Published: 21 Feb 2019

That first weekend turned into two, and then three in a row and on Sunday evening of the third weekend Carter got up from the dinner table and went to his room to get his bag for the return trip to the center he had been staying at. Riley asked where he was going and Carter told him he was getting ready to go and Riley looked so sad that I had to stop the two of them before they had all of us bawling. I asked if either of them knew what week this was and I got blank stares until first Riley and then Carter seemed to have been lit from within. They just glowed as they both came over to me and hugged me. Karen had told us that this was the final weekend of visits and if all went well then we might just as well have Carter stay with us and go to school from our house and stay with us from there on in. We could always go to the center and collect anything he had left there during the week.

There was only a month left to the current school year and Riley could deal with changing Carter’s address and contact information in the morning, we had the permanent custody papers in our home office. We had spent some of the past weekends preparing Carter for the summer, explaining about the interviews both in DC and the West coast, and then to spend some time at the property in Massachusetts. We had shown him the picture of the home we had pulled off Google Maps and he was as excited to see the property as we were.

Carter was his old self at school the next day, Riley told me, and he even seemed to be somewhat of a celebrity himself when the other kids figured out he was actually going to be living with the new handsome math teacher, Mr. Spencer. They had had talks about this and we felt that Carter should call Riley “Mr. Spencer” at school, not Riley as he called him at home; and we encouraged him to call me Mike over the past weekends he had spent with us. Karen had been given the itinerary for our trips and the letters granting us permission to have Carter with us had been issued. Now we had to see what arrangements had been made for our flights and room accommodations and that was Mark’s domain. My agent was so pleased that Riley and I had taken Carter in, and couldn’t wait to meet him somewhere along the way during the first leg of our trip.

Apparently the publishing house was pleased with the revenue I was generating for them and the new book had hefty pre-sales. Mark told me that the same studio that was in production on the movie of the first book was in negotiations for the rights to the second book and the new book was just being released to the public for sale the end of week, everyone was hoping for a summer blockbuster. With this news, Mark made a deal with a private air charter company and our flights would all be by private charter jets. We were looking forward to that, even if Carter was nervous about flying for the first time, but inwardly still excited about it too.

We all had some shopping to endure before our first trip and none more so than getting Carter outfitted for the summer for both the trip to California and the one to DC. What I liked about the schedule Mark had arranged was that in both areas there was only about a week of actual work for me and the rest of the two weeks was free time for us to wander and explore on our own, it was, after all, our honeymoon, which Carter thought was hysterical.

Our first flight was to San Francisco where there were two big meet and greet sessions at large bookstores, one each in the city and one at a suburban Bay area mall. There were two TV station interviews slated, much like the set up for the first book tour the previous year. That all took four days which left us a day to do some touring as a family, Riley, and Carter having been on side trips while I was otherwise engaged. It was then a quick flight to the Los Angeles area where we were treated like minor celebrities by the film studio and driven to all my appearances, and all three of us were taken to a scene shooting on the set of the movie being made from the first book.

It was in Los Angeles that Mark met up with us for a day and he and Carter got along great, even begging in tandem to go visit Disneyland. So to the Magic Kingdom, we went and I actually thought the monorail system was as much fun as many of the rides. By the end of our afternoon there Mark had received a call telling him the studio had conceded to his bargaining requests and the new book would be made into a film starting next spring. The studio was paying a cool million and a half for the rights to produce the new movie. It made for a great ending to a very fun day.

On the return flight Carter was very pensive as we all watched a movie and when the other three passengers had been dropped off at the Mobile, Alabama airport we had the plane to ourselves and watched another movie on the way home. Carter still seemed quiet and thoughtful so as the three of us snuggled on a couch in the forward cabin watching the movie I asked what he was thinking so hard about. He looked up at me and said he really didn’t want this to end, and not really thinking about it I told him the plane would have to stop somewhere for more fuel. He indignantly told me it wasn’t the flight; it was us being his new family he didn’t want to stop. He told us it wasn’t the great trip, but he was beginning to think of us as if we were his dads, not just some nice guys that were letting him spend some time with us. I looked at Riley and he was holding back a bunch of tears, I could tell, as I was getting emotional as well. Riley and I exchanged looks and I asked Carter if it would help if we applied to adopt him, making him our legal son. He flew into my arms and sobbed out that that would be so cool, just what he had been hoping for. We had a family cuddle for the next two hours until the cabin attendant quietly told us it was time to prepare for landing in Key West.

