“I want you to do what you want to do, as long as you want to. There’s life insurance. Use your part to figure out what you want. Both of you. Travel, maybe. See the world. And when you’re done, when you’re through …”
Whatever the man was going to say now, Craig didn’t want to hear it. He knew it somehow, deep, deep down. But he was going to hear it anyway.
“Maybe you can come back here, if you want, and think of me while you marry the man you love. If that’s what you decide to do.”
There was just so much casual acceptance in that one sentence. It was the sort of thing that, growing up, Craig would have assumed was utterly impossible, and yet here it was, freely being offered. Impulsively, he reached forward and hugged his father.
His father had given him the best gift he could have. Permission to move on, but in whatever way Craig decided.
“If I marry anyone, it’ll be Skyler,” he whispered in his father’s ear, as Skyler took his turn hugging the older man. Maybe Skyler heard, and maybe he didn’t. Either way, it was okay with Craig. He would tell him again when the time was right because all of a sudden, he was very clear about one thing.
He was going to marry Skyler. Not now, maybe not for years. And it would be nothing more than a celebration of what was already between them, a chance to share it with the people who were close to them.
If Skyler wanted to, when all was said and done, Craig was in. Hell, he was in for pretty much anything that Skyler wanted, so long as he had the man that he loved by his side.
“I’m going to miss you,” Craig said suddenly, dashing tears impatiently from his cheeks. Skyler slipped an arm around his waist, helping him immeasurably. For such a small man, Skyler was strong. Stronger in some ways, Craig knew, than he himself was.
“I think that’s proper, son, but no matter what happens after death, I’ll be waiting for you and your brothers. You hear me? Now get out of here. It’s a wedding. Enjoy yourself.” There was a brief pause, and then the older man continued on. “No matter what, kiddo, I want you to promise me that you’ll do that. Enjoy your life.”
Craig nodded, gave his father one last hug, and then stood, his arm around Skyler’s shoulders. He might have fallen down if not for the support of his boyfriend, who might be silent but who was here for him. Craig knew that more certainly than he had ever known anything.
“I like his idea,” Skyler murmured thoughtfully, as they wrapped their arms around each other on the stretch of lawn that made up the dance floor. They had come full circle, hadn’t they? This had all really started at Malcolm’s wedding when they had danced, and now they were dancing at Derrick’s, but they were together. There was no more doubt about that.
“Hmm?” Craig murmured, a sort of bittersweet sensation settling in the pit of his stomach and radiating out. He clung to Skyler like his life depended on it, and in a way, it felt like it did.
“About traveling. Seeing the world. Together. Do you want to? We both need some time to figure out what we’re going to do with our lives.”
Craig nodded slowly. In some way, it felt disrespectful to take the money from his father’s life insurance and go on walkabout, but it was what his father had literally just told him to do. Another gift that the older man had given him.
“Yes,” Craig murmured, resting his chin on top of Skyler’s head, where it seemed to fit perfectly. “Let’s do that. See the world. Together.”
“The together,” Skyler informed him soberly, somehow knowing the exact perfect thing to say to comfort Craig as much as he possibly could be comforted, “goes without saying.”
Epilogue
Skyler
In the end, Craig didn’t re-enlist. Skyler knew, he had heard, that Craig had been considering it back when things had been going badly between the two of them. But never, not even once, did Craig bring it up again, and the last barrier that Skyler had felt between them faded away. While he respected the men and women who served, he didn’t see himself being with a soldier.
Time passed, and John got weaker by the day. Despite this, the man seemed to have come to some sort of peace with himself, and he didn’t want to be moved to a hospital or hospice. He would die, he had told them all, at home.
Some nurses came in, and that helped, but Skyler and Craig both spent a lot of time with John since they were the ones who didn’t have to do work out on the ranch. Skyler had his bookkeeping, but in all honesty, Mary Anne had taken over most of it, overseen by Jessica and Hannah, both of whom hadn’t quite managed to go to their own homes again.
Or maybe they were home. This old ranch house, he’d noticed, had a way of working into people’s heart and making them feel like it was home. He had certainly experienced that himself.
But he wasn’t working on the books when the end came. He was sitting in the bedroom which looked more like a hospital room by now, with all of the machines standing noisy, beeping sentry over John’s end. John was now too weak to speak too much, so he and Craig were playing chess quietly, just keeping him company.
“Craig, Skyler,” John said suddenly, just when Skyler was plotting out a move that he was fairly sure would capture Craig’s queen. Although he wasn’t positive, because Craig was often surprisingly wily, pulling out last minute escapes that Skyler hadn’t seen coming. That was probably the military training.
Immediately, though, they both dropped the game and turned to the older man, who was looking at them with so much compassion on his face that it was hard even to notice how sick he was. Something bigger than the physical burned through, and Skyler blinked hard. He knew what John was going to say before he said it.
“It’s time. You’d better get everyone here.”
It was a close thing, but everyone did make it in. They had all been waiting for the call. Even Wyatt was there, and Jessica, Mary Anne, everyone that was in their family biologically or having been adopted and claimed. The room was not small, but it was crammed to the gills.
It was all over in seconds. The incessant beeping of the machines ceased, and everyone had held their tears back until it was over, but the moment it was, they were all crying, every single one of them. Skyler was positive that there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.
And yet, it could have been worse. It could have been a lot better, too, but John had died in the way that he had wanted to, surrounded by the people who loved him, the family he’d made and the family he’d built.
