed and opened himself up to whatever Dan wanted, whatever Dan needed. His lips were gentle, and his tongue slid against Dan’s with unhurried ease. It felt as though they had all the time in the world. As if they could just drift, and see where the water took them.

Duck’s body was warm and relaxed against his, and his skin felt like silk, except where it was calloused and rough, or lightly dusted with hair. He tasted like salt and cigarettes and sweat, and made soft, encouraging noises against Dan’s mouth. And he never let go of Dan’s hand.

Dan broke away, panting, to kiss the side of Duck’s neck, to chase the faint taste of salt down into the hollow of Duck’s throat.

“Mmmm,” Duck sighed, settling into a more comfortable position. He tugged one hand out from where it had been trapped between their chests and rubbed at the back of Dan’s neck, resting it there. It felt good, as though Duck was touching him just because he could, because he enjoyed it, and not because he was indulging Dan’s need to go slow. The others had always wanted to rush this part. They’d wanted to rush everything, actually.

“You’re…you feel so good,” he said into Duck’s shoulder. “I’ve never—”

But he couldn’t put it into words. And Duck seemed to know what he wanted to say, anyway. He eased Dan up off his knees and onto the bed, spreading him out until they were lying pressed together almost nose-to-nose.

Dan could feel the heat radiating off Duck’s bare chest, and the hot, insistent press of Duck’s erection against his thigh.

“You sure about this?” Duck was frowning a little, as if he were trying to work something out. “I know I said we should wait, but—”

Dan kissed the corner of his mouth and said, “I want you.” His voice trembled just a little, and he shivered under the intensity of Duck’s gaze. No one had ever looked at him like that before, need and want all tangled up together but tempered by a kind of helplessness. Duck needed him like a swimmer needed air.

“I—” Duck said, and then swallowed and tried again. He cupped Dan’s face, his palm warm and rough. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too,” Dan said, and meant it.

Together they worked Dan’s sweatpants down and off his hips. Duck kept his eyes on Dan’s face, that unasked question Is this okay? still written there. He’d have to do whatever it took to ease Duck’s mind about that, Dan decided. Duck had to know how much he wanted this.

He caught Duck’s chin and nodded firmly, silently, releasing him with a kiss. Duck’s eyes drifted down to look at him. He pressed his fingers to the head of Dan’s cock and Dan hissed, feeling that tingling again, the one that signaled that life was returning to frozen, forgotten parts of himself.

Duck wrapped his hand around Dan’s penis and kissed him, and watched his face as he slowly began to stroke.

Dan had done this before with anonymous men in the woods behind the Watch, but he’d never done this in a bed, and never in daylight. And not with a man who smelled and tasted like the sea. He’d barely ever kissed anyone other than Val, and he wondered if Duck had, if he’d ever had a boyfriend or a lover. If he’d ever had sex with someone who knew his first name. Someone who called him “Walter.”

He opened his mouth to ask, but Duck grabbed both their cocks in a tight fist and Dan cried out. He thrust up into the warm circle of Duck’s grip and all the questions faded. They fit together perfectly.

“Oh,” he murmured into Duck’s hair. His voice sounded rough, almost like it had the day after the hanging. He sucked on the tender flesh of Duck’s earlobe until he felt it was safe to speak again, but he could only manage, “Just don’t stop, please don’t stop.”

“I’m here,” Duck grunted, eyes closed, his hand still moving over their dicks. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you…”

At those soft words Dan stiffened and then jerked forward, clutching Duck tightly as he came.

Duck was only moments behind, and when he felt the hot splash of semen against his belly, Dan squeezed his eyes tightly shut and started to shake.

“Okay,” Duck said, and Dan couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be a question. Duck was watching his face and touching his cheek for the first time since the hospital room and Dan…Dan was crying.

“It’s okay,” Duck told him, over and over again, stroking his hair. “It’s okay.”

***

Dan moved his things into Duck’s bedroom later that afternoon, and put his few belongings into the spaces that Duck made for them. He hung his shirts next to Duck’s in the closet, and their socks mingled together in the top drawer of the old hand-carved dresser. The box of letters with no return address went under the bed, and Dan arranged his small collection of sea glass on the windowsill above the bed.

Duck fingered the rocks curiously, but smiled and relaxed back against Dan when Dan hugged him from behind.

“What are these for?” Duck asked, and Dan smiled, nipping at Duck’s throat.

“I’m going to try to find one for every happy day,” he said into Duck’s ear. “One for every day I’m with you.”

Duck’s hand tightened on Dan’s arm, and they swayed together in front of the window, until Dan could no longer resist kissing Duck. He couldn’t seem to get enough of him. Just like Dan had remembered from what he’d seen at the Watch, Duck really liked kissing. He was good at it. And he made Dan feel like he didn’t care about doing anything else except kissing him, and making Dan feel warm and safe and—he could admit it—cherished.

Duck guided them down to the bed, and they spent a long, long time exploring each other. It felt like Duck wanted to get to know every inch of Dan’s skin, and Dan lay back, closing his eyes as Duck ran his hand over Dan’s bare chest and belly, and curved his thumb over the sharpness of his hipbone.

“I don’t think…” Dan murmured, sighing a little as Duck pressed a warm, wet kiss to the crease in his thigh just above his groin. “I don’t think I ever took my clothes off before. With another man.”

Duck raised his head to look at him, and then clambered back up the bed. He put his hand over Dan’s heart, which beat against Duck’s palm like the excited flutter of a bird’s wings as it beat against the cage door.

“Everything is different, huh?” Duck said, before leaning down to kiss Dan hungrily. Dan wasn’t sure, but he thought Duck knew what he meant.

There were a lot of differences with it came to making love with Duck. Some of them Dan hadn’t even begun to count. Beyond the premium Duck seemed to place on kissing, he was determined to explore every inch of Dan’s skin. And he seemed to expect a similar kind of exploratory spirit from Dan.

During those first few weeks, they often went to bed right after dinner and stripped down unceremoniously, and then climbed into Duck’s narrow single-man’s bed. They mapped each other with slow, leisurely kisses, stroking hands, hot mouths. The pace of it always caught Dan by surprise. He wasn’t used to spending so much time just…touching. Foreplay had never been a part of what he’d done with the anonymous men in his past, and Val certainly hadn’t been interested in his body.

“You’re too skinny!” she’d laughingly confessed early in their marriage. “I feel like you’re going to bruise me. Can you leave your shirt on?”

He’d complied. Even in those early days, he and Val had never been much for sex. In fact, he could count on one hand the number of times they’d made love during the twelve years of their marriage. The fact that she hadn’t really liked his body was only a small part of the problem.

Duck, it seemed, liked his body very much. Maybe it was the novelty of being with the same person over and over—Dan had figured out enough to know that, like him, Duck hadn’t been with the same man more than a few times. Or perhaps it was the freedom of being able to stretch Dan out beneath him and cover every inch of his bare skin with tender caresses. It was so different, to make love in private, without the fear of anyone seeing.

Dan was, perhaps, a little paranoid about this last bit. He carefully checked all of the windows and doors before they went to bed at night, and he made sure to draw the curtains over every window. Even in the warm security of Duck’s bedroom, when it was just the two of them, he made sure to keep the bedside light dim and not to angle the lamp where it would cast shadows against the curtains.

“You really like your privacy, huh?” Duck asked him one breathless evening, dropping down beside him, sweat-slick and beautiful in the low light of the lamp.

“I just want it to be us,” Dan said. “No one else.” He nuzzled against Duck’s damp throat, and Duck closed his eyes and hummed a little, as though he understood, and agreed.

Truthfully, Dan had nightmares about unseen eyes peering out at them from the night. He dreamed that the mysterious letter-sender was watching from the stunted growth of pines at the end of the peninsula. He could imagine the sender, whoever he was, creeping closer and peering into one of the windows of Duck’s little cottage, and the thought terrified Dan. That night, he pressed harder against Duck, trying to wipe the images from his mind and replace them with the feeling of Duck in his arms.

“You’re shaking,” Duck whispered. Dan could feel the movement of his jaw as he spoke. “Is this okay?”

Dan nodded, hiding his face in Duck’s neck. He just wanted the rest of the world to go away.

The world, however, refused to comply. They continued to dig clams during the long, hot summer days of late July and August, but Duck began to encourage longer hikes around the island.

“I’ll show you around,” he said, flashing one of his rare, brilliant smiles that always made Dan feel a little light-headed. “You really should see the island in the summertime.”

On days when Duck wasn’t working—which was more and more often, as the summer people were now settled into their vacation homes and wouldn’t need Duck again closer to Labour Day—he and Dan would set off into the green forests of Wilby. Duck seemed to know all of the names of the island plants and trees. He’d learned them, he said, from a book he’d stolen from the school library.

“I was never much of a reader,” Duck explained as they tramped through the woods along a nearly-invisible path overgrown with what Duck identified as goldenrod, yellow violets and carnivorous pitcher plants. “But I liked to know the names of things. Some of the plants out here are edible, too. When it got bad at home I’d spend a couple of nights in the bush. I could find enough food, usually—berries, fish. And I could sleep out under the stars. Wasn’t too bad. But I ate the wrong kind of mushrooms once. Made me pretty sick. After that I made myself learn what was safe and what wasn’t.”

Dan watched Duck’s face carefully as he told this story. Conversations with Duck were a little like navigating the old battlefields of Europe. The landscape of Duck’s memories seemed saturated with the blood of history, and filled with hidden craters from long-fallen bombs. On the surface there was just a wide, green pasture, and only a small ripple—a hill here, a dip there—that hinted at old trenches and mass graves.

“How often did it get bad?” Dan asked, seizing upon the one piece of information it felt safe to ask Duck about. “At home, I mean. How often?”

Duck frowned. “Too often,” he said, and pulled Dan into an unexpected hug. Dan held him close and petted the back of his head, right where he could feel a hard little ridge of bone. Beneath the sunny smile and the warm, solid comfort of his presence, Duck was fragile.

