“Grace?” Mary’s dad asked, confused. He was looking at me, then at the Aston Martin parked in front of his small, well-kept little house. It occurred to me that the car probably cost more than his home, and was probably the first Aston to ever park on this working-class neighborhood street, which even the afternoon’s rains couldn’t really wash entirely clean.

“Yes. She won a contest as part of The Downfall’s fan club,” I explained, trying to go with the first thing that occurred to me.

“The Downfall?” he asked again, his mind refusing to make sense of events. His wife, with whom I’d shared a few bored minutes almost a year before suddenly recognized me.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “That’s right! You were with that singer!”

“Yes, that’s right,” I agreed. “Grace won a fan contest, and I’m here to talk to her about it. I’m sorry for disturbing your evening, but the drive up from the Bay Area is pretty long.”

“No, no, that’s O.K.,” Mary’s mother said, her hospitality surfacing. “Won’t you please come in?”

Mary’s dad was still staring at my car when the rest of us entered the house and headed for the kitchen table. The house was neat and clean inside, but definitely very ‘lived in’ in appearance, with mismatched furniture and an old, somewhat worn carpet.

“I can’t stay for very long, Mrs…” I trailed off, unsure what Mary’s family name was.

“Oh, just call me Julie,” she answered. “Can I get you anything to drink? I think we have some diet Pepsi in the fridge.”

“No, thanks. I just ate before coming over here,” I replied. “But as I was saying, Julie, I can’t stay very long. I need to go talk to Grace’s parents, since she is a minor, so I really just stopped by to pick her up.”

“Oh, O.K.,” she said, still looking a bit awestruck that I was there in her kitchen at all.

Grace, who’d been mostly silent since I arrived, asked “Can Mary come?”

“No, sorry,” I replied. “My car is only a two-seater.”

“What kind of car is that?” asked Mary’s dad, who had finally joined us in the kitchen.

“It’s an Aston Martin Vantage,” I replied as off-handedly as I could, trying to downplay my wealth in the face of this family’s humble means.

“That’s some car,” he said, but I didn’t reply, because I wanted the conversation over with.

“So, Grace, are you ready to go?” I asked, and then turned to Mary’s mom. “We’ll be back in a little bit, maybe an hour or so.”

I stood up and motioned for Grace, then put my hand on her shoulder to steer her out, while telling Mary’s folks we’d be back in a bit.

Once I got Grace settled in to the car and the doors shut, I asked her “Where can we go to get a cup of coffee and talk for a few minutes?”

“I thought we were going to see my parents?” she asked, her voice small.

“Not just yet. First we need to talk, so I can get a feel for the situation. I need to figure out what it is I can do for you, Grace. How can I help you through this.”

“Oh,” was all she replied.

“Grace,” I said, turning to face her. “I’m here to help. You reached out to us, hoping we could do something. I’m here to do something, but until I know more, I have no idea what it is I can do to make things better for you, do you understand?” When she nodded, I said “Now let’s go get some coffee.”

“I don’t- I mean, there’s a coffee shop down at the plaza,” she said, so I followed her directions and we pulled up in front in a few minutes. I didn’t like the looks the local hippie street people were giving my car, so I made sure we had a table right by the big front window so I could keep an eye on it as we talked.

I coaxed Grace into telling me all the details of what had happened at her house and how her parents had found out she was gay. The short fifteen-year old told me that her mom had found her journal when she was cleaning Grace’s room, and read through it, seeing where Grace had poured out her love for another girl.

“Not Mary, right?” I asked, just for confirmation.

“No, a girl in our school. She’s a year older than me and Mary.”

“Does she know?”

“No, I could never tell her,” Grace said, dejected.

Rubbing Grace’s back, I tried to console her. “Have you thought that maybe she might like to hear it from you?”

“She doesn’t even know I exist,” Grace replied, her voice mournful.

“Oh, god, I remember those days,” I said. “It sucks, doesn’t it?”

