Shadow's Gravity: Aviary Hill

By Chris M. Vise

Shadow's Gravity, the concluding novel of the Aviary Hill series.
 

Set in the years 1995–2005, twenty-two-year-old Chris Rhodes embarks on the search for his place in life, a missing person and answers to his family's past amid the backdrop of his career in 90s alternative radio, network broadcasting and the life-changing events of Y2K, 9/11 and personal tragedies. Will the armed, dangerous and cruel past find him first by scaling the walls of the present, breaking down doors, connecting through the internet and marking a spot on his doorstep? Chris Rhodes vowed to never sleep in Paulding County again. This is the final novel, based on actual events, about a blue-eyed boy haunted by a bird and his family of secrets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris M. Vise
• Release date: Jun 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227041326

Chris M. Vise

Chris M. Vise was born and raised in New Hope, Georgia. He has lived in Louisville, Kentucky and Atlanta since leaving the hill of his childhood, though it never left his heart. He currently lives in Georgia with his partner. Nature remains a large influence in his life whether it is a beach, a desert or a trail through the deep woods. Chess, photography and gardening are hobbies he enjoys to this day. Chris has appeared on radio stations from New York to Los Angeles during his broadcasting career. Dweller On The Boundary is his debut novel.   Other books by Chris M. Vise include his first novel Dweller On The Boundary, second novel Uncivil X and his third upcoming novel to be published in the summer of 2024.

Book preview

Chris and Never Christopher

The present was wound as a fresh roll of film, ready for exposure to the light. It was late summer and there was a problem. All of that summer, from huddling underneath the park trees with the lesbians that wanted to adopt me at Pride in June to wet patio chairs for Sunday brunch and dodging August gutter streams, it rained. The light was fading and the darkness was growing. I dreamed of the sun and the shadows drawn, which sometimes danced from the wind and other times cut sharp lines that were as dark as charcoal.

I was hopeful that the sunlight would fall in equal quantities as atmospheric compensation. The end of the rain was possible; anything and everything was, as long as it fit into the saucer of my twenty-two-year-old imagination. I was sure of it as I watched the coffee drip from the coffeemaker.

All things past, the past that belonged to me like grades on a report card, were erased in the city. It was like adjusting the aperture dial to the correct setting and adjusting to life in a factory on a busy street in Atlanta. It was going to take some fiddling and experimentation to figure out what was right and what the mistakes were. I expected to get lost and wear curiosity like it was my favorite tee shirt if I was going to accomplish happiness.

The pink neon light of the phone flashed before I heard the ring. It was seven in the evening. Rain pecked at the wall of old factory windows like birds wanting inside. It was either my mother, a telemarketer for long-distance service or my boyfriend Dylan calling.

I tripped over my backpack and reached out for the phone.

The answering machine picked up. The recorded message of Dylan played. You've reached the factory. Dylan and Chris and never Christopher are unable to come to the phone right now. Leave a message after the beep.

Hello, I answered with the wind knocked out of me. I pressed the phone to my left ear, which was still sore from the new piercing that Dylan had talked me into last weekend at Ansley Mall. 'Just wear a small hoop, no need to look like Dorothy from The Golden Girls. You need to change your style,' he had said.

What are you doing? You're out of breath, Dylan asked with a suspicious tone.

Being clumsy. This earring has thrown off my balance.

Are you back to doing aerobics again? Reliving your childhood in Batman pajamas?

Of course, Joanie Greggains and I are secretly having an affair. No, I tripped and fell while getting to the phone.

Hey, I have something that I want to ask you, he said. Be open-minded about this and don't tell me no. I really want this.

I turned down Matthew Sweet on the stereo. Dylan was at his job at a farmer's market in the suburb of Smyrna.

I'm not sure about this, I said after he told me what he wanted.

Please, Chris, we need it. It's the cutest, most perfect one. You have to come right now and take it home.

I don't want to go out; it's raining.

You have to come get it now before someone else does.

I relented and that was how I came to be standing in the parking lot of our loft in the rain at ten o'clock with a kitten in a wet cardboard tomato box. Dylan had named the kitten Phantom after The Phantom of the Opera, as half its face was black and the other was white.

The kitten meowed and I lifted up the lid and peeked at it.

Be quiet, I whispered, as though the cat understood me.