Duck squeezed him back tightly, and Dan couldn’t help but glance around anxiously. They were in the middle of the woods, miles from town, and on a tiny little island off the coast of Nova Scotia. No one would see them here.

Grimly determined, he pulled back enough to kiss Duck’s temple, and then his mouth.

“You can tell me about it, if you want,” he said, but Duck shook himself and pulled away.

“C’mon, I want you to see the waterfall before it gets dark.”

They went out on some kind of excursion almost every day during those sun-soaked days of late summer. Duck explained that things had slowed down at work, and Dan believed him because he didn’t quite know how to ask if people had elected not to hire the only handyman on the island because he was queer. He didn’t know what, exactly, people were saying in town, or how they were treating Duck, because he didn’t ask. He just wanted to pretend that the secret woods and hidden streams he explored with Duck were Wilby Island. Everything else—the Watch, the town, and the condemnation and suspicion he’d lived with there, were not part of his life any longer. There was only Duck, and the ocean and the forest and the sky.

He saw parts of the Island he’d never expected to find, tramping along at Duck’s side. Most of the coastline was developed, but the interior of the island was mostly untouched, and that was where he and Duck spent the bulk of their time. The bush, that green void that had terrified generations of Canadian settlers, was a friend to them. It screened them from judgment, and helped them to disappear into the dark heart of nature.

Dan learned to flyfish, and how to clean what he caught. He began to bake trout on an open fire. He and Duck carried potatoes in their pockets, along with a packet of salt, and they cooked their dinner right where they caught it. Fresh fish and baked potato quickly became Dan’s favourite meal.

Duck taught him how to do a backstroke and a butterfly kick in an old rock quarry a few miles south of the peninsula. The water was deep and cold but much better for lessons, Duck explained, than the open ocean. They dived in together from a spot high on the quarry cliffs, laughing and shouting from the shock of the cold water. Dan became used to the sight of Duck running naked off the cliff, penis bobbing between his legs. It looked ridiculous—they looked ridiculous—but Dan slowly stopped caring about what things looked like. In the privacy of Wilby Island’s secret places, appearances didn’t seem to matter.

They made love often when they were out exploring, and Dan found the shift between the companionable silence of a hike and a suggestive wink or a significant look to be a little disconcerting, at least at first. He wasn’t used to having another body entirely at his disposal. Duck had made it clear early on that he placed no limits on himself, or on his affection. He always seemed to be hungry for Dan. For kissing, hot and slow in the shade of some forgotten glen. For a quick blowjob in the chilly quarry, water lapping at Dan’s back. Duck seemed to enjoy and welcome any kind of touch, save one.

The only restriction Duck placed on his body wasn’t evident until mid-August, nearly six weeks after Dan first spent the night in Duck’s bed. They’d made love all over the island by that point, and continued to spend most evenings doing the same in Duck’s comfortable bedroom. But they had never had anal sex, and Dan wasn’t entirely sure why.

He’d never done it, and perhaps Duck had picked up on his nervousness, but after a month and a half of doing everything else, Dan felt he ought to bring the subject up. It was what men did together, after all, particularly when those men weren’t confined to a rushed blowjob in the trees surrounding the Watch. And maybe it was something Duck wanted to do.

Dan thought it over for a few days, and decided that he had to say something. He waited until they’d eaten dinner—on the beach in front of the house, for a change, rather than out on a hike—and settled himself into Duck’s lap, kissing him deeply. Duck’s kiss was sweet and unhurried, and Dan lost himself in the rhythmic motions of Duck’s lapping tongue and the gentle undulations of his hips. When he felt ready—hard and fully erect, eager for Duck’s touch—he backed off enough to murmur, “I want to fuck.”

He’d practiced it carefully in the mirror while Duck was out at work. And he was sure he’d gotten it right. His statement sounded appropriately husky and suggestive, and not as awkward as it usually did when he tried to swear, but Duck acted like Dan had just picked up one of the embers from the fire and thrown it into his lap.

Duck froze, and for an instant Dan thought he’d jump up, dump Dan into the sand, and run off into the water. Instead he closed his eyes and let Dan go, turning his face away.

“Duck?” Dan asked, and touched his cheek, worried. “What—?”

“I don’t,” Duck swallowed. Dan could hear the tightness in his voice. “I don’t like that so much. It’s not you. Nothing to do with you. I just…I don’t like it.”

Duck still wouldn’t look at him, which Dan thought was a bad, bad sign. “You don’t like…what?”

“Fucking,” Duck finally said, and glanced at him warily. “I don’t like to do it. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Dan said gently, more concerned about Duck and why he was so…afraid. Yes, that was the word for it. Duck MacDonald was afraid. “Do you not like, uh, receiving? Or being…” He scanned his memories desperately for the word. He should have researched this. He should have checked. “Or being on top?”

With a wave of his hand, Duck seemed to dismiss both options, but he said, “Getting fucked. I’ve never liked it.”

Dan frowned, trying to process this new information. They hadn’t talked about who they’d been with in the past. Or what they’d done with those other people. He’d assumed that Duck had had a lot of the same experiences he’d had: rushed encounters with strangers. Duck had said he’d never lived with anyone. For some reason Dan had thought that meant that Duck had never received anyone before.

“Have you done it often? Or—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Duck said, his voice still a little strained. It sounded like he was holding back a cough. Dan frowned at him, wishing he’d made his suggestion inside where he could see Duck’s face clearly. The flickering firelight wasn’t sufficient.

“Well, I think we need to talk about it,” Dan said, deciding, for once, to push. He knew that Duck would tell him if he insisted. And while Dan wasn’t a man who insisted on anything, he thought it was important to talk about this.

Duck ran an agitated hand through his hair. “I haven’t done that for years,” he said, and Dan could see how hard it was for him to say anything at all. He looked a little wild and desperate, but Dan reached for his hand and squeezed it. That seemed to calm Duck a little.

“In the past, when I’ve…when I’ve been fucked, I usually had to be pretty drunk for it to happen.”

He reeled for an instant at Duck’s confession, and then said, “I didn’t know.” He hated the embarrassment he could hear in his own voice.

Duck looked at him, and then sighed and reached out to smooth Dan’s hair off his forehead. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”

Dan bit his lip and thought for a moment, and then put his hand on Duck’s bare neck. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” He rubbed insistently at Duck’s neck until he felt the tense muscles relax. Dan nodded in satisfaction, and continued.

“Okay, so you don’t like getting, uh, fucked,” and this time he did sound awkward. “But what about you doing me? Because I think,” and he sucked in a deep breath, “I think I’d like it.”

There was no immediate reaction from Duck. The lack of a quick refusal was a good sign, Dan thought, and it looked like Duck was considering it. “Have you done it before?” he asked quietly, and Dan shook his head. Duck nodded, still considering. “Are you sure, though? Are you sure it’s something you’d like?”

Dan shrugged. “Well, I don’t know about ‘sure,’ if I’ve never done it. But I think I’d like to try it. See what all the fuss is about, maybe?”

Duck cocked his head, and brushed at Dan’s shirtfront. “It hurts. The first time really hurts.”

“But not after?”

Duck shrugged. “Like I said. I’ve never really done it a lot when I’ve been sober. Maybe if the guy is gentle and goes slow.”

Dan wrapped his arms around Duck, and held him close. Doing so felt as imperative as breathing. Because it was clear as the stars over Wilby that someone had hurt Duck, and hurt him badly. Maybe several someones. And for an instant Dan Jarvis wanted to kill every last one of the bastards. He wasn’t a violent man, but he could understand, just for a moment, what bloodlust felt like.

“No one ever went slow with you, did they?” he asked, barely recognizing his own voice. When Duck shook his head—just a little, because Dan was still hugging him tightly—Dan sighed.

“Okay,” he said, kissing the side of Duck’s face, close to his hairline. “It’s okay,” he said again, because he could feel Duck shaking a little. “You know I’d never hurt you, right?”

Duck tensed in his arms, and Dan slid a soothing hand up his back. “Hey, I’m not saying—I’m not saying that I want to…do that, to you. I was just curious, that’s all. And I think I might like it. You doing me.” Get it together, he told himself. Stop stumbling. “But I’m happy with the way things are. If you decide sometime that you’d like to, um, fuck me, I’d like to try that. But you don’t have to—”

“Thank you,” Duck said against him. Duck sounded so relieved that Dan had to squeeze his eyes shut tightly, just in case he really did start crying.

And that was the last time they talked about it. As the summer nights grew shorter Dan’s interest in the subject faded. They were good together. Great, even. Duck made him feel good in every sense of the word, and the things they did together in bed (or, more often, out in the bush) were more than enough. He did want to know the story behind Duck’s refusal, but there had been enough regret and sorrow in Duck’s voice to discourage Dan from asking any further questions.

The fact that he didn’t know much about Duck’s past—any of it, sexual or otherwise—was a little like white noise. He managed to tune it out most of the time. Dan had never known anything so sweet or so sexy as the sight of Duck, cheeks flushed and skin faintly dewed with perspiration from a long hike, drawing him in close for a wet kiss. And in those moments the rest of it, all of their past pain and disappointments, the mystery of Duck himself, didn’t seem to matter. Dan simply learned to give himself over to the kiss.

And Duck was happy now. He knew that. He knew Duck was happy with him. If Dan wasn’t sure that Duck loved him, well, that was just another one of those white noise worries. He knew that Duck cared for him, and he knew that Duck loved their easy, uncomplicated intimacy. An embrace meant just as much as a blowjob in their private language of physical pleasure, and Duck seemed to appreciate this simple fact.

“You just…like me, don’t you?” he laughed one evening as Dan paddled towards him in the cold quarry water, and seized his mouth in a deep kiss.

“Yeah,” Dan admitted, dropping other kisses on Duck’s forehead and his wet eyebrow. “I really do.” They smiled shyly at each other, and Duck nodded.

“Great,” he’d said. And it was.