“But you have somebody,” Grace replied, sounding a bit envious.

“Yeah, I do. And you know what? I’ve had to fight for her. I’ve had to fight, and I’d do it again in a moment, because she’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“I read about when she got attacked and you beat up the two guys,” Grace admitted. “I could never do that.”

“Yeah, well, that isn’t what I meant, but I would do that again if I had to, if it came down to it. No, I meant that I’ve had to fight to make sure that Emmy was mine, and that she knew I loved her. I mean, not fight in a literal sense,” I clarified, holding up my fists. “I mean that some things had come between us, and I had to make it clear that whatever happened, I was going to be there by her side.”

“Oh,” Grace said, sipping her tea.

“Look, Grace. I want to help. I really do-”

“Why?” she interrupted, her hazel eyes suddenly intense behind her glasses. “Why do you want to help me?”

Stumped for a moment, I had to give it some thought. “Well, I guess it’s a couple of things. Emmy and I have had to deal with people’s ignorance and bigotry, and so I know how much it sucks. I mean, my mom was mostly O.K. with me being gay, but a lot of other people weren’t so I understand a little bit of what you’re going through. I guess I also just feel protective, you know? You sounded so hurt when you called me this morning all I wanted to do was reach though the phone and give you a hug and somehow make it better for you. I guess that’s what it boils down to, you know?”

“You don’t even know me,” Grace objected.

“No, and you don’t know Emmy, but you thought she could help, and might be willing to do so, right?” I asked. When she nodded, I continued. “I might be able to help, or I might not, I don’t know yet. But you asked, and I’m here to try.”

“What do you think you can do?” she asked, a note of hope in her voice.

“Well, first off, I’m going to try to talk some sense into your parents. That’s the first thing.”

“I don’t think it’ll work,” she said, dejected again.

“Maybe not. But I figured if I came in looking extremely successful and like some kind of high-priced lawyer maybe they’d listen to me. I could point out that whatever it is that you are, it’s because they made you that way. I could also point out that yesterday they loved you, and you’re the same person now that you were then, right?”

Grace shrugged, but didn’t seem convinced her parents would be swayed by reason.

Sorry to say, it seemed she was right. Her parents were completely unmoved by any argument I made, and in fact, only seemed more set in their decision to kick the poor girl out of the house the more I talked with them. Seeing that it was getting nowhere, and Grace was being subjected to their hateful words just crying to herself on the couch, I finally had a thought that might do the trick.

“Mr. and Mrs. Hanshaw,” I said, still doing my best to be polite, “I have an idea. You don’t want Grace as your daughter any more, is that correct?” I asked.

When they agreed they wanted nothing to do with the sick pervert that they thought her to be, I suggested “Well, she needs a guardian of some sort. If I have papers drawn up handing her guardianship over to me, will you sign?”

Grace looked up in surprise at this. The Hanshaws looked at each other, unsure what this might mean.

“This would mean that I would be responsible for her. I would see that she goes to school, I would see that she has a roof over her head and food to eat. As I understand it, you no longer wish to associate with her, or to provide her these things. Is that correct?” When Mr. Hanshaw grunted in the affirmative, I continued. “As it now stands, you two are legally obligated as her parents to do these things. I could call Child Protective Services and have you two arrested for throwing a fifteen-year-old girl out on the street, but that wouldn’t solve anything. However, if you transfer legal guardianship over to me, you would be off the hook for having to provide for your daughter.”

When I put it that way, they seemed to think it was a good idea.

“Yeah, we’ll sign,” Mr. Hanshaw grudgingly agreed.

“Excellent. I’ll bring the papers over around eleven or so.”

“No, that won’t work,” said Mrs. Hanshaw. “We’ll be in church until noon.”

Realizing that this church was the same one Mary’s parents went to and they might have a chance to talk, I said “O.K. Eight o’clock in the morning then, before church, and Grace will be out of your life forever.”