I was enlisted into this sneaky operation to satisfy Dylan's need for a cat. The factory required a three hundred dollar pet deposit for cats and we were not paying that.

We'll be saving this kitten's life,  Dylan had said in his natural dramatic way to convince me into becoming a cat smuggler.

I hurriedly tapped in the door code and entered the lobby with my box of tomatoes. I still had another set of doors to get through, the open-air atrium and a four-floor elevator ride to smuggle the cat into our loft.

There was noise in the mail room to my left. It was the sound of someone shuffling papers and humming Pop Goes The Weasel. I put my head inside the room, thinking it was possibly another bum that had sneaked in and was stealing mail.

Hey man, how's it going? Envelopes and magazine subscription cards were scattered on the floor. Columbia House can't seem to figure out that I don't need twenty CDs of Alanis Morissette for a penny. Can't they send me Barry Manilow instead? All I want is to soak in a candlelit bath with Barry singing Mandy to me in a fluffy robe with bunny ears, not some chick from Nickelodeon. I'd pay more than a pretty penny for that.

The voice was recognizable and it made me laugh. He was my favorite DJ at the alternative radio station. His sense of humor was absurd and delivered in a dry manner, but he had the most jolly presence, like a naughty Santa Claus high on speed.

Hey Edison, I said.

Nice box of tomatoes you've got. Are they having a sale at the Murder Kroger next door? I've been craving soggy tomato sandwiches slathered in creamy mayonnaise.

Oh, these are imported from Cobb County, I replied, hoping the kitten was taking a nap. Anyway, good seeing you. I gotta run.

I headed for the elevators. There were two for the building in a glass tube. Sometimes they both worked and sometimes none of them worked, but they were always slow and never on the floor I was on.

I see you're going up too, Edison said behind me.

The elevator dinged and the doors opened.

What floor? he asked.

Four, same as you.

He poked the button and the elevator jerked into action.

I held the box at my waist to allow for more room between us in the cramped space. The cat needed to only stay quiet for a few more seconds and my cat smuggling career would end with success. Edison was heading to the opposite end of the factory from me.

"Do you enjoy marshmallows? I was thinking about roasting some over the stove and watching The Last Starfighter on the USA Network for the six hundred and seventy-fifth time," he said.

Before I could answer that I did not like marshmallows, a meow shot out of the tomato box from the lungs of the kitten that sounded more like a lion's roar.

Edison looked at the box. I looked ahead at my reflection in the stainless steel elevator. Sweat formed in my underarms and I tapped my foot.

Phantom roared again and the elevator doors opened.

Edison stepped out and I followed. As we separated, he said, I hope you don't mind my saying, but your tomatoes are meowing. Have a good night. He winked and I nodded.

I headed to the far corner of the building to the loft I shared with Dylan and in several more steps, our new pet kitten. We lived in a former Model T factory built in the 1920s that was converted into lofts. Our loft looked east over Ponce de Leon Avenue, the Murder Kroger and Green's liquor store. At night, there was the added bonus of the neon from the legendary Clermont Hotel. It was a 1920s art deco hotel that catered to transients, hookers and junkies. Two years ago, punk rocker GG Allin lived there for a few months before dying of a heroin overdose in New York the same year. He had recorded a song called Hotel Clermont with a backup band named The Southern Baptists. In the basement was the strip club, The Clermont Lounge, that every adventurous frat boy from Emory University and Georgia Tech had been to at least once. It starred the iconic Atlanta stripper Blondie, who crushed beer cans between her breasts.

To say the neighborhood was seedy would be to misunderstand that in Atlanta, there was no clear boundary between what was seedy and what was tony. The city superficially blended together like the junk and treasures of a yard sale on a spring Saturday morning under the blooming white petaled dogwoods. The only exception being the old money mansions of the city's elite on the wooded lots abutting two-lane roads in Buckhead. There were no hookers doing business out front of the governor's mansion, but what went on inside was just a more dignified practice of selling some part of one's self for money and power.

The residents of the factory were a concoction of arts and entertainment people like Edison, professionals of various sorts and a smattering of Georgia State University students. Our next-door neighbor was a young flight attendant named Joy. The common thread among the factory inhabitants was that they were all in their twenties and mostly single. There was one other young gay couple, Vance and Scott. Vance was British and worked for the same company as I did, Turner Broadcasting, and Scott was a hearing impaired Georgia native who worked at the gay clothing store in Ansley. Vance was loud, brash and flirty and I disliked everything about him. Scott was the calmer, sweeter and much better-looking one.