***

Shadows still lurked at the corners of that golden summer, of course. The fact that he was happy, finally happy, seemed to have little bearing on the outer world. The letters kept coming. Strange letters, full of indistinct menace and threats Duck couldn’t understand. He kept them in a shoebox under the bed, and sometimes, after Duck left for the day, he’d pull out all the letters and arrange them in a wide semi-circle, sometimes organizing them by date, sometimes by loose thematic grouping.

My Dear Walter, they would always begin. Dan thought it was a strange way of addressing a letter to someone you hated, if indeed they were hate letters. They were usually only a paragraph long, and sometimes just a sentence or two, all composed in a wiggly childish script that didn’t match the neat printing on the envelope. They read:

the world is a hard place. i dream about murder but when the people fall i can’t hear them cry out and i feel like i’m watching a movie with no sound.

Or:

the leeves are turning. wynter will be very hard. I hope you’re redy for lots of storms.

And once:

last night a bird drove into my window. i found it in the morning. it had a broken neck.

The letters always ended with one word: cincerely. There was never any signature.

“We’ve gotten another letter,” Dan would say when Duck arrived home in the evening.

“Oh?” Duck would say.

“Yes. It’s a bit…strange.”

“They’re always a bit strange.”

That was as much as Duck was willing to say about the subject.

***

On August 1st, Duck MacDonald turned 41. He’d let the information slip during one of their quiet conversations; Dan had asked about Duck’s favourite holiday, and Duck had told him he liked birthdays. Not his own, he’d said quickly, but those of other people. It hadn’t taken long for Dan to convince Duck to tell him when his birthday was, although Duck had been unwilling to tell Dan why he’d never liked his own birthday much.

Duck left early that day for a job at the Saunderson’s summer cottage. As soon as Dan heard the rumble of Duck’s truck fade off in the distance he began gathering the ingredients for Duck’s birthday cake. He’d planned a good meal (grilled chicken, because they were both eating more than enough fish) and spent most of the day preparing dinner and baking the cake. It felt good, if a little strange, to spend the day indoors. He wondered what would happen when winter finally came to Wilby: he’d grown accustomed to escaping to the woods and fields of the island.

At six o’clock he heard Duck’s truck coming back down the gravel road, tires crunching loudly. Dan smiled and went outside to watch as Duck pulled into the driveway and hopped out of the cab. He was dressed in his omnipresent paint-stained overalls and a sleeveless t-shirt, and Dan couldn’t help but admire the long, muscled length of Duck’s arms. When Duck reached up to loosen the bungee cord that held the ladder secure on the top of the truck’s rack, Dan could see a little of his armpit hair, dark and soft-looking. He swallowed, and then realized he had no cause to hide or otherwise conceal his desire for his lover. He strode out into the late evening sun and helped Duck with the ladder, then pressed against him and backed Duck up against the truck, making him laugh.

“Miss me?” Duck asked, shaking his head, and Dan smiled and answered him with a kiss.

Duck followed him back inside the house, and Dan went over to the stove, stirring the carrots he’d been steaming.

“Go clean up. Dinner’ll be ready soon,” he said, reminding himself not to add and dessert after that in a seductive tone. It’d be cheesy, he figured. Besides, Duck probably already knew that Dan had made him a cake for his birthday.

He didn’t hear Duck pad down off the hall toward the bathroom, and when Dan turned he saw that Duck was still leaning against the kitchen doorway, smiling at him.

“What?” Dan asked, and Duck shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said, grinning at him. “It’s just…nice. Coming home to you, I mean.”

He crossed the kitchen, snatched the wooden stirring spoon out of Dan’s hand, and kissed him until Dan was breathless with it. He felt Duck’s hand steal into the front pocket of his jeans, and he sighed, rubbing his erection against Duck’s hand. But Duck didn’t linger; he pulled free and, with a last kiss, finally went to take his shower.

Dan blinked in surprise and then dug around in his pocket. Beach glass. Duck had given him a smooth blue stone that looked like ice when it caught the light.

A perfectly happy day.

He smiled, and a bubble of happiness swelled in his chest. By the time Duck returned to the cozy little kitchen Dan was singing along to the song on the radio; he caught at Duck’s hand and dragged him into a slow shuffling box-step. He couldn’t seem to stop smiling.

“I’m the one who’s supposed to give you a present,” he chided. Duck grinned at him, and slid a hand around the back of Dan’s neck, pulling him close for a kiss.

“You already did,” Duck murmured against his mouth. His stubble dragged pleasantly against Dan’s skin, but before Dan surrendered to the temptation of Duck’s warm, wet mouth Dan broke away, giving Duck an apologetic peck on the lips before fumbling for the wrapped package on the counter. He’d been planning to give his present to Duck after dinner, but now seemed like a good moment.

“Here,” he said shyly, handing over the birthday gift. He’d wrapped the present in a dark navy paper, and stuck a yellow bow on top. Happy birthday said the plain white card. Love, Dan.

Duck trailed his long fingers over the white square, as though he had to feel the letters on the card rather than just read them. There was a thoughtful expression on his face, but Dan couldn’t tell if the brief message had pleased Duck or not. He watched as Duck began to pick at the tape on one corner of the present, unwrapping the gift without tearing or wrinkling the wrapping paper.

“I didn’t really know what to get you,” Dan said, feeling the back of his neck heat. “I don’t know what kind of tools you’d need, or…” He looked down at his hands, willing himself to stop babbling. Either Duck would like what he’d chosen, or he wouldn’t. It was too late now.

Duck slid the gift out of the wrapping and stared at it for a long, long time. It was a photograph Dan had taken of the two of them out on one of their hikes: he’d placed the camera on an outcropping of rock and set the timer. They’d been standing on the edge of a riverbank; behind them Wilby Falls tumbled over rocks and fallen branches, feeding into the river. Duck had wrapped his arm around Dan’s shoulders, and Dan was laughing—he’d stumbled a bit as he’d hurried to take his place before the flash went off. Duck was grinning at Dan, and neither of them were looking at the camera lens. They were looking at each other.

Even though Dan had seen the picture a thousand times since he’d had it developed in Port Saxon, Dan blushed at the expression on their faces. Love, desire, affection… Everything they felt for each other was clearly on display, captured for all time by the dispassionate eye of the camera lens.

Duck stood absolutely still and stared down at the framed picture. He seemed so absorbed in looking at it that Dan started to feel a little nervous. Maybe Duck hadn’t wanted a present at all. Maybe he was feeling uncomfortable. Maybe Dan had overstepped, or misjudged the nature of their relationship, or made too big a deal out of Duck’s birthday. He suffered the agony of a thousand misgivings in the seconds it took for Duck to look up at him. His blue eyes were suspiciously wet, and Dan watched, amazed, as Duck blinked quickly and said, “Thank you. I’ve—no one has ever given me anything like this.”

He said it so quietly and so sincerely that Dan knew without being told that Duck wasn’t talking about the picture at all.

“You’re welcome,” Dan said, his own voice quiet and rough with emotion. He cleared his throat, desperate not to let Duck see how relieved he was that Duck hadn’t rejected his gift. Rejected him. He blew out a deep breath, and glanced pointedly down the hallway. The walls were still dotted with the faded squares of where old pictures had once hung.

“Want to put it up?” Dan suggested, still feeling shy and a little uncertain. Duck close his eyes, swallowed hard, and nodded.

“Yeah, I do.”

***

The weather turned grey and chilly, and the nights stretched longer on Wilby Island. Dan and Duck ventured out less often, and instead snuggled together on the battered old couch in Duck’s living room, watching VHS tapes Duck rented from the shop on the mainland.

Duck hadn’t seen many movies, which surprised Dan at first. “No TV when I was a kid,” Duck explained shyly, as though it were something to be ashamed of. Dan took it upon himself to fill in the gaps in Duck’s knowledge, starting with the classics—Rio Bravo, The Searchers, Shane, High Noon, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. When they’d exhausted Dan’s list of favourite Westerns they moved on to mysteries and thrillers: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Rear Window, The Postman Always Rings Twice. Duck liked Hitchock’s stuff, hated Capra, and thought Gary Cooper was overrated.

“John Wayne is okay,” he said decisively after they finished The Sands of Iwo Jima. “But Clint Eastwood makes a better cowboy.”

Dan tucked his chilly feet under Duck’s thigh and smiled fondly at him. “I think you’ve just got a thing for tall skinny guys.”

“Maybe,” Duck allowed, shifting until he stretched full-length against Dan. He wrapped them both up in the warm, thick quilt. “Or maybe I just like cowboys. Quiet ones.”

As winter descended on the island, Duck’s work slowed to a mere trickle. Dan wasn’t sure what their finances were like, but Duck seemed unconcerned. “It’ll pick up in the spring,” he assured Dan. “We’ll be fine.”

And indeed, Duck didn’t seem to worry about anything much beyond weatherproofing the cottage against winter storms, and making sure that Dan wasn’t bored. He organized hikes along the wintry coastline and, after the temperature dropped well below freezing, he taught Dan how to ice-skate. They spent the long winter evenings making love, or playing endless games of gin. Occasionally Duck would make a trip over to the mainland.

“Just picking up a new stack of movies,” he explained to Dan, although Dan suspected Duck had another purpose. He’d finally stopped asking Dan to go with him to Port Saxon or Eldridge Cove or Land’s End. The mainland towns unnerved Dan, and he still didn’t feel comfortable in the little town of Wilby.

One night Duck came home and stayed out in the driveway a long, long time. Dan had been looking at the letters, and as the minutes stretched between the time he heard the engine of the truck cut out and the expected squeak of the screen door, he rose (carefully, so as not to disturb the semi-circle of paper) and went out to see why Duck was lingering outside. The light in the garage was on, and he could see Duck moving around inside, his bright head bent, looking for something in the old kitchen cabinets that lined the garage walls.

Dan glanced behind him at the truck parked in the driveway, and saw that someone had spraypainted the sides and the hood of the truck with big white letters: FAG and GOD HATES HOMOS. The sight of those letters made his stomach clench painfully, and he stumbled backward.