We hadn’t gotten Carter enrolled in any summertime activities because of our trips, but we did do some fun things around our area as we prepared for our next trip which was the one to DC. I had four interviews scheduled in the DC area and four book signing meet and greets also. We did get in visits to the highlights of any tourist trip to the capital city, including the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument and the Smithsonian Museum. We really had a good time there and when we were ready to leave we flew to the airport closest to Western Mass. and rented a car. I drove us to Beth and Ben’s house first. They had been telling us about our property in Granby since they had returned from our wedding. Beth said she was amazed that everything looked as good as it did, considering that the hippie couple living there seemed stoned half the time. She and Ben had been out there a few times a month and she actually gushed about the furnishings in the huge house, telling us it looked like it hadn’t been touched since the retired singer had passed and the former partner of the Spencers had bought it from the estate.

We pulled into Beth and Ben’s driveway at about 3 PM and sure enough, the first out of the house to greet us were the twins, Bill and Max, eager to say hello to Riley and me, but more eager to meet Carter. The boys were off to the side getting acquainted when Beth and Ben came out to greet us and we went inside for coffee and a catch up on our recent travels. We spent an hour with them at their house, but we were definitely getting anxious to see our own place so we split up into two vehicles and we all went to the new property, only a mile from their house, Carter staring out the windows, probably memorizing his way to the two boys his own age he had just met.

We pulled in through the open gates and around to the left side and parked in front of the barn, which was white, just like the house and its additions. After parking, I called the number for the Perkins, the caretakers who were expecting us this afternoon. While waiting for them to come from the guesthouse we walked through the barn, noticing there were eight good sized stalls there, but of course, no livestock. It all looked well cared for and as we started to walk up to the house the Perkins appeared from around the side of the house.

Their greetings were reserved somewhat I felt but they were cordial and Mr. Perkins held out a large bunch of keys to me and I, in turn, opened the front door of the house and we all entered. The Perkins were older than I had expected and I could see that it would take them all day to perform the duties expected of them to keep the property looking so good. During the brief exchange with them before we explored the dwelling we found out they were both in their 60’s and had been caretakers here for 20 years and were looking forward to retiring soon to go live with a daughter and her family in upstate Vermont. I told them we would have a long talk the next day and after we had seen the first floor they left for their quarters and we prowled around by ourselves, the boys just as curious as we were.

I told Carter to choose a bedroom and he started to go toward the enormous master suite but stopped short of going in there, giggling that he bet that one had already been spoken for, and went on to the next bedroom, which we had already seen. It was a blue-hued room with plush blue wall to wall carpeting and Beth said she loved how the bedrooms all had carpeting, as that would help in the fall and winter when it was so cold out, to have warm plush carpeting underfoot. We then went downstairs and checked on the contents of the kitchen and its cupboards and drawers. There were enough service pieces for at least 12 if not twenty and the fridge had been stocked with fresh milk, eggs, bread, and butter, along with several condiments and the freezer had steaks, chops and chicken in it, even breakfast sausages. From there we explored the large laundry room and larder and a huge family room off the kitchen, from whose windows we could see the terrace and the pool beyond with a cabana for changing and showering. Off the other end of the house sprouted a library/home office and a first-floor bedroom and bath.

With that exploring done we went to our car and gathered our luggage and dispersed to our bedrooms to settle in for the next month, and if the Key West weather indicated storms for the month of August, we might just stay here up North out of harm’s way. Beth and Ben left then, leaving Max and Bill with us for the night since all three of the boys were getting along so well and Ben was told by Beth that he could return with a bag packed for the twins in about an hour.

By 6:30 Riley and I were preparing dinner for the boys and ourselves and having fun trying to find this and that in the so far unfamiliar kitchen. If you think we were funny trying to find the items we needed to cook dinner, you should have seen three 12-year-olds trying to set the big kitchen table for dinner without ever having seen where everything was stored. Dinner was fun and after a lengthy cleanup, Carter took the twins upstairs to pick out a bedroom for them to use and unpack the bag their father had dropped off for them before dinner. When they came back down all three were in their swimsuits so Riley and I went and got ours from our room and we all went out to the pool.

