They settled into
bed in silence. By unspoken decision,
Cody went in the middle. Luigi put him
there because he didn’t trust him not to get up in the night and try to do
something rash. ‘Run away’ was what he
pretended to think, but darker alternatives were in his mind. Jason’s reasons
were more complicated. His reasoning was similar to Luigi’s, but he thought
that Cosy needed simple comforting and caressing, like a wounded animal. He ought to be held, to have hands on him,
and flesh against him. Years before,
Jason had read about how infants in Victorian orphanages had died simply
because no one had picked them up and held them. He’d stroked a run-over dog; calmed a
frightened horse. He firmly believed in
the healing power of petting. Cody’s happiness and security, and Cody and
Luigi’s relationship had become his cause.
And—just a little—he was also saying to Tyche, the Goddess of fortune,
“See. I’m trying. I’m trying to make amends for Brent.”
They were all
exhausted with the stress and tension of the day and the night before that, and
for the first time Cody was tranquil. He
handed himself over to Fate. He knew
now, as sure as he knew that the sun rose in the east and set in the west, he
knew that he was in God’s hands, and that he would come right. He needed only patience. And courage.
If you could have
seen those three young men—each one having been through their own personal
Golgotha, scarred, damaged, hurt—nevertheless peacefully and trustingly asleep
in each other arms … well, you know what you would have felt. I leave it to yourselves, gentle readers, to
imagine the simple humanity with which they held each other against the terrors
and agonies of life.
Terrors, which it
would turn out, were not that far away.
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