Duck was at his side in an instant, his hand gripping Dan’s arm and helping him stay on his feet. “Dan? You alright?” Duck asked, his voice low, concerned. “Everything’s fine. I’m okay. It was just some punk kids.”

Dan nodded mutely, still fixated on the truck. What if they’d smashed the windows instead, or slashed the tires? What if they’d hurt Duck?

He thought about it as he and Duck scrubbed down the truck and scraped the spraypaint off. As the ugly words drained off the side of the Dodge and washed down the driveway towards the ditch, Dan felt his sense of fear evaporate. Anger replaced it.

“Fuckers,” Duck muttered darkly as he wiped out the buckets they’d used. Dan silently agreed. His whole body felt sore, like he’d been fighting for control the whole awful night. Even his fingers ached, because he’d been clenching his fists too tightly.

Once they finished up in the garage, Duck stood for a moment at the door, staring intently at the newly-clean pickup. He rubbed the back of his neck, and sighed.

“I need a shower,” Duck said, switching off the light. “Come with me?”

Dan nodded, still seeing GOD HATES HOMOS outlined in bright white letters in his mind.

***

He was still seeing Dr. Fredericks, but only once every few months for a quick check-in, and to get his prescription renewed. Dr. Fredericks had been a little dubious about Dan’s relationship with Duck (“You’re risking a lot there, Dan,”) but Dan had dismissed his doctor’s concern.

“If you knew Duck, you’d understand,” he said, but Dr. Fredericks didn’t seem very convinced.

Dan was hurrying away from the psychiatrist’s office one cold evening, worried that he’d miss the 6pm ferry, when he heard a car horn honk at him. It was Duck. He leaned out of the passenger-side window of the ancient Chevy, cigarette dangling from his lips. His cheeks were flushed red from the cold, and his eyes were bright with excitement. “C’mon,” Duck said, pulling up beside Dan. “Let’s go do dinner and a movie. Have a real date night.

Dan felt himself blush, and he swallowed past the creeping sensation of nausea, looking around to see if anyone saw them standing so close together in the street. But downtown Port Saxon was nearly deserted, and Dan felt it was safe to climb in beside Duck and roar away in the old pickup. He stayed far on his side of the cab, making sure not to let his knees brush Duck’s, or to rest his hand on Duck’s thigh as he normally did when they went anywhere in the truck.

He’d seen enough John Wayne movies to know what this was. An ambush.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked nervously.

***

Duck, it turned out, wanted to go have Chinese food, and so they went to the Lee Wong Garden and dined on chow mein and sweet-and-sour pork and wonton soup. The restaurant was almost deserted, and the few patrons only glanced at the two men seated quietly at a table in the corner before returning to their own meals.

Dan relaxed gradually, laughing when Duck threatened to order from the “Canadian” side of the menu. Canadian cuisine, at least according to the Lee Wong Garden, consisted mainly of grilled cheese on white bread, a cheeseburger with extra mayonnaise, or chicken-noodle soup.

About halfway through the meal Dan finally stopped listening for the sound of sirens, or an angry voice asking, “what are the fags doing in here?”

The food was good and, although standard Chinese food fare, exotic after so many days of simple home cooking. Dan realized that he hadn’t set foot in a restaurant in five months, and the knowledge made him start a little.

“You miss it?” Duck asked him quietly, sipping slowly from a glass of ice water. “Being around people, I mean. Because,” Duck shifted uncomfortably. “Because I’ve been thinking: maybe we should have some people over sometime. Buddy French is a pretty good guy, and he and…and his wife might come for dinner.”

Dan frowned and shook his head. “No!” he said. The firmness in his tone surprised him, and clearly surprised Duck, who quirked his brow at Dan.

“No,” Dan said again, gentler this time, although privately he was a little alarmed at the idea of seeing Carol French again. “I don’t miss other people, Duck. I’m glad that it’s just us.” Pathetic, whispered a voice inside his head, but Dan ignored it. “I don’t need anyone except you.”

And it was true. For weeks now he’d been thinking of the few times he left the little house on the peninsula—trips to the mainland and Dr. Fredericks’ office, mainly—as inconveniences. Interruptions in the smooth rhythms of the life he shared with Duck. Lately, any time he had to leave Duck felt like an irritation.

“What about you?” Dan asked. “You miss people?” He didn’t realize how much he wanted to hear the answer to that question until he’d asked it. “Do you…do you ever miss the Watch?”

“No,” Duck said after a long beat. He stared down at the oily remnants of his chow mien. “I don’t miss that at all. But sometimes I worry that we’re too isolated. Or that you’ll miss this.” He waved at the nearly-empty restaurant, at the wintry streets of Port Saxon outside.

“Well, I don’t,” Dan said firmly.

That seemed to reassure Duck, and Duck gave him one of his rare, brilliant smiles. “Okay,” he said, pulling a folded piece of newsprint from his jacket. “Now, pick a movie.”

***

There wasn’t much playing, so Dan chose a comedy. The theatre wasn’t full by any means, but Dan lead Duck up into the balcony, where it was dark and quiet and out of anyone’s line of sight. They settled down in the first row. The seats smelled like stale popcorn and Dan’s childhood, and he stared happily out at the grey-lit screen.

“They had an old-fashioned movie house just like this one,” Dan said, “back in Victoria. I loved going there. Even bad movies seemed better at that place, just because there was a velvet curtain, and gilded cherubs on the walls.”

Duck smiled at his description, and looked pointedly around the worn old theatre, which appeared to be a little worse for wear. Half of the seats were broken, and the curtain (an ugly orange polyester blend) hung raggedly from the sides of the enormous screen. “This place has seen better days, huh?” Duck asked. He sounded embarrassed, as though it was his fault.

Dan put his hand on the armrest between them. “Just needs a little extra care,” he murmured. “It’s pretty solid, underneath it all.”

***

The movie was okay, and Dan enjoyed it more for the novel experience of seeing a film projected onto a big screen instead of on Duck’s flickering little black-and-white set. They left the movie theatre in high spirits, laughing to one another about the ridiculousness of the film’s plot premise.

“I just don’t believe a grown man would—” Dan was saying, just before he felt Duck’s hand on his arm in warning.

A group of four men were coming down the narrow sidewalk, and they’d caught sight of Duck and Dan standing close together. Dan didn’t recognize any of them, but one of the guys—a big, brawny man with dark red hair—looked like an Islander, his face vaguely familiar from the Easy Mart and the video store before Dan’d closed it up.

He and Duck had nearly reached the pickup, but the parking lot was still about a hundred feet away. They could try to make a run for it, but the men would be on them before Duck could get the doors unlocked. Dan felt his body go numb, preparing for a blow that would knock him to the street.

Duck tensed beside him, and for a second Dan worried that Duck would try to fight them all. I’ve got a bit of a temper, Duck had told him.

“You faggots have a nice night out?” the familiar-looking guy sneered. “You gonna go home and suck each other off?”

Dan closed his eyes, trying to think, trying to believe that he and Duck weren’t really going to be killed like this, not on a grimy winter street in Port Saxon. Not like this, he pleaded.

And then he felt Duck grab for his hand, and the warmth and pressure of his fingers shocked Dan back to reality. He felt stronger, suddenly. Braver.

Two men were harder to knock down than one, after all.

“C’mon, Tommy, let’s go.”

Dan opened his eyes to see one of the other men in the group grab the big guy—Tommy?—and tug at his arm. Tommy resisted at first, but then Dan saw the white flash of an RCMP cruiser as it slipped down the street, cutting through the shadows like a great white shark. And suddenly the threat had passed, and the men were gone, crossing over to the other side of the street, tossing out jeers and catcalls that eventually faded.

“You okay?” Duck murmured, and Dan nodded, heart still racing. The winter wind was cool against his exposed skin, and Duck’s hand was warm and solid in his own. They were alive. Nothing had happened. No one had hurt them, this time.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Dan said.

***

He was sick. Sick by the truck in the parking lot, sick on the ferry back home. Sick with adrenaline, sick with fear and worry and relief. He kept reliving those awful moments where he’d waited for the first blow to fall, and then felt Duck’s hand grasping his, fingers laced together. The meaning of the gesture had been clear—you fall, I fall—and the implications of it terrified him.

Duck was his whole world. Dr. Fredericks had warned him about that, but Dan had been willing to take the risk. He’d only hurt himself, he reasoned, if it all went sour. And he didn’t exactly have a lot to live for, otherwise.

But now he finally understood: he was risking Duck, too. Duck’s life, and Duck’s happiness, which had somehow, incredibly, come to involve him. And by taking his hand, Duck had spelled that out for him. You jump, I jump, he’d meant.

And Dan wasn’t sure he could bear the responsibility of Duck’s life and his own, too.

They finally made it home and stumbled out of their clothes, the shock of adrenaline draining from their systems and making them feel thick-fingered and fumbly. Finally they were naked, and Duck drew a hot bath for them in the old clawfoot tub. He slid down behind Dan and drew him close, and they shook there for a while, together in the water.

“I thought they were going to kill us,” Dan whispered, his voice still hoarse from the aftershocks of fear.

Duck wrapped one wet arm around Dan’s chest and pulled him back against his chest, and gently kissed the sensitive spot behind his ear. “They might’ve tried. But I wouldn’t have let them hurt you.”

“How could you have stopped them?” Duck’s breath was cool against his cheek.

“Don’t know,” he said. “Somehow.”

Dan’s eyes widened. He’d never seen his gentle, watchful Duck really angry, though he’d heard it in his voice, seen it in the scars on his body. Something or someone had taught Duck how to deal with that anger, but for the first time Dan wondered how hard Duck had to fight to rein himself in.

“Would you have killed those men?” Dan asked, and it was a long time before Duck answered.

“If they’d hurt you? Yes.”

Despite the warmth of the water, Dan shivered.

