The Man Who Was Not by Jane Hoppen

Author:Jane Hoppen [Hoppen, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626391727
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2014-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Martin waited for Stephen for seven days and seven nights. Stephen never went to Martin’s office for an examination, and Martin hadn’t seen him on the streets or at the tailor’s shop. When he had inquired, the tailor told him that Stephen had been home for the week, nursing a dreadful cold. Martin briskly and discreetly walked by Stephen’s boarding house each night, part of his constitutional, but he saw only a dim light in the upstairs window that he knew was Stephen’s room. He never saw any sign of movement, no shadowy figure passing behind drapes.

On the eighth night, as Martin sat reading in his library, feigning concentration, he heard knocking on his back door, and he leapt to his feet, his heart racing, his brow breaking into sweat. He opened the door, pulled Stephen into the house before he could murmur a word, and wrapped him in his arms.

“You had me worried to death,” he said. “What have you been doing?”

Stephen melted into him. “I had to think. I had to try to imagine…”

“Come in,” Martin said. “Sit. We need to talk. I, too, have been thinking.”

Martin removed Stephen’s coat and led him into the living room, an arm around his shoulder. He poured him a spot of brandy to remove the chill and they sat together, their bodies touching.

Stephen sipped his brandy and blurted out, “I want this baby, Martin. I can feel it in me. I want it, but I don’t know what to do. How can this possibly happen? You’re the only person who knows my truth.”

Martin leaned into Stephen and kissed him slowly, dearly.

“I want the child, too,” he said. “Your child, our child.”

“What will we do?”

“We’ll do what we have to do,” Martin answered reassuringly. “I have been constructing a plan.”

“I don’t know how this will work, with any plan,” Stephen said. “Do you love me?”

“You know I do. And you?”

“I adore you. But I thought I was loving you as a man. And now I… I don’t know. What am I? How is it that I love you?”

“You love me as you. You are as you are. That is biology, Stephen. Simple, yet complicated.”

Before the night had ended, Martin revealed his plan to Stephen, detail by detail. Stephen would move out of the boarding house under the guise of moving to Boston for a business opportunity. None of the townspeople would care and, after a while, they would forget he even existed. In reality, Stephen would secretly move in with Martin and begin a slow transformation into womanhood. Once spring had fully settled in and the traveling was easier, he would go to Marlborough to be cared for by Martin’s cousin, Suzanne. Stephen agreed to the plan, nervously. He believed that they could be a family—him, Martin, and the child—but he couldn’t really visualize it, was unsure of the actual possibility. That night they held each other tightly, with Martin mindful of what might be new life in Stephen’s womb.

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