In the living room, I removed the lid of the tomato box and a kitten with big eyes and a tiny tail stared back at me. It was putting me in a trance to allow it to stay. Cats were manipulators of the highest order and humans were suckers for anything small and furry.

Welcome home, Phantom, I said. You were Dylan's idea, but you're going to be my kitty. He'll just be the one to change your litter box.

I held him and examined his face. The side of his face with the black fur was like a shadow trying to overtake the other side. The white side was like cotton absorbing an ink stain. The two sides appeared to be in a battle against each other straight down the middle of his nose. I wondered if it was permanent or if one side would overcome the other.

Under the pin oaks, my mother and I sat on her patio. Columbo, her Bassett Hound, lay between our chairs, drowning a bone in slobber. My mother was dressed for her aerobics class later in the evening. It was a bright day - the best for dark talks. Faded sunflowers rose behind us and turned their heads to eavesdrop.

That house was always spooky, my mother said. Maybe it was your father who made it that way or if it was the way it sulked on that hill surrounded by the pine trees. I don't miss him, that house or New Hope.

Whether you believe it or not, Noah and I did see that woman ghost in the backyard in the seventies. We didn't make that up.

Now that I think about it, there were a lot of strange moments in that house, she said, rubbing her bottom lip.

There were a few times when it was mostly just me living there that I swear I heard footsteps upstairs. I spent more time alone in that house than anybody and usually I was okay with it, but a few times I was spooked.

My mother raised her eyebrows. She was not much for conversation about my childhood home or the past. She had lived it, but she did not want to relive it. What I knew of my family's history was what I had witnessed, what little she had shared or was in photo albums. The secrets that came before my birth or the Great Ice Storm of 1973, I did not believe I would learn.

My father told me a ghost story when I was a child, she said. He said it was true and he wasn't one to joke around about such things.

Tell me and was he smoking his pipe? I uncrossed my legs, ready for the generational torch passing of memories. Her memory I absorbed into mine and then it would stop. Without offspring to hand off these memories, they reached a dead end with me.

He may have been when he told it. I used to love to sit with him and smell his pipe. Anyway, this must have been back in the forties before I was born and somewhere out around Yorkville. She tugged at her earring and looked in the distance. Daddy said that he was driving down a road at night and there was a woman standing on the side in the ditch in the rain. She was waving her arms like she was flagging him down. Daddy, being daddy, stopped. He said the woman was in a wedding dress.

When my mother mentioned the wedding dress, I went cold. I could still see the woman ghost under the oak tree almost twenty years ago at Aviary Hill. She was all white and glowing as she pointed at us. I had always thought, but never mentioned to anyone, that the dress she wore was a wedding dress.

Daddy said she was crying and he let her in the car. He asked her what was wrong, but she didn't say; she shook her head. He asked where she wanted to go, but she didn't say anything. He starts driving, figuring she'll say something eventually and you can imagine back then it really was out in the middle of nowhere and pitch black.

I bet it was, I said.

They're driving along and they cross over a wooden bridge. It was then that the woman spoke. She said, 'Thank you.' Daddy looked over and she was gone. She vanished. He jerked the car to a stop and looked in the backseat, looked everywhere for her. He turned the car off and got out. He said he looked around and there was no sign of this woman. Then, as he was getting back in the car, he turned his head and looked down the road. He said it was so dark he couldn't see much, but as he looked back toward the bridge, he swore he saw something darker than the night, like a shadow floating across the road.

And?

He said he couldn't get out of there fast enough and never went down that road again at night. He seemed real shook up about it.

Do you believe him?

I suppose it's possible, by George. Now if it were my mother telling me this story, I wouldn't have believed a word. She is as trustworthy as your father.

After that story, my ghost sighting and you living at Aviary Hill all those years, do you believe in ghosts or not?

She sipped her coffee. Chrisser Michael, there are some things about this world that we don't have answers for.

A fat raindrop plonked my bare leg. The Georgia weather had combined the ingredients of heat and humidity to mix up a storm. The wind gusted and the thunder sent a whip crack across the sky.

I guess I should run, I said.

She looked at me as though I had said the wrong thing and asked, What's possessed you?

I patted Columbo on the head.