After the bath they toweled off and dressed in warm flannel, and Duck made tea while Dan made one final circuit of the house, checking to make sure that all the doors and windows were locked, and that the curtains were tightly drawn. He regretted not asking Duck to pick up some blackout curtains.

They went to bed early and huddled together under the blanket. Dan’s mind kept ticking away, trying to decide what to do. He wasn’t safe, and neither was Duck. They were living under siege here, between the vandalism and the mysterious letters and the constant fear that they were being watched. Tonight was the last straw, Dan decided. Somehow, some way, he was going to keep them safe.

“Get some sleep, Dan,” Duck said softly. “Just close your eyes, and sleep. It’ll keep till morning.”

Dan wrapped his arms around Duck, but it was a long, long time before he slept.

***

Dan woke to the patter of rain against the windows and the rich, heavy scent of burning tobacco. He squinted in dark bedroom. The clock on the bedside table was flashing “12:00” over and over to the beat of the rain.

“What time is it?”

“Eight-thirty. Storm blew up while we were sleeping.”

There was the sound of rustling papers, and he smelled smoke as it washed over his skin.

Duck was sitting on the floor beside Dan, his back braced against the side of the bed. A metal ashtray and the shoebox that Dan had filled with the letters sat beside him, and the letters were spread around Duck in a wide half-circle. It looked as though Duck had been trying to put them into some kind of order, perhaps by date, perhaps by subject. Dan couldn’t begin to work out the system Duck had set up.

“Why do you keep them?”

“I don’t know,” Dan said.

It was the first time he’d lied to Duck, and he didn’t like the taste of it, so he tried again. “I just...I want to understand how people could hate this so much. Hate us.”

Duck lit a fresh cigarette. The match illuminated his face for a brief, blinding moment, and then there was only the dim grey light and the smell of sulfur.

“This guy doesn’t hate us,” he said, waving his hand over the neat stacks of letters. “He doesn’t even know us.”

“Does anybody know you?” he asked, thinking about the realization that had flooded over him last night. Duck was a violent man, or had been at one time.

Duck looked at him, and even in the dim light Dan could see his words had hurt. “You want to ask me something?”

Who are you? Where did you come from? Why are you doing this? Why me? The questions welled in his throat and then died slowly on his tongue. It didn’t seem right to ask Duck anything. Not like this, not lying in a bed that was rumpled and smelled like the two of them, not in the dark surrounded by letters filled with ugliness. He put his hand on Duck’s shoulder, and smoothed his thumb over warm skin and the fragile bones underneath.

“I’d like to know more about you. You don’t talk much about yourself.”

That made Duck smile. “No, I guess I don’t. Not much to say, really.” He scrunched down a little and tipped his head back against the metal frame of the bed. Duck closed his eyes, and Dan couldn’t look away from the brush of sandy-pale eyelashes against his cheeks. He looked like an angel, or the hero in a Western.

“I’ve gotta go do some work at the O’Connor place,” Duck said quietly. “You’ll be okay by yourself today?”

“I’ll be fine,” Dan said quickly, figuring that this was probably the best chance he’d have to put his plan into action. “Don’t worry about me.”

Duck nodded and stood carefully, trying not to disturb any of the letters he’d so carefully arranged around the bed. He was already dressed, and Dan closed his eyes, hoping Duck wouldn’t be able to read his intentions in his face. Duck had always been able to read him so clearly.

But Duck didn’t ask Dan anything. He kissed the top of his head, so quickly and so lightly that Dan could barely feel it, and then he was at the door, putting on his old winter coat and a pair of thick boots.

“I’ll be back pretty late,” he said, and Dan nodded, already deep into making plans of his own.

***

The little chime above the door at Iggy’s rang out merrily, and everyone in the diner looked up to see who might be at the door. Dan kept his head down, feeling a hot blush steal over his cheeks. He hadn’t wanted to attract any attention to himself.

He could feel the eyes of the diner’s few patrons boring into the top of his bowed head. Dan knew exactly who would be in Iggy’s at 4pm on a workday: Floyd Henderson, who hadn’t smiled since his son had been killed in Somalia on a UN mission, and now sat in the diner, day after day, and played endless rounds of Keno. Margaret Petri, a twice-over widow who’d set her hopes on Floyd for husband number three. She didn’t like Keno, but she played for love. And Irene Donnelly, whose cold, cruel stare sometimes haunted Dan’s dreams.

“Dan!”

Fighting the impulse to tear out of Iggy’s, jump in his car and race back to the cottage by the sea, Dan looked up to meet Sandra Anderson’s welcoming smile. Her grin looked warm and genuine, and Dan allowed himself to relax a little. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and crossed the small dinner to the counter where Sandra waited, trying to ignore the cold hostility of the other customers.

‘It’s so good to see you out and about!” Sandra told him, all friendliness. “Are you looking for Duck?”

Dan winced. He heard a murmur of disapproval from somewhere in the group behind him. “Uh, no,” he managed, speaking just above a whisper. “I’m looking for Buddy. The secretary at the station said that he’d probably be here.”

Sandra’s smile faltered a little. “He eats at the Loyalist now, I think.”

“Oh.” Dan’s heart sank. He’d have to go through all of this again at the bar down the street, only there he’d encounter most of Wilby’s working people on their lunch break. The long second of silence while he paused at the door of the Loyalist would seem even longer, and maybe someone, encouraged by a lunchtime beer or two, would actually yell at him, or threaten some kind of violence.

He shrank from the thought and tried to figure out if there was a better way to contact Buddy. It had already taken up most of his small reserve of courage to make the drive into town and walk into the small police station; he knew couldn’t face the lunchtime crowd at the Loyalist. Just as he was about to turn and head back to his car, Sandra spoke.

“I could send Emily to go get him for you,” she suggested, leaning across the counter to touch his wrist. Her hand was cool and soft, and he couldn’t help comparing her gentle hold to Duck’s strong, calloused grip.

He wished Duck were here. He wished—well. He wished he’d just stayed in bed.

“Would you?” he rasped, a little shocked at the compassion and understanding in Sandra’s eyes. She nodded, and called for her daughter. Emily poked her head out of the swinging door that led into the kitchen.

“Yeah?”

Sandra smoothed back a strand of hair that had escaped from Emily’s neat ponytail. “Go fetch Constable French for Dan, okay? They’ve got an appointment.”

Emily nodded and glanced at Dan, offering him a smile that was as warm as her mother’s, if slightly less wide.

“Hey, Dan,” she said, tugging off her apron and handing it to Sandra and pulling on her winter coat with a energetic rush of motion that Dan associated only with teenagers. “Back in a second!” She dashed out of the diner, the bell tinkling after her.

“You want a coffee while you wait?” Sandra asked, turning away to pour out a cup before Dan could refuse. “Double-double, right?”

“Right,” Dan said, keeping his back to Irene, Floyd and Margaret, who’d been staring at him with renewed disapproval ever since Buddy’s name had come up. He tried to forget the others and kept his eyes on Sandra, watching as she doctored his coffee and even stirred it for him, her movements easy and unhurried. The delicate bones in her wrist reminded him of a bird’s, hollowed-out and light as air. She was about Val’s size, and even reminded him of Val, a little. She had his wife’s—ex-wife’s—self-confident nature, that way of convincing you that she always knew what was best. Pushy but well-intentioned, he supposed. Sandra was a little clumsier at it than Val, but perhaps he made her nervous.

“How do you like it out at Duck’s place?” She set his coffee down in front of him, and Dan caught a whiff of her perfume. A fragrant floral scent, surprisingly subtle but nothing at all like Duck’s salty, slightly musky smell. When he looked up she was smiling at him again. Her teeth were small and white and even.

“It’s fine,” Dan said. His voice sounded hoarse, as though he wasn’t used to talking to people. “It’s nice.”

He waited for Sandra to ask when he planned on moving back to the mainland. But she said nothing, only kept watching him, her brown eyes bright and playful. He almost missed the challenging glare she aimed over his shoulder at Irene.

“I haven’t seen it,” she told him. “Duck was never much for having people out there on the peninsula.” She paused, as if waiting for him to respond. How did she expect him to react to that statement? He’d already guessed as much, anyway. Duck was a private person, after all.

“Anyway,” she said, covering over the little pause in their conversation by adding more coffee to his mostly-full mug. “You two really should have a dinner party or a bonfire or something out there. Have some friends over.”

Dan blinked at her. Have some friends over? Sandra’s suggestion was an eerie echo of Duck’s question from the night before, and he couldn’t ignore the faint sense of unease that coiled through him.

“Yeah, maybe,” Dan said, because he felt like he should say something. The doorbell tinkled again, just in time. It was Emily, and Buddy followed a few steps behind her, shutting the door tightly against a blast of icy wind. Dan set his cup down. The coffee inside sloshed dangerously close to the rim, and he paused for a second, willing his hand to stop trembling.

“Hey, Dan,” Buddy said. His parka was unzipped, and Dan saw that Buddy had a mustard stain on the front of his blue uniform shirt. “Sorry I forgot about our appointment.”

Buddy was speaking a little too loudly, probably for the benefit of the rest of the diner, Dan guessed. Dan was grateful for Sandra’s quick thinking. An appointment was less suspicious than Dan wandering around aimlessly and asking for Buddy. It made things sound more official than they really were. More important.

“That’s okay,” Dan said, glancing around. They couldn’t talk here, not with Floyd and Margaret and Irene listening in. Buddy seemed to sense his desire for privacy.

“Want to go for a walk?”

Dan nodded gratefully and followed Buddy out of the diner, thanking Sandra and Emily with a quick, jerky nod. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Irene and the others. They’d all turned their faces away from him anyway, like they’d just smelled something awful.

Buddy paused outside, glanced at Dan, and shrugged in the general direction of the shoreline. They set off at an easy pace, heads bent low against the sharp bite of the wind, and Buddy didn’t say anything for a moment or two. Like Duck, he wasn’t one to rush a conversation.

