Read Thirteen, Fourteen... Little Boy Unseen for Free Online

women’s clothes when you weren’t home, or when he was on business trips. You mean to tell me you never knew this, Mom? Per and I have known since we were teenagers. We walked in on him one day when school was let out earlier than usual and he was home alone. He was dancing with the vacuum cleaner in the living room, wearing a gorgeous purple dress and stilettos. We always assumed you knew about it, but chose to never talk about it.”
    “I…I…I never did.”
    Ever since the conversation with her daughter, Lise had wondered about the husband she thought she knew. She couldn’t say she understood him or what he had been, but she knew that she still loved him. If he was gay, she never knew, but she should have suspected it, since he hadn’t seemed interested in her sexually since they’d had the children. She always assumed he’d simply lost interest in her, and since she was raised to believe that sex and lust were sinful, she had never enjoyed the act, and realized she liked not having to do it anymore.
    She never thought it could be because of that .
    In the weeks after the discovery, Lise Knudsen realized it didn’t change the way she felt about her late husband, to discover that what saddened her was the fact that he had led a double life that she hadn’t known about, that he didn’t feel comfortable enough with her to talk about it. That’s what troubled her the most. Until last Sunday, when Pastor Kemp, with thunder, declared that all gay and transgender people would go to hell.
    “It’s a sin, no matter what you call it,” she had yelled from the pulpit.
    It wasn’t the first time Pastor Kemp had declared something like that, but it was the first time Lise Knudsen had listened thoroughly, and now she was upset. She hadn’t been able to stop wondering if Henning was going to burn for eternity, just because he liked to dress as a woman. Just because he might have been gay? It didn’t seem fair. Henning had been such a loving father. Such a good husband. Was he supposed to suffer for eternity because of this strange double life? It wasn’t right. Not in Lise Knudsen’s book. There had to be some sort of redemption for people who otherwise led decent lives and were good to others, right? Henning hadn’t been a bad person; he had been the best among people…always caring, always loving. It couldn’t be right that he should be punished like this. It simply couldn’t. Where was the love in that?
    Lise had thought about this for a long time, and now she was going to talk to the pastor about it. She would ask her if there was some chance that Henning could have been forgiven. Wasn’t it so that the Lord had taken all of our sins when He died on the cross? Couldn’t He have taken Henning’s then?
    Lise sniffled and parked the bike by the red wooden fence at the entrance to the church. She locked it and started walking across the gravel. She grabbed the handle to the heavy wooden door and pushed it open.
    “Pastor Kemp?” she said, as she walked in.
    Candles were lit at the altar, and it looked like someone was in there.
    “Pastor Kemp?” Lise Knudsen said again, as she walked closer to the figure. “I have a question about Heaven and Hell that I need to get clarified.”
    She blinked her eyes. It was hard to see what it was…if it was a person or something else.
    Damn these old eyes.
    She walked a few steps closer, then she stopped with a gasp. Lise Knudsen held a hand to her chest and gasped for air. In front of her, attached to the old wooden cross, stared the pastor back at her with open lifeless eyes.
     

11
    “ S ORRY I ’M LATE. I ran into our new neighbor.”
    Sune threw his jacket on the chair before he sprang for coffee. It was past lunchtime, and I had been waiting for him for several hours. I followed him into the kitchen. “What do you mean new neighbor?”
    Sune sipped his coffee. The tip of his nose and ears were red from the cold. “Well, it’s technically your dad’s