Chapter 4
“Come upstairs with me?” I asked, barely able to speak above a whisper. “Neither one of us has to be alone tonight.”
Trace rubbed his nose against mine. “Okay.”
I woke in the dark, the gentle ache in my body a pleasant reminder of the sex I’d had with Trace last night. I’d never fallen asleep so fast or sated in my life, content with my partner by my side. But the other half of the bed was startlingly empty, and I sat up, squinting through the gloom for evidence I hadn’t dreamed my encounters with Trace.
No, the sheets were still messy, and an empty condom wrapper was on the side table. My phone’s light didn’t show any extra clothes on the floor, though, and my heart sank. For the hours we’d played, explored each other’s body, and kissed like we’d die without it, I never imagined he’d sneak off while I slept.
I climbed out of bed and padded to the window to make sure—no, his car was still in the driveway. Lights were on inside the garage. I hadn’t thought to set the alarm before dragging Trace inside the house and into my bedroom, or I’d have woken a lot sooner. Curiosity overtaking my disappointment, I slipped on a pair of boxer shorts and went outside.
Trace was bent over, rifling inside a box, likewise dressed in just his shorts, and I took a moment to admire the taut ass I remembered so well. Gripped so hard while he fucked me, and even gave playful smacks a few times. Plus, all the tattoos previously hidden by his shirt…
He straightened when he noticed me, his inked chest glistening with perspiration. “Hey. Sorry, I woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep.”
“It’s okay.” The a/c was on a timer and had shut off for the night, so I strode over and manually turned it back on. “I’m just glad you didn’t sneak away.”
Trace’s arms slipped around my waist from behind, and he kissed the side of my neck. “I would never do that. What we did was special, Atty. I’d never cheapen it by leaving in the dark like a trick who didn’t care about you.”
“Thank you.” I leaned back against his chest, loving the way he held me so protectively, hands clasped loosely over my belly. “Couldn’t stay away from the mystery of Teddy and X, huh?”
“Guilty. I know we were at this for hours last night?—”
“The investigating or the fucking?”
Trace pinched my belly, and I laughed. “Both. I just don’t want to leave this search unfinished, you know? You don’t have to stay up with me.”
I reached behind me to gently squeeze his hip. “I’ll go put some coffee on.”
By sunrise Sunday morning, we’d gone through every puzzle in the garage, plus a few boxes of the games from the same unit, just in case an errant letter had slipped into one of those. Trace had everything sorted chronologically, and after snapping photos of each letter matched with its corresponding puzzle, we took the entire stack of envelopes into my house.
I insisted we break for showers and a simple breakfast of frozen waffles to go with all the coffee we’d both guzzled. Afterward, we settled on the living room sofa with those precious letters and Trace began to read them out loud.
“September eighteenth, nineteen-eighty-six. Dearest Teddy,” Trace read from the very first one. “I found the postcard with your address in my suitcase, you clever boy. Thank you for including it, as I have so many fond memories of our time spent together over Labor Day weekend. It was my first ever trip to Rehoboth Beach, and I did not expect to make so many new friends in such a short period of time. Or to meet someone as spectacularly handsome and interesting and sensual as yourself. My only regret is that there is an entire country now between us, and I don’t know when or if we’ll see each other again.
“But we can write each other, since you thought to make sure our weekend fling was not just a fling. Thank you for that, and for respecting my privacy. No one at home knows, and they can’t ever know. I’d lose everything and everyone I care about in my hometown. But I am so tired of living like this. I know you understand.”
Trace sighed. “That’s so sad.”
“Yeah. As much as it’s possible X is a woman who had an affair, based on other context clues, I’m guessing he’s a closeted gay man from the western side of the country who took a brief, rainbow vacation at Rehoboth Beach and let his freak flag fly. Teddy obviously meant a lot to him.”
“I think you’re right.”
We continued to read aloud the two-year, long-distance love story of Teddy and X. X making gay friends in his home state; losing several to horrible, AIDS related deaths; coming to terms with his sexuality; finally leaving his wife to live an authentic, if terrifying, life in San Francisco and volunteering his time with AIDS patients. His first visit to a place called Club Base. It was the only time X ever mentioned an identifiable location, but it still didn’t narrow anything down in terms of who X was.
With four letters to go, we took a break. Trace was hoarse, and I was stiff from sitting for so long. We shared sandwiches for lunch, and as I watched him eat, I marveled at how well Trace fit in here. How easily he moved in the kitchen, how natural it felt to have him in my space. It was way too soon to start dreaming of anything beyond dating, but I basked in the immediacy of it all. And in how much it chased away my ever-present loneliness.
“Part of me wants to save the last few letters,” Trace said with a touch of melancholy in his voice. “I’m afraid of what the last one’s going to say. But I kind of want to rip off the bandage, so to speak.”
