Free Repairman Jack [05]-Hosts by F. Paul Wilson

kind of… of hitman, are you?"
    He laughed—a real laugh, the kind you can't fake—and that reassured her. A little.
    "No. Nothing so melodramatic as that."
    "Do you pay people off?"
    "No, I just sort of… it's hard to explain. And not the sort of thing I can advertise on a billboard."
    "Is it legal?"
    A shrug. "Sometimes yes, sometimes no."
    Kate leaned back and stared. Who was this man across from her? He'd said he lived on a different world, one she'd never understand, and she was beginning to believe him. He was like a stranger from a faraway planet, and yet in many ways he was undeniably still her little brother Jackie.
    First Jeanette, now Jack… her own world, never a comfortable place these past few years, now seemed to be crumbling. She felt unmoored from her life. Wasn't there anything left she could rely on?
    Jack said, "Now can you see why I thought it best for all concerned that I keep to myself?"
    "I don't know." Earlier tonight Kate would have said no—nothing you could have done would have changed the way we felt about you. She wasn't so sure anymore. "Maybe."
    "I think Dad has scoped that I'm hiding something. Know what he asked me last time we talked?" Jack grinned. "Wanted to know if I was gay."
    Kate gasped. She couldn't help it. She felt as if someone had just dashed a bucket of cold water in her face.

    ***

    "It's not all that bad," Jack said, seeing Kate's shocked look.
    He wondered at that. As a pediatrician she must have run into her share of teenagers who thought or knew or feared they might be gay. Maybe that was still a big deal in Kate's white-collar, middle-class-citizen world. Around here it was no deal at all.
    "He flat-out asked you?" she said, her eyes still wide. "Just like that? When?"
    "Couple of months ago. It was when he was planning to come up from Florida and visit you and Tom. I was trying to deflect him from including me in his itinerary."
    "What did he say? Exactly."
    Jack wondered at her sudden intensity.
    "He said something about how he realized there might be aspects of my life I didn't want him to know about—which was dead-on right—and then he said that if I was gay…" Jack had to smile here. "He could barely get the word out. Actually he said if I was gay 'or something like that'—he never got into what the 'something like that' might be—it was okay."
    "He said it was okay ?" Kate couldn't seem to believe it. "We're talking about our father, the Reagan Republican, the Rush Limbaugh fan. Dad said it was okay?"
    "Yeah. He told me, 'I can accept it. You're still my son.' Isn't that a killer?"
    Not that it changed a thing. His father might be able to accept a gay son, but he'd never accept how Jack made his living.
    He saw tears in his sister's eyes and asked, "Something wrong?"
    She quickly wiped them away. "Strange how some people can surprise the hell out of you." Eyes dry again, she looked at him. "Well, are you:
    "What?"
    "Gay?"
    "No. Strictly hetero."
    "But you never married?"
    "No. I kicked around a lot when I was younger, but I'm pretty much settled with one woman now."
    "Pretty much?"
    "Well, I'm settled, but let's just say she's got some issues about my work. How about you? I'll bet a lot of guys came around after the divorce. Seeing anyone?"
    "Yes." A little nod, a little smile, but very warm. "Someone special."
    "Are we going to hear wedding bells again?"
    And now a sad look. "No."
    Strange answer. Not at all tentative. Unless she was seeing a married guy. That didn't fit with the straitlaced Kate he remembered, but as she'd just said: people can surprise the hell out of you.
    He'd never thought of his sister as a sexual being; she'd always been just… Kate. But smitten enough to be making it with a married guy… a sure recipe for hurt. He hoped she knew what she was doing.
    "So much of what we do comes down to sex, doesn't it," he said. "Sometimes too much, I think."
    "How so?"
    "I mean it's a part of life, a really wonderful part of life, but not all