That settled, I said “Grace would like to collect some of her things before we go, if you don’t mind.”

“We threw all her stuff out,” said Mr. Hanshaw, making me despise the man even more than I already had.

“Everything? I asked.

“All of it,” he confirmed.

“All right, then. Grace and I will be on our way. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

We left the small house with the beat-up old pickup truck in the driveway, and Grace still hadn’t said a word. I just drove around aimlessly for a few minutes before I could think up what to say. Finally, I broke the silence with “Well, Grace, I hope you like living in the Bay Area.”

“I’m… I’m gonna live with you? You and Emmy?” she asked, still completely stunned by events.

“I hope that’s O.K. with you,” I answered. “I should have asked you first, I know, but it was the only way I could see to get you away from them and make sure you’re safe and sound.”

“You… you…” she stammered, at a loss for words.

“Look,” I said, pulling over so I could talk to her face to face. “I’ll be your legal guardian, so that means that it’ll be up to me to look after your well-being, all right? If we all decide that living with us isn’t the best for you, we can make some other arrangements, but right now, in this moment, I think getting you to a safe environment is number one on the list of priorities, all right?”

She nodded, still too stunned to talk.

“It’ll be O.K., Grace. Really, it will. This is going to be hard for you, leaving everything, your whole life behind, and I wish your parents had been more reasonable, but…”

“No, it’s… It’s O.K., really,” Grace said, coming to some sort of conclusion. “Thank you, Leah. I never would have…”

“Well, Grace, what do we tell Mary and her family?” I asked, putting the car back in gear. “I know Mary is your besty, and it’ll be hard to say goodbye to her.”

“We’ll tell them the truth. I don’t like lying, and Mary’s parents are nice people.”

“That works,” I agreed, as we pulled up in front of Mary’s house again.

The conversation with Mary’s folks went a whole lot better than with Grace’s parents, but I could see that they still had a lot of misgivings about Grace’s revelation to them that she was gay. When Mary admitted to them that she’d known Grace was gay for years, they were a bit horrified, but seemed very relieved when they found out Grace had a crush on somebody besides their daughter, and Mary was in fact straight.

They didn’t agree with the way the Hanshaws had treated their own daughter, but were clearly terribly uncomfortable knowing that they’d harbored a lesbian under their roof.

Seeing the way the conversation was going, it looked as if it would be better if Grace didn’t stay there another night so I took her back with me to the B&B. Thankfully they weren’t full, so Grace got a room of her own.

Once she was settled in, I called our lawyer on his cell phone.

“James,” I said when he answered the phone. “I’m sorry for calling you so late, but this is an emergency.”

He grumbled a bit about it being outside his area of expertise and I’d owe him one, but agreed to email the paperwork to me ASAP so I could take it to a copy shop in the morning.

Grace looked terrible at breakfast. It seemed obvious that she’d spent the whole night crying, and I could understand why. “Grace,” I said, “I’m really sorry about your parents. I wish…”

“No,” she said. “I mean, Mom and Dad, well, they’re…” she obviously still loved them at some level, despite the way they’d treated her, and she didn’t want to talk badly about them. “But it’s mainly Mary I’m gonna miss.”

“You’ll be able to talk to her as much as you want, Grace. We can even come up for visits every now and then.”

This seemed to cheer her up a bit, so she was in a better mood when we got in the car.

“This is a really nice car,” she said, clearly afraid to touch anything.

“Yeah, it is. I wouldn’t have bought it, but Emmy insisted,” I replied. I went through the menu on the entertainment unit and selected The Downfall’s first CD, which seemed to brighten Grace’s mood even more, now that it was hitting home that she would actually be living with her favorite rock star.

I asked Grace to wait in the car when I went in to talk to her parents, and she was perfectly happy to not have to see her folks again.

They signed the papers without any real comment, and I thanked them and left without a backward glance.