He’s a pretty good guy, Duck had said. Dan hoped it was true, because he really didn’t have anyone else to go to for help.

“What’s on your mind, Dan?” Buddy finally asked.

Dan’s ears burned. How should he start? Like always, words deserted him right when he needed them most.

Miraculously, Buddy seemed to understand. He fumbled in his coat pocket for a package of cigarettes and lit one, seemingly content to give Dan some extra time to collect himself.

“Nice day, huh?” Buddy asked, puffing on his cigarette. His expression was bland, almost bored. “We’ve been having a lot of good days lately, despite the cold. Lots of sun. It’s been a pretty good winter so far, in fact.” He glanced at Dan. “How’s your winter been?”

“Not so good,” he admitted.

Buddy’s face was still as calm and unruffled as a tranquil day at sea, but Dan could feel his attention sharpen and focus. “Oh?” Buddy said, “why not? You look a lot better than the last time I saw you.”

Dan had to smile at that, at least a little. The last time Buddy’d seen him, Dan’s lips had been blue from oxygen deprivation and there was a ring of bruises around his neck.

“I’m afraid,” he said quietly. “We ran into a group of guys on the mainland who said some nasty things. Someone smashed all the windows in Duck’s truck a couple weeks ago. Marked up the vehicle too. And we’ve been getting these letters—”

“Letters?” Buddy interrupted, the smooth surface of his calm draining away. He looked puzzled, now. And worried.

Dan nodded. “Yeah, letters. They’re not threats, exactly,” he admitted, “just strange. I don’t know what to make of them.”

“What does Duck say?”

Dan sighed. “He doesn’t. He doesn’t like to talk about any of it. He doesn’t want me to worry, I guess. But…”

“But you do. Of course you do.”

They’d reached the little path that lead down to the shore. To the left was the small terminal where the ferries docked. To the right, the Watch. Dan veered deliberately left, and Buddy followed.

“I’m worried about Duck,” Dan said, softly, as though the icy water and the bare black skeletons of the trees around them were listening. “If anything ever happened to him...”

It was Buddy’s turn to sigh. He stared out over the water to the low brown haze of the Mainland.

“Duck ever tell you why he left the Island?”

Dan couldn’t quite hide his surprise at Buddy’s question. “Uh, no.”

Buddy nodded, like that was the answer he’d been expecting. “Ask him about that. Ask him soon.” He’d finished his cigarette. The smell of burning tobacco wafted towards Dan on the wind. Dan realized suddenly that he’d never again be able to watch a man smoke and not think of Duck.

“I’m sorry you’ve been afraid, Dan,” Buddy said. “That’s not right. Wilby’s a nice place. Particularly if you’ve spent time in other places that aren’t so nice.” Buddy looked at him. “But it’s got its fair share of bigots. Just small-minded townspeople hungry for a little scandal. Ask Duck about it. He knows.

“And for what it’s worth, I’m glad that you’re with him. Duck’s had a tough life. He deserves a little happiness. You too, I think,” Buddy offered kindly. Dan felt himself flush, and he ducked his head so that Buddy wouldn’t see.

“Can you stand one more piece of advice?”

Dan hesitated. He was already embarrassed, and all he wanted to do was to escape back to the little house on the peninsula and wait for Duck to come home. But it couldn’t hurt to let Buddy have his say, could it?

“Go ahead.”

“Come into town a little more often,” Buddy said. “Have a beer or two down at the Loyalist while Duck drinks his Pepsi. Let folks see you together. People just need to get used to the idea. I promise, if you’re seen around Wilby a little more often, everyone except the worst of the gossips will either come around, or move on. In fact, I’m surprised Duck hasn’t thought of it. He knows how people in Wilby think.”

Oh. Dan sucked in a breath. The dinner invitation. Movies on the mainland. Chinese food. Duck had been trying to protect him. Protect them.

“I’ll think about it,” Dan promised, suddenly even more eager to get back home and be with Duck.

Buddy seemed satisfied. He dug around in his pocket for his business card. “Give me a call after you talk to Duck. If you still feel…worried, you let me know.” Buddy’s face was serious, almost stern. When they’d first met, Dan had thought Buddy was just another apathetic small-town cop content to ride it out until his pension kicked in. But maybe…maybe Buddy really was a friend. He was certainly better at his job than Dan had thought.

A possibility occurred to him then, flitting at the edges of his mind. “You were friends, weren’t you? You and Duck?”

That smooth, placid look was back. Buddy’s face sealed over, still and calm as the Doldrums.

“We were friends. A long time ago,” he said, and he didn’t sound sad about it. “And I want to help, if I can.”

Dan took the card. He had more pieces, but he was still a long way away from being able to solve the whole puzzle.

“Thanks, Buddy,” he said, and watched the sea. “Thanks.”

***

He drove around after he said goodbye to Buddy, and took himself on his own personal tour of Wilby Island. He visited all of the places he’d tried to kill himself at: the bridge, the motel, the old French house. The house on Peachtree Lane that he’d shared with Val. Some of the painful memories were overwritten with better ones: walks he’d taken with Duck, hidden inlets into which they’d piloted their old motorboat and gone skinny-dipping in the moonlight. Shores where they’d dug for clams. Fires they had built together, stars they had held each other under. All of the secrets of Wilby Island that only he and Duck knew about, and all of it secondary to the mystery of Duck himself.

Duck knew who was sending the letters. He had to know. He was too calm about it, too relaxed, even for Duck. And he’d let Dan think their lives were in danger, when all he had to do was call up his old friend Buddy French and—

No. No. He wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t give in to anger and jealousy. Duck may have been quiet, guarded, even secretive, but he’d never—he’d never lie to Dan. And even if there had been something between Buddy and Duck…well, Buddy was married.

You were married, too, a little voice inside whispered.

***

It was raining when he got back to the house on the peninsula, and none of the lights were on. Dan moved quietly through the small, bare rooms. He felt like a thief, or a stranger. Like he didn’t belong here, and never had.

Duck wasn’t in bed, and Dan checked the bathroom before entering the living room. Cat looked up when he entered, her eyes catching and reflecting the dim light filtering in from the hallway. She’d been drowsing on the slight curve of Duck’s hip. He was asleep on the sofa, his long body folded up awkwardly on the narrow couch. Dan knelt by him, and kissed Duck awake.

Duck stirred slowly, his mouth opening beneath Dan’s, and smiled up sleepily at him.

“Hey,” Duck mumbled. His voice was thick and drowsy. Dan wanted to lie down and curl up next to Duck’s warm, sleep-smelling body. Breathe him in deep, and never, ever let him go. “You just get in?”

“Yeah.” Dan stroked his hand through Duck’s short, fine hair. It was a little damp; he’d showered after work, and probably fallen asleep on the couch while waiting for Dan. “Sorry I didn’t call. I hope you weren’t worried.”

Duck caught at Dan’s free hand, and brought it up to his lips. He kissed Dan’s palm, his lips warm and mobile. “You know me. I try not to worry.”

Dan sighed. “Maybe you should. I doubted you today. I talked to Buddy about some of the things that’ve been happening to us. And around us,” he added, thinking of the way Duck’s work had dropped off. “Buddy made me think—”

“What?” Duck asked, softly, gently, his voice full of concern.

“Buddy said I should ask you why you left the Island,” Dan said.

He couldn’t see Duck’s eyes in the darkness. His face was shadowed, but Dan thought he felt a faint shudder of tension roll through Duck, like the faint rumble of thunder rolling in from off the sea. Duck sat up, displacing both Dan and the cat. Cat grumbled a little and went to settle herself on the ottoman. Dan merely sat back on his heels.

“What did Buddy tell you?” Duck asked, not looking at Dan now. He was reaching for his jeans, and Dan watched as Duck pulled on his clothes and lit a cigarette. Dan knew Duck’s body as well as he knew his own, but anyone would have been able to see the tension in Duck’s hands, and in the curve of his spine.

“He didn’t say much. Just that you’d had a hard time. And that you deserve some happiness.”

Duck lit a cigarette, the flame of his lighter bright in the dark living room. In the half-second of illumination, Dan caught a glimpse of Duck stripped of his defenses. He looked lost and sad in the flash of flickering light. Like Lucifer, after he’d lost his bid for Paradise. Duck closed his lighter and breathed out a smooth plume of smoke, collapsing back into the couch. He rubbed at his eyes, and sighed.

Dan couldn’t bear this. He couldn’t sit here and watch Duck try to force the words out. He crawled up on the sofa and tentatively took Duck’s hand. The gesture felt awkward, insufficient, and he blushed. He was always screwing up with this kind of thing. Any second now Duck would snatch his hand back.

But Duck turned his hand over instead, and laced their fingers together tightly.

“I need to show you something,” Duck said, and Dan trembled at what he heard in Duck’s voice.

***

Duck wouldn’t explain where they were going or what they were doing, and Dan tried not to ask any questions. He could tell by Duck’s pale, tense face and severe frown that this wasn’t easy for him, and so he held back his questions and watched as Duck filled a cardboard box with canned soup, boxes of spaghetti, a bag of Oreo cookies and a large carton of cigarettes.

“What’s this for?”

“Just supplies. Put that in the back of the truck, okay? Under the tarp? There’s an extra slicker in the hallway closet.”

Dan did as Duck asked.

They left just as the rain was petering off. Duck glanced at him before turning on the truck, and he seemed to be trying to say something, or perhaps offer some kind of explanation. Dan waited patiently, but Duck never spoke. After a few more moments of silence, Duck turned the ignition on and the rumble of the Dodge’s engine covered the awkwardness between them.

Dan wanted to ask what was happening, but as they continued to drive in silence, he became convinced that Duck wouldn’t answer him. Duck had the air of a man holding himself together by the thinnest thread of control, and Dan didn’t want to test him. Not now. The left windshield wiper squeaked, and Dan listened to it while Duck piloted them down the narrow island road. He thought they were going to the Watch but Duck turned left at the bridge instead of right, and they went down an access road Dan had never seen.