Time.

The raindrop at my mother's house was the beginning of the storm. Hurricane Opal smashed into the Florida Panhandle and trekked northward into Georgia. Not since the Storm of the Century blizzard two years before had I seen so much wind that was sustained for so long. Grocery carts raced against one another and cut donuts in the parking lot outside our windows. The sign for the factory was damaged, changing the name of the building from Ford Factory to For Fact. Opal severed the electricity and we were left to listen to a battery powered radio the size of a sandwich for news by candlelight.

After midnight, there was a knock at our door.

You guys, the building is flooding, Joy, our next-door neighbor, shouted.

We went into the atrium, which was open to the weather and had small trees. The drains were clogged and the first floor filled like a bathtub with rusty water. The glass elevators were like an inverted fishbowl, surrounded by water from the outside.

We should be okay up here on the fourth floor, Dylan said.

As long as we don't want to go anywhere. The stairs are probably flooded too, I said.

By the next afternoon, the wind and rain had grown bored with Atlanta and had found a better place to go. Four thousand trees had nosedived across the city.

I munched on cold canned chili and Little Debbie snack cakes when Dylan said, The phone is dead too.

It's kind of nice, isn't it? We're in the middle of the city and cut off from civilization. We can't even get outside the building unless we use a snorkel.

The plague and locusts aren't far behind, he said.

Experiencing a storm of that magnitude was different in the city than where I had grown up in the country. There was a realization of how vulnerable and dependent you were on technology and infrastructure. Nature had the advantage over you.

It was a few days before the city functioned again, modern life was restored and I returned to work.

I had a do-nothing job at Turner on Techwood. It was a creative media center, with the frozen mixed vegetables of NBA celebrities, pro wrestlers, eighties child stars and the occasional rock star lingering in the lobby of the original mansion on the campus. There were a lot of us twenty-something do-nothings glad to be making a salary if making nothing else. My boss was a lesbian named Glenda. She was a forty-something do-something-sometimes who mostly talked about her obsession with The Wizard of Oz and her figurine collection. The most common tasks at my job were exploring the World Wide Web via Mindspring and typing in Lotus Notes, which counted as the something part of my job.

The truly creative people were busy thinking, having brainstorming sessions and drawing with colored magic markers on dry erase boards, hiding behind stacks of video tape and unopened mail on their desks with their eyes closed and waiting for lunch. There was a lot of talking that never went anywhere until people were too tired to care and decided it was best to air another episode of Scooby Doo for the three hundredth time.

I did not relate much to my coworkers, who still found cartoons entertaining well past the expiration dates of their childhood. I talked with the engineers in work boots with tool belts that actually made the television networks run or the carpenters that made scenery at the Williams Street building with the big TBS logo visible from the Downtown Connector.

My other task at work was standing atop the parking deck, watching the Georgia Tech students on Tenth Street and looking west toward Paulding County. I would have been lying if I said I did not miss it sometimes.

Atlanta was a strange island on the Peachtree Ridge, surrounded by pine trees and suspicious suburbs that did not like it. It was easier to be a misfit after five when the city spat out the commuters into the pines in all directions on the spokes of the interstate. Those of us left behind had our playground until the next morning. Only the TV news cared after five and they cared more when there was a shooting and yellow crime scene tape. They cared too frequently, but the city was dangerous if you wanted it to be. I preferred it to leave me alone, but I was that way everywhere. I did not desire the drugs, the bars, the prostitutes outside the factory on Ponce de Leon or anything else the more adventurous might use as an elixir for some broken dream inside them. Participation was unnecessary when observation was plenty.

Dylan came home as I shaved. I concentrated on not slicing my chin open with the razor. The nerve damage from my teenage jaw surgery had left it permanently numb.

Oh good, you've had a shower, Dylan said, kissing me on the shoulder. I've brought someone home from school that I'd like you to meet.

I looked at his reflection in the mirror. Who is he?

A she, not a he. Also, I hope you don't mind, but I told her that she could sleep on the sofa tonight.

As I got dressed, I listened to the conversation in the living room. The female voice was as loud as Dylan's and that was unusual for someone to achieve. They laughed about a rehearsal at Georgia State University. Meeting a person for the first time in my living room with wet hair made me extra shy.