The pool was great and the boys kept us quite busy playing and racing from one end to the other. Carter was having a ball with the twins and although his technique was not as refined as the twins he was a strong swimmer and his ability to stay underwater longer than them was noticeable. Of course growing up on an island all the school kids in our town had swimming as part of their gym classes and he had a lot of stamina, but it had been a day filled with firsts for him and he was actually the first out of the pool to “rest” on one of the lounges at the poolside. That started the exodus from the pool for all of us, as the day started to catch up with Riley and me, and the twins were ready to call it a day also, so we called it a night and we all went in to shower and then to bed.

The next day we had just finished breakfast when the Perkins came calling. We invited them in and thanked them for the shopping they had done for us and for the wonderful condition the property was in. Mr. Perkins then told us, after the boys went to explore, that he and his wife were ready to retire, that they had been planning it for years and according to their employment contract, which they had been assured we would honor, all they had to do was to give 30 days’ notice and they wanted to give that today. They would be happy to stay on and help us get acclimated to the running of the property or anyone else we might be considering hiring to replace them.

Of course, Riley and I had been given a copy of their contract so we agreed they had given us proper notice and since it was Saturday now we told them to take the rest of the weekend off unless we got in a jam for some reason and needed to call on them for help. They went back to the guest house and we went to the home’s office to look at our copy of their contract.

Their contract stated that they were entitled to a cash settlement of ten thousand a year (five thousand each) for every year they were employed and that it was almost exactly 20 years since they had been employed, and it would be twenty years on the day they had chosen to retire. Riley called his father and after some pleasantries, Riley explained that the caretakers wanted to retire and we were wondering what had become of the trust fund set up for them by their former partner. Mr. Spencer asked if he could call us back in about twenty minutes and Riley agreed to do that and we sat having another coffee while we gave Mr. Spencer time to locate the trust fund set up by the former partner of his.

When Riley called back Mr. Spencer was pleased to tell him that there was a trust set up at the firm’s bank, and he had never paid any attention to it because it had the property’s address on it and he hadn’t really looked at it for the twenty years it had been in place. He reported there was just under $200 thousand in it and by the end of the next month there would be just a tad over that figure in it, so all was good. He would officially change the name of the trust to the Perkins’ names and the funds would be made available to them upon their retirement. We then went to track down the boys.

The interior of the barn was where we found them, doing what else, playing cops and robbers, using the stalls as the jail cells and we climbed up to look over the insides of the hay lofts which were configured differently than any barn I had ever seen. The lofts were over the stalls, ranged along the outside walls, but open to the roof above leaving a soaring space in the center, the lofts joined by a balcony at the back end. It really made for a brighter and larger looking space all around.

The boys were ready to further explore when we climbed down so we went to walk around the grounds and beyond the pool area we found the guest house, a full-sized smaller colonial and past that were the fields and the orchards, where there were pear and apple trees and another barn where the tractors and the machinery for the groves were stored. There was even a small riding snow plow which I hoped sincerely I’d never have to use. We didn’t go into all the fields, as we knew that they and most of the orchards were rented out to a local farmer, who allowed a bushel of apples and pears a month for the landowner, according to the contract we had a copy of.

We did walk the pickup wide track between the fields to the back gate of the property and upon our return, Riley suggested an iced tea for each of us as it was getting close to lunchtime and we were going up the road about a mile for that to Beth and Ben’s. The idea had been to drop off the twins and enjoy (hopefully) a barbecue lunch with the rest of my siblings who I hadn’t seen me in some time, but it would be good for Riley to meet them finally, and we had Carter to introduce to them also.

It seemed to all to go really well and I was just starting to let my guard down around my siblings and their offspring when one of my older brother’s sons came over to me and asked if we could talk privately. This kind of approach was what, in the past, usually ended with the person asking to try and hit me up for a loan, but Wayne, my older brother caught my eye and winked as my oldest nephew, Tim, and I went into the house from the back deck of Beth and Ben’s house. We ended up in the front formal living room of the house and Ted didn’t beat around the bush, he just started stating facts.