He hadn’t really seen a lot of Wilby, actually.

“You okay on a boat?” Duck asked him. He kept a cigarette clamped tightly between his lips as he spoke, stopping only occasionally to pull it out and knock ash off the end.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he said. “I grew up on an island too, remember?”

Dan’s father had owned two sailboats, and Dan had gone up and down the Vancouver coast by himself, and once made a voyage down to Mexico. Those sloops had been beautiful, and Dan had loved to lie in the belly of the boat and listen to the wind and the water. But Duck’s vessel was no rich man’s million-dollar weekend hobby. It was small, squat and serviceable, although there was beauty in its plain lines and love in the fresh gray paint that coated the body of the little Rebel outboard. It was old and weathered but in good shape, just like Duck himself.

“Suits you,” Dan said as he stepped down into the boat and began to work on the cast-off line. Duck didn’t answer him.

They cleared the launch and then the bay, and soon the foggy beaches of Wilby Island vanished as they headed for the mainland coast. Duck stuck close to the shoreline and seemed to be navigating some internal route: the noise from the outboard and the rush of the wind would have made conversation impossible, if they’d had anything to talk about.

Dan slumped in the prow, and let the land wash by in a blur of green trees and black rock and gray sky.

After a while Duck steered the boat out to the open sea. A small clutch of islands loomed up out of the fog. Waves that were only soft and gentle swells on the sheltered beaches of Wilby pounded these stony shores, as if to punish the little islands for some past transgression.

“Where are we?”

Duck was concentrating on guiding the boat past the jutting rocks. “The Marshes,” he said, finding a small, sandy patch of shoreline to dock the boat. “Islanders don’t come here much.”

Dan wondered if that was supposed to be an explanation of some kind. He frowned at Duck. “Why are we—”

Duck looked at him then, and Dan felt his chest tighten. He’d never seen Duck look so sad and desperate. This is it, he thought. He’s going to leave you here, and say it’s all too much for him. Dan fought the panic and tried to think of something to say that would convince Duck that he was getting better, that some day soon he’d be the kind of person Duck needed him to be. The kind of person who’d be happy with who he was, and what he was.

But Duck didn’t say anything. He looked at Dan for another minute and then turned to fish the cardboard box of groceries out of the boat.

“Watch your step. It’s rocky here,” he said.

***

The Marshes were tiny, rocky islands, barren and almost treeless. In the dreary afternoon light of early winter they resembled hairless old women, their worn landscape dotted with thin, wispy strands of dwarf trees and rocks that looked like broken teeth jutting from the frozen soil. While Dan stumbled and tripped on the uneven ground, Duck moved smoothing over the landscape, bearing the burden of the large cardboard box easily.

They reached a rise where the land dipped and fell away to the sea, and down at the bottom, huddled in the stony crags of the island shore, Dan could see that someone had built a makeshift shack. It was taller than it was wide, and even from this distance he could see it wasn’t properly sealed against the weather. Large cracks were visible between the rows of boards that made up the walls. It looked almost like a child’s fort, but the gray smoke curling from the off-kilter stovepipe suggested that someone was living there.

“Duck, wait,” Dan said, grabbing at Duck’s shoulder. “What’s going on?”

Duck shifted the box of groceries in his arms and looked out at the water. “You’ve been worried about those letters.” His shoulders slumped and he turned back to face Dan. “I should have explained earlier, but I didn’t know how to put it into words. I…” he broke off with a sigh. “C’mon, it’s easier if I show you.”

Dan let go of Duck’s shoulder and followed him down the hill. Duck didn’t knock at the door, which was just a piece of thick plywood likely scavenged from a scrap heap or a construction site. Duck pushed his way in and Dan followed.

The interior was very dark. There were no windows, and the acrid smoke pouring out of an old, unreliable stove swallowed up what little light shone through the cracks in the walls. It smelled terrible inside the shack, and Dan had to resist the urge to cover his nose and mouth. Something was dying in here. An animal, he hoped.

“Hi,” Duck said, as if nothing was wrong, as if they hadn’t just stepped into a dark, foul-smelling hell. He bent and set the box on the dirt floor and began unpacking the groceries. Dan’s eyes stung from the smoke, and he wasn’t able to see much more than the hump of a bed, the shadowy outline of a table, and a black mass that sat before the fire, shrouded in blankets. Dan flinched when it moved.

A knobby hand snaked out of the mass of blankets and grabbed at the items Duck had laid out, fingering the boxes of pasta and cans of soup and then discarding them to dig for further treasure.

“I brought someone,” Duck said quietly, squatting down in front of the fire. “Would you like to meet Dan?”

The figure jerked and the blankets fell away, revealing a wizened old man with scruffy, close-cut gray hair and watery red-rimmed eyes. His skin was pale and fine like parchment, and his eyes were a familiar blue gray colour, surrounded by the violent yellow of advanced liver failure. The old man’s hands shook, and he didn’t look at Dan.

“This is Dan,” Duck said again. He kept his voice low and soothing, but the old man didn’t indicate he’d heard anything. He tottered over to the cardboard box and pulled out the carton of cigarettes, trying in vain to open the cellophane wrapping with arthritic fingers.

Duck took the package and opened the carton. He held out a cigarette and the old man snatched it away, lighting it with the fire from the stove.

“You doing okay?” Duck asked, even though it was clear that the old man wasn’t. He waved Duck off and kept staring into the flames. The stench of shit and piss wafted around him like a foul cloud, and Dan longed to be outside in the cold, clean ocean wind. He knew now what the terrible sick-sweet smell was: that was the smell of a body eating itself.

“Buddy says you were up at the Loyalist again. You’ve got to stop that. You know Matt’s not going to serve you, and Buddy says he’ll have to press charges next time. You want to go back to the mainland?”

The old man gave no indication he’d heard.

Duck put the groceries away, quickly, while Dan waited at the door. He saw it then, in the nameless, forgotten shack crammed with the poverty of another century. He saw what Duck had come from, and what Duck feared most. The old man was mad. Mad with loneliness, or lovelessness, or the flooding betrayal that all hermits suffer. This was Duck’s answer to his unasked question Why?

He stumbled out of the shack and knelt on the rocky sands of the beach, dragging air into his lungs until he felt as though he was finally clear of the smoke and the stench and the desperation Duck must have felt for so much of his life. A familiar hand fell on his neck, soothing him. Duck was there, pulling him up into a hug, sharing his warmth, holding him up. Catching him as he fell.

“You okay?”

Dan nodded into Duck’s neck. Another lie, because this wasn’t okay. Not at all.

“You…that’s your father?”

“It was,” Duck said, and Dan was glad he couldn’t see his face. “Hasn’t been for a long, long time.”

“What happened?”

Duck pulled away and put his hand on Dan’s shoulder. He seemed…worried. Worried about what Dan would think and say.

Dan felt a violent surge of anger, and with it came the strange sense of thawing. “He wrote the letters, didn’t he? And you didn’t tell me! I thought it was some psycho who-”

Duck dropped his hand and lowered his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, so softly Dan could barely hear him of the roar of the waves. “I should have explained.” He frowned and withdrew a little further, crossing his arms over his chest in a way that would have looked like self-protection on another man. But Duck wasn’t good at protecting himself, Dan realized. He only knew how to look after other people.

“He said I’d always be alone. And for a long time I thought he was right.”

Dan’s anger drained away. He really had no right to accuse anyone of keeping secrets.

The plywood door creaked open and Duck’s father stepped outside. He stared at both of them, his ragged blanket wrapped around his thin shoulders. Dan could see a faint family resemblance, mostly in the eyes. Mr. McDonald had that raw-boned, weathered look all men eventually acquired after a lifetime of hard work out in the elements. He had a feeling that he and Duck were simply dim, blurry shapes to the old man. He was stone drunk, and his eyes were blearily and clouded in the brighter light. Cataracts, Dan guessed.

“Get off m’land,” he slurred. “Don’t come here no more.”

Duck stared calmly back at his father. “I’ll see you next week,” he said.

Dan stepped closer to him and took his hand. He threaded their fingers together just as Duck had done hours before. Duck shook, slightly, and Dan squeezed his hand.

They turned together and walked back up the hill without a single backward glance.

***

It was dark when they finally arrived home, and the misting rain added to the sense of gloom hovering over Dan. He felt as if he’d aged a thousand years in a single afternoon. During the boat ride back to Wilby and the long car ride back to the peninsula, Dan had thought of nothing but Duck, Duck’s father, and the terrible note of urgency that had been in Buddy French’s voice.

Ask him about that. Ask him soon.

Well, Dan had asked, hadn’t he? And maybe he’d gotten an answer. Or maybe not.

“How long has he been like that?” Dan asked, not really expecting Duck to answer.

“A while,” Duck said, which wasn’t really an answer at all. He must have noticed Dan’s frustration, because Duck finally turned and stopped to light another cigarette. “He’s mellowed some over the last few years.”

Mellowed? Dan shook his head. “He didn’t seem that mellow to me.”

Duck’s smile was almost bitter. “You don’t know how he was before.”

“Shouldn’t he be in a home?” The memory of the smell inside the shack on the island flooded over him, and Dan instantly felt ill. “I mean, he’s dying, isn’t he? He can’t take care of himself like that.”

“He won’t go to a home.” Duck frowned. “I tried. I even got him into one of those secure facilities on the mainland. One of those places that keep the doors locked all the time. He still got out and went back to the Marshes. Stole some rich man’s boat to get there, and smashed it up on the shore. It was an unholy mess.”

“So it’s better that he die alone out there like some…like some animal?” Dan was stupefied. He knew that Duck had been violent, once, but he’d never suspected him capable of cruelty.

“No,” Duck said. “Of course not. I check on him every day, and when he’s ready I’ll take him back to the place on the mainland.” He paused, and glanced at Dan. “Some might say it’s better than he deserves.”