“I get it. We’re invested, right? Hey, did you ask your sister about knowing any private investigators?”
“I did, and she said she’d get back to me in a few days. She’s in the middle of a big project launch at work, and doesn’t like to divide her attention too much. But April keeps her promises, so she’ll follow through.”
“I’d like to meet her.” As soon as the impulsive thought crossed my lips, my cheeks flamed. “Um, I mean, not right away, and not as, like, your boyfriend or anything, since we’ve only been doing this for a day. But she sounds really awesome.”
Trace smiled at my babbling. “She’s great. And I think you guys would like each other. We also don’t have to define what we’re doing right now, Atty. No labels. Let’s just keep doing what feels good.”
Nothing in his tone suggested a come-on in that final statement, but the words still warmed my blood. “Feels good, huh?” I slid my hand across the table to squeeze his wrist. “How good do you want things to feel?”
With a gentle bite of his lower lip, Trace twisted his hand to clasp mine, and rose from the table.
We didn’t make it upstairs this time, and after we’d sated ourselves, Trace got a wet rag from the kitchen to clean us both up. By some silent agreement, we cuddled up naked on the couch, a crocheted afghan tossed over us for warmth in the air-conditioned room.
“Ready to hear the end of things?” Trace whispered, fingers tracing circles over the front an age-yellowed envelope.
“It might be the end of these letters, but it’s also the beginning of something new. For us?”
“Yeah. Definitely for us.” He angled his head to kiss my cheek, and then pulled the letter from its envelope. “January second, nineteen-eighty-eight. Dearest Teddy. For the first time in my life, I celebrated the new year with likeminded folks, and it was spectacular. Even with the threat of illness in the air, we threw the party of a lifetime. I hope you were not alone yesterday, despite your last letter mentioning you felt poorly. Have you taken the blood test? Perhaps, my love, it’s time.”
My heart sank for Teddy and everything X’s question implied.
“I’d like to come visit this summer, if you agree. It’s been far too long since I’ve seen you, and I’m still heartsick over losing the photo you sent. I’m sure we’ve both changed greatly in the last year and a half. I don’t think you’d recognize me from the shy man you first met at the Renegade that weekend. I hardly recognize myself most days, and that is a good thing, I think.”
X went on to describe a new patient at the nursing home, a young woman who’d contracted the virus from a blood transfusion, but whose family had turned on her for getting “the homosexual cancer.” The ignorance and fear from those times was palpable in X’s letters, and it left me agitated. At once angry and sad and all things in between for all the suffering people who’d died alone.
“Thank gods for angels like X,” I said when Trace folded that letter and slid it back into the envelope. “He needs a hospital wing named after him or something. I just wish we knew his name.”
“Me, too.” He held up the final two letters. “Penultimate installment.”
“If it wasn’t the middle of the afternoon, I’d pour us each a glass of wine for this.” I flinched when I remembered too late. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine, and don’t let me stop you. I’m a big boy and can handle being around someone who’s drinking, especially if the occasion calls for it.”
“Thanks, but getting wine means getting up, and I like this too much.” I liked Trace relaxed against my chest, naked, our legs wrapped around each other. Warm and cozy, and so natural I didn’t want to break the spell. I rested my chin on his shoulder. “Read to me. Please.”
Trace did. The second-to-last letter was dated February 1988 and contained more of the same, making vague plans for a summer visit and tales of X working in the nursing home. He asked again if Teddy had been tested, his concern clear in his words, and I half-expected to see dried tear tracks on the weathered notebook paper. There were also mentions of Valentine’s Day and a potential phone call between the pair.
I hoped they got their call. I hoped they had gotten a chance to express their affection in spoken words, instead of just in written ones. I hoped Teddy’s letters back to X were as filled with longing and adoration and hope for a future together. I hoped.
But hope had a way of leaving you cold and alone and aching.
Not always, but a lot of the time.
Trace held the final letter in his hands for several long moments before sliding the paper out. It was one sheet, but something was tucked into—a Polaroid slipped out and landed on Trace’s lap. I itched to pick it up, but Trace left it face-down on the blanket and opened the letter. Familiar penmanship, but only two paragraphs long.
“March fourth, nineteen-eighty-eight. Dearest Teddy. I wish I could tell you that I bore your news bravely when I received your last letter. I wish I could tell you it filled me with determination and a sense of duty, rather than with dread and despair. I will tell you that I love you, and I still plan on coming to see you. Nothing will deter those plans, they will simply have to be sooner than June. And I promise a longer letter will follow, but I had to send this as soon as I could. I had to tell you.
“I love you, and I will be there for you until the end. It may take time to get my affairs in order and prepare to move east. Until that happens, until we see each other again with our own eyes, please hold on to this photo of us. You sent it to me to replace the one I lost, and I plan on collecting it from you in the near future.