“Uncle Mike, I’m 18 years old and I haven’t told anybody this, but I’m gay and in love with a guy I went all through school with and since we just graduated and I saw that you lived in Key West is there any way we could live with you guys and go to the Community College of the Keys for two years? We are both really good students and somewhat good athletes, but we want to be together, and Ryan and I applied and were accepted and we also applied here and were accepted, but we’d each be expected to live at home, and I think we’re too old to be doing that still, especially as we’ve just started having full blown sex (oops, I’m sorry, that wasn’t meant to be a pun) and we both are smart enough to know that both sets of parents wouldn’t allow that under their roofs. We are willing to get part-time jobs to pay our own way and we’ll help around the house. After we get our BA’s in nursing we want to study to become physician assistants, but that is in the future. I’ve met both Carter and your Riley and I like them and I know Ryan will too. Will you at least think about it and maybe talk to Riley about the possibilities?”

I told him I thought he and Ryan ought to come to our house the next day, or whenever the two of them could come out to present their case to Riley and me together. He seemed relieved I hadn’t said a right out “no” to them and he assured me that the next afternoon they would meet with us, but he didn’t know where I lived here. I explained where our property was and he said they would be over as soon as they finished their shifts at the big grocery store they were working at for the summer, about 3 PM.

My brother Wayne sidled up to me after I had a little confab with Riley back out on the deck where the crowd was for the barbecue. Wayne whispered if Ted had finally come out to someone other than his boyfriend and I honestly told him he had, but Ted thought no one knew. Wayne told me he had had his suspicions for the last two years but was waiting for Ted to tell him, he didn’t want his coming out to be difficult for him. He outright asked if Ted had asked to come to live with us in Key West while he and his boyfriend attended nursing school at our community college down there and I told him he had and Riley and I were willing to let them, as long as both sets of parents agreed, but we were probably not going to be there for too much longer, we were seriously thinking about moving permanently to the new property and using the Key West house for winter vacations, and in that case Ted and his boyfriend could use the property to go to school from. I told my brother that Riley had a full school year to teach and we were hopefully going to adopt Carter this fall and sometime next summer move up here, but we needed a new pair of caretakers for our property up here.

Wayne told me that he had Ted’s tuition covered, but he was proud that his teenage son was willing and able to make his own arrangements, but since I was looking for a property management team he thought I ought to know that Ted had worked for a local stable the past several summers, and his boyfriend had been raised on a working farm and was very handy with tools and carpentry. He left it at that and I just knew Riley and I would be having a further discussion about my nephew and his boyfriend after we got home.

The teens arrived the next afternoon and the differences in the two lads amused all of us. Ted was tall and gangling, with the mousy brown hair all us Hampshire men seemed to have and Ryan was short and built like a fit fireplug with the whitest hair on a teen I’d ever seen. He turned out to be one of the nicest guys I’d ever met, and that opinion was made even before he put 2 and 2 together and realized I was also the author Mike Monroe. None of my relatives had cottoned on, and Beth and Ben were sworn to secrecy so when Ryan made the connection and blurted out that he loved my books, poor Ted was caught unawares and just gaped at what he thought of his boyfriend making a huge social gaff, until he saw Riley nodding, but with a hugely proud grin on his face. Once they had been sworn to secrecy we all walked into the house and told the lads about the plan we had come up with for them.

The younger boys, Carter, Max and Bill were still outside exploring so the two young men and Riley and I sat in the office and I asked them what would they think about changing plans and attending the nursing program offered at the Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, operated by Tufts University, and living here in the guest house and taking care of the property for us. We would pay them a salary, but mostly they would do the regular maintenance for the property and keep on top of the snow removal in the wintertime. There obviously would be some pool maintenance involved but then they would be living free and earning enough money that they wouldn’t have to have outside jobs, plus they would be able to come and spend at least some of their vacation times with us in Key West, even if and when we moved up here and made this our permanent residence.

We then took them on a tour of the property and after they had a chance to see all we had been able to show them we hunted up the boys and we all shared a big pan of lasagna for our dinner. The two young men went for a walk after dinner and when they returned they were holding hands and smiling, and they accepted our offer. We set them up with a schedule of working with the Perkins for the two weeks before the older couple took off for Vermont, which would give them a full week to get settled into the guest house before classes started for them at the Medical Center, which was one of the local places where they had been accepted.

