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friends. In one of those odd twists of fate, Mike and Evan had been alone on a patrol together one night during a week in which half the platoon was down with the flu. During a lull, Evan turned to Mike, confessed his feelings, and kissed him. Mike had likewise been harboring a crush on Evan for weeks and was delighted. They were a couple from that day forward.
    “We got caught,” Mike told Gio as he picked cheese off his sandwich, nervous now instead of hungry. “Before that, we’d been so goddamn discreet the CIA could have gotten tips from us, but one day we were fooling around in what we thought was an empty office and our commanding officer walked right in on us. The CO was a dick about it and invoked Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And that was the end of my army career. After we were discharged, Evan and I wound up back here in New York.”
    Evan had decided to make the most of his military training and went to the police academy. Law enforcement had felt like his calling. Then, a few years into his career in the NYPD and five years into Mike and Evan’s romantic relationship, they decided they wanted a whole mess of kids. They set the adoption process in motion.
    “The counselor we worked with at the agency told us that because we were gay, it could be years, and that was what we expected,” Mike explained. He couldn’t look at Gio, who must have known by now what was coming. He couldn’t just cut to the chase, either. He needed Gio to know the whole story, for some reason. “I was really young at the time. I wasn’t ready to be a father, but Evan was really gung ho about it, and I thought, what the hell? Let’s put our names in the hat. By the time we get a child, I’ll be ready. Then this teenage girl in the Bronx saw our profile and decided her baby just had to go to a gay couple. It was crazy, but bless her, wherever she is. She gave us Emma, and I will never stop being grateful to her.” Mike took another deep breath. “It was an open adoption. The birth mom was supposed to stay in touch, but she disappeared shortly after she turned eighteen. Just dropped right off the radar. Stopped returning my e-mails or phone calls. I hope she’s all right.”
    “But this is your story, not hers.”
    Mike nodded. “It happened when Emma was three.” He knew his voice had grown quiet. Gio leaned forward, probably to hear better. But Mike couldn’t say the words any louder. “Evan was on a pretty routine shift when he and his partner got called to a disturbance at a bodega. At first he thought it was a robbery, but then he saw a man screaming at a young girl. The girl was in tears. Evan’s partner tried to talk the man down, but then the guy drew a gun.” This was where things always got hard for Mike. He blinked to keep from showing too much on his face. “The guy was going to shoot the girl. Evan got between the girl and the bullet.”
    Gio put a hand to his mouth. “ Dio mio .”
    Mike sat back. “When the dust settled, I was a single dad raising a toddler in a city. So that’s my sob story.”
    “I am so sorry, Mike.”
    “It’s been eleven years. That kind of thing… it doesn’t go away, exactly, and I still think about Evan pretty frequently, but it’s not… it doesn’t dominate my life the way it once did, I guess.” What Mike didn’t say, couldn’t say, was that the only thing that got him out of bed in those days after Evan’s death was Emma. If not for her, he would have had nothing to live for. He had to take care of a very young girl who had no idea what was happening, who kept asking why she couldn’t see Daddy Evan anymore. He and Emma had been crucial to each other’s survival.
    After a long moment of silence, Mike said, “Look, my daughter is the most important thing in my life. I would do anything to make sure she’s healthy and happy. I’ve never seen her as happy as she is when she’s singing or talking about music. So maybe I’m a little uncouth and uncultured, but