Page 145 of In Plain Sight

“Okay.”

All the fight rushed out of me in an instant, leaving me dizzy and off-kilter. “What?” I croaked.

She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “Okay. If you say you’re gay, then that’s what you are.”

“I…I don’t understand.”

She pinned me with a look. “I didn’t give up everything to raise a fool. If you say you’re gay, then you are. And if you are, that means God made you that way. Who am I to question His plan?”

“But I thought…”

What the fuck was happening? Had my mother just accepted my sexuality? This couldn’t be real, right?

“You thought I’d be like Coralynn when she found out about Abbie?”

I nodded woodenly. Coralynn was one of my mother’s church friends, and Abbie had been one of my classmates until her mother shipped her off to live with her grandparents in Wyoming after Abbie was caught kissing another girl in the tenth grade. Coralynn didn’t talk about Abbie anymore, and everyone in the church pretended like she never existed.

At the time, my mother had praised Coralynn’s actions, but that was almost fifteen years ago. Was it possible she’d changed her stance on things?

I quickly cycled through my memories to make sense of what was happening. I could recall a ton of times in my youth when she’d ranted about queer people and accused them of destroying the sanctity of both family and marriage. But those rants had stopped when I was in my midtwenties.

She’d never said anything supportive about the LGBT+ community, but she hadn’t said anything disparaging like before.

“I don’t understand it, and I’m not exactly happy about it,” she said, breaking me free from my thoughts. “But I’m also not completely surprised.”

“You aren’t?”

She shook her head. “You’ve been single since your divorce. I hoped you’d meet a nice woman who could be a proper partner and wife to you, but after so many years of you not showing any sort of interest in women, I had an inkling that you might be…like that.”

“And you’re okay with it?”

She shrugged. “I don’t really have a choice, do I? I don’t understand it, and I’m not ready to be…involved in that part of your life, not yet, but like I said, who am I to go against God’s plan?”

I had no idea what to say. I’d been prepared for this to be my last conversation with my mother, but she not only accepted it, it seemed like there was a chance she might actually be okay with it someday.

“You told me this for a reason, didn’t you?” she asked.

My mother was smart, and even with our differences, she knew how I worked. Of course she’d realize there was a reason I was breaking my silence now.

“I’m dating someone.”

She nodded, her expression a bit pinched but not judgmental or disgusted like I’d expected. “A man?”

“Yes.”

She nodded again, slow and rhythmic, like she wasn’t aware that she was moving at all. “It’s serious with him?”

“Very serious. I love him.”

She gave me a tight smile. “And is he a good partner to you?”

“Very much so.”

“I assume you have somewhere to be?” she said suddenly.

That was her way of cutting the conversation short.

“I do, yeah,” I agreed, not wanting to push my luck.

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