This is my darling, Chris and never Christopher, Dylan said, sitting on the sofa with his legs crossed next to the woman. He always introduced me this way to new people. It became a joke every Sunday at brunch at the Flying Biscuit in Candler Park with a lesbian couple, Annie and Quinn, who gave me hugs and called me Chris and never Christopher each time.

My hope of casually walking by to the kitchen and saying hello was thwarted. I extended my hand to the delicately thin woman, who was probably twenty-six, with large brown eyes and a very pale complexion made paler by the Santa suit red dye job braided into two pigtails. She looked nothing like she sounded. She wore a knee-length cotton dress covered in violets that looked like a thrift store Laura Ashley print. She was barefoot with toenail polish that was best described as eggplant. She was not take-your-breath-away beautiful at first glance, but she was striking and had a comfortable style.

She grasped my hand and said, But Christopher is a beautiful name. It's one of the names I have picked out for my first child, if it's a boy.

This is Piper, Dylan said, breaking through my enchantment.

Nice to meet you, I said, nodding at her. "If my mother had named me Christopher Robin from Winnie The Pooh as she had originally planned, then I might have grown up using Christopher. Instead, I'm just a regular Chris that has never lived up to the high standards of a Christopher."

That's better than being named Eeyore and from what Dylan has told me, there's nothing regular about you.

Whatever he's told you, it's most assuredly exaggerated unless it was something tragic, but thank you. Piper is an interesting name; I like it. I've never met a Piper.

It's not my real name; well, it is now. I legally changed it to Piper last year. I'll only tell you this once and never call me this name, but my birth name was Hattie after my grandmother. I hated it since I was old enough to know how to spell it. I didn't like the way it sounded or looked on paper.

Piper makes an impression that's energetic and curious. Wise choice.

Dylan raised his hand like he was a child in a classroom, wanting to speak. Will you two quit or go in the bedroom at least? This is a bit much. Don't mind me or anything.

Jealous already, are we? I asked. I turned to Piper and asked, Did he smuggle you into the building in a tomato box?

Ha! Dylan said with a fake laugh.

I don't get it, Piper said.

Let me introduce you to our cat, Phantom. In his worst moments, of which there are many, he is also known as Satan. I don't recommend touching him, even if he rubs up against you. It's a trick. You reach to pet him and he bites or scratches you. Oh, and about the tomato box, that's how he arrived.

There's Satan, Dylan said, pointing to the cat sitting in the windows. He doesn't meow that often, but he can kind of cluck like a chicken when he gets excited by the birds outside. It's the funniest damn thing.

"Next, he'll tell you about that killer guppy he had as a child that could hum the theme to Jaws," I said.

"I rented The Sound of Music from The Movie Store in Little Five Points," Dylan said.

We're reenacting it here tonight as we watch. Do you sing too? Piper asked me.

"Piper, I'm not gifted in that department or any other, for that matter. Are you guys going to dress up like the characters too, like they do at The Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings at The Plaza Theater down the street?"

I brought pajamas, the kind with feet sewn into them, she said.

Oh, this is a pajama party? This will be fun; Dylan sleeps naked and I sleep in jogging pants left over from high school gym class and band tee shirts with holes in them.

I can come up with something; I don't think Piper would want this to be a clothing-optional evening, Dylan said and winked.

Piper's face matched her hair color and she covered her eyes.

After the movie, Dylan went to bed and Piper and I chatted.

I can't place your accent; where are you from? I asked.

Right now, I'm from Locust Grove. Before that, I was from Texas, North Carolina and Germany where I was born. I'm a vagabond in search of a home for my books.

You're German? I've wanted to live in Berlin. I have an obsession with it, especially the old East German side. There's something romantic about abandoned buildings and cold, gray weather.

My father was stationed there in the Army when I was born. The longest I've lived anywhere besides Germany is here in Georgia.

You don't strike me as a southerner, I said.

I probably won't be much longer. Next year, I'm hoping to find a job somewhere else after I finish my master's in English.

You want to teach?

I couldn't see me ever doing that. Ideally, I want to write the next great American novel and have hordes worship me for my intellect. She sighed and swooned. Probably, I'll work for a low-paying non-profit in some obscure city and never get discovered. But I can dream, can't I?

I see super stardom. You could be the next Sylvia Plath.

With my head in the oven and a cheating husband? Gee. I'll try to be more positive then. What's your dream?

