It went fairly well. She and her roommate had some minor disagreements at first, but they seemed to smooth things over, and Alice got very suspicious that they’d started seeing each other. I told her that it was ridiculous and that even if they were together, it was none of our business until Kallie said something about it to us. Alice just smirked at me, but she let it go.

Alice had started to suspect that Kallie was gay when she was a sophomore in high school. She’d heard her crying one night and had gone into her room to see what was wrong. Kallie told her that her best friend hadn’t spoken to her in over a week and was treating her coldly, and Alice got the impression that Kallie missed her as more than just a friend. This was further conformed when Charlie made an offhand comment that he kinda missed beating Kallie’s girlfriend at video games. I know he hadn’t meant for it to slip out and his expression turned guilty immediately, but the damage had been done. Alice was on a mission to prove it.

It didn’t work. When she finally admitted to us that she was gay years later, she also said that Alice had been right and that the friend in high school had broken her heart. After that, though, she hadn’t had any relationships until college, and none of them were very serious.

Charlie was a different story. He started dating the captain of the girl’s swim team at the beginning of his sophomore year, and they seemed like the real thing. She started to join us at all his meets if she wasn’t competing in the girls’ division herself, and became a frequent gust at our house. Some weeks Kallie would come home and we’d have a family dinner together, with Ashley present. She was a good kid and was always happy, smiling and joking with Charlie and Alice. She fit into the group well and even started coming with us to family and group holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Angelica had come home from boarding school to attend CU so she’d been around for a few years by this time, and she and Ashley got along really well too.