Moving Target by J. A. Jance

doesn’t matter if they are welcoming or not. That’s why I’m here—to have your back. If they prove too difficult or too obnoxious, we shake the dust off our heels and decamp for somewhere better.” She paused. “I realize you’ve never told me the whole story. I can certainly understand why, and you don’t have to tell me now, if you don’t want to. But I’m here to help, Leland. It might give me more of an insight if I knew some of the details.”
    “All of it?” he asked, peering at her sideways.
    Ali slowed and turned the wipers on high as they plowed into yet another swirling mass of snow. “All of it,” she replied.
    Leland sighed. For several long moments he was silent. “I knew I was different from other boys from a very early age, although I spent years of my life trying to convince myself otherwise. Langston and Lawrence teased me relentlessly, calling me names I’d rather not remember. Langston, Jeffrey’s grandfather, was always the ringleader. He’d turn over in his grave if he knew he had a pouf for a grandson.”
    “It’s probably just as well he doesn’t,” Ali said.
    That garnered the faintest of smiles from Leland, but it disappeared as quickly as it appeared. “That was one of the reasons I joined the Royal Marines. Lawrence and Langston both tried to get in and didn’t make it. I not only got in, I served with honor. While I was there—including the whole time I was in that hellhole called Korea—I never said or did anything that would have dishonored my family or my fellow marines. You believe me when I say that, right?”
    “Of course,” Ali replied.
    “The problem is, when I came home from the war, I was the same person I had always been. My brothers were the same, too. They raggedon me constantly. Never in front of our parents, always behind their backs.”
    Leland fell silent as if struggling to find a way to go on. Ali was tempted to interject something, but ultimately she waited him out.
    “Then I met someone,” he said at last. “It isn’t like now, when you can go out to a gay club and meet other people who are in the same situation. His name was Thomas. He was a teacher—a new teacher—at a nearby preparatory school, Kembry Park Academy. During the midsummer holidays, I went to the cricket grounds in Bournemouth to watch a match, and there he was, out on the field. From the time I was little, Langston always said I ran like a girl. Some rough fellows in the Royal Marines said the same thing, but since I could run faster than any of them, what they said didn’t bother me the way it did when Langston said it.
    “So there was this one young batsman out there playing—a handsome lad about my age—who seemed to run the same way I did, and he was fast. After the match was over, I ran into him in a pub. I raised a glass to him and said, ‘Hey, you run like a girl.’ He looked like he was getting ready to punch me. Then I said, ‘So do I,’ and we both laughed. That was it. As I said, his name was Thomas—Thomas Blackfield. Never a Tom; always a Thomas.”
    Wistfulness had come into Leland’s voice. Silence enveloped the car as the Land Rover moved slowly through the snow. As close as they were to the sea, Ali understood that this had to be a powerful storm. Even with all the traffic, snow was accumulating on the highway. As long as people didn’t drive too fast for the conditions, everything would be fine.
    She was about to prod Leland to continue, but Leland resumed his tale without further urging. “Thomas and I were both young and inexperienced. We didn’t want to rush into anything, and with his position as a teacher at stake, it was important that we be discreet. It was summer. We spent a good deal of time just walking and talking, gettingto know each other. Late in August we were down in the gardens by the promenade. We were looking for a little privacy when we literally stumbled over Langston and his then girlfriend, Frances, Jeffrey’s