With their plans re-arranged they got in touch with the nursing school at the Medical Center and made sure they were enrolled for the fall semester and then broached the subject of their new plans with their respective sets of parents. All went well there and both sets of parents were secretly pleased their boys would not be going that far from home for two years. Wayne called and thanked me for what Riley and I had done to help Ted and Ryan and told me that Ted had announced that he and Ryan were a couple and would be living together from now on, as soon as they had moved into our guesthouse.

The rest of the month went well for everyone and then in the middle of August Mr. and Mrs. Perkins took Ted and Ryan in hand and began showing them the ropes of managing the property. Mr. Perkins told me that he thought they’d do a good job for us. They were young and eager to learn and caught on quickly, and what they couldn’t remember, Ryan had taken notes on just about everything so they had those notes as a reference if needed.

We saw the Perkins off on the 15^th, with instructions on how to access their retirement trust, and two hours later Ted and Ryan had moved into the guest house. A week later they were all settled in their duties and setting up a routine so they would have time during the upcoming months to attend classes. Carter tagged along with them on their rounds of chores and he seemed to relish the attention from his older companions, and the older guys liked having him and his cousins along when the three younger boys were together.

The first time we were prepared to leave for home was aborted when the charter air company reported that a tropical storm just below Cuba was expected to cross that island nation and head up through the Straits of Florida right toward the Keys and they were delaying flights until it was determined just where and at how strong it would hit. The storm did reach hurricane strength as it clipped the southernmost tip of Key West, but it caused no more than some wind damage and swelled tides for a day before moving into the Gulf of Mexico and petering out. The crew at Monty’s Guesthouse reported that our property was untouched and that they would remove the hurricane shutters for us in a day or so and we thanked them for looking after our property for us, as we had arranged before we left. We did get to fly down three days later and we left Ryan and Ted in charge of our Northern property, with plenty of hugs and kisses exchanged before we left, constantly reminding them we were only a phone call away.

Within two weeks Carter and Riley were back in their school routines and I was starting a new book. I was missing the expansiveness of the new property, both inside the house and the expanse of fields and yards around the house, but took solace in knowing we would be moving in less than a year. When I began to feel cooped up sitting at my desk I took to walking around the immediate area and found out that it really helped me in fleshing out a scene or a whole section I was working on at the time. I got familiar with the front gardens of the neighbors on our block and eventually the surrounding blocks. Karen called on the last Friday of September and told me she had just gotten off the phone with our lawyer and we had an adoption hearing on the first Monday of October, which was this upcoming Monday. I thanked her for the call, telling her we had had her mother and her wife over for dinner a few times before we came back and she told me her parents had mentioned what a nice piece of property we had up North.

She asked if she could have a short meeting with my new family after the adoption hearing and I told her it would be doable, as I was sure Riley and Carter would be taking off the whole day from school, why didn’t we all have lunch after the hearing at our place.

I’m sure if you are reading this on the The Castle Roland or the Story Lover’s Home website then you know that there are those adoption hearings fraught with tension and heading for the crapper at times, but this one couldn’t have been better scripted if I had written it myself. The friendly judge first met with Carter privately and when they returned to the hearing room Carter was grinning as he came to sit between Riley and me. Then the judge began asking questions of Riley and me, some of which made no connection to our adoption of Carter, but Karen, on the other side of the table, sat smiling and nodding as he did so. The judge then got to the gist of the matter and not only granted Carter’s adoption and name change (he had asked to be renamed Carter Spencer Hampshire) but he asked Riley and me to volunteer to be Court Appointed Special Advocates, members of a volunteer group that advises the court on cases related to children in the foster system. He urged us to become members of CASA, as he thought our young age might be helpful in getting to know the children we would be advocating for.

Karen explained more during lunch as we held our first luncheon as a family. Carter was beside himself and had texted the twins already as we rode home from the courthouse. He greeted Karen at the door a few minutes after we got home with a big hug and she got one from Riley and me each as Carter escorted her out to the enclosed patio where we had a feast of fried chicken and sides laid out, which Riley and I had prepared before the hearing. After our luncheon of Carter’s favorite meal, Karen fished out from her bag some pamphlets from the CASA organization and some applications. But that wasn’t why she had asked to meet with us as a family, no; she reached in her bag again and came up with another file, this one for another boy.

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