Like you, I share dreams of writing a book, but I don't see it happening anytime soon. I have too much living to do first. In the meantime, I dream of getting back into radio and talking about music for the rest of my life.

While I rolled around in bed, I began to consider that Dylan had brought Piper home like a stray to be my friend. It would be something that he would do. Aside from her love of musicals, which I did not share, she had more in common with me than she did with him. She was shy and not someone who wanted to be the center of anything, but she inhabited the outskirts of her own life.

The City Too Busy To Hate

Gay life in the city was not all rainbows and blowjobs. Atlanta, for its reputation as the city too busy to hate, was a city with an undercurrent of hatred against gays. A marketing slogan coined during the civil rights movement did not apply to all, nor did all of its citizens believe in it. It sounded good on television coming out of the mouths of politicians or self proclaimed community leaders who had motivation to protect the city's image, but it did not make it true in every heart.

The idealism that all people were good and would treat you equally was beaten out of me too many times in life, most recently earlier in the year in an attack at a gas station. I was polite to strangers, but they had to prove they deserved more than that. I was cautious; my safety was more important than any city's image.

Dylan and I left Alumni Hall, where I had sat in on rehearsals for his latest play. We walked to the Georgia State MARTA station to catch the train up to Arts Center. Christmas break was around the corner and we were in a festive mood. We had already put up our first Christmas tree together at the factory. He had a new job doing singing telegrams and wore terrible costumes. Money was tight, but expensive gifts were the least important part of the season.

We caught the train and transferred at Five Points. The train heading north was busy, but we found a seat. Dylan grabbed my hand and I was thinking about getting food at Zesto near home.

A guy and a girl were seated behind us. I heard the whispers between them and the grunts of disapproval about Dylan and me holding hands. I squeezed his hand and ignored it.

The guy slapped the seat behind our heads and laughed.

Dylan turned and asked, Do you mind?

Yeah, I mind. I  mind you two sitting in front of us, the guy barked.

You got a problem? Dylan asked.

Sure do. I don't like people like you.

Dylan leaned into my ear and said, Let's give this fucker a show. He grabbed me behind my neck and we French kissed, making sloppy slurping sounds. What we did was no different than what I had seen from straight couples on the train, in restaurants or in movies.

Nasty faggots provoking me, said the guy.

His encouragement kept our tongues wrestling as the train moved. Dylan released me and we turned to stare at the guy.

Hey Sugar, you want some too? Dylan asked him.

People on the train watched, like it was a television show on Atlanta public access TV.

I don't want none of your AIDS infested faggot shit.

Fearing another sneak attack from a coward, I fingered the mace attached to my keychain in my pocket.

The guy jumped up and I matched him. I was taller and he was wider. His eyes went side to side sloshing in his own juices of hatred and fear. He posed like he was about to explode.

You want a piece? he asked.

You've got nothing I want, I said, laughing at him. I waited like a bird on the edge of a pond for its fish.

The train pulled into the North Avenue station and he lost his balance and nerve.

Nah, you faggots ain't worth it, he said, pulling up his pants and getting off the train.

Dylan and I laughed, but it disappointed me that Atlanta was no sanctuary. It was not the city too busy to hate; it was the city too busy to be honest with itself.

Your cat is trying to eat the tree, Piper said.

Phantom, Dylan yelled and slapped his leg.

Phantom looked at him and took another bite of the tree.

He'll get sick and puke. He'll learn from it, I said, unconcerned. At least he's not eating the Chia Pet this time.

You'll make a good father one day, Piper said.

Not if he raises a child the way he raises his cat, Dylan piped in.

Piper had brought over Trivial Pursuit.

I'd rather we play UNO or better yet, strip UNO. I used to play that in junior high with my best friend, David, I said.

Charades, Dylan said.

What is this noise that we are listening to? Piper asked.

"Dick of Death by Pansy Division from their Wish I'd Taken Pictures album. They're a gay punk band from San Francisco."

Dylan rolled his eyes. It's his new favorite. Ever since he pierced his ear, he's been odd. Correction: more odd than usual.

Again, that was another idea of yours, I said to Dylan. You're trying to turn me into some kind of gay clone. I looked over at Piper and asked, Having second thoughts about my being a good father yet?

She bit her top lip and said, No. A good parent should sometimes be hands off and open to new ideas from others.

I wrapped my arms around Dylan. "Here's the child I'm trying to raise now.