Yours always, in love and life and all matters of the heart, Frederick.”
“Frederick,” I said. The author of these letters, X, finally had a first name, something to give more identity to such a profound human being. “Teddy and Frederick.”
Trace coughed hard and sniffled. “Teddy and Freddy. Huh.” With trembling fingers, he lifted the Polaroid and turned it over. Two young men smiled back at us, arms around each other’s shoulders, clearly happy and enjoying themselves. The background was dark with slashes of color, possibly the club Frederick had mentioned. The Renegade? They looked very similar in height and appearance, both with sandy hair and slender builds, and both shirtless.
“I wonder who is who?” I whispered, the moment too reverent for loud words.
Trace brushed his fingertip over the face of the man on the left. “This is Frederick. His eyes. They’re so joyful, because he’s experiencing something so profound. He’s experiencing life as his true self for the first time.”
I raised Trace’s hand so I could study the photo up close. Despite its age and faded colors, I could see in Frederick’s eyes the same relief I often felt now that I was also living a more authentic life. “Yeah. I can see that. Do you think Frederick is still alive?”
“If so, he’d be what? Probably in his sixties or seventies?”
“Probably. And if Teddy’s stuff all ended up in storage for the last thirty-odd years, it’s likely Frederick never made the trip east. Or if he did, he didn’t get access to anything of Teddy’s. I hope he at least got some sort of closure when Teddy died.”
The letter hadn’t spelled it out, but I could guess that Teddy tested positive for the virus, and Frederick had immediately made plans to move east and care for Teddy. To be by his side until the end, like Frederick had been by the side of countless AIDS patients in San Francisco. But the photo was in our hands, not in Frederick’s, and I’d found it in an abandoned, auctioned-off storage locker.
“Their story deserves a better ending than this,” Trace said.
“Hey.” I shifted us so he was facing me, the blanket now draped over his shoulders, not liking him this visibly upset. “You gave them a better ending by being curious. By taking that first letter, reading it, and needing to know more. And even if no one else is alive who remembers them, we do. Maybe Teddy and Frederick only loved each other for a little while, but they did love each other. Without that love? Without Frederick sending letters and puzzles to Teddy on a regular basis? We never would have met.”
Trace’s glimmering eyes widened, hope replacing some of his grief. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I never would have dreamed of walking into a community puzzle swap if I hadn’t bought Teddy’s puzzle hoard. Gerald never would have found the letter to give to you, so you could hand it back to me. And I’m hardly a blushing romantic in any situation, but I really like you here, Trace. In my life. And I think Frederick and Teddy would be happy about us finding each other.”
“Me too. Liking me here and thinking they’d be happy for us. I wasn’t looking for a relationship when I first asked you about looking through your puzzles, but I am truly happy with how things have turned out.”
“Yeah.” I brushed our lips together, a silent promise that we were both intent on seeing where this new relationship took us. Even if it wasn’t forever, it could be a pretty amazing for-right-now.
Trace deepened the kiss, but before things got too steamy, his cell began speaking in a mechanical voice, telling us, “Your sister is calling. Answer the phone, your sister is calling,” over and over.
I laughed and loosened my hold on Trace just enough for him to reach out and snag his phone off the coffee table. “Hey, April.” He winked at me. “No, your timing is perfect. Any leads on a PI I can call about my mail problem?”
His broad, bright smile answered his question for me.
Chapel Hill House was a strange name for a facility in the middle of a city, nowhere near a hill, much less a chapel of any kind, but that’s where our information finally took us. I’d bartered for PI services—the guy was restoring a ’69 Camaro and in search of new-old stock for parts, for which I had a few connections—in locating Frederick from San Francisco, using the letters, the Polaroid, and every scrap of paper I’d found in that storage unit related to its former owner.
The leads panned out. Theodore “Teddy” Pavlik took his own life on March 17, 1988, rather than suffer a slow death by AIDS, with which he’d been recently diagnosed. His property had passed to a sibling, and when that sibling passed, everything was put into storage—the unit I eventually purchased. Between Trace’s work schedule at Half-Dozen, and my other commitments to my own business, we finally managed to visit Chapel Hill in early July. It was hot as balls outside, and the facility’s air conditioning wasn’t a whole lot better, but a very nice lady at the help desk signed us in, and then directed us to the proper room. I hadn’t been in a nursing home before, and the dreary interior made me hope I never ended up in one in my old age. While Trace and I were still dating and very happy with our three-week-old relationship, neither of us was ready for a hard commitment. I wasn’t ready to say, “I love you,” but the feelings were definitely growing.
One day I’d say the words.
