Chapter 6
Nathaniel leaned against the large oak at the side of the schoolhouse. He pulled his jacket tightly around him. As warm as the afternoon had been, the evening, with the breeze from the ocean, was cooling rapidly. Dusky, brown leaves falling from the old tree brushed his face as he strained to see into the darkness, as if trying by sheer will to make Jonathan appear.
Am I foolish to be doing this? he wondered. He is hardly more than a lad. I am thirty. Yet, it feels so right, so good. I could not stay away. He smiled in anticipation of what he hoped would lie ahead. They had been together just hours before, but after so many years of repression, his yearning could not be restrained.
As he waited and watched in the darkness, he thought of his life in Massachusetts. He had barely
