Free Blue Skies by Robyn Carr Page B

We’ll meet you over there in an hour.” When she hung up, she said to Carlisle, “She needs us more than we need to feel sorry for ourselves. Now, are you going to stay here with me for a while?”
    â€œIf you’re sure it’s okay…”
    â€œIt’s not only okay, if you go back home I’ll be very disappointed in you.”
    So Carlisle went around the corner to his town house to pack a bag while Robert was at work. He looked around the home they’d shared these past three years. You’d think Robert would have left a note or something, but he hadn’t even picked up his dirty clothes or wiped out the sink. He left the scut work for Carlisle…and Carlisle always did it.
    He drove his car around the corner to store in Dixie’s garage, and when he pulled into her drive, she was putting the bags full of clothes out on the curb for pickup. This had been the fourth time in the past year that Carlisle had packed a bag to leave Robert. In his heart he hoped he would be strong enough and smart enough not to go back this time.
    Of course, he had a long history of running away. Once he got to college, he had gone home to Anoka, Minnesota, as seldom as possible. He had no siblings, and his straitlaced religious parents were not just openly disapproving of gays, they were downright hostile. Carlisle was afraid they’d pick up on clues that would have been obvious years before to anyone else.
    But they hadn’t. Carlisle was a twenty-six-year-old fifth-grade teacher when he finally told them the truth, and they acted exactly as he had feared—stunned and angry. “But you went to the prom!” was his mother’s first shocked and disbelieving cry. Mothers who were worried that their sons were gay always hung on to that prom date as confirmation that their worst fears were unfounded.
    Then they told him not to discuss that filth around them again until he had examined all his options. Options? Like rehabilitation. There was a church in Minneapolis that was having great success helping gays return to a straight life.
    Carlisle often wondered how you could “return” to a straight life. When had he ever been straight? He had no memory of it.
    He seemed to be able to have a superficial, somewhat loving relationship with his mother, Ethel, as long as they never broached the subject of homosexuality. But this was hard for Ethel, who always wanted to know if he was still gay.
    His father, on the other hand, was barely civil. It was with great sadness that Carlisle had left his teaching job and the Midwest ten years ago to fly for Aries, but he got the distinct impression that his parents were relieved to have him so far away. He visited rarely, and when he did, his father had nothing to say to him. There was noway he would ever introduce anyone in his family to a partner. Carlisle knew he was referred to as the Gay Cousin, and while a couple of his aunts sent Christmas cards and occasional notes, no one bothered to keep him posted on family events, probably fearful he might attend.
    But then came the real deal breaker, the events of 9/11. Although there had not been an Aries jet involved, airline employees often traveled on other airlines using nonrevenue passes—a professional courtesy. His parents couldn’t know for certain that he wasn’t on one of the hijacked planes, whereas Carlisle had talked to his mother the previous month and knew they had no travel plans and were tucked safely away in Anoka.
    As it happened, Carlisle had been in New York on a layover and was stranded by the grounding of all aircraft. He had watched the plume of smoke that grayed the city and wept his heart out at what was happening to the world. Dixie had been in D.C. and Nikki in Boston, and it had taken a couple of days for their cell phones to work properly so they could be certain of one another’s safety.
    When his parents saw those huge planes smash into the