Dan knew he was gaping at Duck, but he couldn’t quite stop himself. What did the old man do to you? he wanted to ask, but found he couldn’t. They’d reached the house, and Dan was reluctant to follow Duck inside. Maybe he shouldn’t stay. Maybe…maybe all of this, coming here, living with Duck, falling in love with him, getting better…maybe it was all some kind of dream. A fantasy he’d had. After all, he was crazy, wasn’t he? It’d said so in the on his medical file: he was a crazy pervert who fucked other men, who’d cheated on his wife, who’d tried to kill himself. Who knew what his mind was capable of?

“I thought I knew you,” Dan said softly, and just ahead of him Duck stopped. The hallway was dark, and Dan flicked the lights on so he could see Duck’s face. “I had no idea you could be so—so cold.”

That had hit home. Duck’s face collapsed and for an instant everything he was feeling—pain, exhaustion, desperate hope—showed on his face. Dan took a step back, shocked. He recovered, and before Duck had a chance to compose himself and slide on his mask of meditative calm, Dan cupped his cheeks and pressed a tender kiss to his lips.

“What did he do to you, Walter?”

Duck sagged against him, and reached up to cover Dan’s hands with his own. He looked relieved, but incredibly sad, too. “I don’t think I can talk about it with the lights on,” Duck said, keeping his eyes closed. “Come to bed with me?”

His voice was soft and quiet as he asked the question, and Duck sounded like he was preparing himself for something, too: Dan’s quick withdrawal, some kind of rejection. But Dan only squeezed his hand, nodded, and guided them into the bedroom.

Dan let go of Duck’s hand to pull the curtains over the big window in the bedroom. He made sure that the fabric panels met without gaping in the middle. The thought of someone peering in and seeing them left him feeling more disturbed than usual. Dan turned just in time to see Duck, already shirtless, stepping out of his jeans.

Dan moved to turn on the light—he needed to see Duck, needed to see the expression on his face—but Duck’s low-voiced, “No, leave it off,” stopped him cold. In his rush to see Duck’s face, he’d already forgotten, and the shame of it rushed hotly through him.

Face burning, he undressed quickly and crossed the room, pausing for a few seconds before thinking Fuck it, and pulled Duck into his arms.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, rubbing Duck’s bare back, his neck, his ears, whatever he could reach. “I’m sorry. Just—just talk to me, okay?”

Duck nodded, his arms coming around Dan as smoothly and easily as they always had. Dan moved them backwards until he felt the soft edge of the mattress touch the back of his knees. He eased them down and covered Duck’s body with his own, warming his chilled skin, easing his trembles.

“What happened?”

Duck shook his head, pressing his face into the hollow of Dan’s neck. “I can’t—I can’t explain everything, okay?”

“Just tell me what you can,” Dan whispered, threading his fingers through Duck’s hair. “Why did you leave the Island? Was it because of your dad?”

Duck’s laugher—shocked, surprised, ironic—was a hot puff of air against Dan’s throat. “No. At least…not just because of him. He was a drunk and he liked to hit me because I was too little to hit back, but I didn’t leave Wilby because of him.”

“Then why?”

“Some guys.” Duck swallowed hard; Dan could feel the movement in his body. “Some friends of Buddy’s—guys from the high school football team—got me alone in the locker room one night. They had a go at me. I…I couldn’t stay on the island, after that.”

He felt like he was going to be ill. The thought of a teenaged Duck—just a kid, a skinny, vulnerable kid trapped by four big football players… he only caught a glimpse at the horror behind Duck’s brief description, but it was enough. He hugged Duck more tightly, and Duck was shaking. He’d never told anyone about this, Dan guessed. He felt it in the way Duck was so tense, holding on so tightly, trying not to break wide open with it.

“Buddy knew?”

This seemed to be the kind of question Duck could answer. “He guessed. He was there, after. The night I left. He gave me some money and helped me find a place to stay in Halifax. Saved my life.”

Dan nodded, his cheek brushing Duck’s hair. He held him a little tighter, until his bones creaked and Duck’s trembling stopped.

“What happened after?”

Duck sighed, and let out a long breath. This part was easier, Dan guessed. Not easy, but easier.

“I stayed in Halifax for a while, and crewed a fishing boat. I traveled some out west. Winnipeg, Edmonton, places like that. Spent a summer in the Yukon, worked on an oil rig. Did lots of hard jobs in lonely places.”

He fell silent for a moment and Dan waited, stroking the back of his neck.

“I was—I was painting. Little things here and there, when I had the money for supplies. A friend in Winnipeg saw some of my stuff, sent pictures to a gallery in Toronto. I got an offer and went to see what all the fuss was about.

“I didn’t care much for the city. Too many people. Too much going on. But they liked my work, and I started to make a living at it. And I was just a kid. Didn’t know what was what. I started to meet people. Go places.”

He paused, twisting under Dan to fit himself more tightly against Dan’s body and wrap his arms around him, and tangle their legs together. This was familiar; it was how they usually slept. Only the conversation was new.

“It took me a long time to get close to anyone, after what had happened. Not that the guys I went with noticed. Everyone was high on something, back then. And I wasn’t happy. I wanted—more.”

“Did you find it?”

Duck’s chuckle was dark and bitter. “No. Kept looking, though. Kept kissing frogs.” He touched Dan’s face, feeling for his mouth. His fingertips tasted like salt. “I started going home with couples, mostly. The three of us’d go to bed together and that was—well. I’d watch them in the morning, and try to figure out how they were together. What it was like, to be with someone like that.”

Dan closed his eyes. He’d never been that lonely for anyone. That hungry. He’d had Val, or at least the shape of her, for so many years. It hadn’t been right, it hadn’t been what he wanted or needed, but it’d been something. He remembered those few times he’d seen Duck at the Watch, how Duck had always seemed to like the kissing more than anything else.

“Then people started getting sick,” Duck continued, and Dan held his breath. “All my friends, everyone I knew, it seemed like. We didn’t know what it was, back then. You’d just—you’d go to bed with a guy, and see him six months or a year later, and he’d be a skeleton. Just a used-up shell. I went to a lot of funerals, in those days.”

“You never got sick?”

He wished he could claw the question back. Of course Duck hadn’t gotten it. Twenty years later he was still healthy. He was here. And if he was sick…he would have told Dan. Dan knew it.

“I was lucky, I guess,” Duck shrugged. “Got the clap a couple of times. And beat up, robbed. But I never did get the virus. And I wondered why for a long time. Why I was spared. Eventually I was the only one left, and I stopped wondering. Other people had started to get it by then—straight men, women. It became a national issue. A real problem. But by then everyone I’d cared about was dead. I sold the last of my paintings and got the hell out of Toronto. I was tired of funerals, and I was angry. So damn angry. It was such a waste, y’know? A whole generation gone.

“Anyway, I didn’t have anywhere else to go but Wilby. I’d inherited this house and it was pretty clear that if I kept going the way I’d been, I’d have been dead in less than a year anyway. Might as well have gotten the virus after all, y’know?”

Dan nodded mutely, horrified. A hard life? Buddy French didn’t have the first clue.

“Anyway, I came home and dried out. My dad was already pretty far gone by the time I got back and got my head on straight enough to think to look for him. He was living in a rooming house in Port Saxon, and his mind was already going. He didn’t want my help. Didn’t want a faggot for a son. He wrote me letters, though.”

The letters. Dan pulled away a bit, trying to look at Duck’s face. “So he was the one.”

Duck nodded. “I should have told you. I’m sorry, Dan. I didn’t know you were scared. I thought…I thought it’d be better if you thought it was just some asshole from town.”

“You were wrong,” Dan muttered, and he felt Duck sigh.

“Yeah, I was.” The words were heavy, but Dan felt something in his chest ease. Duck hadn’t meant to be malicious, or make him worry. He’d simply been ashamed.

“So what happened after you came back to Wilby?” Dan asked. “After you dried out.”

“Well, I tried to put my life back together. I started the business and I…I learned how to stop being so angry. The world wasn’t what I wanted it to be, but I could still help people. I could still matter, at least on the Island. In a place as small as Wilby, everyone matters. Everyone is a part of something.”

Duck felt silent, and Dan wondered if he was thinking of that other community he’d lost to a virus that hadn’t even had a name, at the time.

“And the Watch?”

Duck shifted, uncomfortable. Dan let him collect his thoughts. “I missed it. Missed feeling someone like that. It’d been years, and I kept hoping that I’d finally… Well. I kept hoping I’d find what I’d been looking for.”

He brushed his fingertips against Dan’s mouth, so softly and so gently that Dan had to close his eyes. “I feel like I’ve been looking for you forever,” Duck said.

Dan felt his heart thump. It ached, suddenly, this love he felt for Duck. And he knew that he’d never be able to stop. He couldn’t protect himself from it, or hide away from disapproval of other people. And he shouldn’t have to.

“Hang on,” he said, kissing Duck quickly before slipping out of bed. Feeling brave, he reached over and turned on the bedside lamp, and then the hallway light, and the light in the kitchen and the living room. He didn’t stop until every room in the small cottage was brilliantly illuminated. And then Dan retraced his steps, returning to each room to throw open the curtains and raise the blinds. When he finally reached the bedroom Dan threw back the heavy curtains that he’d always kept so carefully closed. He held out his hand to Duck.

“What’s gotten into you?” Duck chuckled, bemused. Dan tugged Duck back against him, and wrapped his arms around Duck. They were both nude, and as Dan pressed closer he pointed to the window, and the sea beyond. Dawn was just staining the edges of the horizon. They’d talked the whole night through, and Dan felt suddenly, inexplicably happy.

“We’ve got nothing to hide. Not anymore. No secrets, okay? And no more shame.” He turned Duck around, and they looked at each other for a long time, making a silent pact. Duck nodded, and Dan smiled at him. He felt some of his fear fade away, and with it went the impulse to close the curtains and shut off all the lights.

Dan kissed Duck, long and slow, and Duck wrapped his arms around Dan’s neck and kissed him back.

A new day was coming, and they’d finally found land to light on.

THE END