I followed Trace down the wide, echoing corridor to the room number we’d been given. The door stood wide open, and faint voices trickled out, tinny enough that they had to be from a television, rather than other visitors. Trace knocked on the door and stepped into the frame, me close at his back. I was intensely nervous about this, because visiting an elderly man I’d never met was way outside my comfort zone, so I let Trace take the lead.
I trusted him to lead me steadily forward.
“Who’s that?” a gruff voice barked. “Come on in, I don’t bite. Ain’t got my teeth in.”
Trace chuckled and moved deeper inside. It was decorated like a basic hospital room, with a bed, built-in dresser and freestanding closet, but personal touches sprinkled everything like confetti. A red bedspread, framed photos on flat surfaces, some clothes haphazardly thrown on the dresser top, and artwork on the walls. I focused on the art piece nearest my shoulder, which was bright, cheerful, and reminded me of Lisa Frank.
It was also, I realized with a surprised grunt, a sealed, completed puzzle.
A thin, long-limbed man with only a few stray hairs on his otherwise bald scalp sat in a wheelchair that faced a boxy television. He had a crocheted lap blanket over his legs, and he stared at us with a funny mix of suspicion and humor in his deep-set eyes. “You boys got the wrong room?” he asked.
“Not if you’re Frederick Marsh,” Trace replied. “He’s who we’re looking for.”
“Huh. If you’re some long-long grand-nephew hoping old Uncle Freddy’s got something for you to inherit one day, don’t bother. This place takes it all every month, and what I did have got sold at auction two years ago. Nothing like breaking a hip and a femur to lay you up and make people forget about you.”
“You aren’t forgotten, Mr. Marsh. In fact, we’ve been looking for you for a few weeks now.”
“Why?” He eyeballed me, probably because I was older than Trace and hadn’t said a word yet. “I can’t owe you money, and I know I ain’t knocked up your sister. Is this some sorta charity thing? Adopt-A-Geezer Week at the country club?”
I laughed out loud, charmed by his snark and sass. “We’re hardly the country club types,” I replied. “My name is Atticus McMasters, and this is my boyfriend, Trace Johnson.”
Frederick’s sharp gaze softened. “Well, you seem to know who I am, but call me Freddy. What’s brought two handsome young men to my doorstep? Such as it is? Because if it is Adopt-A-Geezer Week, consider me yours.”
“As tempting as that sounds,” Trace replied with a grin, “we’re here because we found something that belongs to you. And we want to give it back.”
“Oh? My charming good looks? I think I lost those in the early aughts.”
“No.” Trace reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts and produced the stack of letters, which were tied together with twine, as well as the Polaroid. “I apologize in advance for reading your private correspondence, but we’re here to give them back. And to give you this photograph that you were never able to reclaim.”
He held out the bundle. Freddy stared at it, lips parted, frozen in place for so long I nearly reached out and shook him. Then a single tear slipped down his right cheek, and that seemed to unstick his gears. He reached out and took the bundle with shaking hands. Let the letters fall to his lap while he held up the photograph. His eyes filled with more tears that trickled out, almost without notice, as a kaleidoscope of emotions played across his face: joy, grief, fear, awe, humor, and so many unnamable things.
“Oh, Teddy,” he whispered. “There you are. I’d forgotten your face.”
Trace trembled once, and I wrapped my hand in his. Squeezed. My own throat was thick with emotion, and all my anxiety over this task melted beneath a bright beam of relief and pride. We’d done the right thing.
Several minutes passed before Freddy seemed to collect himself. “Where did you get this?” he asked. “When Teddy died…his family shut me out. Wouldn’t tell me anything, give me anything. They never accepted Teddy was gay. All I had were the letters he wrote me, and the puzzles we swapped back and forth for those two years.”
“He sent you puzzles, too?” I asked.
“He did. We both loved them. But how? How did you find these?”
“That’s a bit of a long story, if you’d like to hear it.”
“Sonny, I’ve got all the time in the world to hear a story from two handsome young men. Please, sit and stay a while.”
The room didn’t have any other chairs, so Trace and I sat next to each other on the side of Freddy’s bed, and we began telling our story. A bit about my business, a bit about his life, and how both had intersected the night of the puzzle swap. As we spoke late into the afternoon, I marveled at how different my life was now.
If you’d asked me back in June what was the most valuable thing I’d ever found in a storage locker, I might have said a stash of one-ounce silver bars, or even an 1871 Colt revolver. But as our story of reading Freddy’s letters turned into Freddy regaling us with stories of his own life as a young, closeted gay man, I understood that the most valuable things I’d ever found were in this room.
I’d found the stories and first-hand experiences of someone who’d survived a tragic time in our nation’s history. The wisdom of a life lived during a time when so many had died. And, as I leaned my shoulder against Trace’s and smiled at my boyfriend, I was pretty sure I’d also found love.
And love was the greatest treasure of all.